The Month in Telecoms: Feb 2023

Is there a more important month in the telecommunications industry? February has long been the unofficial yearly kick off as well as playing host to the biggest event in the business, Mobile World Congress. This month I run down some of the latest developments as well as my recent adventures in the CPaaS world.

Belgrade Calling

The month started with my first ever trip to Belgrade. Over the years Serbia has become a hub for telecommunications talent and it was an opportunity to meet so many friends from the industry in one place.

Since Telesign acquired Routo Telecommunications in 2013 it seems Belgrade has grown into a key location for messaging businesses with companies such as tyntec , iBASIS Business Messaging , QXTEL LIMITED , Mitto and many others having people based in the city. The Serbian capital must be added to the list of hubs including London, Munich, San Francisco, Madrid, and a couple of others. A productive and fun trip for anyone involved in the messaging business.

eNgY Solutions

eNgY Solutions are ones of those companies taking advantage of the talent in Serbia after opening their Belgrade office a few years ago. They have become well known for their technical expertise and ability to find creative and unique solutions in tricky markets. Led by industry dinosaur Axel Bernhard and with the super knowledgeable Milos Keselj running the Belgrade office, eNgY have become a must have partner providing truly problem-solving solutions around the globe.

Mobile World Congress

Next week is undoubtably the biggest event in the mobile communications calendar with the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona.

The main theme for this year’s event is the convergence of 3 key aspects of our industry; technology, community, and commerce. This is reflected clearly in the messaging business as we see the proliferation of more and more conversational use cases based on 2-way services.

This year will be the first ‘proper’ post-covid MWC (even in 2022 there were considerable restrictions and a much-reduced attendance. Although attendee numbers are not quite up to the 100,000+ numbers of 2019 it is expected to be getting closer to this number.

To coincide with MWC, global trade organisation the Mobile Ecosystem Forum are also hosting their Global Forum on Sunday and Monday (26th – 27th Feb) including a wide-ranging agenda of talks, panel sessions and networking opportunities. Topics include SMS, rich messaging, fraud, identity, and regulation.

Social Network

In my January newsletter I wrote about the recent storm around Twitter ’s high-profile battle with artificially generated SMS traffic. Thanks to Mike Bradford for bringing the latest development in the story to my attention. Twitter have officially announced that as of 20th March 2-Factor Authentication over SMS will only be available to paid subscribers (the famous blue tick accounts). Twitter is suggesting users either sign up to a paid account (of course) or use a third-party authentication application to use 2FA. This does not seem to be a particularly elegant solution as it creates more friction in the user acquisition process but does signal an intent from one of the big players in the market to shift away from SMS. Clearly the advantage of a ubiquitous and universal channel is outweighed by the cost and fraud risk. This ‘experiment’ could be make or break for the future of SMS for 2FA. We have seen this week Meta are following suit in charging users for account verification and this could be a stepping stone to more companies dismissing SMS as their core solution for OTP.

Further Layoffs

Unfortunately, the layoffs in the technology industry continued this month with Twilio announcing another round of further layoffs impacting 17% of the total workforce. This comes on the back of them letting go of 11% of employees in September as part of ongoing restructuring. Twilio look to be the cloud communications business hit hardest in the recent downturn judging by the significant drop in the share price since the COVID peak.

The conversational search engine

Going back to the themes of technology, community, and commerce, Aablar.com is a brand-new search engine for customer service channels and chatbots.?It is making it simpler for customers to find the right channel to connect to businesses. Instead of searching through websites to find the company contact details, this service provides a direct link to a company’s various customer service channels.?

The platform is now live and ready to use, supporting users, enterprises and service providers to increase omnichannel usage.

Check out the link below and get in touch with myself or Michael Power with feedback and how to add your customers and brands to aablar.

Movers and Shakers

There have been a couple of big new roles announced this month in the industry.

David Vigar is the latest big-name recruit for Route Mobile Limited . David has been an industry leader for over 15 years including stints at Nexmo, Google and most recently Twilio. He has made a name for himself as a connectivity specialist not just across the traditional telco products but also next generation identity products.

Belgrade based Uros Mijatovic joins Mitto this month as the VP for Business Operations. Another big role after 10 years at Telesign that culminating in leading the messaging product and then taking on the connectivity at Plivo .

Despite it being a tough time in the technology industry as a whole, there is still a strong jobs market in the telco business and plenty of opportunities.

Finally, if you are planning to attend MWC next week. and have time to catch up please reach out and let’s get together!