This article shares some of the important and unique insights generated through TADSummit 2024. Insights you’ll not read anywhere else, on where telecom innovation is going. We achieved over 65k views of the TADSummit 2024 presentations so far. An amazing result that demonstrates the interest TADSummit generates because of our focus is truth and integrity, they matter to most people and businesses.

Part 1 provides more information on what TADSummit achieved in audience engagement, the 50k views is now 65k. hSenid Mobile showed the way forward in service innovation, SMS and WhatsApp, not RCS. And we reviewed all the juicy Voice AI insights.

Real World Innovation

Our opening keynote was with Raj Sunder from Wootag. We’ve had thousands of innovators through TADSummit and TADHack over the years. Each innovator shares their learning, their trials, and tribulations; it’s always unique. When Raj presented at TADSummit 2013 he was with Bakrie Telecom, where he ran Value Added Services, and presented on bringing the internet’s model of freemium to telecoms.

Shortly after TADSummit 2013 he set about launching Wootag. Then at TADHack 2015 he took part with a hack mashing up Wootag and Apidaze (a TADHack sponsor) and won! That success gave him the spur to make Wootag a reality. Raj presents the reality of innovation, you do not get it right the first time, you have a concept, and with the customer(s) you discover what works. And adapt to survive, e.g. through COVID.

For brands wootag drives:

• Engagement through the multimedia interactivity, seeing an interesting tennis racket and clicking on the wootag.
• Behavioral platform (intents), discovering the person likes tennis, and plays tennis after they clicked on the wootag.
• Personalization, for example highlighting the tennis facilities at a resort they are communicating to that target.

Raj give a frank review of how they survived COVID as marketing budgets were slashed, people worked from home, and customers were no longer buying certain things. Wootag evolved its business by focusing on:

• High repeat customers, not acquisition
• Customer success
• Decentralized approach as customers worked from home.

Coming out of COVID to achieve its 3X growth target, wootag expanded its scope by:

• Any media, not just videos.
• Country focus: India, MENA, North America.
• Personalization: Increased conversion rates based on intent.
• People: everyone is hands on.

And now Raj is onto unleads.ai, based on his experiences with Wootag. TADSummit does not pretend to be an incubator or start-up factory. Rather a group of experienced innovators in programmable telecoms / communications that help people who ask for help. We have over 1100 tadhack videos as testament to the impact we’ve had on innovators. And those are just the pitches recorded. For several locations the numbers of teams were so high 50-70 pitches were given, and perhaps 15 would make it through to the final round and be recorded.

Please reach out to Raj if you have any questions, you’ll find the TADS community is open and always willing to help

Honesty is essential to Innovation

Dave Horton is the creator of jambonz, the open source voice gateway for CX/AI; and drachtio.org, the open source framework for SIP Server applications.

Dave pivots from the usual platform / technology focus to a business focus.

Dave frames what jambonz will become: like Intel, Gore Tex, Vibram and Dolby Digital. Jambonz’ objective is to become an ingredient brand. You buy a hiking jacket, as it has the Gore Tex tag, the walking shoe as it has Vibram sole, the PC has an intel inside. The product is elevated by the ingredient brand, over a no-name brand.

I’d argue Jambonz is already an ingredient brand today. Cognigy is elevated as a brand, because I know is has Jambonz inside. A platform with decades of hard won voice experience. I’ve witnessed Jambonz used in hacks around the world through TADHack.

Dave highlights most of the panelist in the TADSummit panel discussion use Jambonz, “Are LLMs about to disrupt enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service)?” Jambonz is carrying millions of calls in Fortune 50 businesses through its partners.

This is the logo slide I’ve been waiting for. From cool new brands to large established ones. Sound of data does the voting for the EuroVision song contest, a large dynamic range in load. Cognigy and Kore.ai are in the large global enterprise league, and use Jambonz as their voice gateway. So need reliability, performance, and guard rails.

While the ‘cool new innovators’ also use Jambonz to help them move off Twilio. It’s truly the breadth of the market. Jambonz is at the intersection of voice, AI, and telephony. All customers are feeding back many new features.

Why has Jambonz been so successful? Excellent product market fit. Dave uses the analogy like buying a car with an engine (voice) in another place. Jambonz enables the engine to be in the car, hence a complete solution. So the Fortune 500 company as everything is on site, and one vendor to solve any problem that arises. And Jambonz is malleable, configure and customize to the specific customer’s needs.

Dave introduces FirstFive8, the commercial entity. Manages the projects and community, delivers commercial services, owns the software copyrights and IP, and is self-funded, cash flow positive, and growing. Woohoo! Definitely talk with Dave to understand the self funded model, it is not easy.

The team is now 6 people, and provides 7/24 global support. FirstFive8 is not an open source company, its focus is selling the tools for those in the AI gold rush, that is:

• Cost effective and scaleable telephony
• Widest range of speech and LLM integrations
• Best in class dev environment
• Deep telephony and voice expertise.

Dave has focused on organic growth, avoiding investor pressure. I’ve seen some telephony open source projects get dumped because investors wanted their exit. The interesting thing is FF8 does award 2% of equity to partners and initial customers. It’s an interesting model. Making money with open source in telecom related projects is a challenge, compared to web and IT domains. However, Dave seems to have found a way, where people who bet on him see a return, beyond being powered by Jambonz. Honesty pays in the long run.

Programmable Global Carrier Digital Services, Sebastian Schumann, Deutsche Telekom

Not all innovators are independent entrepreneurs. Some work in large organizations, yet achieve impressive results, because they learn from the TADS community. We are unique, do not follow the Ericsson / Nokia sanctioned story, and hence help thousands of entrepreneurs be successful. Notice, I am excluded from any Network API discussion. I find it funny that OneAPI never existed in the Ericsson / Nokia sanctioned story.

Sebastian has been part of TADHack and TADSummit since almost the beginning. Here is Sebastian’s hack from TADHack 2024, Global Carrier vCon extension. We kick off Sebastian’s session with Thomas paying respect for what he built, in demonstrating how easy vCon can be integrated with a carrier’s wholesale CPaaS.

You’ll hear reference to TelecomsXChange and how its Transforming the CSP’s Wholesale Business with Ameed Jamous. We’ve had AJ on the TADSummit Podcast as well as TADSummit over the years. Last year we discussed with Telin running TADS at their event. At TADSummit we’re always honest, no BS, and showcasing the best innovations in programmable communications. Sebastian’s slides are here.

What Sebastian has created with SignalWire is winning customers away from Twilio, because of its local focus. See Matteo’s keynote on the importance of local focus in, Conquer the world or win the customer? Matteo Gatta, Founder GenNoor, ex-CEO BICS. The winning strategy is customer focus, and Sebastian has created a great offer.

Sebastian emphasizes this is within the context of wholesale services, where orders are completed on sheets of paper and faxed. That’s still done today. Also they have made it easy for wholesale customers to resell the services, as well as aggregate them, adding value to make it easier for their customers.

Sebastian runs through the service portfolio, including portal as a service for reselling. They also have a number of custom apps, such as email to SMS, and least cost routing. Because the platform is programmable its relatively easy to create these custom apps.

An important feature of this platform is the numbers are all direct because they are a carrier, there’s no grey routes or other shenanigans. This is important to brands in these days of rampant AIT and customer privacy. Ensuring customers have clean and compliant services.

Through the portal the full portfolio of services is available, and customers can resell with their own branding. DT partners with other carriers so they can aggregate for example identity. Sebastian reviews how they use their network for most traffic, and have in some cases trusted one hop partners, and their messaging hub includes a firewall, like we saw with BT Group to keep traffic clean.

Their focus on Europe is helping them win customers, like VirtualQ, compared to other solutions running on big tech like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

On AI Agents, this is a work in progress. They integrate with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and any LLM that follows the OpenAI format. SignalWire has SWAIG (SignalWire AI Gatekeeper) which they are investigating. Currently, the customer makes their AI model decision and can integrate with DT’s WFA (Workflow Automation).

Seeing what Sebastian has achieved is impressive, and I feel TADSummit and TADHack have helped him over the years. Reach out to Sebastian to get a dose of truth in programmable communications, rather than the nonsense being pedalled by the establishment.