Fraudulent robocalls are a major headache for both landline and mobile phone customers across the country – and especially in Florida. Florida ranked third in the nation in May with an estimated 365 million robocalls and multiple Florida cities were ranked among the top 100 across the country, including:
- 13 – Orlando
- 14 – Miami
- 17 – Fort Lauderdale
- 18 – Tampa
- 58 – West Palm Beach
- 65 – Jacksonville
- 69 – Pensacola
- 80 – Gainesville
Comcast has been tackling robocalls head on alongside our industry peers and is now taking an important step to reduce the number of robocalls to our Xfinity Mobile customers through a collaboration with Hiya, one of the leading call-blocking platforms in the industry.
Xfinity Mobile customers can now download the Hiya app for free to receive alerts about potential spam calls and block them. The app will also identify calls from common businesses to provide clarity on who is calling, and includes a “neighbor spoofing” blocker, which allows customers to block specific area codes if they notice a lot of unwanted calls coming from them.
Comcast is also playing a leadership role in the industry-wide effort to develop and implement SHAKEN/STIR, an important protocol to combat fraudulent calls. SHAKEN/STIR verifies that a call is legitimately coming from the phone number displayed on a caller ID; a major milestone in giving customers more control over the calls they answer.
In March, Comcast and AT&T announced what is believed to be the first call between two separate providers’ landline voice networks using the SHAKEN/STIR protocol. In April, Comcast and T-Mobile announced the first cross-network verification built on SHAKEN/STIR to help protect customers from answering robocalls. When available from our MVNO partner, Xfinity Mobile also plans to implement SHAKEN/STIR so customers will benefit from the additional security it provides.
In addition to the efforts with SHAKEN/STIR and Hiya, Comcast works with an application provider to make robocall blocking technology available to the vast majority of its Xfinity Voice customers. Customers can sign up for this service using their Xfinity username and password.
Robocalling has increased significantly as bad actors find new ways to clog our phone lines. Together, with third-party solutions such as Hiya, combined with important industry-wide initiatives like SHAKEN/STIR, we are working diligently to mitigate illegal robocalls so our customers know which calls are legitimate.
