Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

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Because it's a huge installed base of non-upgradeable equipment that is 15, 20, 25 years old. People doing oldschool SS7 telco stuff are just not going to upgrade. They'll sue their upstream carriers if they suddenly cut them off because their new re-implementation of SS7 is incompatible with their old gear. I'm a senior network engineer for a mid sized regional ISP, and encounter this shit on a fairly regular basis.

It is not as simple as getting everyone who runs public facing smtpd on the Internet to upgrade their software and practices. Telco and PSTN phone stuff is the very opposite of being up to date and continually evolving best practices for security.

It isn't the upstream forcing the upgrade. It isn't forced at all. You can keep using your old equipment as long as you want. But there would come a point that enough people are using the new protocol that recipients start auto-blocking calls from anyone who doesn't use it.

You may not even have to upgrade the old equipment. For an out of band protocol, the upstream may be able to implement it for you.

When you get a scam call, you know that somewhere there is a company that got paid for that call, because telcos -- even and really especially scummy shady scam-enabling telcos -- don't offer access to their network for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

Turning those companies into smoking holes in the ground doesn't require anyone to upgrade their equipment. All it takes is willingness on the part of lawmakers and regulators to track them down and make them regret their business practices.

Cut them off unless they upgrade, their upstream probably has that option in the agreement anyways. Ptsn should just die. The technicians and customer service are so incompetent that every day I had to call to get a line disabled at the switch because it got re-enabled. After a hundred days in a row I finally just shorted the damn line and problem solved.

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