Canada vs. US STIR/SHAKEN: What Outbound Teams Need to Know

Same Standard, Different Regulatory Bodies

STIR/SHAKEN uses identical cryptographic infrastructure in both the US and Canada. The PASSporT structure, the ES256 signing algorithm, the STI-CA certificate hierarchy, and the A/B/C attestation levels are the same. A call signed in the US and terminated in Canada — or vice versa — is validated using compatible verification logic.

The regulatory mandate in the US came from the FCC under the TRACED Act (2019), with major carriers required to implement by June 2021. The CRTC — Canada's telecommunications regulator — issued its own STIR/SHAKEN mandate, requiring Canadian carriers to implement by November 2021. Both mandates have phased extensions for smaller providers and non-IP infrastructure.

Where the US and Canada Diverge

Enforcement posture. The FCC has been more active in publishing enforcement actions against specific providers and in establishing the Robocall Mitigation Database as a gatekeeping mechanism. The CRTC has focused more on large carrier compliance and has published fewer public enforcement actions against individual providers. For outbound teams, this means the US network has more active blocking infrastructure for non-compliant providers, while Canada has somewhat more tolerance for gaps in implementation among smaller carriers.

Carrier concentration. In the US, three carriers — T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon — collectively serve the majority of mobile subscribers and operate the most sophisticated call analytics platforms. Each has its own proprietary spam analytics system on top of raw attestation data. In Canada, the major carriers are Rogers, Bell, and Telus, with Public Mobile, Freedom Mobile, and others serving secondary market segments. The Canadian carrier analytics systems are less publicly documented than their US counterparts, but the major three have all implemented STIR/SHAKEN on their core networks.

Wholesale interconnect complexity. Canada has more geographic concentration of population in a smaller number of major markets (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary), which simplifies some aspects of routing but creates different wholesale interconnect patterns than the fragmented US market. Traffic flowing through Canadian wholesale providers has its own signing and handoff behavior that differs from US wholesale interconnect chains.

CLEC landscape. The US has thousands of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), many of which are still completing STIR/SHAKEN implementation. The CRTC environment has fewer CLECs, and the major carriers handle a larger share of total traffic. This means the US has more variance in attestation outcomes based on intermediate carrier behavior.

Practical Implications for Outbound Dialing

For outbound operations running campaigns into both markets, the key practical differences:

Number geography matters. In both countries, presenting a locally-matched caller ID — a US area code for US calls, a Canadian area code for Canadian calls — is the foundation of answer rate optimization. For Canadian calls specifically, matching province-level area codes (604 for British Columbia, 416/647 for Toronto, 514 for Montreal) performs better than presenting generic national numbers. UnlimCall issues caller IDs on demand for both US and Canadian markets, letting you match area codes to campaign targets without maintaining a pre-provisioned pool.

Attestation signing works cross-border. A call originating in the US and terminating in Canada, signed at A-level by a US carrier, will be validated by the Canadian terminating carrier using the same certificate hierarchy. The STIR/SHAKEN trust infrastructure is shared. Your A-level attestation on US-originated traffic maintains its value when terminating in Canada.

The analytics platforms differ. Canadian carriers' spam analytics systems are less aggressive on mobile display than T-Mobile, which is the most active labeler in the US. Calls that would trigger "Scam Likely" on T-Mobile in the US may display cleanly on equivalent Canadian mobile carriers. This should not be taken as a license for poor behavioral hygiene — the analytics are improving continuously and the gap is narrowing — but it is a real difference in the current operational environment.

Regulatory compliance is separate. Canada's CRTC has its own rules governing telemarketing, do-not-call registration (the National Do Not Call List, or DNCL, operated by the CRTC), and consent requirements under CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation). STIR/SHAKEN compliance in Canada does not imply CRTC telemarketing compliance any more than STIR/SHAKEN compliance in the US implies FTC TSR compliance. These are parallel, independent frameworks. Consult your compliance counsel for specifics on Canadian outbound campaign requirements.

Daily Rate Economics: US vs. Canada on UnlimCall

UnlimCall's flat-rate pricing for US and Canadian markets starts at $99 per agent per month — equivalent to $4.95 per agent per day on a standard 20 business-day month, or $5 per agent per day on a daily billing basis. The per-day floor is $5 per agent across both markets.

Providers charging per-minute rates for US or Canadian outbound — typical enterprise SIP trunking pricing runs $0.007–0.015 per minute — create a direct cost comparison. At 200 minutes of connected time per agent per day (a typical high-productivity outbound session), per-minute costs run $1.40–$3.00 per agent per day. At that volume, per-minute pricing is cheaper. At 400+ minutes — which predictive dialer operations routinely exceed — flat-rate pricing at $5/day is structurally lower.