The purpose of this CXTech Week 10 2020 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech? The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.
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In Episode 1 of UC Influencers by Dominic Kent
Dominic interviewed me on a number of topics, including unified communications.
Listen to the podcast on your favourite platform:
? https://spoti.fi/3aj3XII
? https://apple.co/3cmkUUo
?https://bit.ly/2IhrPQN
FCC seeking wireless fines over location sharing
The FCC is looking to draw hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from top U.S. wireless carriers after an investigation found the companies failed to safeguard critical data about customers’ real-time locations.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint are set to receive notices of apparent liability, a step in a process that could include company protests and a possible eventual collection of fines from the Justice Dept.
The companies reportedly continued sharing subscriber coordinates even after they told Congress they were cutting out middleman companies from those data feeds.
How Does Remote Entry Work for TADHack-mini Orlando?
We’re getting more questions this year on how remote entry works for TADHack-mini Orlando. This weblog summarizes the remote entry process.
We’ve accepted remote entries to TADHack since its founding in 2014. Its not possible for many developers who are interested in TADHack to make it to a location, remote entry has helped over 1000 people take part in TADHack from the comfort of their own home. You’re as likely to be a winner in-person as remote.
Remote Entry Submission Procedure for TADHack-mini Orlando 2020.
Simcon3
Simcon is an interesting gather of leaders in programmable telecoms / communications and its ecosystem.
I was presenting on “Are we there yet?” Covering telecom services’ slow migration to IP. The slides are show below.
For many of the audience this confirmed what that already know: there’s a rapidly growing business for small and medium sized providers in enterprise communications. Because most businesses need a local partner they trust that makes their IT / Communications easy for them.
Gamma acquires Exactive, a provider of Microsoft Unified Communications solutions
We’re seeing enterprise communication channels do store brand and “named brand” offers. Gamma has a store brand using Broadsoft, but really needs to move to open source to be economically viable going forward. And for customers that are Microsoft shops and want their named brand offer, the Exactive acquisition helps deliver the migration and operations skills / experience around Microsoft Teams.
The Coronavirus Attacked at the Worst Time for TWLO Stock
I liked this article’s view on the impact of the COVID-19 across the broader category of growth stocks, not just Twilio.
” Now, before anyone gets any ideas about buying into the “discount” right now, consider the bigger picture. As I mentioned, Twilio is a growth stock. At the core, that means it eschews profitability and stability for expansionary strategies. This stance often facilitates incredible gains, but there’s a catch: a bearish cycle or a black swan event could deflate shares painfully.
If you look at the company’s financials, it’s clearly based on the assumption of a robust bull market. With rising debt, negative net income and free cash flow in the red, Twilio isn’t exactly a paragon of stability. As several countries hunker down to address and contain the coronavirus, the overall environment doesn’t support TWLO stock.
To be fair, President Trump recently announced that the risk of a coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. “is very low.” Furthermore, he stressed that our nation is “very, very ready for this.”
I’m not trying to scare anyone nor am I recommending panic. Still, I believe that Trump is very, very wrong.“
And more broadly on the COVID-19 and event attendance. I’ve found myself repeating the following of late: “By the middle of the year I think avoiding events may make sense because COVID-19 is not the flu, it will not follow the flu cycle, it will continue to spread. And we will gain far better data on the actual rates and R0 over the coming months.
Next year we should see the the vaccine become available. Until then the odds are in our favor: 80% mild, 14% moderate, 5% severe, and 1% death. And those numbers are distorted as most people do not report having the virus, because their symptoms are mild and they want to avoid being quarantined for weeks. That’s why we see the virus spreading in the general population of many countries.
Its still devastating for the families affected but let’s remember 1.25 million people die on the road each year, 25m+ are disabled from road accidents each year, 250k-500k+ die from the flu each year, 17M per year die from infectious diseases that could be cured for as little as $1 per person. And with all those deaths happening every year, we continue our lives as normal.
My recommendation is do not panic, continue as normal, and watch the data come from countries in Europe / Canada as the virus spreads, as I’m not convinced on the US data.”
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Congratulations to Thomas Howe who is now the Chief Technology Officer at VHT.
Utku Yavuz, a TADHack winner, is now a Software Development Engineer at Amazon. This has been an aim for Utku, and its well-deserved.
Well done Ravish Patel who is now Senior Director of Product Management at TeleSign | Head – Identity, Fraud & Risk Scoring & Data Partnerships
Arin Sime is now CEO/Founder at SimplyDoc as well as and WebRTC.ventures. SimplyDoc is a care driven telehealth platform created by the team at WebRTC.ventures. We work with medical clinics and mental health clinics to provide easy to use and flexible patient-focused telemedicine applications for web and mobile.
Kent Winter, Entrepreneur focused on Malibu Real Estate, Mobile Apps, Mobile Solutions & mHealth. Was inducted into Pinnacle Estate Properties Diamond Club for being in the Top 3% of Pinnacle’s 1200 Realtors in Sales Volume for 2019!
Marek Jablonski is now Group Vice President: Europe NEP & CSP Communications at Altran.