You may be aware there is a lot of lying about STIR/SHAKEN, a series of governance and technology protocols for validating phone calls, much of it coming from lobbyists for increased capex spending on networks. That is why, if you primarily speak English, you will almost certainly have seen misinformation that suggests every country will adopt STIR/SHAKEN in the same way the USA has adopted STIR/SHAKEN. Propagandists make no mention of the way Brazil has implemented STIR/SHAKEN, despite Brazil recently becoming only the fourth country to begin testing call validation at scale. It should not be up to me to counter the falsehoods spread by American businesses that spend millions of dollars on marketing, but as not many other people are doing it, here are the key ways that Brazil’s STIR/SHAKEN differs from all those other things you may have been told.
The Brazilian Regulator Has Not Mandated the Adoption of STIR/SHAKEN
One of the most frequent lies is that national regulators must force all telcos to adopt STIR/SHAKEN. The STIR/SHAKEN initiative in Brazil was pioneered by a consortium of reputable telemarketing businesses, Associação Brasileira de Telesserviços (ABT). They were worried their calls were not being picked up by consumers who already receive too many telemarketing calls from too many shady businesses. ABT negotiated with telcos so both sides would benefit from supporting the goal of presenting accurate information to consumers when an ABT member calls them. Anatel, the Brazilian regulator, has played a coordinating role but has not imposed any new rules. There have been no deadlines for adoption, and no threats of penalties or disconnection for any telcos that ignore the business opportunity presented by STIR/SHAKEN. The largest Brazilian telcos have voluntarily made rapid progress towards implementation because they are motivated by profit, not by threats.
It Will Only Work for Smartphones Connected to a 4G or 5G Network
Because the sensible management of costs is essential to the Brazilian approach, there is no intention to make changes to 2G or 3G networks to enable the use of STIR/SHAKEN. The coverage of STIR/SHAKEN will extend naturally over time as newer networks replace 2G and 3G. The rationale of fraud prevention has not been hijacked by businesses whose real motive is to force operators to increase capex spending.
Many Consumers Need Upgraded Phones to Get the Maximum Benefit
STIR/SHAKEN can convey information across networks, but none of it will be seen by the end recipient unless their phone runs software that knows how to present that information. Anatel has cajoled handset manufacturers to speed up revisions to smartphone operating systems so more users will benefit from STIR/SHAKEN sooner. The sheer variety of handsets in use in Brazil, with some consumers relying on older models, will impact how many will be able to see all the information conveyed, which includes the name and logo the telemarketing company calling them, and the purpose of the call. Android is the most common smartphone operating system in Brazil and Google has expressed confidence that many phones will be compatible with Brazil’s version of STIR/SHAKEN soon, if not already.
Brazil Has Ignored Large Parts of the SHAKEN Governance Model
US business culture, backed by US government policies, places an unusual emphasis on the need for private sector competition compared to that found in other countries. The result can sometimes be more waste and bureaucracy as a result of multiple companies inefficiently coordinating the roles they each need to perform, perhaps because complexity allows some businesses to abuse systems whilst blaming the system’s deficiencies on others. The best-known example of this is the US healthcare system, which is supposed to gain an advantage from having a very large number of separate healthcare providers being paid via a great variety of insurance companies, each of which offers customers a range of policies that do or do not cover long lists of specific treatments. The inefficiency of this approach can easily be judged by comparing the total amount spent on healthcare, which is a lot for the USA, with life expectancy and other measures of the population’s health, which are relatively poor for Americans when contrasted with the populations of other advanced economies. So it is not entirely surprising that when a country like Brazil says it is adopting STIR/SHAKEN from a technology perspective, it chooses not to comply with the complicated governance model that is prescribed by the US association which defines SHAKEN.
Instead of emulating the US approach by having a governance authority, a policy administrator, and several certification authorities, Brazil’s approach involved giving a business called Cleartech the responsibility for running the central exchange of information needed for their call validation system. Cleartech was an obvious choice because they were long established as the provider of Brazil’s number portability service.
The Cost of STIR/SHAKEN in Brazil Has Been Kept Low
The huge expenditure required to realize the US approach to STIR/SHAKEN is one of the most important reasons that foreign regulators keep rejecting its use, despite the amount of effort that lobbyists have put into marketing STIR/SHAKEN direct to consumers by pretending they cannot be protected from illegal calls unless regulators mandate it. Brazil has demonstrated that a variant of STIR/SHAKEN can gain traction without needing a regulatory mandate because telemarketers and telcos both anticipate recouping their costs from the increase in revenues generated by telemarketing businesses that succeed in connecting a larger proportion of their outbound calls. The positive net benefit is made possible because costs have been kept low by concentrating on the essential goal of validating telemarketing calls, instead of trying to validate every kind of phone call. Insiders estimate the fee required to cover the ongoing running cost of the centralized exchange of validation data will be approximately one-thousandth of a Brazilian Real per call.
