Rebuilding Trust in Voice Communications with Network-Level Digital Identity
episode
The Fast Mode Podcasts: Breaking News, Analysis and Updates From Telecoms Industry
25 min
1 speaker
7 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is causing the current trust crisis in voice communications?
Whenever we get a call that's unidentified, we just don't assume that they're legitimate anymore. And it is a learned behavior and a psychological anchor that has just kind of proliferated across the entire uh consumer base.
Welcome to the Fastword Podcast series. I'm Tara Neal, and with me today is Josh Whitehurst, head of product at First Orion. As a market leader in branded communications solutions, First Orion elevates phone call and messaging experiences for businesses, carriers, and consumers. In addition to branded calling and messaging, the company empowers businesses with advanced Analytics to optimize call programs, real-time fraud detection to protect their customers, and other innovative solutions that enable enterprises to provide trust and transparency at scale. First Orion is a valued partner to Fortune 500 companies and is integrated into the largest US mobile carriers. Josh, who's with us today, is instrumental in developing and overseeing First Orion's most strategic solutions.
And today he is responsible for all product functions. In today's episode, we discuss how rising spoofing robocalls and AI-driven impersonation scams have eroded trust in voice communication. Josh will explore. how leading telcos are evolving from reactive fraud mitigation to proactive trust enablement, delivering verified identity and real-time decision at the network level. Welcome Josh. Great to have you on today's episode.
Yeah, thank you. Excited to be here.
Awesome. Okay, let's dive right in. So what's driving the current trust crisis, if we we can call it that, uh in voice communications and how did we get here?
Trust crisis is a fair choice of words. Um, and it's a question that we encounter on a daily basis almost talking to the ecosystem, both the in the US and globally. Right. So over the past decade, really one to two decades, the voice channel in particular, uh the simplest way I can put this has just been under sustained attack, right? Mm-hmm. Those attacks come by way of spoofing, which there is there there is a case to be made for spoofing and why that technology was invented, but it's been exploited by bag bad actors. Same same general sentiment towards robocalls and now more recently, AI driven impersonations leveraging these spoofing tools uh are just fundamentally changing the way that consumers view a phone call.
Um, and that change is manifested in a result to where people like you and me that have cell phones, whenever we get a call that's unidentified, we just don't assume that they're legitimate anymore. And it is a learned behavior and a psychological anchor that has just kind of proliferated across the entire uh consumer base. Um, but why did we get here? Uh we got here because I Identity hasn't been something in terms of trust that has been uh proliferated across all these voice channels. Um, you know, over the same time period, the past one, two decades, you've seen websites, the general web evolve towards HTTPS, authentication, verified identity protocols, but the voice channel has largely remained anonymous.
Um, and that anonymity. An enemy has provided easy exploits for those that want to take advantage of it. Um, so again, yeah, the the result has fundamentally been a trust collapse. Consumers don't want to answer, enterprises constantly struggle to reach customers, um, and carriers have up until now um been reacting to that, right?
Well, I think uh you put it really succinctly. You know, when you said that, you know, in other areas like uh like uh you know, if you look at websites and stuff, we have uh the security, the encryption protocols. Whereas, you know, things have sort of s stagnated in the voice space. So um, you know, uh why is the industry um now moving beyond the protocols that we currently have, which is like stir and shaken. Um And what gaps remain?
Yeah, it's a it's a it's another good topic and Stir Shaken was will was conceived out of really good intention. And it was a really critical first step and a good first step, you know. The the the underpinnings of Stir Shaken and what it was created to do was to verify the origin of a call, but not necessarily the intent or trustworthiness.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is causing the current trust crisis in voice communications?
0:00–5:18
2
Why are carriers moving beyond STIR/SHAKEN and what gaps remain?
5:18–6:42
3
How does end‑to‑end authentication work for carriers and enterprises?
6:42–10:26
4
What role do analytics, authentication, and branded identity play in building trust?
10:26–15:26
5
What measurable results are companies seeing with authenticated and branded calling?
15:26–19:31
6
How do calling cadence, consent, and timing affect trust in voice interactions?
19:31–24:02
7
Why will trusted communications become a competitive advantage for operators?
24:02–25:37
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Fast Mode Podcasts: Breaking News, Analysis and Updates From Telecoms Industry
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