The purpose of this CXTech Week 48 2022 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:
- November’s RTCSec Newsletter
- wgtwo gets VoNR calls working from off-the-shelf 5G devices to other mobile and fixed handsets
- Looks like Dish Hasn’t learned that Developer Relations is not BS-ridden Corporate Marketing
- People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
November’s RTCSec Newsletter
Sandro gave several great presentations at TADSummit.
How to bring down your own RTC platform. Running DDoS simulations on your own.
Sandro Gauci, CEO / Senior Penetration Tester / Chief mischief officer at Enable Security
- Why would you want to do such a thing?
- Preparing for destruction
- Running the tests – best practices
- What happens after the fact
- Moving forward towards more robust RTC
There was also an excellent DDoS workshop given by Sandro, but we could not broadcast that at the request of several participants who wanted an open discussion without fear of their experiences and fixes being used against them by bad actors.
Sandro also highlighted a few presentations he liked including:
- Title: Welcome to vCon! The next leap forward in the programmable communications industry. Thomas Howe
- Why is this interesting? Although not actually a security technology, this open format is there for privacy and tracking purposes, to track content and purpose of the various parts of a conversation, especially personal information. It comes with security properties such as digital identity and tamper proof features. The nice thing about vCon is that this could allow the transfer, sharing and tracking of such information since it is a standard.
- Title: What Everyone Needs to Know about Protecting the CPaaS Ecosystem from Unlawful Robocalls. Gerry Christensen, VP YouMail.
- It talks about limitations of STIR/SHAKEN and alternative approaches to prevent unlawful calls.
And back to the meat of the newsletter I highlight a couple of quickly resolved issues by the community: “New WebRTC IP leak discovered and fixed” and “Drachtio security advisories and fixes.”
wgtwo get VoNR calls working from off-the-shelf 5G devices to other mobile and fixed handsets
Moving all voice calls to VoIP should have been done in the move from 3G to 4G. But the telco ecosystem is where it is for better and worse. At least the vendors earned a few tens of billions in the revenue gap between from 4G to 5G deployments.
The situation right now is that even if you have a “5G” logo on the top of your handset, you are – in most commercial 5G networks – actually calling via 4G. This means that your handset needs to connect to a 4G core and an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core to act as the intermediary between you and the person you want to talk to.
WG2 wanted to enable a pure 5G play, that is, a 5G handset making 5G calls using exclusively a 5G stack all the way. This reduces complexity, improves reliability of calls by avoiding radio access technology changes, and enables effective use of network and handset resources (control plane and airtime).
One of the interesting finding from the work is only when a dedicated QoS flow for voice is established, the scheduler of the antenna as well as the rest of the involved 5G core elements have all the ingredients to prioritize a phone call over, say, a Netflix session in the background.
The COTS handsets they tested behaved differently in how they handled the establishment of an IMS connection and QoS flow. That lead them to conclude that even in the 5G SA networks there are still some interoperability challenges, including on the antenna side, which might be configured for data primarily, not voice.
Nevertheless, 5G SA has reached a state where its technology can be procured and used with handsets available in the market. But boy, that’s a complicated stack, for the rare scenario where congestion could be service affecting. I remember work on 4G showing WebRTC voice performed better than carrier voice under a variety of network conditions and situations. Most of it was down to the codec in WebRTC.
Looks like Dish Hasn’t learned that Developer Relations is not BS-ridden Corporate Marketing
Dish Wireless has set up a new developer’s website, announcing that it will expose its network function application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers, allowing them to experiment on its 5G network platform.
We’ve been here before with a network centric view, with no simple so-what that speaks to developers. I’ve said this so many times, just copy Twilio if you want to be successful in engaging developers and businesses in programmable communications. BTW Tobias Goebel gave a couple of excellent presentations on Twilio’s IoT offers at TADSummit last month, see end of this article. This is likely the most ‘network’ developers care about.
What made me groan in the article was: “In a blog for Dish’s new developer site, Totogi Senior Sales Engineer Vlad Sorici said, “When was the last time a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) let you freely code with its connectivity? That’s right: Never.” Vlad is wrong, here’s a potted history of programmable telecoms. Anyway, Dish isn’t going to be successful in engaging developers beyond its existing suppliers.
How a Multi-IMSI architecture makes global cellular IoT deployments manageable
Tobias Goebel, Principal Product Marketing Manager, IoT, Twilio
- Fragmented landscape of IoT connectivity
- Challenges of cross-border cellular connectivity
- Pros and cons of the different SIM deployment architectures that exist today
- How Multi-IMSI SIM profiles on eSIMs simplify interregional and international deployments
What makes a cellular IoT API great?
Tobias Goebel, Principal Product Marketing Manager, IoT, Twilio
- Why IoT SIMs need an API in the first place
- The core functions needed in a cellular IoT API: SIM activation and deactivation, SIM status queries, Network access configuration, Pulling billing information and usage records, Troubleshooting, Device reachability
- What matters in a good API (any API)
- 10 tips and tricks for how to find a good IoT SIM with a strong API
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Sanjay Bhatia is now VP of Product Marketing with DZS, previously known as Zhone Technologies, founded in 1999, focused on broadband access equipment to carriers.
Roque Versace is now Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Mechanical Orchard. I’ve known Roque for over a decade, since his time at Mashery, during the API Economy hype.
Alon Bar is now Director of Product Marketing at OneLayer. I’ve known Alon for most of his time at Amdocs.
Milena Keskenovic is now Routing Regulation Manager at Mitto.
Bhagirath Pandya is now Business Development Manager at Auxano Global Services.
Ida la Spisa is now CIO at Telia.
Jeremy Kagan is now Vice President of Business Development USA at Hikkonu Medical Systems.
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