It took three years, but Verizon is finally catching up to T-Mobile on the fraud protection front

What is Branded Calling ID?

As the name suggests, it’s a way for Big Red to “brand” your incoming calls to try to increase answer rates, improve customer satisfaction, and of course, boost the profits of businesses willing to participate in this nationwide new program.

Branded Calling ID looks like a very neat solution to a bigger and bigger problem for more and more people in the US. | Image Credit — Verizon

Now that’s an interesting spin on the traditional caller ID concept, although the utility of that particular section of the Branded Calling ID (BCID) tool will probably greatly depend on how specific and honest each Verizon partner will be in listing their reasons for calling you upfront. After all, you can’t really expect a business to disclose straight off the bat that they’ll attempt to increase your monthly bill with new services you don’t necessarily need, right?

Still, that sounds like a feature that could save you a lot of hassle in (and ahead of) a lot of conversations, especially as the CTIA claims the call reasons, enterprise phone numbers, caller display names, and logos will all be “thoroughly vetted by Authorized Partners to ensure caller authenticity and legitimacy.”

Now that sounds promising, although the most convenient thing about BCID is probably that it’s not an actual app you need to download and install yourself, but something that Verizon will automatically enable to keep subscribers safe(r) from potential fraud and spam.

What are T-Mobile and AT&T doing in the same field?

T-Mobile’s Branded Caller ID tool looks extremely similar to Verizon’s Branded Calling ID solution. | Image Credit — T-Mobile

Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T clearly all want to regain control over the scammer and spammer plague that’s fallen on the American population in recent years, not (just) because they care about your money and well-being, but (also) because you’ve stopped answering phone calls, making it hard for legitimate businesses to continue boosting their profits.

Apparently, 80 percent of Americans “generally” don’t answer when an unknown phone number calls, which… sounds about right, but it’s a number the nation’s industry-leading mobile network operators are trying hard to reduce for fairly obvious reasons. Like I said, win-win-win scenario for carriers, their business partners, and “normal” consumers, at least in theory.

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