The purpose of this CXTech Week 26 2021 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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Covered this week:
- Mapped (Jose de Castro ex-Tropo) raises additional $6.5M to build API for the ‘digital twin of data infrastructure’
- There’s still time to help your favorite projects in the Open Source Telecom Software Survey 2021
- Enterprise Connect 2021 and TADHack Global 2021
- What to Expect on July 1st (in the UK)
- And in the US, the deadline for STIR/SHAKEN certification is July 1st
- Aircall raised $120 Million Series D Funding at $1B valuation
- Amazon and Wickr – it’s about Military Contracts
- Russia’s MTS acquires telecom and CPaaS provider MTT
- People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Mapped (Jose de Castro ex-Tropo) raises additional $6.5M to build API for the ‘digital twin of data infrastructure’
Congratulations to Jose de Castro (ex-Tropo). Mapped has raised an additional $6.5 million in seed II funding, on top of $3 million raised in February, to build out a universal API for connecting control systems for elevators, HVAC, and other physical assets. Investors include MetaProp and Allegion Ventures as co-leads, as well as Singtel Innov8, Greycroft, and Animo Ventures.
There’s still time to help your favorite projects in the Open Source Telecom Software Survey 2021
The purpose of this survey is to gather your experiences and opinions in using Open Source Telecom Software, and share an anonymized aggregate result with those that compete the survey, likely in August. I’ll also present a summary of the results at TADSummit EMEA / Americas in November 2021.
Thank you for your support in completing the surveys.
Deadline to complete the surveys is July 7th.
This survey follows on from the surveys run in 2020 and 2019, with the results presented here: 2020 and 2019. Thank you for your continued support.
Please complete this general survey, and then choose the specific project surveys (separate forms) you want to provide feedback. If any question is not relevant or you have no opinion, just skip it. All the links are in this weblog.
Covered in the general survey this year are: Security, Serverless, STIR/SHAKEN, barriers and benefits of OSS, telcos and OSS, Training, IoT, and general geographic / category info. The project specific surveys follow the format of previous years with some customizations to make them more relevant to the specific projects.
Enterprise Connect 2021 and TADHack Global 2021
It’s time to reenter the world in September. Yes there’s the delta variant driving up cases; however, as long as you’re vaccinated, masked-up and use sanitizer you will be fine. Given the slow vaccine rollouts and high dumbass rate we’re going to have COVID around well into 2022. It’s time to move-on and get back to normal.
TADHack Global is running around the world on 25-26th September, and on the 27th September we’ll be presenting the hackathon results at Enterprise Connect 27-29th Sept.
TADHack Global sponsors include Symbl, Status, and so fresh it’s not on the website yet Jambonz!
Save $400 off an Entire Event Pass with Promo Code TADHACK400. Join us there! Those who take part in TADHack Orlando get a free conference pass, that’s worth some serious cash!
What to Expect on July 1st (in the UK)
Interesting post from Simwood on what should have been avoidable. On July 1st most UK mobile operators will be surcharging calls to their subscribers based on where calls appear to come from, largely based on network number.
The surcharges are massive, those passing these charges on are doing so at up to £2 per minute. That is 528x the regulated wholesale price of a mobile call – the so-called MTR (Mobile Termination Rate).
The impact is a likely rise in retail prices, some companies could go bankrupt with this massive 528x price hike, and calls may not complete from a variety of unintended consequences.
And in the US, the deadline for STIR/SHAKEN certification is July 1st
The 30th June deadline set by the FCC is only for major carriers. Smaller carriers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers will be exempt until June 30th, 2023.
The major carriers that haven’t certified themselves as compliant may face an unspecified “appropriate enforcement action” from the FCC and will run into even more trouble come September. Beginning September 28th, according to the FCC (pdf), carriers will have to stop accepting traffic from providers that aren’t in the robocall database.
The Robocallers still have options for a few more years. STIR/SHAKEN is not a total solution to the robocall problem, it won’t keep your phone from ringing when a scammer calls you unless your carrier is doing additional blocking using the data from it.
Aircall raised $120 Million Series D Funding at $1B valuation
Aircall’s newest investor is Goldman Sachs, with continued support from eFounders, DraperEsprit, NextWorld Capital, Adams Street Partners, DTCP, Swisscom Ventures, and Gaia Capital Partners.
Aircall is an ‘application’ on the Twilio programmable communications platform. This is an amazing achievement and shows the value increasingly moving from the plumbing into the customer facing services.
Amazon and Wickr – it’s about Military Contracts
Wickr Pro and Wickr Enterprise are geared toward privacy-conscious corporations, while Wickr RAM is designed for the military and law enforcement agencies.
Last year, Wickr RAM won a two-year, $35 million contract to provide encrypted messaging for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and received at least $700,000 as part of a contract with US Customs and Border Patrol.
Wickr’s website also lists military contractors like ARMA Global and General Dynamics Information Technology among its partners and customers.
Russia’s MTS acquires telecom and CPaaS provider MTT
Russia’s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems PJSC (MTS) has acquired compatriot service provider Multiregional TransitTelecom (MTT) for RUB 5.0 billion (US$69 million) on an enterprise value basis.
In addition to B2B and wholesale services, MTT is a communications-platform-as-service (CPaaS) provider.
MTT provides CPaaS solutions for SME and enterprise clients, including cloud-based phone systems (virtual PBX) as well as telecommunications-focused application program interfaces (APIs).
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Guillaume Bourcy is now Vice President, Data & Identity Solutions at TeleSign.
Eamonn Dullaghan is now Head of Wholesale, Europe at Infobip.
Jeremy Spencer is Director Marketing and Communications at BAI Communications. BAI Communications designs, builds and operates communications infrastructure – cellular, Wi-Fi, broadcast, radio and IP networks. I’ve known Jeremey since 1986 when we first met at a BT induction course.
Neil Rowlands is now Technical Solutions Architect at Netcall. We first met when he was with The Key Revolution back in 2008.
Nadav Kadosh is now VP Product at Syte.
Ionut Pepenar is now Product Marketing Manager at DocProcess.
Vidura Dhananjaya is now Intern Project Manager at Arimac. Last year he won at TADHack Global as part of Team Death Company (Vidura Dhananjaya, Kaveen Abeyrathna Charith Bimsara and Kusal Siriwardena) a disaster alerting platform powered with contact tracing for COVID-19.
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