IM (Instant Messaging) / chat has been around for a long time. Before AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, 1997) and ICQ (Internet Chat Query, 1996), there was the command line function ‘chat’ on unix (early 1980s) which evolved into IRC (Internet Relay Chat,1988); and for the VMS (Virtual Memory System) crowd there was phone (sometime in […]
I’m asked this question surprisingly often, “Alan, what is it that you do?” My stock answer is, “I wander the world helping people.” Which generally results in a wry smile from those who know me; else a questioning or annoyed look from someone who was expecting a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. When I […]
Its interesting times to review quarterly financial performance of a number of telecom companies. Firstly, examining the large established ones focused on telco: Ericsson revenue fell 6% year over year during the third quarter to $5.9 billion Nokia fell 9% year-on-year to around $5.7B in Q3, and said conditions will continue to be difficult into […]
Its been a busy summer across preparations for TADHack Global, TADSummit and the day job of helping people around the world build new businesses and services in programmable telecoms. Plus here in the US with the long summer holidays a succession of camps and baby sitters to keep the kids occupied and not watching TV or […]
When Tyntec bought from Iris Wireless its peering agreement with Syniverse and SAP, one of only three contracts in existence, they opened up the old boys club of carrier interconnect in the US. Now tyntec are proposing to address one of the other dysfunctions of the US market by making long code A2P SMS work […]
I’ll start with some definitions. cPaaS – communications platform as a service. Its a telecom app server running in the cloud and a bunch of carrier interconnects that enable telecoms (voice, video, messaging, identity, payments, etc.) over the internet / PSTN between people and things. Its generally accessed using an API, but SDKs, GUIs, and […]
I attended Restconn 2017, this weblog provides quick review and some context on what it means to the industry. I’ve known Ivelin, Jean and Amit since 2004/5; they are the core team behind Mobicents (the open source project now called Restcomm) and they founded Telestax which leads Restcomm. Back in 2004/5 there were lots of open […]
At Restconn 2017 in Prague 23-25 May I gave a presentation on the Future of Programmable Telecoms. As the first presentation of Day 2 at 8AM, I started gently as some listeners soothed their hangovers 😉 I thought it best to show most experts are wrong with most of their predictions, including me. With examples […]
On Saturday, March 18, the winners of the “LINE BOT AWARDS” were announced. 815 entries were whittled down to just 24 teams who completed for the Grand Prix prize of 10 million yen, about $90,000 USD. At TADHack Global we get about 200 entries over one weekend, its comparing apples and oranges a little as […]
I’ve not attended MWC (Mobile World Congress) for quite a few years, and I’ll not be at MWC 2017. I reviewed back in 2015 some of the reasons in this weblog, MWC is Broken. For this year, you’ll likely see most of the usual faces, but for many of the vendors there will be fewer demos […]