The purpose of this CXTech Week 25 2023 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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Covered this week:

• Writes With on Steven Goodwin
• IoT SIM Testing with Stacuity
• TADSummit 2023, 19-20 October in Paris and online registration is live
• Irish Regulator, ComReg, gets serious on scam texts and calls
• FTC Data Shows Text-based Bank Impersonation is Most-Reported Scam
• IKEA bets on remote interior design as AI changes sales strategy
• People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Writes With on Steven Goodwin

Steven Goodwin, a TADHack regular, known as the Marquis de Geek, is a software engineer by trade. However, he has far too many other interests and so considers himself a general-purpose computer geek. His latest book is called 20 GOTO 10 and is a book about retro computers and how they’re connected through numbers. Each section links to others through these numbers, like a ‘Choose your own adventure’ book.

Writes With is a blog about writers, it provides some background on the author, the hardware they use, when and where they write, and their dream writing set-up.

IoT SIM Testing with Stacuity

On 21-22 October 2023 we have TADHack Global. Stacuity is a global sponsor. One of the many sponsor benefits of TADHack is being able to test your SIMs globally. I received a couple of Stacuity SIMs for testing on the US networks, as well as some stickers! I found my SIM tray pin thingy, as unfolded paper clips or drawing pins never work reliably.

I started on my OnePlus 6, which was released in May 2018. Amazing the phone is nearly 5 years old and still going strong. I activated the first SIM, checked to see which networks were available, and reported back to Stacuity the first SIM was active. The 313100 network is the AT&T First Responders Network.

We then cycled through the mobile networks checking not just connectivity but also roaming data worked and at what throughput. We have lots of countries involved with TADHack this year, it’s going to be great for Stacuity to test out their SIMs around the world. Some of the locations we’re hoping to add to TADHack this year include: Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Kaduna, Kampala, Lagos, and the comfort of your home.

TADSummit 2023, 19-20 October in Paris and online registration is live.

Logistics and Registration is here: https://tadsummit.com/2023/logisitcs/

Agenda is here: https://blog.tadsummit.com/2023/03/14/tadsummit-2023-agenda/

Just added presentation from Ken Herron, UIB, and Celeo Aria, PAiC. On “How a legacy 80s technology is delivering ChatGPT to developing countries – AI over USSD.”

Lots to add to the agenda, we have a no ‘BS policy’, it’s the only place to understand the truth in programmable communications / telecoms. I guarantee you’ll be shocked by this year’s content! Check out Johnny Tarone’s post on TADSummit. Plus where else will be see presentations that include Madonna, breakdancing, and USSD.

TADSummit is now in its eleventh year. If you’re working in enterprise communication or telecoms; then programmable telecoms / communications is in your future if its not already in your present. TADSummit delivers a ‘no BS’ firehose of insights and hard-won experiences. Ignore TADSummit at your peril!

Irish Regulator, ComReg, gets serious on scam texts and calls

Scam texts and calls costs €300m a year – ComReg

The cost of scam texts and calls to Irish society is conservatively estimated at more than €300 million a year according to the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, which has outlined a plan to clampdown on fraudulent communications.

The costs break down as €115m due to scam SMS texts and €187m due to scam calls.

“These scams are a blight on society and cause significant financial and economic damage to all sectors of society including consumers, business, and public bodies,” ComReg said in a statement.

“Scams also diminish the trust placed by consumers and businesses in calls and SMS, thereby undermining the benefits of such services,” the regulator said.

Let’s see is similar action follows these strong words.

FTC Data Shows Text-based Bank Impersonation is Most-Reported Scam

A new analysis from the Federal Trade Commission shows that bogus bank fraud warnings were the most common form of text message scam reported to the agency, and that many of the most common text scams impersonate well-known businesses. 

In a newly issued data spotlight, the FTC ranks the top five types of text message scam reported in 2022, with examples of each showing the ways that scammers craft messages designed to deceive consumers. Consumers reported losing $330 million to text message scams in 2022, more than doubling what was reported in 2021.

The analysis looked at a random sample of 1,000 text messages reported to the FTC, finding that fake bank security messages, often supposedly from large banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, were the most common type. These texts are designed to create a sense of urgency, often by asking people to verify a large transaction they did not make. Those who respond are connected to a fake bank representative. Reports of texts impersonating banks have increased nearly twentyfold since 2019.

After bank impersonation, the most frequently reported text scams were: messages claiming to offer a free gift, often from a cell phone carrier or retailer; fake claims of package delivery issues from the USPS, UPS, or FedEx; phony job offers for things like mystery shopping and car wrapping; and bogus Amazon security alerts.

Stronger intervention is required as the scams are become surprisingly sophisticated, e.g. changing the font of one letting in a URL, so it looks genuine, but most certainly is not. Metacert from Paul Walsh would detect that immediately.

IKEA bets on remote interior design as AI changes sales strategy

IKEA is training call centre workers to become interior design advisers as the Swedish furniture giant aims to offer more home improvement services and hand run-of-the-mill customer queries to an artificial intelligence bot called Billie.

In April, IKEA expanded its interior design services to the UK and United States, after previous launches in parts of Europe, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. In the UK, customers pay 25 pounds ($31.44) for a 45-60 minute interior design advice video call and suggested product list, and can pay 125 pounds for three workspace design consultations, a floor plan and 3D visuals.

Ingka says it has trained 8,500 call centre workers as interior design advisers since 2021, while Billie – launched the same year with a name inspired by IKEA’s Billy bookcase range – has handled 47% of customers’ queries to call centres over the past two years.

“We’re committed to strengthening co-workers’ employability in Ingka, through lifelong learning and development and reskilling, and to accelerate the creation of new jobs,” said Ulrika Biesert, global people and culture manager at Ingka Group.

Asked if the increased use of AI was likely to lead to a reduction in headcount at the company, Biesert said: “That’s not what we’re seeing right now.”

Sales by phone or video of products and services through Ingka’s remote interior design channel accounted for 1.3 billion euros ($1.40 billion) of revenue in Ingka’s 2022 financial year – 3.3% of the total. Ingka Group aims to grow that share to 10% by 2028 as part of a push to appeal to future Gen Z customers.

In comparison, online sales of products via IKEA’s website, which is owned by Ingka, amounted to around 9.9 billion euros, or 25% of total sales in Ingka’s financial year ending Aug. 31, 2022.

In many of these applications, meeting with the people implementing these changes is critical. That’s why we’re really happy that at TADSummit Paul Sweeney will be giving a session on: “From Communications to Conversations – What’s Changed And How It Might Matter.”

Paul Sweeney, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder, Webio.

• Conversational AI (CAI) Today: LLM’s + NLU + Workflows = Stateful Conversations
• CAI Evolving
• CPaaS to CXPaaS may be driven by Conversational AI (CAI)
• Voice Interaction – Cui Bono?
• Personal Assistant Will Be The Future
• Conversational Experiences are all about the data
• So What?
  • CPaaS and CCTR (Contact Center) need to figure out what part of this future service infrastructure they own, provide, or maintain
  • Just like Slack got clobbered by Teams, there is a good chance every CPaaS gets clobbered by ChatGPT
  • The Data / API availability on the Enterprise side is still “not in great shape” for many legacy companies.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Tim Whitley awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday honours list for services to Communication Technologies and to Scientific Policy. I’ve known Tim since my time at BT Labs where he was part of the corporate research program.

Mark Hollett is now New Business Sales Director EMEA at Friend MTS. I’ve known Mark since his time at TiVo.

 Kevin Brown is now Senior Enterprise Architect – Mobile at Vodafone Oman. I’ve known Kevin for a couple of decades, I remember pitching presence APIs at an Orange meeting he was part of.

Olle Johansson added a role as a team leader at the Robust DNS project is funded through cooperation between SUNETVetenskapsrådet / Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority. Supporting organisations are Internetstiftelsen and Netnod.

The Robust DNS project going to develop the DNS Tapir – DNS Threat and Privacy Internet Research – Open Source software. A platform to be able to react quickly when bad things happen and generate statistics about DNS usage but still respect the user’s privacy.

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