CXTech Week 17 2024 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 17 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’re releasing the CXTech newsletter over the weekend. I’ve been seeing great engagement on my weekend posts.

Covered this week:

  • Ever been involved in TADSummit or TADHack?
  • Podcast 63: TADSummit Innovators, Eric J Troutman, The Czar of TCPAWorld
  • Podcast 62: TADSummit Innovators, Matthew Hodgson, Matrix & Element
  • Podcast 61: Truth in Telecoms, Bird is Back : Kevin Loving Life
  • If TikTok officially must be sold or be banned in America, what about The Campaign Registry?
  • How WhatsApp Business Chatbots are Surpassing SMS for Debt Collection
  • Received my first RCS spam recently
  • Jeff Lawson buys The Onion
  • Stop Living in the CPast
  • Add realtime translation to your contact center using jambonz
  • Unibeam, a SIM applet approach to mobile authentication
  • Brian West on unrealistic AI demos
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Ever been involved in TADSummit or TADHack?

Have you ever been involved in TADHack or TADSummit over the years, 2013+? Are you part of the TADS community?

You can now add @TADHack and/or @TADSummit to your LinkedIn profile.

Podcast 63: TADSummit Innovators, Eric J Troutman, The Czar of TCPAWorld

Eric is a partner at Troutman Amin LLC, Czar of TCPAWorld.com, President of ‘Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment’ (R.E.A.C.H), and one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers. Ever since Eric reviewed an FCC filing by Latham Watkins, we’ve been fans.

This was an excellent opportunity to understand what motivates Eric, which is protecting small businesses from TCPA lawsuits. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, is a federal law that regulates telephone solicitations, including text messaging, pre-recorded calls, and telemarketing.

Businesses thinking they bought valid leads that turn out to be invalid, can find themselves with a TCPA lawsuits from “scumbag repeat litigators”. Eric created the group Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment (R.E.A.C.H) to help businesses buy leads that are valid. You can read the shenanigans of repeat litigators on TCPAWorld.com.

Eric provides a great review of how we got to the current state of affairs. Where YouMail has become the biggest narc (informant) to the FCC, Industry Traceback Group (ITG), and Attorney Generals (AG). Who are all reacting to the epidemic of robocalling and spam SMS in the US.

The discussion moved onto the perverse situation on SMS being an information services (title I), not telecom services (title II). Which has resulted in the TCR, with a foreign controlled entity having access to many American businesses’ confidential information and A2P messaging plans. Rick Joyce has raised this, and Eric is equally enraged, see his review of an FCC filing by Latham Watkins.

Beyond TCR and unregistered A2P SMS being charged 1c per SMS, we discussed other control points such as 800SMS (Twilio) and SCR (Short Code Registry, iConnectiv); as well as other sources of SMS spam such as SIM boxes and email to SMS. Eric’s focus in simply TCR registered campaigns, where his clients register their campaigns.

Check out Eric’s recent post on IS TCR NEXT TO FACE BAN?: With Tik Tok Facing Ban Unless it Sells to American Company is The Campaign Registry Next on the List? An important point Eric advised is to trust the FCC, it’s the best Federal agency, and will do the right thing.

On the MEF’s (Mobile Brotherhood) mistreatment of Puja, and Robert Gerstmann’s defaming of them. Eric predicts MEF will not be around for long, no organization can behave like that and remain in existence. On why Sinch sponsors REACH, because it’s important, and matters more than MEF (Mobile Brotherhood).

We discuss several other issues such as the FTC ruling on non-compete clauses. Overall, an inspiring discussion with Eric, definitely on the side of truth and justice for small businesses.

Podcast 62: TADSummit Innovators, Matthew Hodgson, Matrix & Element

It’s been quite some time since Matthew and I had caught up. It was great to understand the progress, and finally see how Matthew and Amandine Le Pape‘s vision will come to pass. That is Matrix becoming the communications protocol of the web. Element does the implementations, e.g. Element Server Suite, while Matrix is the open source project.

I see the combination of TNID and Matrix creating a powerful communications and identity solution. Matrix has avoided identity so far, while work on identity has progressed in leaps and bounds with SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) thanks to the work of W3C (Decentralized Identifiers), FIDO Alliance, and many more. From a technology perspective things are finally coming together between Matrix and SSI, and from this point on could move fast.

Matthew and Amandine came to me one decade ago at a WebRTC Conference in London with the vision of Matrix, I was impressed, loved the idea, my only concern was how to make money. Well since then, that issue has been solved.

This week Matrix announced new customers with the United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) and BigBlueButton providing not just the messaging and voice, but also the video.

The United Nations deal is massive, this cements Element/Matrix as the solution for governments around the world, given all their knowledge and value add in compliance, security, regionalization, diplomatic protections, audit, anti-virus, border gateways, etc. Matrix has 141 million users, with 100k deployments. They are building out a strong position in education as well.

Other messaging platforms like RocketChat and MatterMost have adopted Matrix. There is a growing ecosystem of companies deploying Matrix for enterprises and governments. We discussed their path into the financial industry and consumer, and that had Johnny immediately offering his services. I’m sure more coming on that very soon.

We moved back to the origins for Matrix 10 years ago, with the frustrations Matthew and his team faced in competing against WhatsApp in Brazil. How the SIP and SMPP protocols were not built for the web. And that gap led to the creation of Matrix.

Matrix are actively involved in the EU DMA (Digital Markets Act) gatekeeper work, check out this post “The DMA Stakeholder Workshop: Interoperability between messaging services”. Matthew noted attendees are a few specialist like Matrix, the large web companies (Meta, Google, etc.) and telcos. They’ve built a WhatsApp-Matrix gateway, how this goes to market is yet to be decided. However, after the likes of WhatsApp are made interoperable, SMS would seem a likely next stop!

Podcast 61: Truth in Telecoms, Bird is Back : Kevin Loving Life.

A busy weekend:

Robert Vis continues to deliver on his plan to transform the programmable communications industry. Announcing on his TADSummit Innovator’s podcast (over 5k views) focusing on the value add for customer communications and bringing the price of SMS close to cost. Sinch did not like that, especially when Bird dropped prices in Sweden. And today delivering on the payments strategy, partnering with Airwallex to power their international payments operations.

Bird will leverage Airwallex’s financial infrastructure to simplify payments for over 30,000 customers, replacing the more than 20 global banks it relied on previously.

“Prior to working with Airwallex, we were using legacy systems and technology which slowed down our entire global operations. With Airwallex, we’re able to streamline our payments infrastructure and supercharge our finance operations globally”. – Robert Vis, Founder & CEO at Bird. Keep an eye on how this deal develops.

Kevin Graham announced his departure from Vonage, with a walk and a love letter. For the walk, check out the video clip (I had to delete the audio because of copyright) at the end to see what Graham is getting up to. On the love letter, a very powerful statement pointing out:

“Unfortunately, the industry has not helped itself during that period due to some poor commercial judgement driven by short term thinking in addition to some downright unethical business practices from a small but influential minority. Trust in A2P SMS particularly is at an all time low, and whilst we all have our views and respective lens through which to view such matters, it hasn’t been good enough. Better collaboration and governance is required to deal with those who claim to innovate but in reality have been harming this industry for some time.”

source Kevin Graham

I’d just like to point out that the MEF requires its members to ignore my body of work on the problems in the messaging industry. We need many more people to stand up and share their truth before it’s too late.

Noah’s alive! We’d not heard from him in a while. And with this post on Linkedin he’s back firing on all cylinders in pointing out the insanity of trusting businesses with our personal data given their systematic failure to protect it. Stop the insanity and start taking back your identity, rights, and privacy. Apply to be a member of TNID-Trusted Number ID, where consent and preferences are yours to control.

And to prove the point Noah is making Alex Quilici (YouMail) posted on the personal data exposed from the AT&T breach.

Johnny’s pumped about SignalWire, especially after their recent short, “Of course they use FreeSWITCH” Which I also attached to the end of Podcast 61, after Graham’s silent hiking video.

Johnny kicked off the week with an article from The Motley Fool, and extended it by suggesting you take $3M and turning it into $1M to make yourself a Twilio Millionaire. Johnny’s advice was to stop the share buyback and focus on copying Bird.

If TikTok officially must be sold or be banned in America, what about The Campaign Registry?

Great post from The Czar.

So its official– TikTok, owned by a Chinese company  ByteDance, must either sell to a domestic company or be banned. This by an act of Congress.

Pretty big deal.

Per CBS news, the rationale is simple: “U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it to spy on Americans or weaponize it to covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.”

Sounds about right.

But if TikTok’s foreign ownership is a danger to national security–and it seems that it is–how is the Campaign Registry’s foreign ownership not?

The TCR has a record of every intended text message campaign in the country–every business, and even every politician, must bow before TCR and disclose all manner of sensitive information regarding its intended outreach plans.

Just as in the case of TikTok, TCR is in the hands of a foreign-owned parent. And no assurances have been provided that data from American businesses–and political candidates!!–is being shared with the foreign owners of TCR.

So if foreign governments can use TikTok to spy on Americans, that is CERTAINLY the case with TCR– it has a COMPLETE roadmap of every outreach schedule, plan, and schema for every business and politician in the nation.

That’s just nuts folks. How could we allow that?

Eric J Troutman

Click here to read full post.

How WhatsApp Business Chatbots are Surpassing SMS for Debt Collection

Webio has no axe to grind on one messaging platform or another. This is simply their truth, given their customers. Well done in sharing this information!

I’ve mentioned previously how school districts in the US have struggled using 800SMS and 10DLC. They surveyed their students’ parents and discovered WhatsApp is as acceptable as SMS or calling. I’ll be keeping on eye on their experiences.

Here’s a great comment from Stuart Mitchell on the topic:

Alan Quayle there are also some UK use-cases of RCS being used for debt collection with significantly improved results compared to other methods. You are right, it’s not the platform it’s the manner of the communication: more helpful, personable and trusted than a blank SMS

Stuart Mitchell

Received my first RCS spam recently

Check out the comments where Stuart Mitchell and Michael Power discussing this spam message.

It is P2P RCS not (A2P) RBM: the latter would have a verified shield next to the logo and would have a completely different “about” screen (example attached)

This is a very clever technique that uses RCS groups to *mimic* RBM, you can see that from your screenshot. I’m not that familiar with the Android experience, were you invited to join the group or opted-in without any action on your part?

Stuart

I did not join the group, was not was invited. I just found myself part of this group.

In the Philippines SIM cards have historically been available without KYC registration but that is in the process of being tidied up now (see this guide from Globe for details: https://new.globe.com.ph/simreg)

I think it’s safe to say this particular number will be disabled on 25 June this year and you won’t be receiving any RCS spam from +63 after then.

Stuart

I made this post over the weekend and it received 4.4k impressions. Which is one of the reasons I’m releasing this CXTech newsletter over the weekend as an experiment.

Jeff Lawson buys The Onion

Yep, Jeff confirmed it.

One year ago I would have found this story incredulous. However the past year shows Jeff Lawson has been working in an industry where the ‘news’ feels like a parody:

  1. Jeff’s exit from Twilio, Giovanni Tarone‘s ‘why so Syniverse?’ leading the charge there. https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/01/09/lawson-is-innocent/, and later we discover the ‘prepayment’ Twilio made to The Campaign Registry may have led to the platform’s ability to stop spam being gutted.
  2. A Mobile Ecosystem Forum party being disrupted https://tcpaworld.com/2024/03/19/breaking-holy-smokes-protests-erupt-outside-mobile-ecosystem-forum/ because Eric J. Troutman dared mention the foreign ownership issue, https://tcpaworld.com/2024/02/27/bogus-is-tcrs-foreign-ownership-a-threat-to-national-security-they-just-retained-latham-watkins-to-convince-the-fcc-they-are-not/
  3. Robert Gerstmann of Sinch and Mobile Ecosystem Forum telling people to ignore our work. https://tcpaworld.com/2024/03/26/mef-my-life-read-the-face-saving-email-from-their-new-chair-that-just-made-matters-so-much-worse-for-them/
  4. The list goes on and on..

There’s a huge stinking pile of lies on why the US remains spammed, robocalled, and scammed over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

Stop Living in the CPast

A rallying cry for all those sick and tired of SMS spam! Excerpt from Anthony Minessale’s song C Past

The spamming must stop! No one in the telecoms ecosystem should be making money off spam – looking at you CPaaS / CPast companies and telcos!

Add realtime translation to your contact center using jambonz

Latest from Dave Horton: Need to add real-time translation to your contact center? It’s a frequent ask for many developers of voice/CX platforms, but the tricky part is getting it right so that it’s actually usable. With the addition of dub tracks in jambonz, I think we got it. Check out their demo and reach out if you want to add this to your contact center.

Code is available here.

Unibeam, a SIM applet approach to mobile authentication

Unibeam, a SIM applet approach to mobile authentication, verification and fraud prevention. It collects and binds user authentication directly from within the SIM. Because it is based on the SIM as an applet, it can also trigger pop-up messages and questions to the users, which enables new use cases that require user-validated information and acknowledgment.

I had a chat with a kindred spirit, Ran Ben – David, Unibeam.  On the TADSummit blog we’ve covered SIM applet based innovations, for example Wadaro, and Mobile Connect based approaches to authentication, verification and fraud prevention .

Wadaro shows SIM apps work at scale and are easy to deploy. A SIM applet based approach has the benefit of binding the device ID, SIM ID, phone number, and the application ID. This makes it attractive to banking and crypto apps. I’ll not get into a discussion on the pros and cons of each approach. Rather say we’re at a point where action and experimentation matters much more than waiting for the creation of a global standard API (Camara) that is only a small piece of the mobile authentication, verification and fraud prevention solution.

Unibeam is deployed in MNOs, and in PoCs (Proof of Concepts) with large telcos. Regulators are mandating action on SIM swap. Pointing to the Camara API standard is perplexing to say the least. Identity solutions are NOT finalized, and they’re evolving as criminals are evolving their attacks. Solutions need to evolve in hours/days/weeks, not be standardized.

Within telcos most engineers who lived through OneAPI, understand Camara is repeating history, they have chosen to keep quiet and do what is asked for the sake of their families. To demonstrate independent thought from the groupthink imposed by the GSMA is career limiting. I find my work being ignored by the GSMA, Ericson, Nokia, Mobile Ecosystem Forum, etc. In fact some ask their members to ignore my work. Hence why I use the term groupthink. Being purposefully ignored is an endorsement, as well as a sad indictment on the state of the industry in not doing what is best for the customer and telco, rather the Camara vendor.

My recommendation is to experiment with multiple solutions, do Camara to keep the corporate politicians and big vendors quiet, however, more importantly, SIM based and Mobile Connect based solutions enable telcos to understand the practical realities, and help build a business plan focused on customers’ needs.

Regardless of SIM based, Camara based, etc., MNO must act given the rapid growth and sophistication in targeted scams. To do nothing means MNOs cede mobile authentication, verification and fraud prevention to others such as passkeys, rolling code apps, etc. Depending on your preferred analyst it’s a market of mid-tens of billions today.

There’s no need for a global standard until the solution is mature. So what if only 30% of consumers are protected as one carrier rolls out a solution in a country, it’s better than 0%, and in time it will grow. So what if one operator uses a SIM app and another uses Mobile Connect, you’ll see what works best and can aggregate. Just do something today!

Identity verification and risk is a large established market with many global players delivering broad industry focused solutions, e.g. Mastercard (Ekata), Experian, Transunion, AsiaVerify, trustingSocial, Id.layr, Okta, LexisNexis, Prove, Telesign, Seon, Socure to name just a few. Claiming you have a global standard SIM swap API demonstrates a technology focus, not a customer focus.

Brian West on unrealistic AI demos

Brians’s noticed AI products from various vendors when used via telephone, he’s seen unrealistic demos and ‘no-code’ for things like restaurant reservations. Most of what you see online and in many of the video demos are just hallucinated interactions that don’t actually use any APIs to process the request. This is why end pointing and turn around are unrealistic. In SignalWire’s AI Gateway Bobby’s Table example, Bobby does actual work, Bobby uses SWAIG (SignalWire’s AI Gateway) functions to query, update, cancel reservations and optionally text you the details of the reservation.

Get started with a turnkey AI Agent from SignalWire!

https://lnkd.in/gfw2prJ4
https://bobbystable.ai/
https://signalwire.ai/

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Tobias Goebel is now Sr. Director, Product Marketing at KORE. I’ve known him for over one decade since his time with Voxeo. He’s also presented at TADSummit 2022 on IoT was he was with Twilio. I regularly follow his FSD (linkedin.com/in/tpgoebel) post on LInkedin. Check this one out. I’m pretty convinced FSD will work in most cases well. The problem is all the edge cases. For example, police redirecting you the wrong way down the highway as there’s an accident ahead, human intervention will be necessary. For autonomous taxis, remote control will be necessary.

Aurélien Duval-Delort is now Vice-Président Comité Afrique – en charge des startups at MEDEF International. I’ve known Aurélien for over one decade, since his time at Orange, building out their presence in Africa. Ten years ago I reviewed his session at the Telecom API event here. And here’s the workshop I gave at that event on The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Telecom APIs. Check out the other presentations from that event, it’s interesting how far some businesses have come, yet some are remain at the starting blocks.

Pete Margaris is now vice president product marketing – Wireless Solutions at Congruex. I’ve known Peter for 2 decades, since his time with Lightbridge.

Craig Vintcent is now  Interim CRO at activpayroll. I’ve known Craig for nearly a decade, since his time with Oracle.

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