The purpose of this CXTech Week 16 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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This week we did a run of TADSummit Innovators podcasts, we wanted to get the TADHack teams promoted soon after TADHack, and reduce the backlog of innovator interviews to keep them current. We’ll be back to the usual TADSummit podcast schedule from next week. Sorry for filling your inboxes with TADSummit YouTube notifications. The content is really good.

Covered this week:

• Podcast 60: Truth in Telecoms, Got YouMail?
• Podcast 58: TADSummit Innovators, TADHack Team Avocado Intelligence from Valencia College
• Podcast 56: TADSummit Innovators, Garuda, Suraj Shivakumar, Nagasai Saikam, Divya Sakhare, Akshata Salunkhe.
• Podcast 55: TADSummit Innovators, Lonely Bot, Mike Cairns
• Podcast 54: TADSummit Innovators, Moodsense, Pam and Rob
• Podcast 53: TADSummit Innovators, Nikhil Gupta, Vapi YC W21
• Podcast 52: Truth in Telecoms, The Industry needs to come clean
• Global Telco Consult’s TCR Report
• Tata Communications / Kaleyra are at it again, using the TCR mailing list
• Text-to-speech latency: the jambonz leaderboard
• U.S. Consumers Received 4.3 Billion Robocalls in March
• Homeowner, 81, who fatally shot innocent Uber driver thought she was tied to scammer threatening him for $12K
• Facts about fraud from the FTC
• People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Podcast 60: Truth in Telecoms, Got YouMail?

Looks like the US SMS industry has been given a chance to prove they can solve the SMS spam problem, before regulation is imposed. This information is provided from a number of sources who attended the CTIA DC meeting in person.

The corner piece of that chance is the CTIA working with YouMail, as YouMail has the best data. The Attorney Generals from most states are unhappy with the current situation. In senate hearings you can see how frustrated Senator Tester (Montana) is with comments (1:15:00) in the video of the hearing, while praising YouMail’s efforts. It looks like YouMail has become a hot property, as Johnny highlighted in Podcast 50: TADSummit Innovators, Alex Quilici. Though for different reasons.

Johnny raised an interesting theory. Brien Jones-Lantzy (Sinch and board member of REACH), The Czar (Eric J Troutman, President of REACH), and #GMoney (Robert Gerstmann, Sinch and chairman of MEF), may have agreed a deal to remove Dario Betti. You can read the mud slinging Robert did at Puja and Eric, while Sinch remains on the board of REACH? The theory is why has Sinch remained on the REACH board given what #GMoney said, there must be something going on? What say you The Czar?

I posted on yet another email sent out to CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) from Tata Communications / Kaleyra. The US is not a level playing field for CSPs, they are struggling, revenues are down in messaging (not just volumes, revenues) while costs are up. Tata Communications / Kaleyra, the owner of TCR, appears to be using the data contained within TCR for their business benefit. Because there is no sanction for doing this, they appear to act with impunity. Regulation is required, as even introducing competition for the TCR will not change this issue.

A reminder on the T-Mobile quote from the GTC report about the ownership issue with the TCR:

“Regardless of data protection, there was a commitment to get out of the messaging space to keep TCR proposition ‘clean’.
A relationship meant to be based on trust but ‘built on a lie’.”

GTC Report Slide 23

We briefly reviewed Twilio, their chief legal officer Dana Wagner saw his pay soar to meteoric heights in 2022, boosted by a $25.6 million stock award. But his compensation fell back to Earth last year, according to the Twilio’s recent proxy filing.

Wagner joined Twilio from Impossible Foods in late 2021. His 2022 pay included a $600,000 salary and the $25.6 million award, which included a one-time hiring grant of $12.8 million doled out in January 2022. The compensation package made Wagner the third highest-paid US legal chief in 2022, behind only Zoom’s Aparna Bawa and Apple’s Kate Adams. That appears a little inflated, Apple’s market cap is $2570B, while Twilio’s is $10.7B.

Johnny’s going to review soon how Twilio employees can fight back to rescue Twilio from its current situation.

We’re planning a TADSummit and TADHack event later this year. More information coming soon on what will be a revolutionary event in programmable communications. This will connect innovators to money, we’ve been doing that all this year. The event will share truths to help all businesses succeed, and highlight where the future of the industry is already happening. Practitioners sharing insights, honest analysis, an event to break free from the book clubs, laundromats, and catering holes plaguing our industry.

Podcast 58: TADSummit Innovators, TADHack Team Avocado Intelligence from Valencia College

Avocado Intelligence is an impressive first hack from Valencia College students, Anna Ugay, Anna Corrêa, Kai Nguyen, Luke Clauss, and Ruslana Sigalova. Valencia College has supported TADHack for many years, it’s great to see such as impressive hack from the Valencia College students.

Anna Ugay, Anna Corrêa, and Luke Clauss are seeking internships for the summer in software engineering, cloud computing, and they all bring current AI skills from their work on SignalWire’s AI Gatekeeper. They can be contacted through their Linkedin accounts.

The voicebot, Rebecca, representing Valencia College West Campus, warmly greets callers and collects their information, including name and VID (Valencia College ID), for record-keeping. It is built using SignalWire AI Gateway.

She then inquires about the reason for the call, offering departmental options such as Advising Center, Enrollment Services, and Financial Aid Office. Based on the caller’s choice, Rebecca transfers the call accordingly or provides voicemail options.

Utilizing special instructions, she clarifies ambiguous requests by asking targeted questions based on keywords mentioned. If needed, Rebecca directs callers to the Answer Center for further assistance, ensuring personalized and efficient service throughout the call.

The team gave pitches and demos at both TADHack Open and at Enterprise Connect. Their demos worked despite the large echoey rooms.

Brian West highlighted SWAIG has added transparent barging to improve the voicebot experience. He also reviewed some of the ways the hack can support multiple agents. Well done to everyone involved with such a great hack.

Podcast 56: TADSummit Innovators, Garuda, Suraj Shivakumar, Nagasai Saikam, Divya Sakhare, Akshata Salunkhe.

vCon is the PDF for conversations, its being standardized by the IETF. It enables conversations to be stored, shared, and used in AI training; all in compliance with local and industry regulations.

Thomas, the CTO of STROLID and sponsor of TADHack Open, was in Melbourne Australia for an IETF meeting before TADHack. Flying back over most of TADHack, arriving into Boston on Sunday morning, called me and asked, “Alan, what do you need me to do?”

The first response was get some sleep! The next was be on the TADHack live stream at around 2PM to see the hacks built with vCon. Suraj, Nagasai, Divya, and Akshata built this hack using principally the Hack-a-VCON documentation, that’s it. They delivered on the challenge and much more with a fully functional product that generates a vCon and redacts all PII (Personal Identifiable Information). Here’s their pitch video from the event.

The team are all looking for internships, please contact them using Linkedin. They’re happy for any technology focused internship, if your business is looking at vCon, you’ll not find better people  Suraj Shivakumar, Nagasai Saikam, Divya Sakhare, Akshata Salunkhe.

The team reviews their hack and gives an demonstration of an audio conversation having PII identified and then redacted. Their pitch video includes the audio. We discuss some of the features of their product in enabling the redaction to be customized to the specific enterprise’s needs. Thomas then gives a real world example on how customer feedback can be made safer to share around an organization. He particularly likes how they customized the vCon to their specific needs.

Podcast 55: TADSummit Innovators, Lonely Bot, Mike Cairns

Lonely Bot by Mike Cairns powered by SignalWire. Utilize AI and LLM’s with SignalWire’s technology to curb loneliness. Have a trusted friend to talk with, and automatically reach out to family when Lonely Bot notices you need a human touch.

Mike is a TADHack regular here are some other his other hacks over the years, some of which he competed with his son:

• TADHack Open 2023, Fitbot, https://youtu.be/usNrvDs0_Do?si=Gf072dq5-Crd6I6W
• TADHack 2020, Homework Helper, https://youtu.be/wPZqz5vyl14?si=8OOpQMpkw_XYX36d
• TADHack mini-Pheonix 2020, Feed The Hungry with Food Bot, https://youtu.be/wPZqz5vyl14?si=FrkanFfTRlXzSMxv
• TADHack-mini Orlando 2019, IoT Smart Room Flags, https://youtu.be/xDS2uean9vs?si=rT5l8_u5q35gcXLy
• TADHack Orlando Online 2020, Home School Helper, https://youtu.be/37Y7NJ5QeJk?si=rseKJ-fybI4wODBF

Mike’s inspiration for Lonely Bot is his father, and the challenges the elderly face with loneliness. In my experiences, hacks that come from something important in your life are the best.

We get into a discussion around some of the features coming up or hidden in SignalWire AI Gateway that Mike would like to use. There’s so much more functionality SWAIG is adding and exposing, we’re entering a rapidly developing phase in voicebots.

Both Brian and Mike’s elderly relatives have been impacted by scams over the PSTN. There is an epidemic. You are not alone in having elderly relatives being scammed using the phone and SMS.

The FTC received 2.6 million fraud reports from consumers in 2023, an increase of about 8% from the 2.4 million reported in 2022. One in four people reported losing money, with a median loss of $500 per person. Last year, scams cost consumers $8.8 billion, which was an alarming 30% increase over 2021’s total of $6.1 billion. And those are only the ones reported! The actual total is far greater.

The flow of cash is clear: scams steal from our elderly, that funds SMS spam and robocalling, that revenue to carriers pays for share buybacks and dividends to investors. There’s a massive transfer of wealth from people’s life savings into investor’s pockets thanks to the inability of the telecom ecosystem to stop spam/robocalling. This is why the attorney generals of every state in the US are up in arms over the problem. It can and must be stopped!

I finish on something uplifting, a fun YouTube short, ‘Of course they use FreeSWITCH!’ 

Podcast 54: TADSummit Innovators, Moodsense, Pam and Rob

Here is the TADHack pitch video for moodsense by Pam Mishaw and Rob Parham powered by SignalWire. Here’s the webpage for their app. I’m not supposed to express favorites, but all families have relatives that struggle with mental health. This AI therapist combines journaling with mood tracking. There is nothing do download, no apps to open, simply send a text and receive instant, actionable feedback.

Most families do not talk about such struggles, even amongst themselves, that makes things so much worse. A relative can become almost catatonic before things get noticed, we’re all busy. This simple app could become so much more in helping the relative and family, often there is no easy answer, but coping better can be good enough.

In this TADSummit Innovators Podcast Pam and Rob provided some background on their individual experiences. Pam is completing her Masters in Data Science and is looking for an intern position in data science. Rob is a highly experienced full stack developer. To my surprise this was only their second hackathon. Yet what they produced was quite complete and powerful.

Brian West from SignalWire reviewed how he created WireStater for internal development with customers. It meant the environment is controlled, so problem solving can focus on the use of the technology, not its set-up. He provided examples so hackers can start from something that is working and build from there. For the hackathon having experts on the ground is invaluable.

Overall, moodsense demonstrates how powerful the dev tools have become, and how SignalWire’s experiences have created what I considered to be one of the best technology on-ramps I’ve used. And please remember Pam is wrapping up her Masters in Data Science and is looking for an internship in data science. She can be contacted through Linkedin.

Podcast 53: TADSummit Innovators, Nikhil Gupta, Vapi YC W21

Use the vapi voicebot, you’ll be impressed, and check out the docs.

Vapi is a Y Combinator-backed platform so you can easily create a natural-sounding voice-based AI-powered assistant that works. Their focus is all the voicebot challenges on low latency, back-channel, turn of conversation, emotion detection, background noise elimination, integrations (WebRTC, SIP), etc.

It’s a voicebot orchestration platform. That’s their focus, they are not trying to add a voice bot to a call center or programmable communications platform and all the workflows and integrations. That’s your job. It’s simply being the best voicebot interface for humans. That’s the curve they are riding.

Yes there are quite a few competitors, but most are also solving lots of other problems in delivering services to their customers. Using Twilio as an example, they could build a their own voice bot agent, but they have many other issues to solve at the moment. Vapi let’s them focus on those, while augmenting say their IVR services with a natural-sounding, voice agent.

Their focus is bringing customers on their platform to drive development and reach millions of minutes per month over the vapi platform.

Use with the vapi voicebot, you’ll be impressed, check out the docs, and set up a dashboard account to use vapi on your platform. As you see its performance and how customers respond, you can then move more minutes over to them.

Podcast 52: Truth in Telecoms, The Industry needs to come clean

Johnny promised to be focused on this podcast, no running around. The movie he referred to is ‘The In-Laws‘, here’s the video of the scene with ‘serpentine’, that is running around to avoid being shot.

The focus for this podcast is Twilio and the GTC Report on TCR.

The CTIA / FCC / FTC have a meeting in DC tomorrow. There appears to be concern on what the TCR has said about its role, we covered this in “Was the FCC Lied to? What the FCC was told on SMS spam” and “TCR: Responsibility without Control.” The key quote from TCR is:

We also clarified TCR’s role in the messaging ecosystem, explaining that the company collects and validates information regarding campaign service providers’ customers and their messaging campaigns, but does not, and is not able to, view the content of, filter, or block messages sent by campaign service providers’ customers to mobile subscribers.

TCR Filing made on Feb 7th 2024 to the FCC, https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10207829015272/1

Over the weekend I published a post referencing Microsoft’s concern on the election risk from China, “At what point will the US government act?” Referencing all the public statements from Rick Joyce and others on the risks and evidence of China’s involvement, plus the sustained campaign against those statements.

I finished asking the question at the end, “Is the MEF, Tata Communications, Kaleyra, and The Campaign Registry acting in the best interests of the US?” Microsoft is highlighting the risk of election interference, Rick Joyce with the highest security clearance has been highlighting this since last year. Are they simply xenophobes? As claimed by the detractors. I think not.

The core of the US SMS industry is Twilio, it must not fail. As shared on last week’s podcast they could be behind the fact the TCR has no numbers given the prepayment they made to the TCR. The Syniverse deal remains unclear. The activist investors with such a small holding are able to have significant control over the Twilio board. Something does not sit right in the current situation.

Johnny deep dives into this and why it’s important the Twilio employees (Twilions) take the lead in forcing Twilio to come clean to the industry and then enable the industry to expand through open competition, no more messaging monopolies.

We then review the GTC Report on TCR. Its highly political, missing a major stakeholder, Twilio, and many others, e.g. CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) and brands. Increasingly the CSPs feel they are being squeezed out of the industry. The concerns on Data Security: “Kaleyra’s ownership of TCR.” Its now Tata Communications’ ownership of the TCR, and Tata Communications used TCR data as soon as the acquisition was complete. That concern was demonstrated to be true.

The T-Mobile interview quote backs up the ownership concern

Regardless of data protection, there was a commitment to get out of the messaging space to keep TCR proposition ‘clean’.

A relationship meant to be based on trust but ‘built on a lie’.

GTC Report Slide 23

The GTC report and the current crapification of the PSTN shows that the Industry needs to come. The evidence we’ve exposed over the past 9 months continues to be backed up by third parties, see Microsoft’s recent post on China and the GTC report.

Global Telco Consult’s TCR Report

Global Telco Consult’s TCR (The Campaign Registry) report exists, and can be downloaded here.

Remember this is an analyst report, its written for the client: TCR and Kaleyra (now Tata Communications). The ‘Rock Stars’ comment is an example of how the team must be spun in a good light despite all the challenges, this was clearly an ask from the client. This report is a political review, not a frank, open and quantified review.

Ignoring Twilio in the interviews is a glaring hole, and invalidates the analysis in my opinion.

What about smaller CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) who are now considering exiting the SMS business after all the problems with 10DLC, who then moved to 800SMS, and faced Twilio’s ‘hiccup.’ There is also a broader attempt at consolidating the A2P SMS business into a couple of vendors at the moment. I’ve heard this from multiple sources. Was this consolidation plan already known given the bias of the interviews?

‘MNOs are happy.’ They should be ecstatic at 0.5c for SMS and 1c for spam. However, the current A2P SMS mess in the US should have them very concerned as the CTIA, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Trade Commission appear to be circling.

Communications, slide 10, most CSP’s I know are astounded TCR does not have a basic CRM in place. Its people based, using emails and phone calls will all the dropped issues that ensue, at least for CSP communications.

Reporting, slide 11, there are SaaS services where the data can be presenting in a dashboard / portal and slices / diced by the customer. TCR has been in development for years, it should not be acceptable for reports to be emailed. Again showing the bias of this GTC report.

Data Security Concern: “Kaleyra’s ownership of TCR.” Its now Tata Communications’ ownership of the TCR, and Tata Communications used TCR data as soon as the acquisition was complete, see below. That concern was demonstrated to be true. What else has been exposed? Another concern was, “The fox watching the henhouse.” Again this concern has been proven real in the email sent below.

The T-Mobile interview quote backs up the ownership concern

Regardless of data protection, there was a commitment to get out of the messaging space to keep TCR proposition ‘clean’.

A relationship meant to be based on trust but ‘built on a lie’.

GTC Report Slide 23

The quote below is again spinning things in a favorable light. Within the Messaging Monopolies I’m sure this is true. However for some CSPs and brands, this is not the case.

TCRs relatively new solution still needs work to catch up and keep pace with a market used to split-second SLAs but it’s clear the team are trusted to do the right thing to the best of their ability – while being welcome and valued collaborators of companies across the ecosystem.

GTC report Slide 16

As a general comment in reviewing the interviewee feedback, it appears TCR process was designed from ‘on high’ where a few people were included, but the vast majority of the ecosystem was not. Hence all the gaps, concerns and frustrations with the TCR. Which was by some seen as an automation of the existing SCR (Short Code Registry). This makes sense and importantly INCLUDES the campaign numbers used, unlike the TCR.

The planned exit of brands and CSPs from the A2P SMS business in the US (focusing on email, calling and WhatApp); as well as the non-entry of some potential CSP into the A2P SMS business in the US because of fine liabilities; shows the issues raised in this 2022 report have not been adequately addressed, rather left to fester.

Change is urgently required.

Tata Communications / Kaleyra are at it again, using the TCR mailing list

Yet another irate CSP (Campaign Service Provider) contacted me after they received this email from a Tata Communications / Kaleyra employee:

In the US, we’re directly connected to T-Mobile, Verizon & AT&T SMS gateways so its lot cheaper working with us.

We also own the 10DLC Campaign Registry and support many Campaign Service Providers (CSPs) as their Direct Connect Aggregators (DCA).

We delivered over 85B+ messages in over 190 countries touching 4B devices last year for clients such as Oracle, Salesforce, American Express Capital One and many more.

Beyond SMS, we are the part of the largest telecom network in the world via Tata Communications, we host best-in-class cloud, governance, telephony, call center, chatbot and video conferencing software as well (UCaas/CCaaS/CPaaS Global Tier 1 Provider).

If you or your colleagues would be up for a 30 minutes conversation, I’d happy to accommodate your schedule!

Thank You Kindly, Zachary US, Partnerships & Development Lead

NYSE: KLR”

Source irate US based CSP

I had forwarded to me a similar post from a CSP on the day Tata Communications completed the acquisition of Kaleyra / TCR, see image below. Quoting from the GTC interviews for TCR:

This T-Mobile interview highlights the ownership concern:

Regardless of data protection, there was a commitment to get out of the messaging space to keep TCR proposition ‘clean’.

A relationship meant to be based on trust but ‘built on a lie’.

GTC Report Slide 23

The US is not a level playing field for CSPs, they are struggling, revenues are down in messaging. Tata Communications / Kaleyra, the owner of TCR, is using the data contained within TCR for their business benefit. Because there is no sanction for doing this, they appear to act with impunity. I think regulation is required, as even introducing competition for the TCR, will not change this issue.

Text-to-speech latency: the jambonz leaderboard

Technology is moving fast in the voicebot space. We interviewed vapi, a voicebot that is close to natural-sounding. Then Dave Horton released the latest findings on the latency of TTS. Things have changed!

PlayHT (avg 73ms short audio/92ms long audio) was the winner by a mile, with blazingly fast results. Sub-100 ms times – that is astounding!

Google (201ms/408ms). We were surprised on two fronts: first, Google had an extra burden in that we were measuring time to last byte instead of first, because we have not yet implemented streaming support for Google in jambonz; and secondly, we are historically used to seeing in the neighborhood of 800ms+ times for Google to synthesize audio. 

Microsoft (302ms/353ms) came in with very fast times as well, competitive with the new entrants and raising the question: why change?

Google has been slower than most for a couple of years, but is now catching up. Check out the article for the full findings.

U.S. Consumers Received 4.3 Billion Robocalls in March

We’re numb to these numbers, it’s a ridiculously large number. I no longer answer my phone, unless you’re in my contact list. I miss important calls, my son’s orthodontist called from his mobile as he had an urgent question. This is an example of the crapification of the PSTN.

YouMail shared the breakdown of those numbers across notifications, reminders, telemarketing and scams. While scam numbers flat, they’re getting much more targeted / successful. It’s not just criminals and their scams, it’s also a mental health issue as the phone has become a source of stress.

Type of Robocall	Estimated MarchRobocalls	Percentage March Robocalls
Notifications	1.27 billion (+7.0%)	30% (flat)
Payment Reminders	1.04 billion (+4.9%)	24% (-1%)
Telemarketing	1.54 billion (+11%)	36% (+1%)
Scam	0.41 billion (-1.0%)	10% (flat)

Homeowner, 81, who fatally shot innocent Uber driver thought she was tied to scammer threatening him for $12K

People are losing their lives because of these scams! Its has to stop, identity is the root that can stop scam calling and put people back in control of their communications.

Facts about fraud from the FTC

I quote this report often, and know some claim it massively underestimates the size of the scam problem in the US. However, it’s a data point with useful segmentation of this growing problem.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Nadine (Brendel) Rothkamp is now Director Marketing, EMEA at Figma. I’ve known Nadine for almost 10 years, since her time at DT’s Developer Garden.

Thomas Quintana is now Founder at AdminIQ. I’ve known Thomas for over a decade, from his time with Telestax, through BetterVoice, Inteliquent, and then Sinch.

Jelena Sušanj is now Senior Routing and Sourcing specialist at JT Group Limited.

Jeremy Delrue is now  Head of Sales at Groupe MTarget.  I’ve known him throughout his time in CM when they were involved in TADHack.

Caroline Hicks is now Senior Director, Applied Intelligence Events at Informa Tech. We’ve known each other for well over one decade.

Justin Ramirez has joined the team at Five9 as Senior Director focused on ISV/Platform Acceleration. I’ve known Justin throughout his time at Cisco.

Luis Gomez is now at PaaSoo as Carrier Relations and Business Development Manager – LATAM.

Kevin Gorey is now OSS Strategy Senior Manager at Three UK. I’ve known Kevin for 18 years, since his first stint at Three UK.

Razik Keloth is now Business Development Manager at Direct7 Networks.

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