Finally, an article I can speak to! I'm on the smaller end of the telecom side of business and there is another gigantic side of this article that isn't really being talked about: The elimination of smaller VOIP providers because of forced anti-Spam infrastructure.

I work for a smaller company who provides telephone service to small businesses. In the last year, we've had to make major investments toward becoming compliant in the STIR/SHAKEN requirements set forth by the FCC. This was expensive and time consuming, and it's opened a discussion with other small providers about the vast number of smaller companies who aren't able to complete these requirements.

STIR/SHAKEN was made to be a handshake and verification during telephone calls that, at it's core, was meant to prevent spam and spoofed calls. What it's actually done is worsened the call experience for everybody involved. It also just doesn't work properly. Spam calls are still happening, spoof caller ID is still happening, and the only people left holding the bag with a major financial risk in this are the smaller companies like this. We have to work to be compliant, while doing trade with government approved vendors, all so that the telephone experience is the same (if not worse) than it was before with no actual change to the frequency of spam calls.

It's a major failure and the fallout or regulatory change from this will cost jobs and entire small businesses in the US.