The Month in Telecoms: Jan 2023
Connecting People

The Month in Telecoms: Jan 2023

If you thought 2022 was a turbulent year for the telecoms industry, then the start of 2023 looks to continue that trend if the month so far is anything to go by.?

Every week we are seeing new announcements and market shifts whether it be mergers and acquisition activity, new recruitment, innovative products, or the world’s most famous businessman wading in on the latest SMS fraud topic. Hopefully the old proverb ‘any publicity is good publicity’ holds true for CPaaS.

I started the year with a few days in Zaragoza with the S and BTS messaging team to kick off a big year for the group.

SBTS and BTS Messaging Teams in Zaragoza, January 2023
The SBTS and BTS Messaging Teams in Zaragoza, January 2023

Happy New Year

The new year brought some more positive news out of Asia as China opened the borders for international business travel for the first time in 3 years. In the past years we have seen a rise in the number of big players in the messaging and CPaaS market from China and it has become a key market for the industry (coupled with growth across the rest of Asia). Looking forward to getting out there as soon as possible.?

Beijing also announced further loosening of restrictions in the gaming industry allowing dozens of international titles to be released in the Chinese market. In the short term this has led to a bump in the stock prices for the likes of 腾讯 and 网易 but in the longer term this is hopefully an indication of further regulatory easing which opens bigger opportunities for the telecoms and wider technology industry. Happy Chinese New Year!!

Twitter Storm

It seems the Elon Musk saga is touching every industry and SMS is not immune to the constant news cycle. It was brought to my attention via the article by Eric Priezkalns on Commsrisk (see link below) that Twitter are seeing $60m per year of fraudulent activity with artificially inflated traffic or traffic generation. I wrote about the wider issue of traffic generation in my October Newsletter, and this further emphasises the scale and importance of the issue. The talk of the messaging industry is that this short-term gain could end up being the demise of the One Time Password over SMS unless a good solution can be found to reduce the fraud risk.

2022 was a difficult year for the stock market in general and the publicly listed CPaaS companies felt the squeeze with the rest of the market. Route Mobile Limited have bucked the trend at the start of 2023 as they saw a jump in share value at the start of the month after signing a multi-year deal with the premier Mobile Operator in Sri Lanka. Route Mobile have moved from being one of the market leaders in India to a global powerhouse with the well-publicised acquisition of Mr Messaging last year and some high profile hiring including industry heavyweights Carl Powell and Ibs Ali .

Another company making waves at the start of the year is iBASIS who announced the acquisition of Austrian aggregator iBASIS Business Messaging . TOFANE GLOBAL , the ownder of iBasis, have completed 7 acquisitions in recent years across voice, data and now messaging. iBasis has been historically known as a voice provider and Dimoco have built a fantastic reputation across the messaging industry so the acquisition seems to be a good fit for further development into wider communications channels.

CM Group have also been busy on the acquisition side for a few years now and have tripled their revenue since 2018 and now are reporting over 40,000 customers. As part of the various acquisitions the company has been through a rebrand to Marigold and are integrating the various products within the business to become a ‘Martech’ leader. It is interesting to see how CPaaS can be positioned in many ways and focusing on marketing and customer acquisition is a great way to create use cases out of existing channels. Listen to a recent interview by AZK Media: Global B2B Technology PR & Marketing Agency with Andy Gladwin (Head of Partnerships) where he outlines the focus on creating customised products to enable clients to use the optimum channel for their customers.

It has been a busy start to the year when it comes to recruitment and role changes. We have seen some high profile moves around the CPaaS merry-go-round and well-deserved promotions.

Movers and Shakers

At the end of 2022 Anurag Aggarwal joined Globe Teleservices Pte. Ltd. as Chief Growth Officer. Anurag is one of the most influential people in the industry (he was voted number one in the ROCCO 100) and is a big hire for GTS as they continue to push on into international markets.

Uku Tomikas has moved into the CEO position at Messente to spearhead their continued growth. He has cemented his position as a market leading voice with his work with the Mobile Ecosystem Forum and this looks like a big statement to push Messente into the spotlight over the coming months.

After the acquisition from iBasis, Dimoco have promoted Ilija Drazovic to Head of Enterprise Sales. Ilija has become a star in the enterprise market and since his move from Telesign to Dimoco has seen back-to-back promotions.

Elsewhere 冯碧霞 has joined IDT Corporation to help continue their push into the messaging business and Luanna Luna Sena joins China Mobile International Limited in London.?

On reflection it looks like the middle market (which is vast in the CPaaS and telecoms world) is stronger than ever judging by the activity and opportunities. We continue to see big tech companies announcing layoffs and cost cutting measures but it seems the mid-sized business are taking full advantage of the opportunity and there is a lot of room to grow.

Cheryl Ruck

Partnering with Senior Leaders and CXO's in providing high-quality recruitment services within the global Digital Infrastructure, Communications & Technology markets. An industry DEI advocate!

2 年

As always; some brilliant insight into the messaging/CPaaS market - intrigued to see what the year will bring for the companies mentioned and more….

Vinod Mehlan

Chief Business Officer- Business Head, Team Leadership, Hunting & Farming Business, B2B Enterprises, P&L, Strategic Partnership & Alliances and Operations

2 年

Well articulated, Dear Scott Warner

Scott Thanks a lot for the mention mate! Truly appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you sometime soon... Cheers! ??

what an exhaustive report !!! Thank you Scott

Luanna Luna Sena

Solutions Engineer - Roaming - Mobile Security

2 年

Busy busy start of the year for our Industry! I It is an honor to be mentioned here Scott, and even more to have supported the M&A deal of iBasis too! Patrick George gave me a fantastic testimony of it. We are all looking forward to your Feb 2023 report! Congrats !

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Scott Warner的更多文章

  • The Month in Telecoms - Feb 2025

    The Month in Telecoms - Feb 2025

    It feels like the week before Christmas as the industry looks forward to the biggest event of the year in Barcelona…

    15 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms - Jan 2025

    The Month in Telecoms - Jan 2025

    The start of the year is always a busy time and there is a lot going on in the ever evolving telco market. RCS…

    35 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms - Oct 2024

    The Month in Telecoms - Oct 2024

    It has taken me a bit of time to get back to writing after taking a few months off over the summer (plus Oktoberfest)…

    13 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: Feb 2024

    The Month in Telecoms: Feb 2024

    This month’s newsletter has a slightly different feel to it as I wanted to share my highlights from Mobile World…

    23 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: January 2024

    The Month in Telecoms: January 2024

    We might be only a couple of weeks into the new year but there is still plenty going on around the telecoms and CPaaS…

    24 条评论
  • The month in Telecoms: Nov 2023

    The month in Telecoms: Nov 2023

    As we come towards the end of the year it is now a time to reflect and plan. Plenty of news from around the markets…

    7 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: Sept 2023

    The Month in Telecoms: Sept 2023

    September has historically been a busy month in the telecoms industry and this year was no exception with plenty going…

    29 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: June 2023

    The Month in Telecoms: June 2023

    It has been a couple of months since I was last able to put pen to paper and there is plenty going on in the CPaaS…

    31 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: March 2023

    The Month in Telecoms: March 2023

    It has been a hectic month both professionally and personally with multiple events plus a house move. Finally I had a…

    4 条评论
  • The Month in Telecoms: Feb 2023

    The Month in Telecoms: Feb 2023

    Is there a more important month in the telecommunications industry? February has long been the unofficial yearly kick…

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了