The Silent Churn Engine: How Scam Calls Are Draining Your Customer Base and Revenue

As a Communications Service Provider (CSP), your network is a revenue asset. But what if part of it is hijacked to target your customers?

Voice calls are the bedrock of your service, but scammers have turned them into a primary weapon. While the 2024 Global State of Scams Report records a staggering $1.03 trillion lost globally to all fraud, a deep dive into the data reveals the overwhelming role of phone calls. With phone calls consistently cited as a top contact method for scammers worldwide, we can conservatively estimate that this single channel accounts for over $343 billion of these losses. This isn’t a distant threat; it’s a direct attack on the core utility of your network, resulting in:

• Customer Churn: Subscribers frustrated with incessant spam are more likely to switch to a provider they perceive as safer.
• Brand Erosion: Being known as a “spam-friendly” network devastates brand trust and acquisition efforts.
• Revenue Leakage: Fraudulent traffic drains your network without generating revenue.
• Regulatory Risk: Inadequate protection against robocalls and scams can lead to significant fines and regulatory scrutiny.

The financial and reputational damage is already triggering action. The 2024 State of the Call Report reveals that nearly 11% of consumers have already switched carriers to escape scam calls, with another 27% considering it. This isn’t a future risk; it’s a present-day drain on your subscriber base and revenue.

The status quo of reactive defenses is no longer sustainable. It’s time to treat fraud for what it is: a revenue attack aimed at your bottom line.

The High Cost of Complacency: Why Your Current Defenses Are Costing You Money

Many CSPs have taken a checkbox approach to fraud prevention, implementing STIR/SHAKEN and basic firewalls. While these are necessary steps, they are woefully insufficient against modern, AI-driven fraud operations.

The Limitations of a Siloed Defense

• STIR/SHAKEN verifies identity, not intent.
  It does nothing to stop a verified number from running a scam or a warranty robocall campaign.
• Basic firewalls and blacklists are reactive.
  They rely on known signatures, while modern fraud uses AI to generate new numbers and patterns faster than any manual list can be updated.
• You lack full visibility.
  Without deep, network-wide signaling analysis, you have blind spots that fraudsters exploit with impunity. You can’t protect what you can’t see.

This gap in your defense isn’t just a technical oversight; it’s a financial liability. You are leaving revenue on the table and exposing your business to immense risk.

Shifting from Cost Center to Profit Protection: The AI-Powered Blueprint

The next generation of network protection isn’t an expense; it’s an investment in network integrity, customer retention, and revenue protection. The winning strategy involves a holistic, AI-powered approach that operates at the network level.

Here’s how leading CSPs are building a defensible, ROI-positive network:

1. Gain Total Network Visibility: See Every Threat Across All Protocols

To stop fraud, you must first see it. This requires a solution that provides deep signaling intelligence across your entire network stack, from the IP layer to the application layer.

A solution like Subex’s Signaling Risk Intelligence deploys network-agnostic probes to capture and analyze voice traffic across protocols like SIP and ISUP. By monitoring SIP messages (INVITE, ACK, CANCEL), it constructs a complete picture of call behavior, identifying malicious patterns and sources regardless of the protocol used.

This eliminates blind spots and provides the data needed for informed and decisive action.

2. Move from Reactive to Proactive with Real-Time AI Analytics

Legacy systems look for what was bad. AI looks for what is bad, right now.
An advanced AI analytics engine performs real-time analysis of signaling patterns to detect anomalies that indicate potential fraud. This includes:

• Behavioral Analysis: ML models that identify spam/scam call patterns through abnormal Answer-Seizure Ratios (ASR), call durations, and call volumes.
• Number Analysis: Detecting campaigns from suspicious A-number clusters and ranges.
• Threat Intelligence: Leveraging pre-packaged controls and global threat feeds to identify known fraud signatures and zero-day attacks.

This proactive detection allows you to identify and stop new fraud campaigns before they impact your subscribers, and your bottom line.

3. Enforce Protection at the Network Core: Automate Blocking for Instant ROI

The final, critical step is automated enforcement. Detection without action is merely an alert; it doesn’t protect your revenue.

The solution must integrate via APIs with core network components, such as SBCs and firewalls.
When a high-risk call is identified, the system provides a real-time risk score to the SBC, instructing it to block the call at the network edge.

This is where you save money:

• Core Network Resource Preservation: Stop fraudulent traffic from consuming network resources.
• Reduced Operational Overhead: Fully automate the detection and blocking of new spam, scam, and robocall patterns, freeing your fraud and security teams from constant manual analysis and list updates.
• Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Protect subscribers from malicious and harassing calls, dramatically reducing spam-related churn and reinforcing your brand as a trustworthy, customer-first provider.

The Business Case: Turning Network Protection into a Competitive Advantage

Investing in a comprehensive AI-powered solution is not just about stopping fraud.
It’s about building a more efficient, trustworthy, and profitable network.

Conclusion: Secure Your Network, Protect Your Profit

The conversation around spam and scam calls must evolve from a technical challenge to a strategic business imperative.
The persistent drain on network value and customer trust will only be plugged by CSPs who are willing to move beyond compliance and invest in intelligent, automated protection.

The technology to achieve this exists today, solutions like Subex’s Signaling Risk Intelligence provide full-stack visibility, AI-driven analytics, and network-level automation required to turn your operational resilience posture from a cost center into a powerful engine for customer retention and revenue protection.

The question is no longer if you can afford to implement this solution, but if you can afford not to.

See how our Spam Detection Solution helps in protecting your revenue.

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