i3Forum Thought Leadership
By Eli Katz, Founder and CEO, XConnect
Consumer trust in voice calls and business messaging is under unprecedented pressure. Scam calls, spoofed numbers, fraudulent text messages, and increasingly sophisticated social engineering attacks have transformed the way people interact with communications channels. Today, many consumers simply ignore calls from unknown numbers or treat unsolicited messages with suspicion, regardless of whether they originate from a legitimate business or a fraudster.
For the telecoms industry, this creates a significant challenge. The same networks that enable critical communications between businesses and customers are increasingly viewed as unsafe or unreliable. As trust declines, businesses struggle to reach customers, public services experience lower engagement rates, and consumers risk missing important communications from banks, healthcare providers, government agencies, and other trusted organisations.
The Scale of the Problem
The financial and societal impact is substantial. According to global industry estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars are lost annually to scams. Europol has highlighted caller ID spoofing as a major enabler of fraud, with phone calls and text messages representing the primary attack vectors in most reported cases. Fraudsters exploit weaknesses in identity verification by presenting trusted phone numbers or brand identities that appear legitimate to recipients.
The result is a communications ecosystem where consumers are often unable to answer a simple question: Who is really contacting me?
While the telecoms industry has made significant progress through initiatives such as STIR/SHAKEN, Rich Call Data (RCD), sender registration programmes, analytics platforms, and spam detection systems, these solutions primarily focus on identifying suspicious activity or validating call signalling. They do not always provide definitive proof of the identity of the organisation behind the communication.
Shifting from Detection to Verification
Historically, much of the industry’s effort has focused on detecting bad actors. However, there is growing recognition that a complementary approach is needed: enabling legitimate organisations to prove who they are.
This is where digital identity for business communications becomes important.
Rather than relying solely on fraud detection algorithms or blacklists, a digital identity framework allows businesses to establish a verifiable identity that can be attached to every call or message they send. The objective is simple: provide recipients, networks, and regulators with reliable evidence that a communication genuinely originates from the organisation it claims to represent.
In practice, this creates a trust model similar to what HTTPS certificates achieved for the web. Before secure certificates became commonplace, users had limited ways to verify whether a website was genuine. Today, digital certificates provide a trusted mechanism for validating website identity. Communications networks need an equivalent capability for voice and messaging.
A Four-Step Digital Identity Framework
A practical framework for verified business communications can be built around four key stages:
- Identity Verification
Businesses undergo a Know Your Business (KYB) process that confirms their legal existence and validates their Right to Use specific telephone numbers, messaging identifiers, and brand assets.
- Identity Binding
The verified identity is cryptographically linked to each individual communication. Rather than relying on static databases, the proof of identity travels with the call or message itself.
- Independent Verification
A global governance structure to support approved vetting agencies that provide organisations services to verify KYC, KYB and any absence thereof. Whilst this would be a global structure it would support the difference across national sovereignty – thinking globally but acting nationally. SSL certification demonstrates how a globally recognised, interoperable security standard can be adopted across jurisdictions—providing a useful model for telecoms regulation that seeks consistent trust, compliance, and cross-border connectivity.
- Consumer Trust Signals
The verified status is presented to the recipient through a trusted visual or audible indicator, enabling consumers to distinguish verified communications from unverified ones.
Why Open Standards Matter
For any identity framework to succeed globally, it must be open, interoperable, and inclusive. Telecoms networks operate across multiple jurisdictions, technologies, and regulatory environments. Solutions that depend on proprietary platforms or centralised databases risk creating new silos and limiting adoption.
An open standards-based approach allows multiple operators, service providers, and identity verification organisations to participate while maintaining consistent trust models across markets. It also enables the framework to complement existing technologies such as STIR/SHAKEN and RCD rather than replacing them.
The Opportunity for Telecoms
The opportunity extends far beyond fraud prevention.
Verified business identity can improve answer rates, increase customer engagement, support branded communications, and provide regulators with stronger tools for enforcement and traceback. Most importantly, it can help restore confidence in voice and messaging channels that remain critical to both commerce and public services.
As fraudsters become more sophisticated and consumers become increasingly sceptical, the telecoms industry faces a choice: continue relying primarily on detecting bad actors, or build a future where legitimate organisations can prove their identity by design.
The long-term solution to restoring trust may not simply be blocking more fraud. It may be making authenticity visible, verifiable, and portable across every communication channel.