Consumers worldwide have been inundated with illegal robocalls and other unwanted calls to the point that by some estimates, a large percentage no longer answer their phones. This makes it difficult for legitimate businesses to reach consumers in a timely manner with important information, alerts and reminders. Those businesses also bear the expense of follow-up calls and other outreach. Meanwhile, service providers bear costs such as fielding customer complaints and investigating sources of
fraudulent traffic.
This Technical Report describes a specification that extends the capabilities of SHAKEN to provide the ecosystem with new options for mitigating illegal robocalls. In addition, it features a distributed ledger infrastructure called the enterprise identity network.
The specification enables an enterprise to establish enterprise identity credentials by applying distributed ledger technology and its cryptographic principles. The enterprise then can place calls signed with its enterprise identity credentials, enabling any originating service provider (OSP) receiving the call to authenticate the enterprise identity of the calling enterprise. When the OSP can authenticate the calling enterprise identity and the originating TN is authorized for use, the OSP can apply SHAKEN A-level attestation to the call.