2025 Telecom Industry Fraud Report

Tackling fraud is an immensely complex challenge — and while customers demand more streamlined experiences, fraudsters are constantly probing for vulnerabilities.

While nearly all telecom providers have invested in some type of fraud prevention solutions, losses continue to mount as fraud attempts show no sign of slowing down. TransUnion® conducted the 2025 Telecommunications Industry Fraud Report, a survey of industry executives, to better understand where they’re seeing fraud, how they’re managing and mitigating it, and where they’re focusing investments. Some findings include:

• Top three types of fraud telecommunications companies said they were most concerned about were payment fraud (57%), new subscriber fraud (53%) and identity theft (50%)
• Nearly 70% of respondents reported fraud occurs most in online channels: 23% said most fraud occurs over the phone, and another 9% named in-store fraud as the most prevalent.
• When asked about specific solutions their companies were looking to invest in, 67% of respondents said identity verification solutions, while 60% called out multi-factor authentication as a priority.
• Respondents offered several important criteria for measuring the success of providers’ fraud prevention solutions: 87% of respondents stated decreased fraud losses, 63% said increased fraud detection rates, and 53% wanted to reduce false negatives.