Robocalls make up nearly half of all phone calls so frustrated consumers simply don’t answer incoming calls and businesses can’t get through to customers when they need to reach them. At the same time, phone numbers have become the defacto personal identifier for consumers and—if verified— can provide valuable information for companies looking to mitigate risk. As communications security professionals gather at this year’s Communications Fraud Control Association’s (CFCA) annual convention, iconectiv will highlight the role of trusted communications and how the industry is working together to maintain the integrity of the phone number to protect businesses and businesses.

Glenn Reynolds, Head of Government and Industry Affairs at iconectiv, will be among several industry stakeholders to highlight policy-related issues, including the progress being made in scam and spam robocall mitigation, one of the top issues impacting carriers today and a key focus of the 116th Congress during its first nine months.

iconectiv, the authoritative partner of the communications industry, has signed the agreement to serve as U.S. Secure Telephone Identity Policy Administrator (STI-PA) for the FCC-endorsed ATIS-SIP Forum SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) — the industry-wide solution to mitigate illegal robocalls and help consumers once again trust their calling number displayed on their caller ID.

Published ahead of the industry’s Open Networking Summit next month in Antwerp, Belgium, the latest release of international specifications to help build future software-led mobile networks includes a key contribution from iconectiv®, a company which provides information services that help service providers operate and manage their communications networks globally.

The specifications have been published by the LF Networking’s Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) to help combine and drive industry progress toward delivering new services quickly and cost-efficiently using network functions virtualization (NFV) over software-defined mobile networks within an open source framework.

Mobile phone numbers now rival social security and driver license numbers as the personal identifier that consumers use to register for products and services. That ubiquity makes mobile numbers an attractive and powerful tool for identity thieves, who stole $14.7 billion in 2018 from 14.4 million U.S. consumers.

Now, with the introduction of PortData Validate from iconectiv, financial institutions, healthcare providers and other authorized businesses can leverage telephone number porting data as part of their assessment when verifying a customer’s identity, approving a transaction or disclosing information.

Transaction expands company’s Information as a Service (IaaS) footprint in digital transformation and trusted communications solutions.