Hiya Launches First Solution to Help Carriers Fight Robocallers at the Network Level

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - August 03, 2016) - Hiya, the leading source for caller identification and phone spam protection services, today announced that it has launched "Hiya Cloud," a new solution that integrates directly into wireless and wireline services at the network level, helping consumers identify unknown callers and protecting them against the increased threat of robocalls. Hiya Cloud provides mobile and landline operators with the only service on the market that can apply spam detection services where the call originates, halting the threat before it even reaches the device. This delivers a faster, more impactful line of protection for all subscribers, regardless of operating system or device. In light of recently proposed legislation and at the further urging of the FCC last week, Hiya Cloud is the first network-based solution available to carriers to help them in the ongoing fight against unwanted robocalls.

"While the recent announcements by the FCC shined a light on the pervasive robocall problem in the U.S., anti-robocall solutions prescribed through inflexible regulation are not the answer," said Alex Algard, Founder and CEO of Hiya. "We believe that both carriers and consumers will ultimately benefit from agile and nimble solutions from the industry, which is why we are launching Hiya Cloud."

When integrated into wireless and wireline networks, Hiya provides a better phone experience for users that includes:

• Spam Protection: With Hiya's state of the art phone reputation service, users will have much needed context for unsolicited spam and scam calls, giving them peace of mind when answering or ignoring a call. Hiya lets users block unwanted callers, and provides them with an auto-blocking feature that keeps known scam numbers, like the recent IRS scam, from ever ringing through to a user's phone. In addition to Hiya's proprietary algorithms that detect spam calls, Hiya also integrates the FCC and FTC complaint lists into its existing database.
• Caller Identification: By leveraging Hiya's proprietary data set that includes more than 600 million active mobile and landline phone numbers in the US and over 1.5 billion unique numbers globally, users will be able to make informed decisions about whether or not to answer an incoming call.
• Call Management: Hiya Cloud can process and manage calls on behalf of the user, allowing mobile carriers to provide unique consumer products such as parental controls, do not disturb, out of office, call screening, and visual voicemail.

An issue impacting nearly every smartphone user, the growing phone spam problem has also caught the attention of regulators. In June 2015, the FCC announced that it would enable U.S. mobile operators to block spam. In April of 2016, Representative Jackie Speier introduced the ROBOCOP Act, a piece of legislation that would require telecom companies to offer consumers free, optional robocall-blocking technology. The ROBOCOP Act was then introduced to the Senate by Charles Schumer of New York. Finally, last week, Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC, sent letters to major wireless and wireline phone companies giving them 30 days to come back with concrete, actionable solutions to address these issues.

Deploying caller ID and spam protection via the IMS Telephony Application Server (TAS), or at the network level, enables mobile operators to offer ubiquitous protection across all devices on the network, regardless of operating system (Android, iOS) or device type (phones, tablets, cars, appliances). Hiya can work with all industry TAS API's and can deploy its services via a hybrid server/client model so that mobile carriers can quickly and efficiently build and deploy a solution to actively protect their subscriber base. As a complete solution for any mobile network, Hiya Cloud includes features such as service provisioning, user authentication and authorization, customer service support, fraud protection, spam analytics and call disposition.

Hiya Cloud joins Hiya's suite of spam protection and caller ID products and services that include popular Android and iOS apps that have been downloaded more than 30 million times, as well as partnerships with T-Mobile and Samsung that leverage the power of Hiya to protect their users from robocalls. In April 2016, Hiya was spun out of Whitepages as a stand-alone company entirely dedicated to protecting users from unwanted calls made to their mobile devices.

Learn more about Hiya at www.Hiya.com.

About Hiya
Hiya provides enhanced Caller ID products and services designed to make the phone experience better. With a database of more over 1.5 billion unique numbers globally, Hiya leverages its expansive algorithms to identify unknown calls and texts and to monitor phone-based threats for consumers and businesses. Hiya screens more than 665 million incoming calls per month, and has detected more than one billion robo, telemarketing and scam calls and texts to date. Hiya is available as a consumer app on Google Android and iPhone and is integrated into the phone experience for T-Mobile and Samsung Galaxy S7 users worldwide. For more information, please visit www.hiya.com.

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