CXTech Week 6 2024 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 6 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:

  • Sinch Responds to Robert Vis
  • Podcast 32: TADSummit Innovators, Anthony Minessale, SignalWire and FreeSWITCH. Word of the Day, CPast
  • Podcast 31: TADSummit Innovators, Andriy Zhylenko, WebTrit and PortaOne
  • Podcast 33: Truth in Telecoms, Before Bird / After Bird (BB/AB)
  • Solving the Turn of Conversation Problem, Jambonz
  • 8 years ago we ran TADHack Japan in Kawasaki around Valentines Day
  • FOSDEM was last weekend
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Sinch Responds to Robert Vis

This post surprised me given the dirt flinging. But Johnny Tarone pointed out on TADSummit Podcast 33, always fear the underdog. Sinch knows Bird is a threat to their business.

They confused where the 90% discount applied, I had it written down on the post about the podcast. Though my son something mis-understands on purpose when it serves his purpose.

Dan Gill gave a graph shows a CPaaS provider blending routes, which includes SIM farms… a type of route that his a much higher probability of the SMS content being sold to fraudsters…
Is this graph the “regional competitor” or Sinch? Anyone fancy taking a guess?

Mark Hay gave an eloquent response:

Quite surprised to see such a hasty public and derogative (thinly veiled accusation without proof of grey routes being used by Bird) response from Sinch to Bird’s headline-grabbing announcements. Will be seen by some as panic and desperation on the part of Sinch and bring it into a dirty fight that it should not have let itself get dragged into. I’m not convinced by Bird’s announcements, but global leaders in messaging shouldn’t be responding as Sinch have done.

Separately, let’s not fool ourselves about the relative amount of power the MNOs have when setting SMS termination rates compared to tier 1 aggregators. High termination rates (but not too high for fear of regulator intervention) work for MNOs and the publicly-traded tier 1 aggregators, where it is important to report meaningful revenues and profits. 6 cents/SMS is a lot more valuable than the more cost-plus price of 1 cent/SMS. Similarly, 5% margin on 6 cents/SMS is a lot more valuable than 5% on 1 cent/SMS!

Podcast 32: TADSummit Innovators, Anthony Minessale, SignalWire and FreeSWITCH. Word of the Day, CPast

We had ‘CPaaS is done’ from Robert Vis on Podcast 30. And we now have CPast from Anthony on Podcast 32. Anthony also positioned their platform as Programmable Unified Communications, more on that later. If you’re still using CPaaS after both of these leaders in the industry dismissed it, you’re most definitely legacy.

Anthony founded FreeSWITCH close to 20 years ago in 2005, and in 2017 founded SignalWire. As FreeSWITCH became the dominant telecom app server the support requests could not be adequate supported through an open source project. Hence a commercial entity was created, that also enabled the team to democratize many of the applications built on FreeSWITCH.

Learning what drove Anthony to build FreeSWITCH after working on Asterisk was insightful. He focused on modularity, building on Debian so FreeSWITCH ran anywhere, for example at scale in the cloud. These bets were decisive in enabling FreeSWITCH to dominate programmable communications.

Whether it’s IVR, UCaaS, CCaaS, it’s all just a JSON document, think low code interface.

For TADHack Open Anthony wants people to build using their SignalWires AI Agent. Think of it as a digital employee, that can automate any repetitive task at scale though the SWAG, SignalWire AI Gateway.

His vision is to convert all telecoms into software, your website is your contact center, and the PSTN is simply the channel of last resort for for a small segment of your customers / contacts. All other communications are over the internet.

Anthony, thanks for sponsoring TADHack Open and we look forward to seeing the hacks built on SignalWire’s AI agent.

Podcast 31: TADSummit Innovators, Andriy Zhylenko, WebTrit and PortaOne

Andriy presented at TADSummit in Paris last year: Intro to WebTrit and Call to Action to join the WebTrit Open Source Community. Andriy Zhylenko, CEO PortaOne and Advisor WebTrit. Video, Slides.

This podcast is a chance to catch up and understand more about his other company PortaOne and his plans for the future of both WebTrit and PortaOne.

PortaOne has been in business for over 20 years. They provide a service management, provisioning, billing, and communications services across ISPs, VoIP providers, cloud service provides and all flavors of telcos (MVNO, MVNE, MNO, FTTH, etc.) With customers throughout the world.

Their approach emphasizes flexibility, Andriy shared one use case of a call center application in New Zealand that was also used for the booking and billing for bed and breakfasts across the country. They simply extended the workflow.

One aspect of how PortaOne does business, that reminded me of TelecomsXchange is the source code is available for customers, so they never need worry about PortaOne going out of business, or being taken over and the squeeze being put on customers.

WebTrit is a voice/video WebRTC SDK, that takes an Ikea rather than Home Depot approach to communications. Making it easy for businesses to craft the experience they desire, without getting into the details of communications. One use case was of a Tarot Card reader service, well that shows WebRTC has definitely gone main stream.

An important point Andriy raised is the decline in RFPs (Request for Proposals) in working with telcos, rather PoCs (Proof of Concept) to show the platform works for the end customer and the service provider.

Looking to the future PortaOne sees growth from its service and revenue control platform for IoT, deployed by Vodafone Brazil. PortaOne is not seeking an exit, rather grow the self-funded company and support Ukraine through employment.

At the end Andriy made a request for everyone in the TADS community to continue support for the Ukraine. This is not a regional battle over territory, this is a battle for the global rule of law. It impacts the security of everyone, especially our children. Please contact your elected representative so they understand why supporting Ukraine is important to you.

BTW, the city in the background is Kyiv.

Podcast 33: Truth in Telecoms, Before Bird / After Bird (BB/AB)

Before Bird was a time when the A2P SMS industry was comfortable in scamming / overcharging enterprises, innovators and consumers. Then came a time AB (After Bird) when Bird shone the light of truth on the dirty tricks being played. Check out Podcast 30: Truth in Telecoms: Flipping the Bird with Robert Vis to see the full interview.

In this week’s Podcast 32: TADSummit Innovators, Anthony Minessale, SignalWire and FreeSWITCH, and sponsor of TADHack Open added a new word to the industry, CPast.

Signalwire has created a platform that makes a CPaaS, CCaaS, UCaaS, really any Programmable Unified Communications service a JSON document. If you’re still using the term CPaaS after such leaders have called time on the term, you’re legacy, and heading towards extinction as the technology and rules have changed.

The week began with a knee jerk reaction from Sinch to Podcast 30. In the post they confused margin and price, Robert stated a 90% reduction in margin. Sinch started throwing dirt around, which did not look good. But importantly showed how much of a threat Bird is to their business. As Johnny said, always fear the underdog, by the spoons. Also props to Daniel Gill for his comment showing the reality of what Augnet discovers.

Next week several companies report their results, and we plan a breakdown of Twilio’s numbers on its claimed margin.

We’re going to have a drains up review of TNID from the people leading the industry. There are solutions, using Self-Sovereign Identity that solve the scourge of spam and robocalling.

Here is a reminder on important reading:

We had a interesting conversation with Andriy about his companies and where he’s taking them, Podcast 31: TADSummit Innovators, Andriy Zhylenko, WebTrit and PortaOne. At the end Andriy made a request for everyone in the TADS community to continue support for the Ukraine. This is not a regional battle over territory, this is a battle for the global rule of law. It impacts the security of everyone, especially our children. Please contact your elected representative so they understand why supporting Ukraine is important to you.

Solving the Turn of Conversation Problem, Jambonz

Yes, we can talk to AI. Connecting a speech driven interface to AI is easy.

But crafting a conversational experience that approaches the ease and pleasure of a conversation with another human is not.

Jambonz are experimenting with using LLMs in conjunction with jambonz in some innovative ways to improve the human-to-AI conversational experience.

8 years ago we ran TADHack Japan in Kawasaki around Valentines Day

Summary of Day 1 https://blog.tadhack.com/2016/02/13/tadhack-japan-day-1/
Winning Pitches https://blog.tadhack.com/2016/02/14/tadhack-japan-prizes/
Pitches https://blog.tadhack.com/2016/02/15/tadhack-japan-pitches/

Naoki Uchida, NTT Advanced Technology Corp and Shirotori Kenji, NTT Ltd. welcomed everyone.

Sponsors included NTT Advanced Technology Corp, matrix.org, #NTT #Skyway (focused on WebRTC) (https://skyway.ntt.com/en/), and Telestax.

It was an amazing experience for everyone involved. You’ll recognize Henrique Rosa from Telestax in the photo, checked shirt. He was taken by one of the locals to a Maid Café, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_caf%C3%A9 (all PG). Next time you see Henrique be sure to ask him about his Maid Café experience!

FOSDEM was last weekend

Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement.

Check out the Real Time Communications devroom

Steve Goodwin was there talking about Magic and Software, it’s an excellent presentation and lots of fun.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Adam Katani, TADHack Evangelist

Thank you to Adam Katani, from University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) for being an evangelist for TADHack Open in getting the message out across the Tanzanian Developer Communities.

TADHack is a global community of developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

https://tadhack.com/2024/

Steven Goodwin the Ultimate Dev Rel

For the last 30 years I’ve always considered myself a developer, first and foremost, but one who also knows how to communicate.

But over the last few months I’ve realised that by writing books, giving conferences talks (120+ in total, and 3 already this year!), and building a bunch of demos, that I might now be closer to a communicator that also happens to be a developer!

Has anyone made the move into Dev Rels after such a long time in development? Previous attempts to move into the area have met with a stony silence, since I was considered to have no commercial experience.

No plans or goals, just yet, just pondering all possible options for my next move…

Steven on Linkedin

Most dev rel in my opinion fail at the first hurdle in they can not hack using the resources they promote. Hence they can not relate to developers, and developers can not relate to them. Steven’s ability to be a developer, a communicator, and an inspiration is why he makes the perfect dev rel person.

Quote of the Week

You say things out loud that the rest of us say under our breath. Thank you for bringing overhyped “stuff” back to earth.

Jonathan Eisenzopf on the CPaaS is dumba$$ post

Ramesh Raman is now Group Product Manager at Intuit. I’ve known Ramesh since he was with IMIMobile, over one decade ago.

Patrick Langelaan is now VP of Enterprise & Partners Europe, Network Infrastructure at Nokia. I’ve known him for 15 years.

Devadas Krishnan is now Co-Founder at Stealth Mode AI/ML Startup based in India. I’ve konwn Devadas for 18 years, since his time at IMIMobile.

Moshe Beauford is now an editor at Informa managing the brands thinkhdi.com and icmi.com, produce two weekly newsletters for SupportWorld and Contact Center Insider along with managing their featured contributor network of 30 writers.

Monte Giles is now technical product management for Project Kuiper at Amazon.

 Brett Nulf has joined https://www.hashicorp.com/ as Sales Director for ASEAN. I’ve known Brett since his Volantis days 15 years ago.

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