There’s another level to KYC which comes into knowing your customer’s customer. It’s actually an extension to that acronym. Like we didn’t have enough letters already in it, but now it’s KYCC or CCC or whatever. It depends how many customers are in that chain of custody. And in telecom, as you’ll understand, by the time you get your phone number assigned to you, there are many other stakeholders in that chain of custody before you get that assigned service level.

So if you take your cell phone, for example, there’s the government that assigns the numbers to the phone companies, then there are the phone companies, then there might be resellers of the phone company. So if you think about your cellular service being on Boost Mobile, for example, it first comes through the government. That number is leased to, let’s say, Verizon Wireless or AT&T Wireless and then rolls down to a mobile network operator that resells one of those other networks. In other words, uses the same towers and all that. And that could be somebody like Boost Mobile or Cricket or some name like that.

And when you think about your phone number now, that’s traversing multiple organizations before it gets assigned to you. So knowing your customer’s customer just basically means knowing every level from the assignment of the phone number all the way down to the end user.