In case you missed it, on December 30, 2019 President Trump signed the Pallone-Thune TRACED Act into law. This law gives service providers 18 months to implement STIR/SHAKEN in their networks. The clock’s ticking!
The act is a relatively snappy 17 pages, but to save you time I’ll share the most interesting points for independent telcos right here.
- Telcos have an 18 month deadline (that would be June 30, 2021) to implement STIR/SHAKEN for VoIP calls.
- For TDM calls, service providers must “take reasonable measures to implement an effective call authentication framework” by the same deadline.
- The FCC continues to have oversight on robocall blocking, although the act mandates that consumers may not be charged an additional fee for this service.
You need an action plan
If you’re reading this and you are already taking steps to be compliant, then go ahead: pat yourself on the back. Nice job.
On the flip side, maybe you were concerned about all the issues with STIR/SHAKEN and have been taking a “wait-and-see” approach. If that’s you, then (a) don’t panic, but (b) now’s the time to figure out what you’re gonna do about it.
If it were me, I’d be taking a look at the following options (and as always, some of these are Metaswitch specific):
- Metaswitch have a partnership with TNS to provide a cloud-based STIR/SHAKEN + robocall blocking solution.
- TransNexus put out a lot of great content on this topic, and their STIR/SHAKEN solutions can handle not-only VoIP, but also the troublesome issue of an “effective call authentication framework” for TDM, through their Out-of-Band STIR solution.
As always, if you need advice on how to navigate this issue, feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to offer some quick advice on the phone, or we can walk alongside you through the deployment process through our Project Guidance service.
