Everybody says they are in favor of coordinating efforts to reduce scam calls and messages, but that does not mean they do it in practice. Thankfully, the good news from the Global Informal Regulatory Antifraud Forum (GIRAF) is that Ofcom, the comms regulator in the United Kingdom, has agreed to participate and is happy for the news to be shared publicly. They join a string of other European regulators including those of France, Italy and Spain.
The real test of GIRAF is whether they can expand beyond Europe to involve comms regulators that are heavy-hitters on other continents. It is one thing for regulators to express vague approval for the notion of working with international partners, but what really matters is being willing to negotiate effective compromises that multiple countries will agree upon. It is significant that Ofcom agreed to allow the news of their participation to be made public. Regulators sometimes behave like herd animals. The bigger a group gets, the more likely others will join them.
Regular readers will know that several bilateral international agreements to work on telecoms scam reduction have been signed over the last few years. This has created a web of relationships involving the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and the UK, amongst others. The hope is that the overt support of Ofcom will encourage other regulators in this web to join GIRAF as well, extending the forum’s geographic reach. In particular, Hong Kong is evidently keeping a close eye on the anti-scam policies adopted by Singapore, giving rise to the tantalizing prospect of a regulatory forum that involves both China and the USA. It would be an enormous boon to get these two economic giants to coordinate their efforts to tackle telecoms scams despite the antagonism between them on other matters of policy.
GIRAF is the regulatory counterpart to the One Consortium, an initiative which involves carriers and vendors seeking to agree upon common tools and protocols for tackling nuisance traffic that crosses borders. A recent presentation explaining the relationship between GIRAF and the One Consortium can be found here .
