- First Orion’s biggest U.S. customer is T-Mobile
- The company, which provides branded calling services, is expanding in Europe
- Plans call for doubling branded calling coverage by the end of 2026
Remember Scam Shield, the “un-carrier” move T-Mobile launched in 2020 to protect customers from rampant scams and robocalls?
Turns out, the company that powers that service is going to be at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona next week, with an eye toward expanding beyond its current global footprint.
First Orion already works with some overseas carriers, like T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT) in Germany, which came after First Orion’s successful relationship with T-Mobile in the U.S.
With DT, First Orion is offering branded calling services to enterprise customers across Germany.
Branded calling occurs when a brand, like a drugstore or bank, pays to have their brand name presented on the phone when they’re calling customers so that when the customer sees an incoming call, they know who’s calling and they’ll be more likely to answer it.
First Orion has been associated with T-Mobile for close to a decade, providing calling services like Scam Shield. Customers see a “scam likely” message if the system believes a scammer is calling. Customers can turn on scam blocking either online or through the T-Life app.
“It’s a really nice protection solution we offer to every T-Mobile customer,” First Orion CEO Scott Hambuchen told Fierce. In addition, “they really helped us create this whole branded calling network and solution. We rolled it out on their network as the first branded calling experience.”
Their relationship is close enough that Arkansas-based First Orion leases space on the fourth floor of a building on T-Mobile’s Bellevue, Washington, campus for a couple dozen or so First Orion employees. Given the volume of meetings they have, “we like to be on site,” Hambuchen explained.
First Orion also provides call protection for Boost Mobile, the fourth largest carrier in the U.S. – and for the record, yes, they’re getting paid (unlike network vendors and contractors who are not.)
Boost Mobile parent company EchoStar is decommissioning Boost’s 5G mobile network and struck an MVNO deal with AT&T for coverage, but it’s pursuing a hybrid network that will see Boost keep its 5G core. First Orion’s software is deployed in that mobile core.
First Orion works with TNS, TransUnion
Other companies providing services similar to First Orion are TNS and TransUnion, which provide call protection services for Verizon and AT&T, respectively. All three – First Orion, TNS and TransUnion – have federated their solutions together so that when a customer purchases a branded calling service from any one of them, they’ll get access to all three major mobile U.S. carriers.
“For us, it was really important to be able to brand a call on all the major carrier networks and working with each carrier was not a very efficient way,” Hambuchen said. “We all figured out how to work together to create a solution for businesses where they could just go to one place, purchase branded calling and get their calls displayed on all three carrier networks.”
Things seem to be working out. The CEO estimates the company provided branded calling for about 5 billion calls in 2025. “As an ecosystem, it’s growing every day,” he said. “We've got about 15,000 active businesses branding calls through first Orion. So very, very successful.”
Expanding in Europe
Last year, First Orion introduced the Global Exchange platform, which enables international deployment of branded calling services. At this year’s MWC, the company will be talking about an upcoming April 2026 release that introduces support for CAMARA-standard APIs and expands international carrier connectivity.
Temim Adwan, managing director EMEA at First Orion, said they developed Global Exchange to simplify how branded calling scales across borders.
Europe recently adopted branded calling, led by Vodafone in Germany, although they call it “CallerID.”
For the last several months, “we've been seeing carriers racing for branded calling,” he said. “They have seen the opportunity. It’s a new revenue stream … They moved really, really fast compared to what we have seen in the evolution in the U.S. market.”
CAMARA, an industry initiative led by GSMA, helps carriers do things like age verification, for example, and it’s being applied here to make it easier for carriers to integrate into the Global Exchange. “It’s just because it makes everybody's life easier if you're working to a set of standards,” Hambuchen said.
In 2026, First Orion plans to expand European connectivity through Global Exchange to include Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and additional carriers in Germany and the United Kingdom.
If all goes as planned, the company will double its branded calling coverage by the end of 2026.