Iristel calls for caller ID manipulation to be outlawed

Iristel Inc. has asked the CRTC to issue an order explicitly prohibiting the manipulation of caller ID information to circumvent routing restrictions, alleging in a Part 1 application that Rogers Communications Inc. may be involved in a scheme where some of its Canadian customers have had their caller ID tweaked to make it seem like calls are originating from the U.S. In the Part 1, dated July 29 but posted on the CRTC’s website on Monday, Iristel says it believes the purpose of the caller ID manipulation is to “allow Rogers to benefit from termination rates that are more advantageous than those they would otherwise pay to Canadian by routing Canada-to-Canada traffic domestically.” In an email, a Rogers spokesperson denied Iristel’s allegations. “We do not manipulate caller line ID. We have investigated the case provided and determined a third-party long distance vendor made an error during testing in May and the matter was resolved in the spring,” the spokesperson said, In a phone interview, Iristel CEO Samer Bishay said Iristel strikes bilateral deals with certain U.S. providers that typically include a “blended rate” for calls going from one country to the other, which factors in the average cost of making a call to that country. The wholesale cost per minute of making a call to a “high cost area” such as Canada’s arctic originating in the U.S. is then cheaper under that blended rate than it is if it originates inside the country, Bishay said. In its application, Iristel says a call is made to look as if it originates from the U.S., and then passed further downstream to a U.S. carrier with a bilateral agreement with a Canadian carrier. The U.S. carrier then unknowingly treats the call as originating in the U.S., Iristel argues. Iristel’s application states it suspects Rogers has “engaged in, or has at very least been willfully blind to” the caller ID manipulation, but Bishay said in a phone interview that he had no evidence Rogers was involved in the alleged scheme. Changing caller ID information violates section 36 of the Telecommunications Act, Iristel says in its Part 1 application, as well as being “essentially fraud.” Iristel said in its application it first became aware of the caller ID manipulation on May 25 when a Rogers customer located in Vancouver called an Iristel conference bridge, with the bridge registering his calling number as originating from New York. The customer, who was not roaming, told Iristel staff he was not aware his caller ID information was not displaying his own telephone number. After the call, Iristel investigated its call data records and found “hundreds of calls and tens of thousands of call attempts” originating from that same number, starting on May 14, the company’s application states. Iristel said it contacted Rogers about the issue and was told the issue was being investigated, but had yet to receive an explanation. Further tests with Toronto-based Rogers customers dialling an Iristel conference bridge occasionally showed caller ID information appearing as the earlier New York-based number, while also occasionally appearing correctly, Iristel said in its Part 1 application. In a phone interview, Samer Bishay said he was not aware of caller IDs being changed to that of other international numbers, but said “there could be others”. “That’s the one that we ran the check on, we didn’t run other U.S. area codes, to be honest we didn’t take that exhaustive check because one time is already one time too many,” Bishay said. Bishay said the scheme would have cost Iristel “at least thousands of dollars” in termination rate revenue but said Iristel was more concerned about public safety. -- With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Iristel calls for caller ID manipulation to be outlawed

News | August 4, 2020

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Iristel calls for caller ID manipulation to be outlawed

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