Restore Trust initiative – Off to a roaring start!

On September 7^th, 2023, i3Forum announced a major, industry wide initiative to combat unwanted/illegal international communications (Voice and Messaging) and help restore public trust through unprecedented cooperation between the Industry and the National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), globally.

Significant progress towards that objective has been made in the past three months, in three directions :

1. Building the Industry side of the discussion : we’re getting ready to launch One Consortium for the international ecosystem by 1Q24 : over 45 people representing more than 25 ecosystem stakeholders (traffic carrying companies, vendors, industry organizations) have met multiple times in a fast paced ‘pre-consortium” effort to define the work plan and structure for One Consortium. After launch, this will allow the everyone in the industry to contribute to and agree a “tool box” to combat international illegal / unwanted communications, including the relevant governance for a self/joint regulatory framework. – as well as represent the Industry in discussions with NRAs.
   
   
2. Building the Regulatory side of the discussion : as announced, we have been reaching out to multiple National Regulatory Authorities, as well as Government Authorities and Law enforcement agencies, to gauge interest in this initiative and explore how to set up a global NRA forum for multilateral discussion on these issues. The feedback has been extremely positive and encouraging, albeit informal at this stage, and we are confident that we can get the multilateral conversation started in 1Q24.
   
   
3. Strengthening the cooperation with other Industry organizations on this topic : although i3Forum is spearheading this initiative,  success hinges (among other things) on close cooperation between the many industry organizations that bring together various segments of the ecosystem, each one of them focusing on different aspects (e.g. GLF, GSMA, ATIS, GSC…). There is tremendous value there, that we need to leverage, collectively, in order to deliver the best possible response to this challenge –  we are currently having very active and positive discussions to organize and optimize our joint efforts.