This article focuses on TADSummit and TADHack’s secret sauce, honesty and integrity, and why it should matter to everyone in the industry. Part 2 will focus on all the unique and world class insights shared at TADSummit 2024.

The beginning

TADSummit began in 2013, bringing together innovators in programmable telecoms. We recently had Raj Sunder founder and CEO of Wootag and unlead kick off TADSummit 2024, https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/11/12/raj-sunder/. Raj was one of the original presenters at TADSummit 2013. Back then he was heading up VAS (Value Added Services) for Bakrie Telecom. Raj won at TADHack in 2015, with Wootag, and that win set off his Wootag and now unlead journeys.

At the first TADSummit in 2013 we decided, let’s do a hackathon. Here are all the videos from the first TADHack in 2014.  Companies were founded, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWpZ31J3r0U. Couples who hack together, stay together, and that remains a TADHack theme with another TADHack marriage this year. Many couples who hacked at TADHack now have families with young kids, sometimes they even manage to squeeze in a hack! 

Today

The technologies hacked on this year include: vCon from STROLID (a file type for conversations). TNID from TSG Global (Trusted Number ID, trusted communications), and SWAIG (SignalWire AI Gateway). Using an API to build a hack today is uncommon. Check out Ideamart, the most popular method remains its no-code templates from 2013.

Deutsche Telekom had a successful CPaaS launch using SignalWire, winning a Twilio customer (VirtualQ) because of its focus on a sovereign implementation. Check out Sebastian’s TADSummit presentation. Sebastian has been part of TADS since almost the beginning.

Listening to the customer is the super-strength. Camara was not built with adequate customer input, and is repeating the mistakes of OneAPI. I see vendors lying about how banks love the SIM swap API. The reality is banks consider SIM swap a carrier problem because their employees are easily bribed. Having carriers ask to be paid for a slow API that does not guarantee the SIM swap status is an insult as far as the bank is concerned. The industry must stop lying to itself. That is the core reason for the lack of innovation.

The importance of Truth and Integrity

To innovate the industry needs to be honest with itself. The reason TADSummit and TADHack have punched way above their weight-class is because of Truth and Integrity, it’s in our policies. While industry fora collude and cover-up the reality of the CPaaS industry, TADS helps everyone understand the reality, and shows how the industry can move forward with customer focus.

A2P SMS customer theft and monopolistic pricing has never been higher. Twitter complained about telcos stealing $60M a year using AIT (Artificially Inflated Traffic), https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/10/26/the-honest-cpaas-review/.

Businesses in LATAM are being subjected to 250%, 267%, and 6600% price increases for international A2P SMS as global aggregators (CPaaS) squeeze out the local aggregators. And we’re seeing even local A2P SMS price increases of 1125%. https://alanquayle.com/2024/11/latam-a2p-sms/.

The industry’s reaction is a shrug of the shoulders, and to ignore the customers’ terrible situations. The loss of honesty and integrity in SMS is forcing businesses to WhatsApp, email, passkeys, flash calls, gray routes, in-app, etc.

Call to Action

If honesty and integrity matter to you, TADSummit and TADHack are your Secret Sauce for success in programmable communications. Stop wasting money on organizations that support customer theft through ignoring it, or unenforced codes of conduct. Support truth and integrity, that’s a TADS’ policy since 2013.