ATIS Robocalling Testbed Ensures STIR/SHAKEN Call Authentication Interoperability For Carriers Ahead Of FCC Deadline

Neustar-hosted testbed to expand functionality and international interoperability testing

As the Federal Communications Commission’s June 30 deadline for implementing STIR/SHAKEN approaches, the ATIS Robocalling Testbed hosted by the Neustar Trust Lab continues to help carriers confirm their ability to protect consumers by mitigating robocalls and caller ID scams. In the second half of 2021, the testbed will expand its features and functionality to support emerging ATIS standards as well as global interoperability testing for evolving international frameworks.

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“When the testbed launched in February 2017, STIR/SHAKEN standards were still under development; the final versions were shaped by real-world experience”

The testbed serves as the industry interoperability test facility to validate the effectiveness of STIR/SHAKEN. To date, 66 participants (62 carriers and four vendors) from seven countries have used the testbed, in a total of 89 test sessions. The participants represent 70% of the active phone numbers in the U.S.

ATIS developed the initial SHAKEN standards and continues to develop those standards to meet future industry needs. Neustar created a reference implementation of STIR/SHAKEN which has been used to validate all subsequent implementations that participated in the robocall testbed.

“When the testbed launched in February 2017, STIR/SHAKEN standards were still under development; the final versions were shaped by real-world experience,” said James Garvert, senior vice president of Communications Solutions at Neustar. “As we tested, we provided feedback on interoperability issues to the relevant standards groups and to early adopters of STIR/SHAKEN and identified gaps or inconsistencies to further improve the standards — so testing and standards development informed each other. We aim to scale this same approach internationally, to address nuisance calls at a global level, while also expanding functionality as the call authentication standards evolve.”

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“The ATIS testbed has played a critical role in accelerating industrywide STIR/SHAKEN deployment and leading carriers forward in the race to meet pressing FCC deadlines,” said ATIS President and CEO, Susan M. Miller. “With the June FCC deadline approaching, ATIS and Neustar are looking ahead to determine how the industry can gain further ground in the fight against illegal robocalls and caller ID spoofing. Phone calls don’t stop at national borders, so international interoperability is key for universal adoption and consumer protection.”

In the third quarter of 2021, the Neustar Trust Lab will expand the features and functionality of the testbed, and migrate into a virtual, flexible cloud-based architecture to support emerging ATIS standards, including delegate certificates, Out-Of-Band (OOB) SHAKEN for legacy Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) networks, and Rich Call Data (RCD). With these enhancements, Neustar and ATIS aim to unify advanced call authentication approaches across the global telecommunications ecosystem to enable providers, carriers and enterprises to implement a wider range of call scenarios and business models.

The testbed has already supported international interoperability testing between the U.S. and Canada, as both countries prepare for implementation deadlines in June and November of 2021. As additional countries consider deploying SHAKEN, the testbed will be available for international service providers to test their implementations in support of global interoperability for SHAKEN.

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