Restoring Trust to the Telephone Network for Rich Communication and Accelerated Prosperity
What You will Learn from Reading this Article
This article discusses the extent of fraud initiated with a phone call and how this has caused a catastrophe in trust in our public telephone network and the impact that has on genuine business.
The phone numbers and Calling Names (CNAM) of legitimate businesses are being impersonated by fraudsters allowing $10 Billion of fraud in 2023. This also damages the reputation of the legitimate business being impersonated and increases the problem of distrust in the phone system. Here we discuss a just-introduced, standards-based mechanism, fixing the problem with STIR/SHAKEN, to authenticate the origin of phone calls and add certified Rich Call Data (RCD) including company logos. This has resulted in better answer rates, longer and more meaningful conversations with between clients and “good-faith” suppliers and turns the corner on restoring trust in our Phone network.
The Impact of Trust in Growing Business
Last year I read a fascinating book (available from your local library)…
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous—published in 2020, and written by Harvard professor Joseph Henrich.
It’s a history of how the early church, around 300CE, outlawed marriage within the family or the extended family. This inadvertently caused people to move outside their tribe and started the movement to cities, to universities, guilds and other civic groups. It drastically triggered the expansion of business with strangers and grew the modern global economy.
For the History Buffs—here’s an intricate mechanism used by the Ancients to engender Trust and promote trade
One of the more intriguing mechanisms to promote trust and trade in ancient times involved a group or tribe sailing to a beach somewhere near the city of Carthage (in modern day Tunisia) to trade with a local land-based society. They would land on the beach, deposit their produce, grain and food items and then jump into their boats and sail away over the horizon, out of sight.
The tribal group with which they hoped to trade with would then emerge from hiding, inspect the items on the beach and place beside them a quantity of beads, Pottery, gold, whatever items they had to trade and retire across the desert dunes out of sight of the beach.
The parties never met face-to-face.
The next day the sailors would return, inspect the amount and nature of items offered in exchange for their food stuffs and decide whether it was adequate compensation for their offering. If not, they would leave their merchandise, sail away over the horizon and wait for the next day.
The tribe offering pottery and trinkets would then return and add more items to offer into the bargain if they wanted to do the trade or remove their items and disappear, if they did not.
As you can imagine, this involved a huge amount of trust, to believe that your seemingly abandoned and unguarded items would not be purloined in your absence. Instead, you sat down your valuable merchandise and trusted the other party didn’t make off with it. The trust engendered in this process ensured that items offered by the other party in the trade represented a sincere indication of the value that they perceived in your initial offering.
Impact of the Telephone Service on Economic Growth of the USA
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone service was launched in 1878 and provided a profound accelerator to U.S. economic growth. The effect wasn’t immediate because infrastructure (i.e. wires) had to be installed
But it did allow for:-
- Faster communication allowed businesses to coordinate operations, logistics, and decision-making in real time.
- Improved Knowledge Transfer over large distances.
- Helped companies expand regionally and nationally without needing full staff at every site.
- Created a New Industries—By the early 1900’s, the Bell System became one of the largest employers in the U.S.
- Accelerated Urbanization—because the Infrastructure was built where population density was greatest.
- Rural telcos took the initiative to build their own starting in 1920’s and accelerating in the 1950’s.
- Benefited from the network effect:
- The more people used it, the more valuable and essential it became.
Here’s a visual timeline showing how telephone adoption tracked alongside U.S. GDP growth in the 20th century.
The chart below shows the peaks for US GDP growth per decade using analysis from Robert Gordon of Cambridge University published in 2020. The automobile domestic appliances and sanitation under the inventions contribute to this peak of GDP growth. But the telephone played a huge part.
Adoption and Penetration of the Telephone into Homes and Offices
| Year | Phones per 100 People (Approx. Teledensity) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 0.4 | Very early adoption |
| 1920 | 10–13 | Urban areas led growth |
| 1940 | 15–17 | Still mostly businesses and urban households |
| 1950 | 30 | Growth accelerated post-WW II |
| 1960 | 41 | Becoming more common in middle-class homes |
And the Point Is…
As trust in the phone system has been eroded and only 10% of call ever get answered, this has a detrimental effect on GDP growth and the pace of business creation.
Damage Caused by CNAM Mislabeling and Enterprise Impersonation
US consumers lost $10 billion in 2023 according to the FTC. Examples of disingenuous social engineering leading to fraud:
- Package delivery scams.
- Impersonating bank scams.
- Fake tax rebate claims.
- Fake car warranty programs.
- Increasing use of deep fake media.
Robocalls are Also a Significant Drag on Economic Growth
When only 10% of phone calls get answered, what impact do you think this has on the ability for local businesses to converse with their consumers? The spammers and scammers are not only cyber threats. They are hindering the growth of our GDP. If we only talk to people in our Contacts list, we limit business growth. We don’t grow outside our current circle.
“KLT–Know, Like and Trust”—the Axiom of Business Development
Our ability to develop trust and do business with strangers is key to economic growth and the increase of standards of living for all people of the world.
We can text and DM and email but eventually to get the job done, you need to talk real-time, on the phone and it’s surprising how productive this is.
STIR/SHAKEN was a major step forward, implementing in the network a mechanism to authenticate the identity of the origin of phone calls. But the spammers and scammers easily got round the fence of trust. 95% or scam calls defrauding Americans in 2024 came in as ‘A’ Attestation. We need to use and build on STIR/SHAKEN but we need to re-build the circle of trust.
What is BCID-based Secure Verified Identity Presentation (sVIP)?
Branded Calling is the presentation of the Rich Call Data (i.e. logos and Caller-ID info) on the display of the mobile receiving the call. The problem is, current Branded Calling is insecure and these logos are spoofed or counterfeited by the scammers.
Secure Verified Identity Presentation Branded Calling platform—or sVIP—offered by Numeracle, where the logo and other RCD info is certified to be genuinely from the authenticated enterprise, your customer. sVIP is based on BCID.
BCID Is a certifying platform, administered by CTIA, which requires the End-User Enterprise to offer itself for Vetting and Validation to onboard the platform. This means the enterprises themselves are identified, validated and brought into the circle of trust. calls can be certified. DID’s allocated to the enterprise by the OSP are also identified and confirmed and associated with the Enterprise ID which labels the an-boarded enterprise. Copyright checks are also used to enhance authenticity.
What does Secure Verified Identity Presentation give the Originating Service Provider?
- Delivers End-to-End STIR/SHAKEN call signing solution, with RCD, accepted by participating TSPs with delivery confirmation.
- Build on a Zero Trust Framework.
- Uses Multi-adopted Zero Trust Framework governed by CTIA.
- Provides Policies, standards, auditing and oversight for vetting of Enterprise entity and trademarks/copyrights.
- Delivers Verified Business Call indicator.
- Presents Dynamic presentation of certified Name, Logo and Call Reason.
- A platform based on CTIA’s BCID standard.
- RCS (transmit RCD) natively on Mobile.
- Does not need an App.
Benefits to Enterprise
- Reports on every logo RCS information delivered to your consumers’ mobile.
- Increased answer rate.
- Increased call time.
- Increased meaningful dialog with your customers.
- Business productively obtained over the telephone.
- Enhanced customer loyalty and Brand Affinity.
Benefits to Terminating Wireless Service Provider
- Increased Revenue.
- Does not Require consumer/user to install an App.
- Reduced identity Fraud.
- Enhanced customer loyalty and Brand Affinity.
- Having delivered “good-faith” calls from genuine callers.
Teraquant Makes On-Boarding and Mobile Verification Easy
- End-to-End testing for:
- Correct appearance of RCS/logo information on all supported mobiles.
- Types.
- Firmware releases.
- Proof of Verified Call Origination.
- Confirmation of Certification Status.
- Correct appearance of RCS/logo information on all supported mobiles.
- Correct and Dynamic Customizable Reason for Calling.
