Trust, AI and the Phone Fix | Dave (Founder at CarrierX)

In the Future of Voice AI series of interviews, I ask three questions to my guests:

- What problems do you currently see in Enterprise Voice AI?
- How does your company solve these problems?
- What solutions do you envision in the next 5 years?

This episode’s guest is David Erickson, Founder of CarrierX.

Dave Erickson is a telecom pioneer and the visionary behind CarrierX and now Phound, a platform redefining trust in digital communication. As the founder of FreeConferenceCall.com, he disrupted the industry by making high-quality conferencing free and accessible, forever changing how people connect. Now, with Phound, he’s tackling one of the biggest challenges of our digital era—restoring privacy, security, and control to phone calls and messaging through verified identity, AI-powered spam blocking, and dynamic persona management.

With decades of experience in telecommunications, Dave has a deep understanding of the evolution of voice technology and the growing need for secure, seamless communication. He believes that trust should be the foundation of every interaction, and his work is shaping the future of how we verify, manage, and protect our digital identities.

CarrierX is a CPaaS and API provider that owns its own network. We allow you to build an entire communications infrastructure for your application without depending on third-party carriers. As a carrier that gives you carrier-like control, we allow you to manage your network how you want. Our global reach in telecommunications means we can do everything from providing reliable phone numbers to enabling your company as its own network carrier.

Recap Video

Takeaways

• CarrierX is rebuilding trust in phone calls with secure, AI-powered networks that give users control over their identity and privacy.

• Dave also founded Phound, a self-managed, verified contact system that lets users control their phone identity, privacy, and who can reach them.

• Phone numbers were the best global ID, but spam and fraud ruined their trust.

• HD voice improves call quality, but telecom companies have been slow to adopt it.

• AI works better with HD voice, improving speech-to-text, emotion detection, and overall accuracy.

• Too many carriers degrade call quality—zero-hop networks solve this.

• Caller ID is broken—spoofing and fraud make it useless without real verification.

• AI-powered call filtering could block spam and let in only trusted calls.

• People now avoid sharing phone numbers because they’re more of a risk than an asset.

• AI-driven telecom needs stronger ID verification to prevent fraud and build trust.

• The phone system was built for connection, but without trust, it fails.

• The future of communication is about controlling identity, privacy, and access—not just better call quality.

• Caller authentication should work like social media verification but with stronger security.

• AI will depend on phone networks, so security must improve before AI-driven calls take over.

• Businesses will adopt private, trusted call networks before these solutions go mainstream.

• Old phone networks had built-in trust through operators—modern networks need an upgrade.

• AI-powered phone directories could help verify and connect real people and AI services.

• Telecom companies should enable AI instead of competing to build their own models.

• Phone numbers need AI, cryptographic verification, and security layers to stay relevant.