Podcast Directory

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 as they 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 money 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 by their lawyers 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, he and Johnny have already had a chat. 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 posting was a surprised.

I pushed back, at least someone was talking about AIT in an open way, I asked 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 apparently corrupt.

All this 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.