Event Review

By The Numbers, The Honest CPaaS Review

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TADSummit is the thought-leadership event in programmable communications / telecoms for over ten years. I’ve been in programmable telecoms / communications since my startup Teltier, founded in 2000.

TADSummit delivers the truth, no BS. Truth you can build your business on. We’re able to do that because many of our presenters are small and medium businesses. If they are wrong, their business ceases to exist, hence they tend to be right. Large telecom vendors get their revenue regardless of being right.

I’ve noticed a movement in the echochamber of the industry, rather than ignoring TADSummit; exposing the truth gets labelled as “being negative”. That is a lie. Change is only possible by understanding the current situation. The industry is currently lying to itself, so change can not happen.

Exposing the truth is the most positive and customer focused thing we can do. Ignoring the theft of $60M from Twitter for close to 2 years is the most negative thing the industry can do.

It’s about time the industry got behind TADSummit’s focus on honesty. The claim, “We must restore trust” is nonsense. Trust comes after honesty. The industry needs to focus first on honesty.

This presentation is long, 1h15. Recorded at the end of Day 1 of TADSummit and an intense TADHack weekend, so there are a few too many ‘ers and ums’, my apologies. This presentation provides a review of the actual state of the CPaaS industry. Everything is referenced to public sources, and brings together the expertise of an industry. A few of people prepared to be named are: Robert Vis, Daniel Gill, Kevin Graham, Rick Joyce, Johnny Tarone, YouMail, truecaller, etc. If anyone makes verbal claims on the veracity of this presentation, ask them to provide written sources that disprove what is shown.

The actual number of people who helped is about six times that named listed, because exposing the truth is punished in the CPaaS industry. Look at the lawfare Bill Peters has been subjected to, he’s the father of SMS in the US. Judge Colleen McMahon described what Bill, Johnny and I were subjected to as lawless litigation.

Johnny discovered a strange man talking to his young daughter at his home. At 8PM on a Saturday night, my family’s viewing of a movie was disturbed by a loud hammering on our front door. The purpose was plain and simple, intimidation paid for by TCR, Kaleyra, and Tata Communications. They should be ashamed of themselves, and the whole industry should hold them accountable for their immoral behaviour. Not ignore the situation.

Why should TCR, Kaleyra, and Tata Communications’ competitors hold them accountable? The CPaaS industry currently has a serious credibility problem, they need to demand all CPaaS companies behave with integrity.

The CPaaS industry has never been this bad.

This presentation has 5 sections:

You’ll understand the honest reality of the CPaaS industry, and be shown a way forward that can in time can restore trust and revenues.

Quantifying the Degradation of the PSTN

Since the late ’80s when dinner time calling became a problem a series of laws and industry initiatives have been put in place that have not made the PSTN better.

It’s the worst we’ve ever experiences. However, since August this year things have improved for me, a T-Mobile US customer, because T-Mobile moved from Syniverse to Infobip as its DCA (Direct Connect Aggregator). And sorted out the pointless ‘SPAM likely’ labelling on all the robocalls I receive.

Yes, I know there are issues on what calls are being labelled and SMS filtered. My immediate concern is its ‘good enough’, to stop the majority of the robocalling and spam SMS.

The most popular quote from TADSummit 2024 is from Peter Drucker, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure.” RoboKiller was bought by a private equity company and is no longer reporting statistics on the state of robocalling and spam SMS. Truecaller did not publish any data in 2023, at least there is YouMail. But I am worried what will happen to them in the future.

We had an excellent session with Eric Troutman and Alex Quilici, The Robocalling Dream Team. Alex shared insightful numbers and ways to tackle the persistent robocalling and spam SMS problem.

The fraudsters are now targeting vulnerable people (lonely, depressed, elderly) in the US and stealing $25B from them in 2024 (source truecaller). 41% of the elderly (65+ year olds) are too afraid to answer the phone because of the risk from fraudsters stealing their life savings. This is wholly unacceptable.

Slide 17, explains a simple fact. US telecom ecosystem makes money from robocalling and spam SMS. Fraudsters use CPaaS companies to send robocalls and spam SMS to people in the US. A piece of evidence is when T-Mobile US moved from Syniverse to Infobip, my spam SMS was immediately lower.

In summary. The PSTN has become so bad we no longer answer phone calls, unless it’s someone in our contact list. Since the early 1990s robocalling has grown, mitigations over the past 30+ years have failed to address the problem. The CPaaS industry must be held account for this SPAM SMS and robocalling situation. Why have Bill Peters, Rick Joyce, Giovanni Tarone, and myself been abused by the CPaaS industry? Because we’re exposing the truth.

Read about the anger of the judges at TCR, Kalyera, and Tata Communications’ lawyers:

This is the honest reality of the CPaaS industry.

Messaging Monopolies

I provide a very brief review of the state of the US messaging monopolies. Search “messaging monopolies” and my weblog article is the first link. Its popular, and this is only about 10DLC SMS.

Other A2P SMS are Toll Free (Twilio is the monopoly), short code (iConectiv in the monopoly). This year I discovered the category of unsanctioned 10DLC. That is A2P 10DLC without TCR approval. How is that even possible? I guess it’s who you know in the SMS old-boys club.

And finally there is Rich Business Messaging (A2P RCS) from an unclear group of companies: carriers, CPaaS, Google, Apple? Enterprises are currently confused on that one.

Infobip has become T-Mobile’s preferred DCA, replacing Syniverse. Sinch supplies AT&T, while Syniverse currently supplies Verizon.

TCR is a monopoly, commissioned by AT&T. It was bought by Kaleyra that went public through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), and is now owned by Tata Communications (sale completed in Oct 2023), which is currently for sale (Lazard is the banker).

We’re in an election cycle, a foreign entity controls most 10DLC SMS election communications. If you speak out on foreign ownership of TCR you may be labeled a xenophobe. Rick Joyce, ex-Chief Counsel to the US Coast Guard, who has the highest US security rating, and was the chair of the Communications Practice at Venable, a highly respected law firm pointed out the issues. I can not think of a more qualified person to comment on the risks of foreign ownership. Yet Latham & Watkins (one of TCR’s lawyers) and Eric Priezkalns, Director of Anti-Fraud and Integrity at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum did, labelling him a xenophobe.

Check out these links:

Rick is a good guy, he’s a boy scout, like Bill Peters. There’s industrial shenanigans taking place against individuals trying to do the right thing for their country and its citizens. Yet the industry looks the other way, because the focus is on the revenue, not the customer.

A2P SMS Realities + Artificially Inflated Traffic

Internationally A2P SMS has a multi-decade history of scams and misbehavior against mobile phone customers, carriers, and enterprises.

SIM farms remain in broad use today. In the US they are growing as carriers take more control over the spamming of customers, e.g. T-Mobile US. Wadaro has a good solution for closing down SIM farms, and also BTW closing down SIM swaps. Eliminating SIM swap makes more sense than offering a slow API to see if it’s happened.

Many CPaaS have an association with SIM farms either with a clandestine division, a group of engineers in a corner somewhere, or a third-party special operations group.

Exploiting the P2P route for A2P remains essential for many CPaaS to come close to achieving ‘Twilio-like’ margins. Though Twilio spent $1.6B a couple of years ago on some aggregators (Zipwhip and Syniverse) so its struggled with achieving GAAP (Generally Agreed Accounting Practices) profitability.

Gray routes happen in international interconnect between carriers that do not implement AA.19 agreements. There’s no pricing as they assume mutual forgiveness, its a low volume international SMS route between a large carrier and a carrier in an island nation. CPaaS companies discover them and using them for sending A2P SMS for free into the large carrier. It’s a revenue leakage problem for the large carrier.

The big customer theft is from AIT, Artificially Inflated Traffic. Twitter complained about the $60M theft per year, that is just one brand out of thousands. Potentially billions is being stolen from the brands by AIT. As discussed in  Daniel Gill’s presentation on governance and certification in SMS.

In reaction to all this malfeasance we’re seeing carriers take more control. I’ve already covered T-Mobile US. BT Group is a success case in taking more control to protect its customers. 3 UK also filters SMS spam for its customers.

Tackling this problem is a whack-a-mole situation, constant vigilance is required. Other tools include:

  • A2P Revenue Assurance, see Ivan’s presentation (will update when I publish).
  • Implement SMS Governance / Certification, e.g. Augnet
  • Publishing and harmonizing SMS rates, stop the pricing games. However, the rise in unit prices has created more of an incentive for fraudsters and driven customers to alternative channels – rebalancing is required. From enterprises around the world: a reasonable charge is 4-8c per SMS depending on country, with annual guarantee on price. There are lots of alternatives these days: email, passkeys, WhatsApp, flash calls, gray routes, in-app, etc.
  • Close the SIM Farms once and for all using Wadaro

We still have the core problem of SS7, but if we make A2P SMS fraud much more difficult, the crooks may start to look at easier targets.

The Problem with some Industry Fora

GSMA’s OneAPI was a failure. hSenid has a much more successful solution, that raised telco revenues by 10-15%. However, the GSMA’s focus was on OneAPI, as that was what the large incumbent vendors’ wanted. This means most telcos missed out on those revenues. Camara is following in OneAPI’s footsteps because it’s not easy (no code), secure (rapid response to fraud), and adequately supported (multi-level country-wide engagement). I’ve run the largest, longest running hackathon in programmable telecoms, TADHack, for over one decade. What do I know about engaging developers around the world? /s

On the MEF issues:

I also cover the serial crook Robert Kurver. For CPaaS companies attempting to build trust through honesty. Paying money to an organization founded by a serial crook does not look good. The claim they are an Acceleration Alliance is farcical, given the deceleration happening given the lack of honesty.

Even the industry fora show the focus is on revenue, not the customer.

The Way Forward

Elon Musk publicly shamed the industry 2 years ago, and the industry ignored that customer.

Codes of conduct do not work.

Pointing the finger at the customer (brand) when they have no merics other than price is shameful.

Any solution must include Google and Meta, the 2 largest international A2P customers.

Carrier solutions are important, but slow, and at risk of politics slowing things down to a crawl. They must move forward and interconnect their islands of honesty.

If a carrier uses a 3rd party firewall, be very careful, and copy BT’s leads.

A portfolio approach is required:

  • A2P Revenue Assurance, see Ivan’s presentation (will be published soon).
  • Implement SMS Governance / Certification, e.g. Augnet
  • Publishing and harmonizing SMS rates, stop the pricing games. However, the rise in unit prices has created more of an incentive for fraudsters and driven customers to alternative channels – rebalancing required. From enterprises around the world: 4-8c per SMS depending on country, with annual guarantee on price. There are lots of alternatives these days, email, passkeys, WhatsApp, flash calls, gray routes, in-app, etc.
  • Close the SIM Farms once and for all using Wadaro

My career started in BT for the first ten years. I was involved with the Full Service Access Network group. A small group of motivated carriers and vendors that JFDI what has become the global FTTH solution. Perhaps T-Mobile US, BT, Google, and Meta get in a room and sort the CPaaS industry out?

Inaction is not an option.

My slides can be downloaded here.