TRUSTED TELECOM ASSOCIATION
Restoring Trust Before Communication Begins

Dear [Name],

I am 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.

You may recall a similar moment in 1979. People needed a way to communicate when no one was available to answer the telephone. The industry had the technology, but lacked the standards, architectures, and cooperative frameworks to bring it to scale. A small group of carriers, vendors, and visionaries came together to form the International Voicemail Association — and a new global communications medium was born.

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 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 to develop it.

I am 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 founding meeting to discuss the scope and structure of the TTA?

Would your organization consider becoming a founding member?

Please reply directly to this letter or visit www.trustedtelecomassoc.com to learn more.

Sincerely,

Paul Finnigan
Founder, Trusted Telecom Association
Co-Founder, Voicemail International
Co-Founder, NetNumber
Former President, International Voicemail Association
SRI Alumni Hall of Fame