The Honest CPaaS Review

One of the 2024 highlights in my opinion was publishing The Honest CPaaS Review, https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/10/26/the-honest-cpaas-review/.

A quantified and detailed review of the CPaaS industry. Quoting Peter Drucker, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure.” To remove the problems our industry faces, we must first define and measure them.

Thank you to the hundreds of people who have helped assemble this work, it’s a global team effort. Some I can name include: Robert Vis, Daniel Gill, Kevin Graham, Rick Joyce, Jeremy Turner, Aaron Birnbaum, Bohdan Hopanchuk, Muhammad Wahab Sultan, YouMail, truecaller, Giovanni Tarone, and the whole TADS community. Unfortunately there are many I can not mention because their organizations are vested in maintaining the status quo of stealing from customers and spamming Grandma.

Let’s remind ourselves how bad the US situation has become:

• 41%+ of 65+ year olds have stopped answering calls (source Truecaller)
• Black Americans are twice as likely to say they lost money to a scam (source Truecaller). Plus there was the recent racist text about slavery, further proof TCR does not work.
• 56M Americans impacted by scams every year (source Truecaller)

TADSummit is the thought-leadership event in programmable communications / telecoms for over ten years. I’ve been in programmable telecoms / communications since my startup Teltier, founded in 2000, presence-based services based on HLR (Home Location Register) status.

The Truth is not Being Negative, it’s the first step to Change

TADSummit delivers the truth, no BS. Truth you can build and protect your business on. We’re able to do that because many of our presenters are small and medium businesses. If they are wrong, their business ceases to exist, hence they tend to be right. Large telecom vendors get their revenue regardless of being right. This is a critical reason why TADS is unique and important to the future of our industry.

I’ve noticed a movement in the echochamber of the industry; exposing the truth gets labelled as “being negative”. That is shocking, if exposing the Truth is ‘being negative’, the CPaaS industry will never change for the benefit of its customers. See Peter Drucker, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure.”

Remember at the end of 2023 Twitter complained about $60M being stolen per year by ‘telcos’ using AIT. https://techeconomy.ng/commentary-elon-musk-says-twitter-lost-60mn-a-year-to-bot-accounts-used-by-390-telcos-to-pump-a2p-sms/. Apart from the work of BT Group and DT to keep their A2P SMS business clean, not much else happened. Just look at the situation in Latin America in the Great A2P SMS Robbery.

Change is only possible by understanding the current situation. Being paid to spam grandma is wrong. Stealing from customers using AIT is wrong. We’ve shown how AIT can be solved at TADSummit and in the Honest CPaaS Review. 

My mobile carrier, T-Mobile US, has significantly reduced robocalling and spam SMS for me. It’s not gone, but is a fraction of friends and neighbors on other carriers. This fact is driving customers to T-Mobile US, better customer experience matters.

To those accusing Johnny of a “hate campaign”, Johnny has been clear from the start on his hatred of people making money from spamming grandma. See this post. <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/giovanni-tarone-569935240_chinese-hack-of-global-telecom-providers-activity-7269894683634388992-djmD/>. Stop spamming Grandma and be part of the solution.

Rick Joyce was Right.

My 2024 kicked off with a cease and desist letter from Tata Communications, https://alanquayle.com/2024/01/tata-communications-new-years-present/.

That was then wrapped into Bill’s arbitration with a subpoena. At 8PM on a Saturday there was a loud hammering at my front door, while my family watched TV. I did not know Bill when he worked at TCR, I am irrelevant to the arbitration. The subpoena and its delivery were intimidation. 

As described by Judge Colleen McMahon, “Long, drawn-out, lawless litigation.” https://alanquayle.com/2024/07/judge-colleen-mcmahon/. And as Paul Sweeney eloquently put it, “Alan is on the side of angels.”

A foreign owned entity (Tata Communication owns TCR) thinks it’s OK to commit lawless litigation, according to Judge Colleen McMahon.

Just a reminder on the frame-job against Bill Peters:

• Oct 4:   Bill is put on “administrative leave,” still an employee.
• Oct 5:   Soren takes back laptop and changes all passwords and password reset information.
• Oct 6:   The start the “frame job” by using a MAC named “Bill’s MAC” to log into Bill’s TCR email account. They successfully log in on the first try!
• Someone who didn’t have the password or any ability to reset the password was able to do this.
• Only Soren and the security manager knew the new password on Oct 5. Soren is a MAC guy and only uses MAC computers.
• Bill is a Windows guy who has never owned or used a Mac.
• Ricardo as a whistleblower reported the frame job against Bill to the KLR Board whistleblower contact (Mikulsky) and Avi Katz.
• TCR began an investigation to find out who the whistleblower was and fired Ricardo once they discovered it was him.

I discovered earlier this month Dario Betti is sending private emails to TADSummit and TADHack sponsors. Claiming I am lying about the MEF and its members. Everything I’ve posted is backed by public documents and corroborated by leading experts. It’s all public and verified / corroborated, it’s the truth, unlike Dario’s private email.

For example on leading experts:

• Robert Vis on the fraudsters being on the MEF board; 
• Kevin Graham on why he could not sign the MEF code of conduct. 

MEF’s official policy was to ignore my work, see this letter from Robert Gerstmann (Chairman MEF and Sinch Evangelist) to its members. https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/03/26/revenge-of-the-messaging-monopolies/. A very odd policy given the importance of addressing the problems highlighted by Twitter. Clearly, that order has stopped and they are now targeting TADS sponsors. I’ve been in telecoms for decades, my reputation on telling the truth and being right against the industry belief set, e.g. OneAPI, is widely known.

If someone claims my work is lies, ask them to prove it. If their defense is, ‘you’re not supposed to name names.’ then that person is endorsing customer theft and the spamming of grandmas for cash. Nothing has been done about the PSTN’s problems by the CPaaS industry. Rather T-Mobile US has made my experience much better by filtering all the SMS spam (replacing Syniverse with Infobip) and illegal robocalls. 

Given the hacking of the PSTN, I remind everyone of what Rick Joyce posted: The Campaign Registry and Foreign Ownership: A Matter of National Security. Rick was the chair of telecommunications at Venable LLP, Alston & Bird LLP, and Joyce & Jacobs LLP; and former Chief Counsel for Chief Information Officer/Assistant Commandant for C4IT at U.S. Coast Guard, and holds the highest security clearance. Rick is uniquely qualified to understand the risks of TCR foreign ownership.

MEF had Eric Priezkalns do a hit job on Rick’s post, with the accusation it was a xenophobic dog whistle. I’ve followed Eric for many years and was surprised by his analysis. However, MEF bought Commsrisk, and Eric was given the Director of Anti-Fraud and Integrity at the MEF. I assume that was the pay off?

Why was MEF involved in the accusation of Rick Joyce’s xenophobic dog whistle? Its sponsors are TCR, Kaleyra, and Tata Communications. The ones that funded sending people to my home at 8PM on a Saturday in an attempt to intimidate me. Here is Judge Colleen McMahon’s opinion on what they are up to: https://alanquayle.com/2024/07/judge-colleen-mcmahon/, “long, drawn-out, lawless litigation”. Yes, Bill Peters is still under lawfare, one of the fathers of SMS in the US.

Rick also posted to the FCC in a call for comments a version of this note, which lead to the Latham Watkins post and Eric Troutman’s fun review. 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/. And after that, Puja was kicked off the MEF panel. This is all published by her law firm. 

TADSummit Youtube channel has about 500k views from 1.4M impressions, add in TADHack and that’s over 2M impressions and 650k views. We have the best innovators in programmable communications / telecoms on our channels. Truth in Telecoms is the only place where you can understand the reality of the business, as NO BS has been our policy since the beginning. 

The people have spoken by their viewership, even as foreign owned entities tried to muzzle me through intimidation. The world is changing fast. Last year Rick Joyce warned about the risks, and we have experienced the worst hack in American History that has now spread into dozens of countries. Truth in Telecoms will continue to help you understand the reality of what is happening, and fight for the customer whether that be an individual or a business being robbed of $60M per year.

Honesty and integrity matter, make that part of your business in 2025 by sponsoring TADHack and TADSummit.

2025 will be focused on Cybersecurity

We’re bringing an increased focus on cybersecurity to TADSummit, Enable Security has been part of TADSummit for many years. The hacking of the PSTN has shown the industry is ill-equipped to manage how the world is shifting.

We’ve brought together ethical hackers such as Bohdan Hopanchuk, Jeremy Turner, Aaron Birnbaum, Kim Crawley for insightful and frankly scary conversations. The telecoms industry is playing catch-up given the democratization of cybersecurity knowledge. We must protect ourselves, and that requires an open and honest sharing of knowledge. Use secure messaging!