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.
Given the CTIA meeting in DC last week, the underlying subtext is: should SMS finally be regulated? The CTIA is under orders from the carriers to not let that happen. However, the Attorney Generals from many states are furious that SMS spam continues, remember the SMS industry claimed it can solve this problem, hence the creation of TCR.
The flow of cash is clear: scams steal from our elderly, that funds SMS spam and robocalling, that 100% margin 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. We’re witnessing the crapification of the PSTN. We have become numb to the elderly losing thousands of dollars if not their life savings, not answering the phone, ignoring SMS, I’m even receiving RCS spam these days, some people are even scared to answer the phone because of the overblown threat of deep fakes.
This is why the attorney generals of every state in the US are up in arms over the SMS spam problem. It can and must be stopped, we’ve shown several solutions on the TADSummit Innovators podcast. And the TADHack Lonely Bot was created as a result of such scams directly affecting elderly relatives. The FTC points to $10B lost to scams in 2023. No one in the telecom ecosystem should be making money off SMS spam / robocalling.
Ignore claims that going after the criminals will solve the problem. Many are based in India, they are arrested at lunchtime, and released by dinner time. SMS spam and robocalling must stop at the ingestion to the network. Identity based solutions can solve this.
