Ooma Forums

The FCC's new stir/shaken policy will be starting this year. All caller ids will be marked "verified", "unverify" or "no information".

Vonage has asked all of their customers to verify their identity in order to make sure that their caller id is "verified". Here is the vonage URL.
https://www.vonage.com/about-us/vonage- ... d-to-know/

What does OOMA intend to do? Are we already "verified"? Or will our calls start getting blocked by other carriers because they are "unverified"?

The only information I see from ooma is the following from their financial dislosures:

To the extent that we cannot authenticate our customers, their traffic may be more likely to be blocked or adversely labeled. Additionally, as a VoIP provider we rely on the FCC to design rules that do not
disadvantage our service relative to those of incumbent local exchange carriers and competitive local exchange carriers. Should the FCC decide to do so, it could result in an inferior user experience for Ooma’s
service, which may negatively impact our business.

What does OOMA intend to do? Are we already "verified"? Or will our calls start getting blocked by other carriers because they are "unverified"?

Yes, our calls will be negatively impacted by STIR/SHAKEN, unless Ooma implements STIR/SHAKEN itself, which probably they won't, at least not in near future, judging by their complaining in SEC filings...

I have to correct myself. Ooma is going to support STIR/SHAKEN.

https://www.ooma.com/home-phone/reduce- ... standards/

So if I read this correctly, the spammers will just move to small VoIP providers that didn't sign on to the program, or non-US providers as they are already doing, and Ooma will let the spoofed calls come through regardless. This is an improvement? I would love it if there was an additional option to send all non-authenticated calls directly to voicemail.

I have Premier and two lines, one of which uses Google Voice and the other does not. The GV line gets maybe 1-2 spam calls a week, the non-GV line gets 3-4 a day, even with Nomorobo enabled.

I get so many spam calls a day it's not even funny. I'm sick to death of it. Ooma needs to do something.

The new FCC laws require providers to reduce outgoing robocalls; they don't require providers to block incoming robocalls. Ooma users benefit indirectly from what non-Ooma providers are doing to comply with the new laws, since that's where the robocalls are coming from. But given the different deadlines for different providers, that is not going to happen all at once. Anyone expecting overnight relief from the new laws is probably going to be disappointed.

Ooma can't start refusing calls until after the September deadline, and then only from those providers who didn't register with the FCC. STIR/SHAKEN protocols only work over IP networks, so providers that use non-IP networks (including the existing landline and mobile networks) to connect with each other can't exchange STIR/SHAKEN headers. And providers that use (or plan to use) IP networks may not fully implement it right away. So, Ooma can't always detect non-authenticated calls, due to missing or incomplete headers. But again, Ooma users still benefit indirectly from what non-Ooma providers are doing to authenticate their own callers.

Some Ooma users seem to get a lot of spam calls, while others don't. There could be many different reasons for this, some beyond Ooma's control. Ooma offers several different call blocking options. In the worst case, users can always enable Contacts-only calling; that will stop the spam calls.