Johnny promised to be focused on this podcast, no running around. The movie he referred to is ‘The In-Laws‘, here’s the video of the scene with ‘serpentine’, that is running around to avoid being shot.
The focus for this podcast is Twilio and the GTC Report on TCR.
The CTIA / FCC / FTC have a meeting in DC tomorrow. There appears to be concern on what the TCR has said about its role, we covered this in “Was the FCC Lied to? What the FCC was told on SMS spam” and “TCR: Responsibility without Control.” The key quote from TCR is:
We also clarified TCR’s role in the messaging ecosystem, explaining that the company collects and validates information regarding campaign service providers’ customers and their messaging campaigns, but does not, and is not able to, view the content of, filter, or block messages sent by campaign service providers’ customers to mobile subscribers.
TCR Filing made on Feb 7th 2024 to the FCC, https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10207829015272/1
Over the weekend I published a post referencing Microsoft’s concern on the election risk from China, “At what point will the US government act?” Referencing all the public statements from Rick Joyce and others on the risks and evidence of China’s involvement, plus the sustained campaign against those statements.
I finished asking the question at the end, “Is the MEF, Tata Communications, Kaleyra, and The Campaign Registry acting in the best interests of the US?” Microsoft is highlighting the risk of election interference, Rick Joyce with the highest security clearance has been highlighting this since last year. Are they simply xenophobes? As claimed by the detractors. I think not.
The core of the US SMS industry is Twilio, it must not fail. As shared on last week’s podcast they could be behind the fact the TCR has no numbers given the prepayment they made to the TCR. The Syniverse deal remains unclear. The activist investors with such a small holding are able to have significant control over the Twilio board. Something does not sit right in the current situation.
Johnny deep dives into this and why it’s important the Twilio employees (Twilions) take the lead in forcing Twilio to come clean to the industry and then enable the industry to expand through open competition, no more messaging monopolies.
We then review the GTC Report on TCR. Its highly political, missing a major stakeholder, Twilio, and many others, e.g. CSPs (Campaign Service Providers) and brands. Increasingly the CSPs feel they are being squeezed out of the industry. The concerns on Data Security: “Kaleyra’s ownership of TCR.” Its now Tata Communications’ ownership of the TCR, and Tata Communications used TCR data as soon as the acquisition was complete. That concern was demonstrated to be true.
The T-Mobile interview quote backs up the ownership concern
Regardless of data protection, there was a commitment to get out of the messaging space to keep TCR proposition ‘clean’.
A relationship meant to be based on trust but ‘built on a lie’.
GTC Report Slide 23
The GTC report and the current crapification of the PSTN shows that the Industry needs to come. The evidence we’ve exposed over the past 9 months continues to be backed up by third parties, see Microsoft’s recent post on China and the GTC report.
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