The purpose of this CXTech Week 35 2020 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.

You can sign up here to receive the CXTech News and Analysis by email. Please forward this on if you think someone should join the list. And please let me know any CXTech news I should include.

Miguel Monforte Nicolas’s Knowledge Pill on Mobile VAS Migration

I mentioned Miguel’s knowledge pills in last week’s newsletter, and I really like this week’s pill on an important challenge in value added service migration to VoLTE / IMS.

We’re going to see significant VAS reduction, some of which is needed, as legacy platforms are turned off. But for customers, what choice do they have? Hence why customers increasingly use communication service providers other than their telco. The long slow march towards a utility internet access business for telcos continues.

Using APIBAN to protect your phone system (in under 5 minutes)

APIBAN is a free (as in beer) service from LOD.com that helps prevent SIP attacks. Their global honeypot network collects addresses of SIP attackers and then provides this information to you in a simple API request. Fred mentioned it in his presentation at TADSummit Asia in May.

UK Regulatory Stuff: Simwood’s Review OFCOM’s “Wholesale Voice Markets Review 2021-2026”

There are 2 parts to this review, well it could be serialized. But focusing on “Part 1 – Huawei bad for Internet; Huawei good for Voice over Internet“, and “Part 2 – WVMR Part 2 – CP Status – we need a new one!” For non-British readers, it’s useful to understand the culture of “English Understatement“.

Case in point: “We were pleased to see this review recognises VoIP as likely to catch on. In fact, in what you could call BT’s business plan, it deals with the migration of the BT network to IP by 1st April 2025. Whilst that is good in one sense, there’s a healthy dose of contradiction, oversight and hypocrisy in there which we need to call out. First out the door: Security.“

It’s a good read for both entertainment (an oxymoron for anything regulatory related) and understanding the gap OFCOM must address between meeting BT’s needs and those of the broader wholesale market.

I’ll be doing an Innovation Interview with Simon Woodhead (CEO of Simwood) at TADSummit EMEA / Americas in November, and this topic is on the list.

Symbl.ai Sponsors TADHack Chicago / North America

We’re proud to announce Symbl.ai will sponsor TADHack Chicago / North America. They have a $1K prize for the best hack(s) built on their API from Chicago / North America and will provide free trial credits to any developers using their API.

Symbl is an API platform for developers and businesses to rapidly deploy conversational intelligence at scale, on any communication channel.

Check out Symbl’s developer documentation page: https://docs.symbl.ai to see all the APIs available.

Guide to TADHack Global 2020

A global hackathon is a bit complex, both from the perspectives of taking part and organizing 🙂 In this weblog I try to set out what we have planned for the “COVID-19 version” of TADHack Global.

Please register for TADHack Global, you’ll have fun, learn important new skills, virtually meet some amazing people, and perhaps even change the world with your hack.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Jaime Ryan is now Vice President, Product Management at Axway. I first met Jaime when he was with Layer 7, breaking into the telco API business.

Jennifer Kite-Powell is now Global Editor-in-Chief, Online at Nokia.

Leo Cheng is now working as a Specialist, Edge Cloud at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amr Adel is now a Senior Product Manager at Swiftell, building Arabic conversational experiences. I first met Amr at Cequens, who sponsored TADSummit.

Ahmed Al-Issaei is now Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at Mamun. I first met Ahmed when he worked for Ooredoo.

Lee Powney is now Senior Partner at VIVALDI_.

Yeasin Ar Rahman is now Executive Lead Engineer at WellDev. He’s a TADHack Global winner from 2015 using hSenid Mobile.

Frederic Gournard is now CEO at Calanques Valley – Startup Studio DeepTech.

You can sign up here to receive the CXTech News and Analysis by email.