The purpose of this CXTech Week 35 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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Bandwidth’s David Morken: ‘We’re a 20-year overnight success’ as company hits $2 billion valuation mark
As Bandwidth grows into Europe, and Simwood (sponsor of TADHack Global, and keynote at TADSummit) expands into North America. Its going to be interesting to track their respective progress. Though quite different in size, the democratization of telecoms enables smaller companies to punch above their weight-class.
Both Simon (CEO of Simwood) and I will be presenting at Astricon at the end of Oct.
New MVNO Audacious Launches Special Mobile Service in the UK for Users with Hearing Loss
We’ve tracked the progress of RogerVoice (app based solution) for several years, their CEO has presented at TADSummit several times. Audacious is an MVNO solution, where the voice channel is adapted to improve call clarity for those with hearing loss. While RogerVoice works for the profoundly deaf, Audacious could be more appropriate for the elderly, especially if the SIM-only package is priced appropriately.
The great thing with CXTech / programmable telecoms is the democratization to telecoms technology lets people experiment to find what works best in the market. When telcos were the gatekeepers on such innovation…. well I’ll let this deck explain (slides 53-79).
Leader in Mobile Identity Solutions, TeleSign, Sponsors TADHack Global 2019
TeleSign is sponsoring TADHack Global 2019! At TADHack-mini Orlando earlier this year, we had lots of interest in their Score and PhoneID APIs. At TADHack Global we’ll have a chance to see what hacks are made possible with those APIs.
TeleSign connects and protects online experiences with sophisticated customer identity and engagement solutions. Through APIs that deliver user verification, data insights, and communications they solve today’s unique online customer experience challenges. Their customers include most of the largest web brands in the world who trust Telesign to help them deliver the easiest and safest customer experiences available. TADHackers will be in great company hacking on TeleSign 🙂
TeleSign’s APIs deliver actionable insights that enhance and protect every stage of the customer experience.
- Score – Delivers reputation scoring based on phone number intelligence, traffic patterns, machine learning and a global data consortium. Think of it as a credit score of your users that can grant and block access based on data intelligence.
- PhoneID – Detailed and actionable global phone number and subscriber data intelligence to strengthen authentications, evaluate fraud risks, and enhance the user experience. There are multiple add-ons you can choose from that provide wholistic solutions around mobile identity.
- Standard API docs – Get familiar with TeleSign and our APIs through technical docs that will help with implementation.
7 Deadly Types of SMS Fraud
Telecom fraud costs customers and businesses $29 billion a year. SMS fraud, in particular, can have a detrimental impact on phone users. Hackers can send messages, which look like legitimate texts, and encourage people to hand over their personal information, for example. This is a nice review from Cequens (previous TADSummit sponsor) on some of the common types of SMS fraud.
Now Is The Time To Buy Twilio
An interesting review by Steve Auger on Twilio. They the largest and one of the fastest growing companies in CPaaS, though it’s misleading to use that label for them.
In putting the CXTech landscape together, which I will present at TADSummit Americas, I’ve kept their growth up at 70% in 2020 (in 2019 it was 56% YoY organic revenue growth and 79% growth with the SendGrid acquisition included) as they raised a war chest, more M&A is likely on the way.
Vonage Holdings Is Betting The Farm On Communications Convergence
Vonage is spinning the trendy story of combining UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS. But its not in the same category as Twilio. It’s an enterprise focused telco. Its delivering a soup-to-nuts enterprise communications portfolio that it sells direct and through channels. So the “rule of 40” is perhaps not the best metric.
Dialpad Launches Online Partner Success Portal
Dialpad announced the launch of its Partner Success Portal. The portal aims to provide seller and reseller partners with tools and resources that will enrich their knowledge of Dialpad products and enable them to sell more efficiently. It’s all about the channel in enterprise communications!
Siris Enters into Agreement to Acquire TPx Communications
For a change Siris has not bought one of my customers. But what is interesting is they’re buying an enterprise communications / managed services channel. The CXTech market is getting much more interesting.
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Andre Moskal is now with Aptilo, over his time in Telus he’s been involved in Telecom APIs.
Terry Hsiao added a role of Technology Advisory Council at HARMAN International. He’s still with Kaleyra which will be going IPO soon. And will be presenting at TADSummit Americas.
Fabio Tylim is now co-founder at Innovation Journey. Previously he was with APEX Communications that was bought by Dialogic (part of which is now in Sangoma).
John Senay is now Sales Engineer, at IIOT Communications. Previously he was with Telestax.