Twilio takes US branded calling to GA on a competitor's survey

Twilio moved US Branded Calling to general availability, displaying a verified business name, logo, and where supported a reason for calling. The technical description is the part worth reading: Branded Calling “uses Rich Call Data in the STIR/SHAKEN signing flow so supported carrier paths can verify and render branded caller identity without requiring a third-party app.” Identity travels in the native voice path rather than through a consumer-installed app. The implementation constraints are published too — display name capped at 35 characters, call reason at 64, ASCII only, logos as 32-bit BMP at 256x256, and call reason unsupported on iOS.

Every consumer-distrust figure in the post is Hiya’s, named and linked by Twilio to Hiya’s 2026 State of the Call: 86% of consumers do not answer unknown numbers, 73% say businesses should identify themselves in caller ID, 29% say a verified business name is the top thing that would make them answer, 34% report declining trust in calls, 31% say they have received a deepfake voice call. The 86% also supplies Twilio’s subhead about outbound budget being ignored. Hiya sells voice intelligence and its own network-level branded calling, so the demand-side case for Twilio’s launch rests on a survey published by another vendor selling into the same problem.

The outcome evidence comes from elsewhere and is thinner: Forrester research that branded calling improved answer rates and reduced calls mistaken for spam, and a single customer — healthcare provider CareSignal — reporting a 21% answer-rate increase and a 48% pick-up rate. One deployment is an anecdote. Twilio also claims reach of more than 265 million US mobile devices.

That makes three vendors now shipping branded calling as GA on RCD rather than app-side labeling, each quoting a different survey at the same problem — First Orion put unanswered business calls at 45% earlier this month. The methodologies are not comparable and none of the publishers are disinterested, which is the reason to keep the figures side by side rather than average them. Follow the Regulatory Watch dispatches for how RCD attestation obligations move in the KYUP proceeding.