news & events

With illegal robocalls now representing nearly half of all unwanted calls in the U.S., consumers are opting to simply not pick up their phones. In fact, studies show that in the U.S. alone, 76% of calls from an unidentified or unfamiliar number are left unanswered, and 58% of consumers only answer calls from numbers they recognize. A previous article exploring how businesses can protect their brands against the damages from illegal robocalls touched on industry initiatives that are helping…

The Covid pandemic has accelerated not only digital adoption but also the scale and spread of scams. Every month, over 4 billion scam calls are made globally, with 23% of Americans reporting that they've lost money due to such calls in 2021 alone. During a panel session during Mobile World Congress Barcelona, George Cray, Senior Vice President at iconectiv, highlighted the growth in spoof calling and cited statistics revealing that 85 billion robocalls happen globally. He revealed that many…

In a recent VanillaPlus article, Peter Ford, Executive Vice President of iconectiv, explained how digital transformation will have a significant impact on connectivity and communications, along with identity verification. “Both are driving forces behind the acceleration of conversational commerce – completing customer e-commerce transactions through communications platforms likes Instagram and WhatsApp, for instance – and how businesses communicate with customers and how countries make…

Business strategies that involve 5G, edge computing and virtualized networking demand a universal structure for the deployment, interconnection and management of the physical and virtual assets these capabilities require. Essentially, the same terminology must be used to enable different domains within a communications service provider (CSP) to have visibility into each other and for external organizations, such as partners and vendors. For this interview, Eyad Alqadi, Regional Sales…

STIR/SHAKEN is a now widely-adopted protocol enabling telecoms to feed calling party attestation info to consumers when they receive a call from businesses. But phone calls from legitimate enterprises—such as a consumer’s bank, pharmacist, and doctor—are routinely NOT answered by consumers. So what “common language” or industry-adopted methodology will enable STIR/SHAKEN to evolve to its next level of usefulness? The Q&A with iconectiv and CTIA about their joint initiative,…

The science of selling is constantly evolving. Over the last several decades, selling has become more capital intensive, data driven, and teamwork oriented. Several secular forces have been changing the nature of selling incrementally over time. Peter Ford, Head of Information Solutions Business at iconectiv, shares his insights on allocating the most effort toward the biggest customer opportunities.  Read more here.

People simply do not answer the telephone anymore unless they unequivocally know who is calling. That is hurting legitimate businesses that rely on voice calls to reach their customers. The industry continues to advance the objective to restore consumer faith and confidence in answering our telephones. Central to achieving that objective is the ability to verify that the information of the calling party has been authenticated. That seems simple enough but considering that many businesses use…