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T-Mobile announced it is expanding its industry-first Caller Verified feature, which alerts customers to likely scam calls, to seven additional smartphone models in the coming weeks.
Business Insider Intelligence
The feature, which uses STIR/SHAKEN protocols that rely on digital certificates to ensure the number calling you is trusted, was initially launched in January 2019 on the Samsung Galaxy S9 series.
Since the feature launched, the carrier says it’s alerted customers to 225 million potential scam calls per week.
Here’s why now is the perfect time for the expansion of T-Mobile’s Call Verified feature:
- Scam calls are growing their share of total calls in the US. Scam calls are predicted to account for almost half (45%) of all calls made to US mobile numbers in 2019, up from just under one-third (29%) in 2018 and 4% in 2017, according to First Orion.
- US consumers are feeling the burden of robocalls. US consumers lost an estimated $1.5 billion to fraud in 2018, according to the FTC.
- And they’re getting vocal about it. Of all fraud complaints, imposter scams — when a scammer claims they’re with the government or a well-known business to get a victim’s money, for instance — are now the FTC’s top report category.
And T-Mobile is poised to benefit by expanding its Call Verified feature:
- T-Mobile can keep its customers loyal. The carrier had the largest share of loyal customers for the second consecutive year, with 16% saying they’d stick with T-Mobile no matter what in 2018, according to Business Insider Intelligence’s Telecom Competitive Edge Report (enterprise only). But T-Mobile also took the hardest hit in loyalty compared with its rivals, as its share fell 7 percentage points YoY in 2018. Providing a tool to manage malicious calls can help T-Mobile keep its top spot for loyalty and prevent further slips in its lead.
- T-Mobile will offer more consistently up-to-date anti-scam call solutions than its rivals. Both Verizon and AT&T currently combat malicious calls through apps, but T-Mobile is launching its solution at the network level. Since T-Mobile plans to update its network every 6 minutes, it’ll be consistently providing customers with an up-to-date solution instead of relying on them to repeatedly update an app.
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See Also:
- Samsung’s killer new Galaxy S10 camera feature has been used by another major smartphone maker since 2016
- Here’s how New T-Mobile plans to disrupt the current US in-home broadband market — and why it will be successful
- The new Galaxy S10 has a fancy new fingerprint sensor — but the old-fashioned version on the cheaper S10e is significantly better
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (George Paul)