STIR/SHAKEN Progress Uneven as AI-Powered Robocall Fraud Escalates — Transaction Network Services, Inc.

Event summary

TNS's 2026 Half-Year Robocall Investigation Report reveals uneven STIR/SHAKEN adoption, with top 7 U.S. CSPs at 85% signed inter-carrier traffic while smaller CSPs lag at ~20%.
17% of confirmed spoofed calls carry 'A' attestation, undermining trust in authentication signals.
AI-driven fraud tactics—including voice cloning and multimodal attacks—are outpacing compliance efforts.
Regulators are tightening KYUP obligations and removing non-compliant CSPs from the Robocall Mitigation Database.

The big picture

STIR/SHAKEN has made progress in reducing robocall fraud, but its effectiveness is being challenged by AI-driven threats and uneven adoption among smaller CSPs. The report highlights a critical inflection point where compliance alone is insufficient, requiring deeper collaboration across the ecosystem to maintain trust in voice communications.

What we're watching

Compliance Gaps: Whether smaller CSPs can overcome cost and infrastructure barriers to achieve full IP migration.
AI Fraud Evolution: How rapidly telecom providers and regulators can adapt defenses against AI-powered voice cloning and deepfake attacks.
Ecosystem Collaboration: The pace at which layered security measures—such as reputation scoring and anomaly detection—are adopted across the industry.