“When, in March 2008, the FSA mandated that all telephone calls should be recorded, the authority made an exemption for calls via Mobile Phones as, at that time, there were technical limitations on the practicality of recording mobile calls,” explains Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare Plc.
With the launch of TeleWare Mobile Recording, there is no longer any technical limitation. Our solution records any call, to and from most widely available mobile phones on any operating system, with the entire call along with destination, date and time stamp held on an encrypted, high availability storage platform for up to 10 years.
TeleWare, in partnership with two independent national telecommunication carriers, are testing the solution using thousands of simultaneous calls equating to hundreds of hours of recordings.
“Our call recording solution is built into the mobile tariff and starts from around £14 per user per month in addition to the standard rental. The solution scales from a small sole trader all the way to an organisation with 10,000 mobile users. Implementation at, say, a small brokerage firm with 20 traders takes less than a week and requires no additional IT equipment on premises,” Haworth adds.
The technical limitation of previous mobile call recording solutions included a need to place a small software application on each device to handle recording. These ‘clients’ could be circumvented and also needed to be updated constantly as device operating systems evolved. Another method of mobile call recording is to re-route all mobile voice calls to a centralised hub packed with banks of call recording equipment. This solution requires firms to absorb huge additional upfront costs, higher per call charges and fails to scale during periods of higher than normal demand.
“The exemption made by the FSA was reasonable at the time but we have solved the inherent problems with a simple and elegant solution – we place the call recording within the mobile network itself!” explains Haworth, “Every call is recorded as it passes through the network so there is no need for any device clients or re-routing and the call recording policy cannot be circumvented.”
Using a special TeleWare SIM, the call recording solution works in any location with GSM, 3G or 4G in the UK or abroad and has been tested in 265 countries. Like any other mobile network, the Call Recording solution has standard features like voicemail, call conferencing, forwarding, internet access as well as coverage across 99% of the UK population. In the event of an FSA investigation or if a clarification is required on any conversation, each call can be accessed via a secure internet portal with the proper two factor authentication procedures.
By placing the call recording solution directly within the mobile network, TeleWare has delivered a simple yet effective method of meeting the FSA mobile recording requirement while reducing the burden on internal IT and compliance staff.
With the FSA deadline less than 6 months away, TeleWare is going to market with partners including several of the UK’s leading telecommunication services providers. The solution can either use a range of fresh mobile numbers or via PAC (porting authorisation code) procedures to transfer any existing number to ensure minimal disruption for busy staff.
The solution also interconnects with TeleWare on-premise and hosted telephony applications that provide business communications solutions for mobility, personal contact management, messaging and call distribution.
“Based on feedback from telecommunication operators, financial services clients and the statement of requirement from the FSA sourcebook, we feel confident that our solution meets all the requirements set out by the FSA,” concluded Haworth.