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Nokia partners with Hiya to stop spam calls

Machine learning could end the barrage aggravating fraudulent and spam phone calls

27 Jan 2021

Nokia has successfully tested a new real-time spam and fraud detection service that could end nuisance telephone calls. Nokia worked on the trial with Hiya, a Seattle-based identity verification platform that helps analyze over 13 billion calls each month.

The telecoms company has integrated Hiya Protect on its cloud-native Telephony Application Server. Hiya Protect uses machine learning models to analyze calling events in real-time around the world for fraudulent behavior and new scams. Hiya serves more than 130 million businesses and customers worldwide.

The test marks the industry’s first VoLTE network integration through a public cloud service to a major European carrier. The company claimed that Hiya Protect could accurately detect various legitimate and illegitimate calls to keep subscribers protected from the unwanted ones plaguing the telephony industry.

The test involved Hiya's SaaS cloud interworking with Nokia’s cloud-native, IMS based Telephony Application Server. Hiya said the test not only proved the success of its detection and alerting capabilities, including fraud, spam, legitimate callers, and verified businesses, but it also proved the integration of Nokia core solution with Hiya’s cloud. As a result, Nokia’s Telephony Application Server is properly issuing call events and enforcing Hiya’s call instructions, the firm claimed.

Hiya’s integration also showed minimal impact on call set-up time to meet industry-standard service requirements.

Alex Algard, CEO at Hiya, said the project was a critical step in addressing carriers’ needs to integrate a cloud-based solution at the network level.

“Fraudsters and spammers are sophisticated and constantly change their tactics, so our solutions must outsmart them to stay a step ahead, which is why integrating at the network level and pushing the application to the Edge is such an important accomplishment,” he said.

Jitin Bhandari, vice president of core network products at Nokia, said proving open solutions like this can be effectively integrated and accurately detect spam calls is a “big step in pushing the industry forward.”

“This is the type of open cloud-based innovation and collaboration that is needed to solve nuisance/spam calls in networks and make the communication experience better for users across the globe,” he added.