Get started with our next panel. My name is Christopher Shipley executive director for encompass thank you all for sticking around. And gives me great pleasure to introduce our next one seeing is how for encompass i do all of our inhouse robo call and robo texting work. But i am thrilled thank you. Thank you. [applause] thank you i do want to think back for poll attachments in half an hour but it gives me great to introduce tamara fin moderating our panel today and thank each and every of our gue bill hunt and john from tns and Michael Pryor council to the Communication Alliance looking forward to todays panel and i wish you all the very best. Thanks. Thank you chris and thank you bill john and michael for join knows what robo calls and robo texts are of course nobody wants to be called from the irs scam but you do want your calls and your Doctors Office or from your schools it is very important those calls get through and they dont get labeled as spam so industry and the fcc working together adopting rules and practices and trying to make sure that we stop the robo calls. But we also have kind of standardized non discriminatory rules that let the call through that the receive. So weve got some great panelist here today to talk about it from different aspects of the industry. And bill i would like to start with you from bandwidth perspective how has proliferation texts and calls impacted you as a Service Provider and wha issues . I want to i think the audience needs to thank tamara before we get started it was my idea to announce t this with a robo call to everybody. [applause] but tamara didnt feel it would be a very and chips slowly mississippi draw it could be a really long robo call. But that didnt work either. So this a little bit about banddth it is a historically started in voice space. And we offered telephone numbers Emergency Services a lot of inputs. So the industry evolved weve been in the middle of everything from perform and universal service to robo texts and robo calls. And how its impacted the business is it leads to a lot of lost from misdirected resources theres initial knowier customer work you have to do theres Additional Network work you have to do because robo calls take up a lot of capacity on your network. Theyre very short calls. Theyre capacity work and you have to terminate them along you have to dealcement attorney generals the fcc so theres a lot of lost resources that go into fighting robo texting and we have been at the fore front we were in the room when chairman wheeler created the task force and most of you probably know greg rodgerss more than you would know me but greg is like a a crusader in this space. Hes very passionate about it, as mr. Shipley knows [laughter] from all that do but we really arntent and we want to find a way to ban these calls we doangts want to dont deal with them and they hurt with other carriers i think the solution tamara at the end of the day is we would love to see you bike with connection and reasonable terms because a lot of benefits of stir shaking is still being lost because tem Network Parts of the network that cant handle signal so thats our of course thank you bill michael you represent that cloudiance . Can you talk about what the cloud Service Providers are doing to deal with the robo calls . Sure. And the Cloud Communicationssort of Small Association whose members are primarily over the top voip providers and we actually get to work closely with encompass and pleased to do that on a lot of these robo call issues. You know, what has kind of happened over the last few years as the commission realized that regulations and laws that could h arent really doing a good job of about curbing robo calls it is looking for either Technological Solutions like stir shaken, or expanding authorizations or mandatory blocking. So its from the perspective the Cloud CommunicationsAlliance Members who are trying to serve businesses who are have very interested in talking to their customers. The balancing act for them on one hand is to extent theyre providers theyve theyve committed resources time and effort to do that, and as, you know, just mentioned theres a bit of concern about that because while theyve spent these resources to develop a meanings to sign calls using the stir shaken protocol those calls are getting through to the end user. But the thing theyve done is that theyve very taken very seriously know your customer rules. They try to exercise Due Diligence and who theyre ing. Theres some members who just make it as a business policy. There are their Customer Base is not going to include peopleho make mass calling. So you know, that varies the risk that theyre wanting to take. But it really is emblematic of where weve come in the last few years where essentially the Communications Community has deputized as robo call police, and they have really enormous responsibilities on them now with consequences they dont really do a reasonable job of trying to identify to the extent possible and keep off their networks illegal, illegal robo calls and texts. So john can you describe the solutions and how you partner with and help, you know, carriers in the addressing thanks for having thanks for the staff here in encompass so tns is a structure as a Service Provider. We provide service holistically to several across the country and canada for the robo call mitigation solution. We provide this service forviders in u. S. And canada. We provide the full stir shaken authentication function we run the call validation treatment which is the solution im responsible for called guardian we also have at face applications to amer interface to bring that presentation to the consumer on the handset to be able to manage that experience then we also have a Service Integration elevation that were working on with some of the smaller carriers and Legacy Networks to really do advance technoly improvement to bring as you mentioned into the ip space because we see that same issue and this is something that i report on in the quarterly robo call produces on every quarter we have been seeing since the of sign traffic by the major Service Providers theyre doing a wonderful job. The problem were seeing now is disparity of the nontop sudden carriers seeing a bigger divergence which im sure many of you are representing and supporting so one of the things were trying to do with that is enable to sift as you mentioned and if theres a connection if we enable the communication of what sti shaken is doing the translation of the know your customer from the originated seed to terminating we can get a much better experience. So thats a quick oversets. Great. Thank you. So fcc has many ul rues in this area right . Weve got the Call Blocking with reasonable analytic and trace back so you know, john you said youve seen improvement with the top 7. But are these rules working . They working as intended . So john yowment you want to start . Thats an interesting question so weve been filing comments through fcc right with the age order one discussing a. I. And law that came out weve been pitching describing solutions that we have right we provide the service for the terminating Service Provider has the has the what it should be of the ca identification of the service to offer their subscriberses we offer based preferences where the individ subscriber can define how they want to manage that experience of traffic being marked et cetera coming to them. One thing to note is that with all of this traffic all of those over 95 of the traffic still gets to the handset so the blocking is not really the issue its the labeling and identification. And again in comes back to the ability of translating the knowledge from the stir shaken authenti terminating side with interconnectivity so opportunities to keep working. Weve progress but we want to keep making the industry go forward and build them. I think i dont remember a time ive been at this for so many orders coming so quickly on a topic. You barely have time to understand what the last rule was before another set of rules comes out and its really hard to stay on top of this. And frankly i dont know, i havent really seen hard data that suggest that robo calling has materially decreased as a result of this. Maybe thats not the right test. But i think i think sort of, you know, the jury is out whether all of this is going to work. You know i think it is interesting with destructive stir shaken and talked about the problem with tdm and need for connection is a way to solve that problem. But you know, many of these come in from Foreign Countries you know fcc has placed very specific obligations on gateway providers that may reduce the somewhat but it is an International Problem. And yountries are going Different Directions you know england has said were not going to do stir shaken i think france says we are and spain is making up its mind. You know so its its an interesting International Problem as well as a a problem domestically. Bill did you want to add anything . Sure you said earlier that given all of the rules really becomeou see a badge . And can i put away [laughter] i should have a badge. That all of the the work thats been coming out of the fcc rules reflects how aanything these calls are and theres a universal acceptance to find a way to stop these thats why i think were seeing a lot of that. But what you kind of touched on is this concept of analytic providers and the call flow who are providing a service maybe to one carrier that you then become the gateway to get to that carrier and whether the calls get through are you know, pretty much premised on the quality of your data. Know, the source of it whether it is almost a pay to play kind of give us your information well put your numbers in our database carrier that maybet to sell or give you my numbers doesnt have to deal with that. How do you work through that, that know like i think we would agree with you i. P. Is delay weve seen a reduction in robo calls. Especially as you get like one of the things come out of this is the transparency when the fcc was 14 people they kicked out of the rmd you make sure that your network and go to the sales force and think dont touch these guys right so more good but lack because theres always going to be somebody popping up somewhere. But we always struggle with the pay and the fact that something can be mislabeled and then recourse. So what are your what are working thats nnc that ive heard right so part of the issue right is understanding what we do and again this was part of our noy commentary we did on a. I. So the way they entered was work it was initially machine on Artificial Intelligence using several dozen features to actually process each and every call independently and scoring it. So one of the issues that we do see is what we do get a call in for a readdress process right readdress is when you get a call that has been identified not marked as spam but contactss that. Over 80 of the time were seeing that number had already been naturalizedo a natural score five times record came in. Because the key is that algorithm thats running is not a static database right it is no longer a white black ligs or dump file of dial code plans that you use for a country it is an integrate combination that includes activity we see not only for customer a but for the other 14 9 that we support and additionally i would say more importantly we ingest and process and integrate commentary from the consumer to play a role with how the traffic is identified. So were getting the consumer coming back to us in a real time telling us that this member is making dodgy traffic and often what we see is well see lijts traffic coming through with one set of information andlegitimate traffic with another without numbers spoofed by elicit source. This is one of the problems that we have. The Service Provider who has contracted us to provide and give them the service. Box in which to work with with how they want to control traffic on their network. And then, within the subscriber preferences. So i think as we get to the point of making more coverage and enabling better identification of traffic. Differentiating the spoofed versus legitimate and real time, this is where we get to better Delivery System i have commentary special providers like you were the people you represent dissent onto the process. Under the customer and of the three questions i need to answer for that value insertion. I can answer that may be your spot the time it goes to your network i know who the carrier is, but i do not know the telephone number i did not sell it to you. This is where we get into pieces of the puzzle of than the shaken framework. We need to keep moving forward. Obviously we hit last june when the last tear of the mandate from fcc participate. We are still in this learning phase. The big carriers have had three years to work with us. We are moving forward and need to keep a lot of the customers to help support. Because what we want . We want from the enterprise size to have your customers connected. For an aggregate side i w bring traffic and i i want a billable conversation. From the service pack providers i support we want to bring that to the consumer because they get value as a provider. Being the conduit to that consumer. Everyone wants this to happen we now have to continue the progress to keep learning and refining and how we do this better make the standards work and apply. A long time ago the fcc said theres a terminating access monopoly. Providing the service to the customer that is terminating one of the things we are struggling with an eye am hearing our the call analytics the l and everything how do we make sure thats nondiscriminatory . I think it is not just ai a i learning. It is making pay to play and everybody is treated fairly there is a redress method. And so it recommendations without there. Cooks great summary of the problem. [laughter] thank you very much we are worried one monopoly, one bottleneckther. He moved down the road. We would love to see ideas. To have some transparency would be curious. Do you guys have transparency and what your standards are and what goes into theox . Ifyou are an aggregator and not one of your subscribers is there a teaching checklist the best practices that we distribute to the req that in that case we do not adjust the score and identify this as legitimate traffic we will send that back to do things such as ramp up traffic. Stop cycling through numbers actually leave voicemail and connect to the customers. We collect information such as conversation duration per whether calls are answered, always a part of the algorithms we are processing to determine what is valid or not. This is intent of the language. Weve been building things look at processing topts to understand whats being settled a call. There is a difference of a number making a phone call versus the party claiming something as the treatment while. You, as a Provider Party who youve done your k yc but some other person that gets identified that messes up the party for everybody. Weve got to find ways to address these and identify it. We can share that with the team and through chris we can distribute to the best practices we have. Questions like what redress the importance of that . We have heard that term a couple of times we back up and explain what that is. The fcc continues to ratchet up the amount mountain blocking was authorizing or mandating and based on reasonable analytics but the algorithms we have been discussing. There is a concern legitimate traffic is getting blocked. The systems are infallible. A group of us including a cloud Communication Group and others when the trade was passed to get in language to talk about the need for effective and transparent redress. If your legitimate calls are getting blocked mechanism to get those calls unlocked. Rule codified for analytics based blocking. Where they have to do two things. One is it has to have a notification to the originator of thethe call is been blocked. Ec thing as it has to have a process once a claim has been made theres been an erroneous block how we going to process that . The rules require that we done within a reasonable period of time. The status update within 24 hours. It has to happen faster. So those rules are in the books. The only cal still some work to be done on the notification issue those rules do not apply tog which has become maybe even a bigger issue than blocking. When youre picking up your phone and seeing spam is that spam has been mislabeled with our law firm in denver they were able to spam. Theyve taken us off. We had to work through that. We are trying to get to take the codified rules about redressing notification have them apply to texting. Companies respond not a standardized process. Imoving to the texting world and try to translate. We try to see some notification a redress transferred int texting world as we start to mandate blocking of text. That is my huge issue. Thats one way to balance a stretch at the really bad traffic try to get blocked but at least not for too long. Go ahead. What would you agree labeling is a problem. There is yet another bottleneck to go through. Also moving away its kind of out there and no one uses it anymore. We had toward labeling. A couple Different Things to think about labeling. One is the extension makes a decision about whether traffic is suspicious or not. Thus one kind of labeling. The other kind of labeling is lets say youve got to get through. You see a label on your phone. And verify. I think where the fcc needs to go is not to authenticate a number but to authenticate the identity of the person calling or sending the text. Data unit there are concerns being uptodate. And there are questions about who should be in control of the information that gets sentthe network. I think it has a terminating provider. But maybe rich called the originating provider audit on, on said this is who is calling you. Why they are calling a prude know the number is not spooked you can trust us. And said moving here all day about conductivity. We are losing trust in the networks. People do notes answer the phone. We really need to have systems in place that can verify the identity so that when someone sees this as is my Dentist Office calling me i can be reasonably assured y that is my Dentist Office calling out pick it up. As it works is as good a stir shaken and does them. This is the frustrating part. We do services for originating did services for originating stir shaken. When i see that coming back viaanother i am seeing the stir shaken. There is some other provider that missed. All the work was in the front, all the work that was done has disappeared its ridiculous across all the providers. Only with myself but the ones that run the other big two mobile carriers. It is been a great discussion and im sure we could go on for a while. Unfortunately we have attachments. So thej answer iss is connection right everyone . Thank you so much. [applause]