CXTech Week 37 2024 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 37 2024 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:

• Ericsson continues to repeat history with the old "between Gs Playbook."

• Podcast 92: Truth in Telecoms, Bill's Federal Complaint is Moving

• Added a can not miss TADSummit panel session on "Are LLMs about to disrupt enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service)?

• All CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) must send T-Mobile US bound SMS campaign traffic to Infobip, NOT Syniverse.

• People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Ericsson continues to repeat history with the old "between Gs Playbook."

Check out these 2 announcements, 12 years apart:

"GSMA and WAC Join Forces to Accelerate Mobile Applications Market"

https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/gsma-and-wac-join-forces-to-accelerate-mobile-applications-market/

"Global telecom leaders join forces to redefine the industry with network APIs"

https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2024/9/global-telecom-leaders-join-forces-to-redefine-the-industry-with-network-apis

As I've said since the beginning of Camara, its OneAPI 2.0. They're even repeating the press releases!

It will be interesting to see how this fits into the large established anti-fraud ecosystem: Mastercard (Ekata, a Mastercard company), Experian, TransUnion, AsiaVerify, trustingSocial, IDlayr, Okta, LexisNexis, Prove, Telesign, SEON, Socure, etc.

Low latency is a critical requirement with SIM Swap. Most of the IP based solutions are database lookup speed.

I wonder how this dovetails into existing solutions / experience built on telco capabilities, e.g. Telesign, Prove?

Yep, Telesign brings multiple services within its framework. That framework evolves and flexes to the many customer needs around the world. That's one of the reasons why Twilio succeeded and carriers did not with OneAPI. The biggest mistake is creating a standard API, its perverse.

A FinTech in Indonesia has very different requirements to a bank in Germany. It's a solved problem, though many issues remain, e.g. latency. A back office upgrade is really required for most telcos to make SIM swap work fast enough, not adding additional layers. Yes, I know the claim is a venturing model to accelerate things. But look who's running it.

The local 5GSA use case scenario is a tough one. For the stadium owner WiFi gives better economies of scale, across all enterprises, and avoids specialized apps. That's why provisioning remains to dominant method, no need for network APIs and the associated maintenance burden.

One difference to the last time is the relatively broad industry skepticism that comes from the failure of OneAPI, and the typical vendor playbook of, 'create a story to keep carriers spending on us between XG and (X+1)G.' IMS was the last used playbook.

The industry toadies are busy spinning, 'banks love this', 'SIM swap through the Camara stack works perfectly with no latency issues', 'standard APIs make things better'. Some of the same telecom toadies that backed OneAPI over one decade ago are back again, they have no shame. If you're a developer or telco, beware. And if you choose not to be aware, that's OK, I've said my peace.

Podcast 92: Truth in Telecoms, Bill's Federal Complaint is Moving

This is a useful review of where we are across:

• All the fun we had with The Vis

• The Problem with Twilio

• Bill Peter’s Complaint

• Artificially Inflated Traffic

The video contains so much more than I can write. Johnny does a good job reviewing the story so far. I provide below a sample of some of the points covered, but you know Johnny!

Fun with The Vis:

Check out the 45 min session with Robert Vis, founder & CEO Bird. He is the most open and honest leader in our industry. Johnny wants to give him an award because he loves him so much. TADS does not do awards, awards are for losers. The Vis’ achievements in the industry are what matter. Johnny estimates Bird’s IPO could be in the range $10-30B.

If you only have 6 minutes for The Vis. We reduced the 45 min podcast into his the best 6 shorts.

The Problem with Twilio (and Syniverse)

I know some people have struggled to understand the specifics of Johnny’s beef with Twilio. He can tend to race through his thoughts. The first point is its Twilo and Syniverse are financially joined at the hip.

Here is the hard decision The Vis made to reduce spam, stopping automatic onboarding that many in the industry still allow. This is a rare decision in the industry to help their business protect people from spam. Well done.

We saw last month T-Mobile turn off Syniverse, my spam plummeted, I covered that in this post. Finally, an operator taking back control of SMS, well, at least an important first step.

Johnny reviews some history on how AT&T implemented TCR with Hook Mobile, even though CTIA had ‘awarded’ it to iConectiv. AT&T’s concern was iConectiv runs the relatively high cost SCR (short code registry). Then Twilio did a pre-payment to TCR, of perhaps $7-8m, which resulted in TCR losing customers. Bill was CFO of the TCR and investigated what was going on. He discovered the prepayment deal and that the numbers had been removed from TCR. With no numbers in TCR, spamming was much easier. We covered this in the messaging monopolies post last year

The beef with Twilio/Syniverse is they make lots of month from spam. They spam grandma.

Bill Peter’s Complaint

Bill discovered the change in TCR, along with a list of other violations in Kaleyra, covered in Bill’s complaint. These discoveries led to the incompetent framing of Bill in an attempt to have him fired for cause. The lawfare against Bill and colleagues has resulted in several exceptionally angry judges: Judge Colleen McMahon and Judge David J. Novak. Johnny makes repeated calls for Tata Communications to investigate what is going on as their reputation is being besmirched as more facts come to light.

The event that has moved the complaint forward is the federal judge in charge of the case has asked for the parties to outline their cases so he can review. Given the delay in the Arbitration, perhaps the judge will move forward with the complaint independent of the arbitration, especially given Judge Colleen McMahon ‘s view on the situation, “Long, drawn-out, lawless litigation.”

Artificially Inflated Traffic

I posted with commentary one of Vox Solutions AIT posts. Its insightful and opens up what is going on in AIT. The CEO of Vox Solutions has an invitation to join us on the TADSummit Podcast. Boy, I received quite a few comments on that post, not only from Vox competitors, but people who had left the industry. The general comment was, that’s rich to be quoting Vox Solutions, given what they do in AIT.

I’d heard that accusation many times in the past from people I trust and respect their domain knowledge, but the size of the reaction to my reposting was a surprised.

I pushed back, at least someone was talking about AIT in an open way, asking for them to make their claims public. I did receive this link, which given the trust I have in the people who explained the situation published. Also the industry fora blocks open discussion, e.g. the MEF chairman instructs MEF members to ignore my work. The people complaining about Vox, saw their membership as the prime example of how the MEF is corrupt.

All this also kicked off Johnny into a swearing fit, hence all the buzzer sounds.

Bottom-line, unless the truth is exposed, we can not begin to clean up the industry.

Added a can not miss TADSummit panel session on "Are LLMs about to disrupt enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service)?

Added a can not miss TADSummit panel session on "Are LLMs about to disrupt enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service)?"

https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/07/26/tadsummit-2024-agenda/

With people working at the coalface of conversation intelligence
Karel Bourgois, Voxist
Lyle Pratt, Vida Global
Paul Sweeney, Webio
Nikhil Gupta, Vapi
RJ Burnham, Consig AI

In 2020 we ran a panel at TADSummit on "Serverless and RTC (Real Time Communications)." The conclusions from that panel continue to ring true today, 4 years later. The importance of examining the specific workloads, AGM (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) define developer fashion, so serverless is required to remain relevant. The key is some workloads are well suited to serverless, and some like the real time communications core are not, even today. We brought together people working at the coalface of that segment, the results passed the test of time, it's something to be proud of. https://blog.tadsummit.com/2020/11/02/serverless-and-rtc-panel-discussion/

One of the current memes on LLMs (Large Language Models) is their impending disruption of enterprise SaaS. An AI agent is claimed to replace many enterprise SaaS, across customer communications, workflows, accounting, sales operations, enterprise resource planning, etc.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO Klarna, announced earlier this year that Klarna’s OpenAI-powered assistant handled two thirds of the fintech’s customer service chats in its first month. Replacing 700 full-time contractors, a projected $40M saving. They've shut down SFDC and Workday SaaS. Klarna is a major data point.

Yet, when I examine what the innovators are doing, it's highly focused, so the problem is constrained. Webio - debt conversations, Vida - specific SME customer conversations and scheduling, Voxist - I think is the broadest offer at the moment on capturing enterprise processes through voice. From academics I'm seeing discussions on the need to combine LLM + ML (Machine Learning) to deliver unique insights and fewer hallucinations.

1) The shift seems to be predicated on Agentic Architectures. What is an Agentic Architecture? What are the factors impacting its development?
2) Most see Vertical LLM’s being the sweet spot, given the limited availability of enterprise data. Everything else gets eaten by the LLM Platforms (OpenAI, etc.). Are these assumptions correct?
3) Where do you see the current Agentic Architecture successes? What are the numbers? What are the timelines, 2, 5, 10 years?
4) How does LLM/Agentic change the specifics of what CX/xCaaS does today? Voice, Messaging/ RCS, eMail, Webchat = channels but what happens in and around these channels in this future picture.

All CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) must send T-Mobile US bound SMS campaign traffic to Infobip, NOT Syniverse.

All CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) must send T-Mobile US bound SMS campaign traffic to Infobip, NOT Syniverse. This has been confirmed through a number of reliable sources.

It also means all new campaigns are unfortunately vetted twice, which slows things down.

In related news, since August 27 I have not received any SMS SPAM, that's almost 2 weeks! T-Mobile is my carrier. Finally, a carrier has taken control of SMS, well done T-Mobile ❤️, as explained in the Definitive Truth in A2P SMS, https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/08/12/definitive-truth-in-a2p-sms/.

And then as I was writing this post, I received a spam SMS :( Let's see what happens. A multi-pronged defense is required. Likely with Syniverse closed down, the spammers move back to SIM boxes. Which as we covered in the Definitive Truth in A2P SMS, Wadaro has a solution for that. https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/08/12/definitive-truth-in-a2p-sms/

I must admit the past 2 spam free weeks were pleasant. Only by exposing the truth on spam and robocalling can we motivate customer-centric action.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Pedro Pereira is now a Business Advisor for executives in startups and scale-ups to drive revenue growth, improve organizational excellence and enhance company culture. I've known Pedro for about 15 years, since his time in WIT-Software during the very early days of RCS.

Rick Joyce is now General Counsel at Wadaro. Rick is the author behind, "The Campaign Registry and Foreign Ownership: A Matter of National Security." He had hit jobs attempted by Commsrisk (link has been removed) and Latham Watkins.

Jon Spinney is now Head of Products, et al at Locance. I've known Jon since his time at AT&T working on APIs.

Terry Hsiao is now s Managing Partner at Bonhope Capital. Terry recently settled his long drawn out case against Kaleyra, reported here. As you can read in the report, the judge was extremely unhappy with Kaleya / Tata Communications' lawyers. This is an example of lawfare, and people in our industry are just left to fend for themselves. Note Kaleyra went public through a SPAC, before the SEC put in some protections, generally for investors, not employees.

Holly Depies is now The SMS Queen at Self-employed.

Daniela Puzzo is now VP Marketing at Coconut Software. We first met when she worked for Fonolo.

Sam Pamma is now  General Manager at Tirum UK Consulting Ltd.

 Gioacchino La Vecchia is now Head of Service Delivery at Cives. I've known Gioacchino since his days in H3G (Italy).

Naveen Bhat is CEO of 25yearsmore, in AgeTech.

Jim Tavares is now Senior Director Security Solutions / Security Center of Excellence at Cohesity. I've known Jim for 20 years, since his time at Dynamicsoft, bought by Cisco.

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