CALL RECORDING
The mobile minefi eld M
obile call recording is the hot topic in financial circles within the UK this year.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) updated its call recording regulations earlier in 2011, lifting their exemption on mobile phones. From 14th November regulated firms are required to record calls for transactions in the equities, bond, derivatives and financial commodity markets made on both fixed line and mobile devices that have been supplied by the firm to employees, with the regulations covering voice, email, text messages, instant messenger (IM) services and pin-to- pin communications on mobiles.
Trevor Davis
The mobile call recording market is confusing and disjointed, according to Trevor Davis, Senior Product Manager at CTI Group, who believes that new mobile recording regulations are a technical minefield.
Research conducted in July by Tru and Obsidian Wireless showed that only nine per cent of firms had implemented a complete solution with 70 per cent of firms unable to decide how to comply. The confusion is driven by the fact that there is no perfect, integrated solution to this problem, says Davis. The issues with mobile recording depend on the type of solution being deployed, he believes, and that in itself presents a problem as there are several solutions with none of them fully meeting the FSA guidelines.
The first type of solution is network based, with the call recorder in a carrier’s network running as either a dedicated or hosted service. This solution is beneficial because there is no handset application and therefore it is tamper-proof and will not impact on the user’s experience. It is not limited to any particular handset, being handset agnostic, and it is possible to capture voice and messaging data, but there is limited scope for capturing email and IM. However, says Davis, the disadvantages include geographical coverage which is limited to either the carrier’s network, or the networks that they peer with. Once outside of the network it is necessary to implement a handset application and this immediately limits to service predominantly to Blackberry devices. As the recorder is embedded into
the carrier’s network it is necessary to use that carrier for your mobile service. Furthermore there is limited scope for interoperability with in- house fixed-line recording systems.
“The second type of solution requires a handset application to installed,” said Davis. “The handset application acts as a call control device. It either sets up a conference call when a call is detected, or it redirects the call to a DDI number that has a host server performing onward call forwarding and recording. This type of solution works well when looking to integrate recording with existing in-house systems. But there are numerous disadvantages.
Limitations
“The solution is handset specific and today that means Blackberry. It is possible to cover other handsets but not the iPhone due to operating system limitations. Only Blackberry offers a management platform for distributing the application, managing it after installation, and locking it down to prevent tampering. There is an impact on call ring time, usually a few seconds, while the application patches in the recording service. Even the Blackberry solution is not completely tamper-proof. Additionally, no single solution offers all the features required by the FSA, namely voice, messaging, email and IM recording. This means that it is necessary to implement multiple solutions to meet the requirements. Finally, additional call costs are incurred with these solutions as an additional outbound call is always made from the device.”
A third type of solution is available with some IP PBXs and is classed as the ‘one number’ feature, where the PBX controls call routing to the mobile by using one number per user. This means that the mobile number is not given out. “By routing the call through the PBX a standard voice recorder will record both fixed line and mobile calls,” added Davis. “The solution is not handset specific, which is advantageous. The solution falls down though because it is only
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viable for voice recording. You then go back to the handset application requirement for the other types of communication or you integrate with Blackberry Enterprise Server, which does allow capture of SMS and pin-to-pin messaging. But that means limiting handsets to Blackberry devices and still does not include capture of email or IM. It is also trivially easy to bypass the recorder, just give out your mobile number.”
Davis believes that the issues identified above make for a confusing and disjointed mobile recording market. The FSA guidelines also seem to have been introduced prematurely as there is no single solution that meets the requirements, he claims. “This has lead to slow take-up of the solution as the cost of implementation is not trivial,” he commented. “However, the FSA had to implement these regulations at some stage and I believe their implementation will eventually lead to more technically sound solutions coming to market.”
In an ideal world mobile calls should not be treated any differently to fixed line calls when it comes to call recording, Davis believes, but he says the mobile recording regulations are a technical minefield. “Banks are considering alternative proposals such as banning the use of mobiles for regulated calls,” he commented. “But the FSA has specifically advised that this is not an acceptable solution. The cost of deployment needs to come down, and solutions need to integrate more of the recording requirements, although technically this is significantly challenging.
“I cannot see a breakthrough without the cooperation of both carriers and handset manufactures. Given that current demand for mobile recording is limited almost exclusively to the UK financial sector there is little appetite from manufacturers to open up their operating systems to call recording vendors. The next couple of years will be decisive for this immature technology.”
Call recording in focus – page 52
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