Ajit Pai claims Sprint, Charter and CenturyLink for low effort in automated calls

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, yesterday criticized Sprint, Charter, CenturyLink and four other telephone operators for failing to commit to a new automated call blocking system.

Pai issued a press release and sent letters to mobile operators and other telephone operators, indicating that some companies "have not yet established concrete plans to protect their customers", using the new call blocking protocols "SHAKEN" and "STIR".

SHAKEN stands for treatment based on the information signatures asserted with the help of TOKEN, while STIR stands for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited. The new industry standard should not completely eliminate automated calls, but it could make a considerable difference and should be implemented by carriers starting in 2019.

"Under SHAKEN / STIR, calls through interconnected telephone networks would be" signed "as legitimate by the original operators and validated by other operators before reaching consumers", explains Pai's press release. "The frame numerically validates the transfer of phone calls through the complex network of networks, thus allowing the telephone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is coming from the person who passes it. -called. "

Pai's letters indicate that seven telephone operators "apparently do not seem to have a strong call authentication framework in place yet" and are asking these operators to answer a series of questions on 19 November. These operators are CenturyLink, Charter, Frontier, Sprint and TDS Telecom. , US Cellular and Vonage.

Pai's letters yesterday came one month after 35 Attorneys General urged him to act more aggressively on blocking automated calls.

Pai thanked the other phone operators for being committed to implementing SHAKEN / STIR. Carriers that have already committed to SHAKEN / STIR are AT & T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Bandwidth.com, Cox and Google, according to Pai's letters. He also asked these providers for more details about their projects.

Carriers that did not commit to deploying SHAKEN / STIR received a different letter.

"Despite these efforts in the industry, Commission staff tell me that Charter has not yet come up with concrete plans to put in place a robust framework for the authentication of calls, "Pai wrote in his letter to Charter. "I hope this is no longer the case."

Explain yourself

The letter to Charter was almost identical to that sent to Sprint, CenturyLink, Frontier, TDS Telecom, US Cellular and Vonage. The letter asked the following questions and asked for detailed answers before November 19:

• What prevents or prevents you from signing calls today?
• What is your time to sign (ie authenticate) calls from your network?
• What tests did you perform on the deployment and what are the results? Be specific, please.
• What steps have you taken to work with vendors to deploy a robust call authentication framework?
• How often is Charter an intermediary supplier and do you intend to forward signed calls from other suppliers?
• How do you plan to fight and stop launching and ending illegal fraudulent calls on your network?
• The Commission has already authorized telephone operators to block certain fraudulent calls. If the Commission decided to allow voice providers to block all unsigned or unsigned calls, how would you ensure that legitimate calls from your customers are properly routed?

We contacted the seven carriers about Pai's letters last night. Sprint told Ars that he had "received the letter and would respond directly to President Pai". US Cellular responded in the same way, saying it "will respond to the letter from the president".

CenturyLink told Ars that it "understands consumer concerns" about automated calls and "will continue to work with our industry colleagues to identify and address the sources of illegal automated calls". TDS said that it "is currently studying our options for implementing a call authentication framework on a multitude of platforms". Frontier told Ars: "We are reviewing the letter from the president and look forward to continuing our collaboration with the FCC and the industry to fight the bad actors who make these annoying, pervasive and deceptive calls."

We have not received any responses from Charter and Vonage yet.

Today, Pai has sent couriers to voice phone companies that, he says, do not participate in "industry efforts to track fraudulent automated calls that originate or pass through their networks". These companies are 382 Communications, Global Voicecom, IP Link Telecom, R Squared Telecom, Talkie Communications, Thinq, TouchTone Communications and XCast Labs.

Sprint is complaining of the cost

In previous FCC filings, some carriers indicated that SHAKEN / STIR would not fully resolve the issue of automated call blocking, and wondered whether the FCC had provided the appropriate authorization to use SHAKEN / STIR.

Sprint told the FCC in October that "SHAKEN / STIR will be useful to carriers fighting illegal automated calls but is not a complete solution."

Sprint is also complaining about the cost of implementing the system. "Sprint is also concerned about the costs associated with implementing SHAKEN's certificate management requirements and encourages the Commission and industry to explore more cost-effective alternatives to the centralized storage process initially envisioned in the development. of SHAKEN ", wrote Sprint.

Sprint and others noted that SHAKEN / STIR needed to be widely adopted by carriers to be effective. Sprint wrote that "SHAKEN does not tell us anything about the content of a call or the legality of its content, it only authenticates the start of the call path and information about the identity of each call. Without universal adoption of supplier SHAKEN origin to supplier the authentication will not be forwarded to the final carrier. "

When Charter was filed in September, Charter said it would associate with Nomorobo's call blocking company to offer automated call blocking to customers, but indicated that it needed a additional authorization to use SHAKEN / STIR.

"As the industry finalizes and implements the SHAKEN / STIR framework, the Commission should adopt rules allowing providers to block calls that fail to authenticate in cases where calling service providers call and termination have implemented SHAKEN / STIR protocols, "said the Charter. "Given the rigorous testing currently underway in the SHAKEN / STIR framework, the Commission can be assured that such appeals are" most likely illegal ".

Although T-Mobile has already committed to using SHAKEN / STIR, it has pointed out potential gaps in its ranking.

"First, SHAKEN / STIR can only provide a positive affirmation of the source of a given call," T-Mobile told the FCC. "It can not give confirmation to the contrary, that is to say that a call is definitely" bad "or fraudulent.This is especially true when calls are routed by international providers that do not participate not to SHAKEN / STIR who send calls to the United States via wholesale partners. "

T-Mobile further noted that the majority of fraudulent calls probably originated from outside the United States and that "adoption must go beyond national operators to also include the operators." to have a real effect on the attack of fraudulent calls ". Finally, T-Mobile noted that SHAKEN / STIR requires IP interconnection. "[T]We, existing networks will not be able to generate or transmit verification data for calls, "wrote T-Mobile.

Disclosure: The Advance / Newhouse partnership, which owns 13% of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, who owns Ars Technica.