The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is mandating that phone companies bring in new technology aimed at slowing down fraudulent spoof calls and robocalls.
Yesterday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto, CRTC Chair Ian Scott said Canada's telecom companies have until November 30th to update their networks to meet a standard that gives telecom providers the ability to validate the identity of a caller.
Scott also said that scam calls, unwanted calls and/or robocalls have become such a problem that people are beginning to lose their confidence in the country's telecommunications system. He also noted that 25 percent of all calls made on mobile networks consist of these fraudulent calls.
The November 30th deadline that Canadian carriers must meet to update their networks with the technology is a start, but according to Scott, the goal is to give people the ability to determine which calls are legitimate, and which need to be treated with caution.
Ultimately, he said call recipients could see a caller ID that shows up as either a “red light” or “green light” beside the name, which would indicate whether the caller's identity has been verified by the carrier or not.
Scott also mentioned that the costs associated with implementing robocall-mitigating technologies should fall on the carriers, not consumers.
