[VoiceOps] STIR/SHAKEN warning!

[Mary Lou Carey]

I've heard from several clients that their upstream carrier told them 
they don't need to worry about being STIR/SHAKEN compliant because they 
are taking care of everything for them.

THAT IS NOT CORRECT! Every phone company is required to have its own 
certificate/token!

It doesn't matter if you're a reseller or a facilities-based carrier. 
Whoever bills the customer is the carrier of record and is responsible 
for signing the customer's calls with THEIR OWN certificate/token. While 
an upstream carrier can sign calls for your company, they must sign with 
YOUR certificate/token - not their own because they don't have a direct 
connection with your customer.

Please understand that you're putting your network at risk when you 
share a token with another company because there's no way to 
differentiate between traffic when it's all under the same 
certificate/token. If your upstream carrier signs all their customer's 
traffic with their token, it only takes one bad customer to shut their 
whole network down. The only way to protect your company from other 
companies' mistakes is to make sure your upstream carrier is signing 
your calls with your certificate/token.

One may not think they can get away with using someone else's 
certificate/token because it would be difficult to monitor the call 
stream for offenders. Let me just tell you the ITG can easily compare 
the Robocall Mitigation Database with the Approved Carriers list to 
locate the companies that don't have their own certificate/token. They 
don't need to look at traffic to determine that.

Please don't play Russian roulette with your company because it's not 
worth losing your whole business over the cost of a certificate/token. 
Getting your own certificate/token can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 
months depending on where you are in the process. From what I've heard, 
the FCC will start blocking traffic in August so if you haven't started 
the process....do so now!

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