CXTech Week 33 2022 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 33 2022 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.

Covered this week:

  • Link Mobility
  • How I Got MicroAcquired
  • TADHack Memory from 2017
  • Please Register for TADHack Global, 15th-16th October 2022
  • New TADSummit Sessions and Registration Open
  • Wire raises €24m
  • Deja Vu on QoS APIs
  • OFCOM’s Media Nation 2022
  • Scientific American: The Robocalls Problem Is So Bad That the FCC Actually Did Something
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Link Mobility

We covered Link Mobility’s challenges in CXTech Week 19 2022. This week trading in Link Mobility was halted multiple times as the stock fell further. Analysts were unimpressed with Q2 financial results; LINK revised down their revenue growth due to “slower than expected growth in H1 2022” and “increased macroeconomic uncertainty”.

Definitely external factors are an issue as marketing budgets are slashed. However, rolling up SMS gateways / aggregators is tough given the service is relatively easy to substitute. Their customers often work with multiple gateways for resilience and adequate reach across their customer base. For example, Sinch is a similar but less exposed situation had a cost restatement covered in CXTech Week 30 2022.

How I Got MicroAcquired

We’ve talked previously about MicroAcquire in CXTech Week 39 2021. Its part of the pack we’re putting together for TADHack Founders Academy.

Tomorrow’s Tools, is a SaaS app for workflow platform, Monday.com. Tomorrow’s Tools began as a hackathon project and ended with a six-figure exit on MicroAcquire.

When Monday.com announced a hackathon to launch its app store in 2020, Ethan trawled the support forums for ideas. People were practically begging for the option to see a combined view of their tasks across different boards. This was the product idea he’d been looking for.

Ethan provides an interesting model. First, scour the market for problems in large ecosystems like Monday, Jira, or Shopify. Fix the problem and then share your solution with the people who need it. If it works, the platform will likely market it for free.

Then, like Ethan, maybe raise money to launch a bigger, bolder business idea where time to market matters. Raising money makes sense when you know how to spend it. With three exits under his belt, Ethan will likely make the most of this investment.

TADHack Memory from 2017

Burbudy, ‘chat with your burglar’ from Mike Dauphinais

Always fun to see a demo showing the use case live ‘chat with your burglar’.

TADHack is less than 2 months away, reserve your spot now, https://tadhack.com/2022/

Thank you to Radisys Corporation, Telnyx, STROLID, Inc – Strong Process. Solid Results., and jambonz for making TADHack Global 2022 possible.

Please Register for TADHack Global, 15th-16th October 2022

Here are some short videos to informally introduce the sponsors, so you get to know the people behind the brands.

  • Dave from Jambonz, was on the US Rugby team for the 1987 World Cup. Yes, that is the Jungfrau in his background live!
  • Thomas from STROLID, is the cook for his family like me, though much more advanced 🙂 vCon is an important technology for everyone to learn.
  • Al and Adnan from Radisys, technology saved Al from becoming a lawyer 😉 As a kid Adnan had a Commodore 64 computer like me!

TADHack registration is open!

Check out ‘Choose your location’ on the TADHack landing page. Click on the location you can attend, and then the register button for that location. The Location page contains the address, schedule, and other important information about the specific location. We’re still updating location details, but register now to reserve your place. If there is no location close by, you can take part in Global Remote.

New TADSummit Sessions and Registration Open

Registration is now open for TADSummit 2022. The best experience is in-person because:

  • Aveiro is beautiful, you must visit at least once in your life.
  • Nothing beats face-to-face networking. The event set-up, relaxed format, lunch and dinner will provide lots of opportunities to chat with the in-person attendees.
  • Dinner is sponsored by GoContact at their offices to provide the best of Aveiro cuisine. With beer, wine, and a roof deck – meet more people and enjoy Aveiro’s ambiance.
  • Jam-packed agenda you can dip-in and dip-out of, with lots of areas to work and take calls. You may be away from the office, but you’ll still be able to multi-task throughout the event.
  • Ten years of thought-leadership and a no-BS policy ensures you’ll meet the best minds in programmable communications.
  • The DDoS Workshop will not be live streamed at the request of several participants. In-person will be the only way to learn and share your DDoS experiences.

Here’s the agenda and the logistics. Make your arrangement as soon as you can.

We also added some excellent sessions to the TADSummit agenda this week including:

Future of WebRTC and Web3 Panel Discussion

The idea for this panel came from re-reading Tim Panton’s FOSDEM ‘Future of WebRTC’ and Arin/Alberto’s session on the WebRTC Landscape. And that got me thinking about the growing importance of WebRTC to Web3. David Dias (Protocol Labs) has pointed this out since he first presented at TADSummit in 2017.

We’re working on the questions and exact structure at the moment.

Panelists are:

  • Nikki Shum-Harden, ex-VP Marketing Subspace
  • Jayne Mast, Engineering Manager for DevRel at Daily
  • Amandine Le Pape, COO & co-founder at Element; Co-founder at The Matrix.org Foundation
  • Amber Lincoln, VP Customer Success, liveswitch
  • Tim Panton, Co-founder and CTO at Pi.pe
  • Arin Sime, CEO/Founder at AgilityFeat and WebRTC.ventures, Co-host of the Scaling Tech Podcast, and host of WebRTC Live

Building a sub-second virtual ThunderDome: Considerations for mass scale sub-second production broadcasts

Jerod Venema, CEO and Co-Founder, LiveSwitch

In the throes of the pandemic, the WWE debuted its ThunderDome, a world-first, large-scale installation of high resolution LED screens that transformed empty seats into live-streamed fans who joined over video from around the world. Performers in the ring and TV audiences at home could see and hear these virtual fans in real-time. LiveSwitch was selected to develop and manage the ThunderDome’s cloud video infrastructure.

  • How to enable low-latency, live video streamed via the internet capable of fostering real-time engagement between performers and audiences on a massive scale.
  • Massive-scale latency challenges and how to overcome them.
  • Current and future uses of programmable communications for live fan engagement.

Programmable Testing for Programmable Telcos

Andreas Granig, Founder & CEO at Sipfront

  • Advantages and Challenges of automating real-time communication testing
  • How real-time communication testing could actually be quite pleasant
  • Creative ways to use typical server-side applications like kamailio and rtpengine as test clients
  • The revival of sipp, and how you create test scenarios 20 years after its invention
  • “Just show me the curl command”

Wire raises €24m

Wire is a secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed and with the same impact that its founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 government and enterprise customers worldwide, including EY, Fortum, the German government and four other G7 governments. Recognized for its secure collaboration platform as a leader and high performer by G2 Crowd, IDC, Forrester and Gartner, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the most advanced end-to-end encryption.

Deja Vu on QoS APIs

I’m seeing lots of 5G QoS API mentions as the Ericsson / Vonage integration progresses, and all the OCS / PCRF (Online Charging System / Policy and Charging Rules Function) software gets the dust blown off it for another go with 5G.

Two decades ago the idea of turbo-boost on cable broadband began. Yep the fixed broadband ISPs have already been through the QoS API experimentation. When it comes to the ISP business, fixed were there first, there’s much mobile can learn from the fixed business.

And that led me to this article on my blog from 9 years ago. I gave workshops on what the cable folks learned from QoS APIs in the ’00s. Perhaps I should dust off those workshops?

OFCOM’s Media Nation 2022

Always a good factual read, some of the juicy insights this year include:

  • People aged 16-24 spend 53 minutes in front of broadcast TV on an average day, down 66% over the past decade. Adults aged over 65 by contrast spend an average of 5 hours and 50 minutes per day watching broadcast TV, slightly higher than 10 years ago.
  • While nine in ten 18-24-year-olds typically bypass TV channels and head straight to streaming when looking for something to watch, 59% of 55-64-year-olds and 76% of those aged 65+ still turn to TV channels first.
  • The change in consumption habits is borne out by an increasing dependence on a trio of streaming giants – Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. A fifth of UK homes (5.2 million) subscribe to all three platforms.

Looks like I’m in the 18-24 year old age group on viewing habits 🙂 We subscribe to Netflix and Prime, not Disney as we do not find their content that interesting.

Scientific American: The Robocalls Problem Is So Bad That the FCC Actually Did Something

We covered this in CXTech Week 30 2022, where the FCC issued cease-and-desist letters to eight providers: Call Pipe, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, SipKonnect, South Dakota Telecom, and Virtual Telecom. Finally naming names!

It’s nice to see Scientific American covering this issue, explaining why its taking so long, and why it’s unlikely to go away. SMS being a likely next target.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

David Walsh is now Director of Cloud Strategy and Business Development at Oracle. I’ve known David since his start-up Shango, one decade ago. He’s sponsored both TADHack and TADSummit over the years.

Dragana Linfield is now Senior Director of the Digital Transformation Team at Liberty Latin America. I’ve known Dragana through her time at Telefonica and Etisalat, and with a couple of US telecom companies. Dragana presented at the first TADSummit in 2013 in Bangkok.

Arnaud Budkiewicz is now Vice President, Engineering at Dialpad. I’ve known Arnaud for over a decade, since his time at his start-up BISTRI and the Paris WebRTC group.

Krista Wald is now Head of Communications, MANA at Ericsson.

Bashar Hlayel is now Procurement Department Head at Palestine Telecommunications Company – Paltel. And again I’ve known Bashar for one decade.

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