YouMail and Bandwidth Unite to Combat Robocalls

We've all been there. You're sitting down to eat dinner or watch your favorite show. Suddenly, your phone starts ringing. It’s from a number with an area code similar to yours, so naturally you expect it to be a friend or relative. Instead, you are greeted by the automated voice of a robocaller.

"Congratulations, you've been selected for a free cruise to the Bahamas!" Or maybe it's a telemarketer trying to sell you a miracle cure for hair loss. Whatever the case, robocalls are a nuisance that just won't go away.

In fact, robocalls have become so prevalent that they're now considered a national epidemic. According to YouMail’s Robocall Index, 4.3 billion robocalls were made in July.

So, two organizations that are fighting against robocalls?

YouMail and Bandwidth.

YouMail (News - Alert) protects consumers, enterprises and carriers by providing app-based call protection services through the YouMail, Another Number and HulloMail apps. These solutions answer over a billion live calls per year across over 10 million registered users.

Bandwidth (News - Alert) is a global enterprise cloud communications company that provides a suite of voice, messaging and 911 solutions to businesses of all sizes. Their platform enables businesses to communicate with customers in a more efficient and personalized way through channels like voice calls, SMS, MMS and chat.

Through the partnership, Bandwidth will use YouMail Protective Services’ Watch 2.0 service in the fight against robocalls.

YouMail Protective Services protects consumer-facing enterprises by detecting and helping shut down imposter traffic that can lead to financial or brand damage. The team also protects carriers with robocall mitigation services that detect and help stop bad traffic originating, traversing or terminating on their networks.

Watch 2.0 is a solution for helping communications providers meet the FCC (News - Alert)'s stringent requirements for preventing consumer harm from robocalling. By analyzing call data from the YouMail Sensor Network, Watch 2.0 accurately identifies problematic calling traffic, such as calls that attempt to circumvent Bandwidth's Stir/Shaken compliance. This will let Bandwidth quickly shut down these sources of unwanted calls and make sure that their network remains compliant with regulatory standards.

"YouMail Protective Services Watch 2.0 service is part of our ongoing, relentless fight against the scourge of robocalling," said Seth Ray, Bandwidth's Vice President of Business Operations. "This enables us to root out callers that are problematic and meet our obligations for the FCC's robocall mitigation requirements."

Ok, sure. Robocalls unfortunately will not disappear. Still, seeing more effort to help consumers thwart them is a small sigh of relief that can go a long way. We will continue to monitor what this partnership, as well as others that pop up, can do to help with the robocall mess.