U.S. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Canada's CRTC Chairman Ian Scott completed end-to-end international authenticated calls using the STIR/SHAKEN protocol using Xfinity Voice and Telus wireless phone services. STIR/SHAKEN is intended to help protect consumers from fraudulent robocalls.
"Comcast has been at the forefront of these efforts from day one and will continue working diligently to eradicate the nuisance calls that have plagued consumers for years," said Tony Werner, president of Technology, Product and Xperience, Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA). "We applaud Chairman Pai and the FCC's leadership to protect consumers by working with voice providers like Xfinity to pave the way for broader implementation of STIR/SHAKEN and other robocall mitigation techniques."
STIR (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) is an emerging technology intended to enable voice providers to "sign" and "verify" caller ID information to prevent bad actors from manipulating or "spoofing" caller ID information in an effort to deceive and defraud consumers.
The protocol's deployment has been implemented steadily for domestic calls. Comcast announced in March that it had completed the first exchange of authenticated calls under the STIR/SHAKEN protocol with AT&T (NYSE:T), and announced in April that it had begun exchanging authenticated calls with T-Mobile (NASDAQ:TMUS).
