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Part 2 starts with a review of the US market, how Twilio was paid to send and receive SMS, and was only charged a small fee by the carriers. However, the carriers saw the charges Twilio was making to its customers, and used TCR (The Campaign Registry) to raise pricing to 0.5/1c per SMS on the pretend of spam reduction. The stock market reset was broad across programmable communications companies, e.g. Zoom was also hit, though their costs were unchanged.

TCR was supposed to stop SMS spam, however, we see the lack of spam control every day in our messaging inbox. Check out the Messaging Monopolies article for an in-depth review of what happened there.

Johnny makes the point that people made their money during the stock market peak, like Jeff from Twilio, and today there is no run-up potential. The stock market has done with CPaaS. Which impacts investment potential. Twilio’s buybacks from activist shareholder pressure has had little impact, see below. Sinch has nearly 1B outstanding shares so is going nowhere. For Infobip, an IPO after a $800M investment, its spin on the Nokia partnership, and moving away from SMS firewall deals to look cleaner is challenging.

Johnny then focused on how The Vis will build his personal brand in the US, as a Bird IPO is more likely in the US than Europe, and his brand will be part of that.

The Vis brings the discussion back to the lack of need for the MEF in the Industry. Bird has never been part of the MEF. MEF claims its purpose is to tackle fraud, yet as The Vis says, the fraudsters are on the MEF’s board. This is a concern for many members of the MEF, not just Bird.

The Vis also highlight the crazy situation about 5 years ago, that Bird could not get a carrier connection without being a member of the MEF. They fought against that rule and won, this shows the old-boys network is restricting competition. Johnny refers to other nefarious activities of the MEF. We’ll review them another time, The Vis is the focus on this podcast.

There’s a slight diversion onto Telegram’s founder/CEO arrest in France. Pavel has hired some high power lawyers, so let’s see what happens there. But France appears to be trying to enforce moderation on those platforms.

On Bird’s future The Vis makes 2 critical points:

• This is a long haul play; and
• Focus needs to be on customer value, NOT money, that comes after.

The Vis divides the industry into 3 buckets, red (fraudsters), grey (depends) and white (customer focused like Messente); 90-95% of the market are in the red and gray buckets. Hence the methods proposed in the Definitive Truth in A2P SMS.

Because of all the legacy agreements and back room deals in the industry, to focus on customer value requires a long haul focus.

Now at this point Johnny has another go at trying to sell Tyntec. The Vis is clear, there is nothing in Tyntec he wants to buy, as he has a mobile core, like Tyntec. This is a critical learning point for Johnny. Only an aggregator without a mobile core would be interested. The Vis is adamant, only if Tyntec is free would he be interested.

Johnny realizes Bird is not an exit. So at that point on the call, he realizes his next best option is litigation with a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit. WOW! You saw it here first!

We then jump onto AIT with synthetic identities used for account creation. With someone in the SMS chain terminating the messages and revenue sharing. I disagree on whether it can be stopped. But the industry needs to get serious about doing so as the tools are there as explained in Definitive Truth in A2P SMS. But given self-interest I’m dubious about whether coordinated industry action will happen in the real-world.

We then jump onto RCS, and how thanks to Google and Apple there could be a route forward after years of negativity. There’s now distribution, outside the carrier. The Vis posits there will be a switch as the SMS ecosystem will collapse as it all moves to IP messaging by Apple and Google. Who no longer need TCR, PE groups looking to buy the TCR take note. You can call it RCS, but it’s Apple and Google in the driving seat. And this drives Bird’s strategy with giving messaging away as there’s no more money on the transport bit of the industry.

In part 3 the insightful discussion continues. But wow, RICO suites, the end of days in SMS, and the long slow shift in the industry as the focus needs to be on customer value.