Last year, the FCC announced a proposition that would require carriers to implement the STIR and SHAKEN standards to fight robocalls, and now the agency has a date that all carriers must comply by.

The FCC revealed today that all carriers must implement STIR and SHAKEN by June 30, 2021. It estimates that the benefits of eliminating the wasted time and nuisance caused by scam robocalls will exceed $3 billion nationally. And when paired with call analytics, STIR/SHAKEN will help protect consumers from robocall schemes that cost Americans more than $10 billion each year.

STIR and SHAKEN are two standards that help fight caller ID spoofing. With this scam technique, a malicious party temporarily hijacks the area code and first three digits of the person they're calling to make their call appear legitimate and get the person on the other end to answer.

Some carriers have already begun deploying STIR and SHAKEN to their customers. For example, T-Mobile first deployed the feature in January 2019 and now there are 30 devices on its network that support STIR and SHAKEN call protection.

Now that the FCC is requiring all US carriers to support STIR and SHAKEN by the end of June 2021, those operators will need to work on deploying the feature to phones and getting interoperability going with the other carriers.