Summary

  • Arab States administrations have proposed a new ITU resolution covering caller-ID, IP and domain spoofing. The draft assigns coordination, guidance and training; it sets no common verification test or deadline.
  • The ITU already has a more exact caller-identity track: its 2024 Resolution 65 addresses origin information and certification work, while the in-force Q.3063 recommendation describes signalling authentication procedures. Doha will decide whether to add the broader political brief.

An impostor can borrow a telephone number, an IP address or a domain. In addendum 36, Arab States administrations put all three disguises on the ITU's conference table. Their new resolution would turn spoofing into a cross-sector assignment for cooperation, resilience guidance and capacity building. It would also give the Secretary-General a Council reporting line, when appropriate. The ITU register dates the proposal to 19 October and lists it for the November plenipotentiary conference in Doha.

The broad title hides a modest engine. The Secretary-General would connect Member States, Sector Members and relevant organizations. The standardization and development bureaux would continue technical and training work. Governments and companies would be invited to share experience, consider national measures and teach consumers to recognize fraudulent communications. The reasons section explicitly chooses collaboration over prescriptive regulation or enforcement and says no additional financial resources are required. There is no timetable for an authentication scheme, no adoption target and no joint pass-or-fail test for networks.

The contrast sits in an existing ITU file. WTSA Resolution 65, revised in 2024, speaks in the machinery of international calls: delivering calling-party numbers, carrying origin information across transit networks, making identifiers verifiable and working on trusted signalling certificates. Recommendation Q.3063, approved in 2022 and still in force, specifies signalling procedures for authenticating calling-line identity. A specification is a tool on the shelf; the records cited here do not report how widely operators use it.

That is the interesting division of labour. Caller identity has detailed ITU instructions. The Arab States draft gives IP and domain impersonation a place in the same political sentence, but leaves the operating tests to sector work and national choices. A new conference resolution can put chairs around a problem. The harder work is deciding what each network checks before it accepts a claimed identity. The draft leaves that question in the room for Doha.

Official sources