STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI Re: In the Matter of Call Authentication Trust Anchor, Notice of Inquiry, WC Docket No. 17-97 This Notice of Inquiry targets fraudulent robocallers. These robocallers continue to find ways around consumer call-blocking or filtering tools by using inaccurate caller ID information. For instance, they impersonate phone numbers that use the first six digits of the recipient’s phone number to make the calls appear as if they originate from a local source. This practice, known as caller ID spoofing or neighbor spoofing, is similar to a villain in an action movie donning a disguise to trick unsuspecting victims into thinking that the villain is someone he is not. Now, in the movies, the hero generally manages to unmask the villain just in time. But all too often, consumers don’t realize that a number has been spoofed until it’s too late. That’s why we’re exploring call authentication—a process for reliably determining whether the caller is in fact who he purports to be—in order to help eliminate fraudulent spoofing attempts and to further secure our telephone networks. At the heart of this Notice of Inquiry is the SHAKEN (or Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs) framework developed by the STIR (or Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) working group and other dedicated industry stakeholders. If things go well, our hope is that, just like in the movies, someday soon consumers won’t be as easily fooled by a villain’s disguise. I would like to thank the staff who worked on this item: Alex Espinoza, Heather Hendrickson, Dan Kahn, Kris Monteith, and Ann Stevens from the Wireline Competition Bureau and Ken Carlberg from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.