[VoiceOps] STIR/SHAKEN concerns

[Mary Lou Carey]

I am doing some research for an article so I wanted to ask all of you 
some questions about STIR/SHAKEN and the upcoming implementation in late 
September when traffic will start getting blocked. I personally envision 
the first few months will be a nightmare! Ironically this will all hit 
just as elections are about to take place......how convenient! When the 
industry missed so many steps on the implementation phase, there's sure 
to be things they've missed in this phase so let's think ahead so we can 
address as many problems as we can before they happen! I specifically 
want to focus on the effect the changes are having and will have on end 
user customers. Not only residential and small business customers, but 
enterprise customers such as schools, hospitals, banks, political 
organizations, and other industries that use call centers. Please 
respond to the questions below and let me know your thoughts.

1. Have you seen any changes in the industry since the June 30th 
implementation date. I have witnessed a few odd routing issues that have 
never happened in the past. I'm not sure if they are a fluke or a trend. 
Have you experienced anything out of the ordinary?

2. If your network is partially TDM and partially VOIP, have you 
experienced any issues with either of them? What are your future 
concerns since STIR/SHAKEN does not work with TDM?

3. My biggest complaint as a residential consumer is that caller ID no 
longer shows up like it did. Unless I have the number in my phone, I 
only see something along the lines of Scam Likely or a phone number with 
no caller ID. I find this quite irritating since it prevents me from 
determining if its a friend whose carrier hasn't implemented it yet or 
an actual scammer. Anyone else have complaints about what information is 
being passed?

4. Are you getting more complaints from your customers about anything 
related to STIR/SHAKEN? What are the nature of the complaints? Is there 
a recurring theme?

5. What is your customer's impression of what a Robocall is? My son 
claims he's getting more SCAM calls than he was before but I'm not sure 
he understands what a Robocall is. He may consider any advertisement or 
donation request a robocall, but some things are allowed while others 
aren't. What are you doing to help your customers understand what's 
allowed and what's not allowed?

6. If you're hearing from customers about scam calls they are getting, 
are you reporting those calls to anyone? If so, who are you reporting 
them to?

6. Criminals always seem to be creative. Have you seen any new methods 
scammers are using to get around STIR/SHAKEN process?

7. One of my greatest concerns I have about the September implementation 
is that carriers will get no warning if/when they are going to be 
blocked. I haven't seen anything that states a terminating carrier or 
intermediate carrier has to give a warning muchless disclose that they 
will start blocking another carrier's traffic. Maybe there is a hotline 
to call if your traffic is being blocked unjustly, but I haven't heard 
of any. Have you? Normal routing issues are already a nightmare to deal 
with. Hopefully this will not make it worse or just another method for 
anti-competitive carriers to take out their competition!

8. The last question leads me to the next one. I know there are some 
carriers using their underlying carrier's certificate so they didn't 
register for the Robocall Mitigation Database. I didn't recommend this, 
but I heard through the grapevine some consultants / underlying carriers 
did. If those who didn't sign up for the Robocall Mitigation Database 
have legitimate traffic shut down, what will happen to all their 
legitimate customers? Will they be out of service until the ITG gets 
around to figuring it out? Has anyone heard of a plan to address the 
impact on consumers displaced by this?

9. Has anyone heard of a centralized contact to deal with unjust 
blocking complaints? We all know nothing goes perfectly but I would 
think it will be important for everyone to know what number to call 
should they have problems BEFORE this change is implemented. Have any of 
you heard anything? I haven't!


10. I tried to keep my list simple but I would love to hear your 
thoughts on anything I missed.


Thanks for all your input,

MARY LOU CAREY
BackUP Telecom Consulting
Office: 615-791-9969
Cell: 615-796-1111