Telecoms bond over stirring proposals to shake up call spoofing

Technologies identified by the CRTC as potential tools to combat spoofed and nuisance calls have promise, but barriers to their deployment mean they’re not likely to be put in place any time soon, companies told the regulator. The CRTC launched a consultation in January following a November order requiring telecoms put in place measures to block “unwanted nuisance calls” on both wireless and wireline networks. In interventions, which were due Wednesday, companies addressed the potential effectiveness of two standards that are currently in development to authenticate caller ID information — the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)’s Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS)’s adaptation, Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN). In a joint intervention, telcos BCE Inc., Telus Corp., Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. and Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. said they’re not aware of any solution other than STIR and SHAKEN that “has industry momentum that attacks the problem at its root,” but that it’s still too early to determine how effective those technologies are. One of their limitations is that they don’t work on circuit-switched, or legacy, networks. “Given the still considerable number of consumers currently served and expected for the foreseeable future to be served by circuit-switched networks in Canada and abroad, the effectiveness of such measure is expected to be low at its introduction but increasing over time as the base of consumers served by domestic and foreign STIR/SHAKEN capable SIP-based networks and devices grows,” their intervention said. They noted that SHAKEN is a tool that allows the person receiving the call “to verify the validity of the calling party number being presented” and not a tool to block calls. Cogeco Inc. also wrote that the “STIR/SHAKEN solution would benefit in gaining maturity before considering nationwide deployment,” noting that in Canada, “the majority of voice networks and endpoints are still on legacy/Time-division multiplexing technology (TDM) technology.” Rogers Communications Inc. said the “telecommunications industry is cautiously optimistic about the effectiveness of STIR and SHAKEN. While they hold good potential to limit nuisance calls, the technical specifications for these technologies have only recently been developed and some are still under development.” Rogers said it will still take the vendor a year or two to develop the equipment and software, and following that it will take another few years for telecoms to implement them in their networks. The technologies are still “relatively new and untested,” Shaw Communications Inc. pointed out. They will not be effective unless they are adopted by both most North American telecoms and companies internationally, and their level of readiness isn’t “guaranteed as equipment upgrades or replacement would be required for the large majority of TSPs to support this standard,” Shaw said. Implementing STIR/SHAKEN on wireless networks wouldn’t be appropriate, Shaw’s wireless subsidiary Freedom Mobile wrote in a separate intervention, because in calls originating from a wireless network, the caller ID is “not unilaterally alterable” by the user. “Freedom Mobile is aware that over-the-top VoIP applications can easily manipulate and spoof caller ID information, but Freedom Mobile has no control over such providers and the call processing by such applications is not visible to Freedom Mobile,” it said. The cost of these technologies is also still unclear, the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) pointed out, writing that their implementation cost “is difficult to calculate at this point in time due to the fact that these standards are still under active development and have not been deployed yet in a commercial capacity.” The CRTC also asked companies to comment on the idea of tracing nuisance calls on behalf of subscribers and “the feasibility of establishing an industry-managed entity or government-led voluntary process for tracing nuisance calls in Canada.” Rogers responded that it had concerns about such an initiative. “First, the mechanism is labour intensive, and no methods and ‘best practices’ have yet been developed to enable this function. Second, subscribers that request the service would expect quick resolution to the trace, even if it were traced overseas where the Commission has no enforcement jurisdiction,” it said. Meanwhile, Cogeco noted potential privacy concerns with the idea of tracing calls on behalf of subscribers. The company added that it “remains unclear whether certifying and verifying caller ID information in order to reduce caller ID spoofing will be permitted either under Canadian privacy laws, or under Cogeco’s current terms and conditions.” CNOC also pointed out that tracing calls on behalf of subscribers is a practice that “would not likely be permissible” under the terms and conditions of many telecoms and could also incur “significant ongoing costs.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

Telecoms bond over stirring proposals to shake up call spoofing

News | March 3, 2017

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Telecoms bond over stirring proposals to shake up call spoofing

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