A 100-Year-Old Model
As I write this, I’m watching Google’s GDC 2019 Gaming Announcement.
If you want to watch the presentation, search for the hashtag #GDC19.
But what caught my eye earlier today was a blog post by Jeff Lawson, the chairman / CEO of Twilio ($TWLO), which is largely responsible for those texts that you get from retailers and other brands you know and trust.
Jeff wrote about the issue of robocalling, which we have all grown to know and hate these past few years:
“When the first US telephone services were created around the turn of the 20th century, one company, the Bell Telephone Company (later rebranded AT&T) not only built and operated the network but also every device attached to the network. In that world, trust wasn’t an issue because every device was sanctioned by the same company.
But that started to change in 1956 when the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the network needed to be open, forcing AT&T to allow 3rd party devices on the network. And thus began the trend toward more open communications. In 1968, AT&T was ordered by the FCC to allow 3rd party phones to attach to their network. In 1982, the DOJ split AT&T into multiple competing companies. Fourteen years later, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 made communications even more competitive enabling the creation of competitive local carriers.
At each step, consumers have generally received better service and lower prices through increased competition. So what’s the problem?
That original network, designed in the first half of the 20th century, was built and operated by one company. Any actor on the network was automatically and fundamentally trusted. That meant that little security was built into the network itself.
But with all the breakups and competitive tides, the network became more open. However, the underlying protocols — and trust — were fundamentally based on a 100-year-old model. There was no way to anticipate the technological advances that would dramatically change everything about telecommunications in the coming decades.
Roll ahead to 2019: if you have the right access, hardware and/or software — you can initiate a call on the network, from any phone number to any phone number in a (pretty much) untraceable way.
Vrrrrrrp? Record screech. What?!? That’s right… anybody can impersonate anybody else on the phone network to make a phone call. (Yeah, I was surprised to learn that too.)”
Even HBO’s Last Week Tonight did a main story segment on the issue robocalls this month:
And you know that when John Oliver is upset, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for Jeff’s second upcoming blog post: “Your Phone, Your Call: Part II — Why did we have caller ID in the 90s but not today?”
