By Oystein Bergmann, Correspondent Scandinavia

GSMA is expanding its fraud prevention service portfolio, which will enhance the telecoms industry’s capacity to combat robocalling and other unwanted or fraudulent calls. Together with technology partner Mobileum, GSMA has developed a new international fraud deterrent system, launched at MWC21 as a proof-of-concept model. GSMA now invites the global telecoms industry to trial the model.

The invitation is open for a range of global telecoms stakeholders to participate, including mobile and fixed carriers, voice over IP operators, voice and signalling wholesalers around the world. The aim of the trial is to evaluate advanced collaborative fraud and nuisance call prevention techniques.

“The US Federal Communications Commission recently said that fraudulent robocall schemes cost Americans approximately US$10 billion annually, with most perpetrators operating overseas. It’s a challenge faced by citizens globally, which is why we’re calling on telecom operators – mobile, fixed-line, internet-based and wholesalers – to share their insights and experience so we can together locate and mitigate these sources of fraudulent activity,” said GSMA CTO, Alex Sinclair.

The joint initiative will trial a series of tools using real fraud incidents, which will help limit a wide variety of fraud and nuisance calls. These include:

• Case handling – allowing multiple networks to work on a problem
• Call path tracing – to find the source of a call when that source is disguised
• Live threat monitoring and alerts – providing a real time view and warnings about active fraud campaigns
• Network identifier address book – providing an authenticated list of network identifiers
• Call validation – to confirm the provenance of a call

“By combining the industry’s collective intelligence and locally based information with our latest technology, we can deliver game-changing support to tackle fraud,” said Chief of Risk Management business at Mobileum, Rui Paiva. “Our cloud-native platform provides the necessary tools to make a material difference, delivering the results and improvements everybody wants.”

Companies that wish to participate in the trial are invited to contact the GSMA Services Fraud & Security team,  where they will join a growing community of participating fraud prevention organisations. Fixed and VoIP service providers are encouraged to make contact as fraud is an inter-modal problem. GSMA expects to make significant strides in fraud management and is looking for players to join the trial phase.

This initiative supplements the GSMA Services’ recently refreshed High-Risk Numbers and Fraud Intelligence Service, which are part of GSMA’s broader fraud and security work under GSMA T-ISAC (Telecommunication Information Sharing and Analysis Center).