STIR/SHAKEN Participation Sees June Increase

Americans go through each day constantly interrupted by robocalls. They come at all hours of the day. People can be out with friends or about to sit down to relax, and the phone rings with a someone asking about a car’s extended warranty or the IRS issuing a warrant if the requested information is not provided.

To help validate phone calls and fight off bad actors, STIR/SHAKEN standards and protocols are allowing phone companies to verify that the call is from the number displayed on caller ID and is secure. In fact, the FCC (News - Alert) has mandated that carriers adopt STIR/SHAKEN to protect consumers.

TransNexus, developer of innovative software to manage and protect telecom networks, released statistics that showed signed robocalls continued to grow in June, and calls signed B or C were six times more likely to be robocalls. About 37% of calls signed B, or partial attestation, and 39.85% of calls signed C, or gateway attestation, were robocalls.

These calls were signed by a downstream intermediate provider using their own SHAKEN certificate, meaning the downstream provider would sign robocalls and then look the other way.

TransNexus (News - Alert) also released statistics that showed STIR/SHAKEN participation increased in June, including robocalls signed with SHAKEN certificates. SHAKEN authorized providers increased 15% in June. This may be a result of the June 30 deadline set by the FCC that required small carriers to implement STIR/SHAKEN.

Additionally, the number of originating service providers, OSPs, signing calls increased by 22% from May to June. An OSP is a communications provider that allows users to originate 911 voice or nonvoice messages from the public-to-public safety answering points.

Robocall Mitigation Database filings also saw an increase of 51%. Voice service providers must certify whether and to what extent they have implemented the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication framework through the Robocall Mitigation Database.

With the increase in SHAKEN participants, 76.23% of calls were still unsigned. This number stayed level from May to June despite the increase is OSPs and SHAKEN authorized providers.

STIR/SHAKEN participation is continuing to rise; however, the percentage of signed calls is not increasing.