SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - February 07, 2017) - Hiya, the leading source for caller profile and phone spam protection services, announced it has teamed up with ZTE USA to integrate caller identification, spam detection and call blocking into its Axon 7 beginning today. With this collaboration, ZTE becomes the first mobile manufacturer to provide free caller ID and spam protection for consumers in the US to protect themselves from unwanted callers the moment they turn on their device.
"The rise of robocalls is staggering, with more than 10 billion of these calls made to U.S. phones in 2016 alone, and complaints to the FTC up nearly 30 percent since last year," said CEO and founder of Hiya, Alex Algard. "ZTE understands this problem and is approaching it head-on by using our tried and true solution that has been fighting unwanted calls for nearly 10 years."
The phone spam problem is affecting consumers at such a wide scale that regulators have taken notice -- and have been pushing for concrete action. In 2016, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York proposed legislation requiring telecom companies to offer free robocall-blocking technology. Additionally, the FCC has hosted two meetings of the Robocall Strike Force, a joint effort across major wireless and wireline carriers tasked with providing actionable solutions to the robocall problem. While progress has been made, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler stressed that there is still a long way to go and requested a third meeting for the end of April to review progress.
"We're excited to team up with Hiya to automatically protect our consumers from the nuisance of robocalls," said ZTE USA's VP of Technology Planning and Partnerships, Jeff Yee. "Our Axon 7 is the first in the U.S. to offer spam and scam protection along with a natively integrated caller ID solution for free because we are committed to protecting our consumers and giving them the best phone experience possible."
Axon 7 users will have context for unsolicited spam and scam calls, eliminating the fear and annoyance of answering or ignoring a call. They can also block unwanted callers and select an auto-blocking feature that keeps known scam numbers from ever ringing through to a user's phone. By leveraging Hiya's proprietary data set that includes more than 1.5 billion active mobile and landline phone numbers globally, ZTE Axon 7 users will have the best information at their fingertips to help them know who is calling on the other end of the line.
To learn more about the Axon 7, visit: www.zteusa.com/axon7.
About Hiya
Hiya provides enhanced caller profile products and services designed to make the phone experience better. With a database of 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 analyzes more than 3.5 billion calls and text per month, and estimated that more than 10.2 billion unwanted calls were made to mobile phones in 2016. Hiya is available as a consumer app on Google Android and iPhone and is integrated into the phone experience for ZTE, AT&T Call Protect, T-Mobile and Samsung Galaxy S7 users worldwide. For more information, please visit www.hiya.com.
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Contact Information:
Lisa Bowers
Hiya
lisa@hiya.com
(847) 894.7333
