We recently moved mobile carrier, our monthly bill is close to one third of what we were paying with TMO (T-Mobile). Today we received one letter for each phone on the family plan asking for the return the CellSpot router, which we received back in 2015, yep about 6 years ago. See label below on […]
The purpose of this article is to explain a simple model to understand the programmable communications market. I divide the market into 3 domains: Aggregation, Technology, and Applications. I’ve shown a number of similar frameworks in the past, see this one from TADSummit 2018 given during the State of the Union presentation. The reason I […]
Introductory Comments Overall, it’s a rather telco-centric view in the Telecommunications Arena paper, which today is far broader than telcos. It’s the internet. Most communications today are over the internet, not the PSTN. Telcos provide access to the internet, i.e. to peering points, they are not the exclusive transport / network within the internet / […]
I’ve been repeating the ideas presented in this weblog quite often of late on the shift in telecoms, ever since TADSummit / TADHack Global in 2018. None of this is new, it’s simply packaging old ideas into an easy to digest form to better understand the shift in telecoms thanks to programmable telecoms, why digital transformation […]
IM (Instant Messaging) / chat has been around for a long time. Before AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, 1997) and ICQ (Internet Chat Query, 1996), there was the command line function ‘chat’ on unix (early 1980s) which evolved into IRC (Internet Relay Chat,1988); and for the VMS (Virtual Memory System) crowd there was phone (sometime in […]
Critical thinking is the objective analysis of facts to form a judgment. If I were to sum up the one skill I think has helped me throughout my career, it would be hard to find a better one than critical thinking. Unfortunately, we live in a world where opinions and facts are treated with equal weight, […]
I’m asked this question surprisingly often, “Alan, what is it that you do?” My stock answer is, “I wander the world helping people.” Which generally results in a wry smile from those who know me; else a questioning or annoyed look from someone who was expecting a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. When I […]
There are 3 principle reasons why analysts are wrong on many aspects of telecoms, because they: Believe the AR (Analyst Relations) / CFO (Chief Financial Officer) spin on the numbers and happily repeat them in their research notes. Its reportage and linear prediction on the story / spin given. Many industry analysts are ex-reporters, the trade […]
When Tyntec bought from Iris Wireless its peering agreement with Syniverse and SAP, one of only three contracts in existence, they opened up the old boys club of carrier interconnect in the US. Now tyntec are proposing to address one of the other dysfunctions of the US market by making long code A2P SMS work […]
The robustness of the A2P SMS market has surprised me, granted many analysts have been predicting its decline for the past 3-5 years, however, its continues to grow. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a number of things start to point towards the corner could be in sight. Personal experience (its always very […]