Happy New Year!
The purpose of this CXTech Week 1 2024 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:
- When Power goes Unchecked: The Telecom Triopoly
- Tata Communications New Year’s Present, a Cease and Desist
- Podcast 21: Truth in Telecoms, The 250B INR Tata Communications Short
- Nikki Keeps Texting me!
- People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
When Power goes Unchecked: The Telecom Triopoly
This is a significant piece of work, gathering feedback from tens of people across the industry, and the support of exceptional talent in assembling the data into a clear understanding of how the Telecom Triopoly have shaped the US A2P SMS industry. For many within the Messaging Monopolies, this is not that surprising. However, outside them and internationally it has shocked the industry.
In the post we examine how The Telecom Triopoly (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) has gamed the Federal Communications Commission for decades.
We’ll review the evolution of A2P SMS, through fixed line SMS, 10DLC, 800SMS, to the unfair practices being imposed on UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) today.
How The Telecom Triopoly has honed their craft in gaming the FCC and abusing their position in the market.
It’s important to remember through most of the existence of SMS, carriers considered it a loss leader. The majority of money was made on voice and data, not SMS. That is, until Twilio and others (Telnyx) showed carriers how A2P SMS can make loads of money.
Tata Communications New Year’s Present, a Cease and Desist
Just before the New Year I received a Cease and Desist from Tata Communications, the owners of TCR. It’s a warning that threatens potential legal action. In this case, the release of conversations between a US carrier and TCR, now owned by Tata communications, on planned election interference. I’ve attached the cease and desist document, so you can see what one looks like.
I’m surprise at this piece in the cease and desist. I’ll let the reader deduce why they’re using Washington State legal references.
As you appear aware, any such recording was unlawfully obtained without consent. See, e.g., Wash. Rev. Code Ann. §§ 9.73.030 (“[I]t shall be unlawful for any individual . . . to intercept, or record any: . . . [p]rivate conversation, by any device electronic or otherwise designed to record or transmit such conversation regardless how the device is powered or actuated without first obtaining the consent of all the persons engaged in the conversation.”),
In the Linkedin article you can read some lawyers ripping apart the cease and desist. I do not have a signed NDA with the TCR, and I do not have the recordings in my possession. My role here is to draw the industry’s attention to what I consider abuse of Bill Peters doing their job well. This is not an industry of crooks, this is an industry of professionals who conform to a code of conduct.
If you are a customer, partner, or employee of Tata Communications take note of how they continue the abuse of Bill Peters, and use corporate lawyers to threaten people trying to do the right thing. Syniverse, the Tata Communications partnership mentioned here could become a problem given you’re both US Messaging Monopolies.
Check out how covering the abuse of Bill Peters by TCR/Kaleyra/Tata has led to uncovering what continues to shock and sicken me. We must hold the US Telecoms industry to far higher standards of behavior.
- When Power goes Unchecked: The Telecom Triopoly
- Original Messaging Monopolies Post – assumes a fair bit of industry knowledge
- Messaging Monopolies Simplified
- Major William Peters, Plaintiff, versus Kaleyra, Defendant. Part 1
- Understanding TCR and Kaleyra Part 2
- Understanding TCR and Kaleyra Part 1
- The Campaign Registry and Foreign Ownership: A Matter of National Security
Podcast 21: Truth in Telecoms, The 250B INR Tata Communications Short
This podcast is a doozy!
Over the holidays’ period so much happened!
- T-Mobile tried to bury the news of their new A2P SMS fines. Fines that appear to have no appeals process.
- Tata Communications sent a New Year’s present of a Cease and Desist, to myself, Bill Peters, Johnny, and another person.
- Elon Musk’s Starlink to offer direct-to-cell service with T-Mobile. To the tune of The Muppets “Pigs in Space” intro do I hear, “SPAM from Space!”
- And after lots of research and support from the industry we released the “Telecom Triopoly” post.
Johnny’s been studying Tata Communications, they’ve had a massive run up, from 330 INR to 1750 INR. We covered in the TADSummit Innovators interview with UIB who is no longer a partner, and across our analysis on TCR and Kaleyra (Part 1 and Part 2). They are a CPaaS in name only, the longevity of TCR revenues (their main source of profitability from Kaleyra) must be called into question, why have they avoided USF fines? The list goes on. So Johnny is calling a 250B INR Tata Communications short.
Nikki Keeps Texting me!
Its an election year, likely the most important election of our lifetime. Politicians gave themselves the right to spam Americans. And it’s started, see my SMS Spam folder in Google Messages. YouMail Inc. has begun tracking who running for office has the loudest voice in sending SMS to US voters. Mike Rudolph show Nikki’s SMS campaign is ramping up, see graph below.
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Shahnawaz Aziz is now Group CTO at Quantum Group. I’ve known Shah since our time in Cambridge Technology Partners over 25 years ago!
Niek de Jong has joined as a Member of The Supervisory Board at Greenchoice. We first met over 10 years ago when he was with Accenture, helping him understand the relevance of APIs to Telcos.
James Williams has joined XConnect team as VP Business Development. I’ve known James since his time in MEF.
Nadeem Ladha is now Director at Kennen Technology Limited. He’s another graduate from tyntec university 😉
Robert Alexander is now Enterprise Account Manager at High Performance Technologies (HPT). We first met when he was with Salesforce.
Kolitha Wanniarachchi is now Business Insight Analyst at Air Canada. I’ve known Kolitha since his time in Stax in Sri Lanka.
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