CXTech Week 41 2023 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 41 2023 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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There will be no CXTech Week 42 as I’ll be busy with TADSummit and TADHack. And possibly no Week 43, that just depends on how quickly I can get all the TADS content online.

Covered this week:

  • TADSummit and TADHack are next week / weekend
  • TADSummit Podcast Episode 7
  • Ericsson’s $3B Writedown on Vonage
  • TADSummit Podcast Commio Special
  • James Crawshaw Post on Ericsson Overpaying for Vonage
  • Traffic Pumping as a Service
  • Ericsson Claim $20B market in Network APIs
  • How open-source software could finally get the world’s microscopes speaking the same language
  • SMS SCAMS TRICK MORE THAN 80% OF AUSSIES
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

TADSummit and TADHack are next week / weekend

Everything is set for TADSummit 2023, a packed agenda, excellent location at Capgemini’s 5G Labs with a top floor balcony overlooking Paris, and lots of food and drinks ordered through the day and into the evening.

To access the TADSummit live stream during the event (19-20 Oct) you can access it from the TADSummit website (tadsummit.com – you’ll see LIVE STREAM on the top bar), the TADSummit YouTube channel (youtube.com/TADSummit) or directly with this link: https://www.youtube.com/TADSummit/live. You can ask questions during the live stream, I’ll have someone checking for questions at the event.

Everything is recorded and I’ll post all the content with commentary after the event, most of TADSummit’s views come from the posted content. TADHack is immediately after TADSummit so there will be a delay in posting the TADSummit content by about 1 week this year, as I get everything wrapped up for TADHack. Developers will be waiting on their prize money and 5 minutes of fame on the TADHack youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@TADHack

TADSummit remains the only event in telecoms with a no BS policy. No marketing fluff, just facts and hard earned experience.

TADHack Global 2023 is again going to be massive, Sri Lanka and Colombia registrations are closed. Africa is going to be massive! I’m really excited to see all the hacks generated over the TADHack weekend.

I also put a short TADHack Welcome video together. Thank you to everyone who has registered for TADHack Global 2023. Here’s a short video welcoming everyone to TADHack and a quick guide to all the resources and how to submit your pitch video .

Here are the links shown in the video:

Check out this guide to get the most out of TADHack. Its time to make sure you’ve signed up to the Sponsors’ Resources.

To win cash prizes you must hack on the global sponsors’ technologies. This year we have:

  • Stacuity. Mobile connectivity for IoT. You’ll need a SIM sent to you in the mail, which can take 2+ weeks to arrive. Once you receive the SIM get is activated to make sure everything is working;
  • Jambonz. Open source voice platform; and
  • Radisys. Engage Digital is a programmable communication and digital engagement platform. The platform gives developers API’s, SDK’s and low code, no code visual design tools to develop AI based communication and Industry 4.0 applications for consumers as well enterprises; and
  • STROLID. vCon is the new global standard, a ‘PDF for conversations’ (their resources are coming soon).

Thank you for being part of TADHack, have fun, and good luck!

TADSummit Podcast Episode 7

Podcast Directory

TADSummit Innovators

This is an amazing multi-decade review of Dave Horton‘s telecoms journey, through Open Development Systems, Pactolus that supported the prepaid calling card industry so he and Johnny have much in common, to where we are today with Drachtio and Jambonz, enabling CPaaS to run on free and open source software.

I have to mention with the Rugby world currently running, that Dave was on the US Rugby team for the 1987 World Cup. 

When Dave was consulting to companies he was helping them migrate off platforms like Twilio, and from that the idea of Jambonz was formed. Today Jambonz is used by many of the conversational AI platforms. At the TADSummit Special in March Dave did a great piece, Why conversational AI providers are moving to open source.

We then focused on where next for Dave, clearly the services business is growing nicely. In Dave’s presentation at the TADSummit Special we see there are interesting opportunities in radically improving voice chatbots, and disrupting the Contact Center consolidation through enabling the customer experience AI providers to directly compete with the legacy contact centers.

Johnny saw a massive opportunity for Jambonz to deliver on the voice aspirations of many of the SMS aggregators, who have been position as CPaaS, but remain 95% SMS focused.

Truth in Telecoms

We had to start with Tim McLain’s impressive TADSummit Special, reviewing how to get your campaigns accepted by the TCR. We had some comments from viewers on that Podcast, which I reviewed, and some of those topics were also mentioned in the TCR Trilogy. We discuss some of the main options for what Tata is going to do with TCR.

We discussed Ericsson $3B write-down of Vonage, and the many issues around that. In fact, Jambonz could be a very cost effective option for a telco wanting to become a techco to make that move in programmable communications. As well as for the messaging aggregators to make the move to voice with their existing development team.

There are many topics circling around the telecom space at the moment: If not TCR then what? – we’re hoping to get some ideas reviewed by the industry soon. Will iConectiv (Ericsson) lose management of LNP (Local Number Portability)? Who are the CTIA anyway? Will Ericsson need to write down Vonage further? Why isn’t Sinch copying Syniverse/Twilio on the fines? Are the Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawyers about to pounce on SMS, like with robocalling? The old-boys network claimed the TCR was the best SMS spam solution, will anyone be held responsible? Many more questions than answers, but hopefully we’ll start seeing some answers emerge in the next couple of months.

Ericsson’s $3B Writedown on Vonage

I pointed this out in 2021 Ericsson overpaid for Vonage. “$2.9 billion impairment charge related to its acquisition last year of Vonage“

Here’s my review of the acquisition in 2021.

On the TADSummit Podcast we learned from one of the bankers involved with the Ericsson/Vonage deal, the next highest offer after Ericsson was roughly one third the size.

I’ve covered how Nokia can leapfrog Ericsson’s misstep.

But this misstep impacts far more than Ericsson’s financials. Good and far more cost effective projects are being impacted in carriers, check out this post on “Deutsche Telekom get your act together on programmable telecoms.”

The Telcos must break free from the “Telco Echo Chamber” that is causing such missteps. At TADSummit, running for over 10 years, you’ll learn about Programmable Communications past, present and future with no BS. By the people who have built the programmable communications industry.

Quoting a fixed line operator, with many decades of experience in telecoms. “If mobile operators want to transform, they must break free from their legacy vendors.” I made the same statement at the MEF Wholesale session this week.

TADSummit Podcast Commio Special

This week we have a Commio Special podcast with Tim McLain. The 10DLC market is changing rapidly. News released today,: on November 8, 2023, all unverified toll-free phone numbers being used for text messaging will require registration. If everything works that means an more unregistered SMS period. I’m really hoping we see a reduction in SMS spam, but unfortunately I have my doubts given the issues we’ve highlighted with TCR Trilogy.

Referenced several times through the podcast, here’s Commio’s “Essential Guide for Cloud Comms Compliance & Cybersecurity.“

Tim runs through his guide to getting campaigns approved, including the latest from the DCAs (Direct Carrier Aggregators) on a growing list on blocked topics beyond the CTIA’s SHAFT (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco), covering topics such as high risk investments, payday loans, class action lawsuits, etc.

There are many items that once were not an issue, have become so, such as the use of URL shorteners, and ensuring the example messages are as close as possible to the campaigns first used. I was surprised by some pointers, much as no P.O. boxes for business addresses. It’s not surprising we’re seeing 7 out of 10 applications get rejected.

We cover a lot in this podcast including the traceback group, the need for someone dedicated to compliance in a brand, portability of campaigns between CSPs, the fines for being hacked and having spam run over your numbers.

In summary, Commio does a great job showing all their work to help brands be successful in using 10DLC, and how they differentiate in the market.

James Crawshaw Post on Ericsson Overpaying for Vonage

Fun discussion as the analysts bicker over market size predictions and focus on the wrong parts of Vonage’s business. But beyond that fun, there are some great insights.

Traffic Pumping as a Service

Great post from Michael Power on an email he received offering to artificially inflate traffic. The list of companies they claim to be able to impersonate is long! SMS, like email, is a mainstay of consumer comms but this type of activity threatens the whole ecosystem.

On a similar topic, a local business I know had completed all the TCR hurdles, it was a simple 1:1 campaign confirming attendance at an event, they’d run many times, had proof of opt-in and they’d communicated with their customers many times with similar campaigns. But this time they mentioned the Grammy award winning singer headlining the show. Then delivery became spotty. Given the large price rises, and byzantine processes, the case for SMS is being weakened by the day.

For this local business, they have no clue on the complexity of A2P 10DLC delivery. They blamed their provider OnePhone, I then asked if OnePhone had registered the campaign, they had through their CSP. As we dug across the phone numbers failing, there appears to be some inconsistent filtering at the DCA or Carrier level. The process should have been designed before it was implemented, not bandaided live.

Ericsson Claim $20B market in Network APIs

I can see how NaaS can achieve $20B. As CAMARA overlaps lots of existing telecom services commercially available like device status, device location, authentication, SIM swap, billing, etc. I guess they can fudge the numbers to make $20B. If they mean network quality of service, then I doubt the number.

There’s so much mobile network APIs we can learn from the fixed NaaS (Network as a Service). NaaS is a mature segment, for example Korea Telecom bought Epsilon in 2021. At TADSummit in 2021 Liang Dong of Epsilon (now KT) gave an excellent presentation on NaaS. https://blog.tadsummit.com/2021/05/24/delivering-the-future-of-networking-with-hyper-scalable-connectivity-liang-dong-epsilon/.

NaaS has a current market size is $8-12B depending on how you measure it, with a CAGR of 10-20% over the next 5 years. In this article I explain why NaaS meets market needs, and how we’ve been here before on dynamic network APIs with packet cable multimedia https://alanquayle.com/2023/08/nokia-leapfrog-ericsson/.

I would also caution on new market numbers. Remember Telco 2.0 and the 2-sided business model? Here’s a piece I wrote from 12 years ago on how it’s the 1.005 sided business model. https://alanquayle.com/2011/05/the-two-sided-business-model-i/

If Epsilon, NaaS, PCMM, 1.005 sided model are news to you; then you’re trapped in an echo chamber. TADSummit is your chance to break free from the echo chamber and meet the innovators changing telecoms for the past decade. tadsummit.com. The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

How open-source software could finally get the world’s microscopes speaking the same language

When I read this post I immediately thought about vCon. In summary, there are 2 key issues: standardizing the metadata yet allowing openness for microscope innovations, and getting the downstream users on board. Not the microscope folks, all the biologists that use the data. Two key points relevant for vCon.

SMS SCAMS TRICK MORE THAN 80% OF AUSSIES

Vodafone has released it’s first “State of Scams” report with alarming data showing just how big an impact SMS scams are having in Australia.

It’s not just the headline grabbing life-savings being lost either – the most common financial loss from scammers was between $10 and $49 among 49% of survey respondents. Another 14% saw losses between $50 and $99, while those $10,000 or more losses affected 2% of people.

Vodafone’s General Manager of Corporate Security Simone Sant says “It doesn’t matter where you come from or your generation, fraudsters sending scam SMS and making scam calls are defrauding Australians every day,”

“You don’t need to fall for an elaborate scheme and lose thousands of dollars to be scammed. In fact, most people lose anywhere between $10 to $49 per scam.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Oana Raluca Dukanac is now Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at TelQ Telecom.

Heather Baden has joined ISG (and just finished my first week!) as the Senior Social Value Manager for Fit Out. I’ve known Heather since her time in Telstra, and she was with Nexmo for several years.

Anne Marie Vega is now Global SMB/eComm Product Marketing Leader at Veeam Software. I’ve known Anne Marie since her Lucent days.

John Tanner is now a Reporter at Developing Telecoms. I’ve known John through his time in Questex and Disruptive.Asia.

Kevin Summers is now Senior Vice President Product Management at CareAR, A Xerox Company. I’ve known Kevin since he was working on CPaaS for Mitel.

Wim de Mooij is now Business Companion at Twycis. I’ve known Wim all the way back to his France Telecom days.

Paulo Glórias is now supporting the Cyber Risk business at Moody’s Analytics. I’ve known Paulo since his WIT Software days, who are still promoting their RCS+ platform.

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