TRUSTED TELECOM ASSOCIATION
Restoring Trust Before Communication Begins

Dear [Name],

We are writing to invite you to become a founding member of the Trusted Telecom Association (TTA) — a not-for-profit initiative to establish a global trust framework for communications in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

“Forty-five years ago, the telecom industry came together to create voicemail as a new communications medium. Today, AI presents the industry with another architectural inflection point. Rather than waiting for incompatible solutions to emerge, we invite industry leaders to work together to establish the principles and standards for trusted communications.”

I was there. I co-founded Voicemail International in 1979, introduced the first voicemail services in the United States, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, and served as President of the International Voicemail Association for twenty years. I later co-founded NetNumber, the global provider of number portability infrastructure. I have spent my career at the intersection of communications innovation and industry cooperation.

Today, we face a different but equally defining challenge.

For generations, when the telephone rang, people generally knew the party who was calling. That assumption no longer holds. Consumers are inundated with spoofed identities, fraudulent calls, and sophisticated scams. Caller ID and analytics have helped, but they have not restored trust — scammers simply change identities and call again.

Artificial Intelligence will dramatically accelerate this problem. We are entering a world in which communications may be initiated by humans, enterprises, software agents, and autonomous AI systems. The volume, speed, and sophistication of these interactions will increase by orders of magnitude. Before this new era can achieve its potential, the world must establish a framework of trust.

The Trusted Telecom Association exists to build that framework.

Its mission is to bring together carriers, identity and authentication companies, AI communications platforms, standards organizations, and high-risk industry users — banks, healthcare systems, government agencies — to define the policies, standards, and architectures required to restore trust to global communications. The objective is clear: authentication and authorization before communication begins, not analysis after the fact.

This is the right moment. STIR/SHAKEN has addressed part of the problem, but it was designed for a pre-AI world. The industry needs a contact-layer authentication standard that works across voice, text, email, messaging, video, and AI-to-AI channels. The TTA is the forum that can develop this.

We are seeking a small group of founding members to convene an inaugural meeting, establish a Board of Directors, and define the Association's initial work program. I am prepared to serve in an advisory capacity and to draw on four decades of relationships across the global carrier community to support the initiative's launch.

I would welcome a brief conversation to explore your organization's interest.

To that end, I have three simple questions:

Does your organization believe AI-generated communications require new trust frameworks?

Would your organization participate in a virtual meeting to discuss the scope and structure of the TTA?

Would your organization consider becoming a founding member?

Please visit www.trustedtelecomassoc.com or reply to the Contacts page or to pffinnigan@gmail.com to learn more, comment or join the TTA.

Sincerely,

Paul Finnigan
Organizer, Trusted Telecom Association
Co-Founder, Voicemail International
Co-Founder, NetNumber
Former President, International Voicemail Association
Inductee, Stanford Reseearch InstituteI Alumni Hall of Fame