Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

When it comes to texting, few people have been more involved in helping make an evolving and critical technology in a high demand consumer favorite than Paul Ruppert. In this podcast Ruppert walks us through the evolution of text and the parallel evolution of platforms which together are driving changes to the way people and organizations communicate. To Ruppert, CPaaS can be seen as a platform of platforms, allowing for the “lashing” together of different approaches, brands, and technologies into a coherent set of options for individuals and companies. Ruppert tells us that industry estimates place the CPaaS market at over $8.8 billion. Even with that scale and maturity, the market is growing at 40%, stoked by Covid and a historic change in the way the world works. Ruppert offers a view of the medium and long term, connecting the opportunities available from 5G, AI and more. Part of Ruppert’s message is to not get lost in today’s successes while missing the emergence of new and powerful trends. Many channel companies might face a challenge. The revenue engine of today will not be the revenue engine of tomorrow, but that pivot is challenging.

Visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulruppertintl

Jim Tyrrell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Transaction Network Services (TNS) describes it as perhaps one of the few issues that’s “…neither red state nor blue state.” Robocalling. Robotexting. Americans received 78.9 billion robocalls in 2021, up modestly from 77.2 billion in 2020 but still down considerably from pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to Transaction Network Services (TNS). TNS analyzes more than 1.6 billion daily call events across hundreds of carrier networks to identify emerging robocall trends and scams to produce the most authoritative source on robocall data. 2021 robocall volume was still far below 2019, when it reached 106.9 billion.

In this podcast, Tyrrell takes us through where we are with the effort to curb abuse and offers insights into the future. A major take-away in our discussion is the possibility that, as with email, while the issue of spam continues, mitigation works on a level that has preserved email’s viability. Real-time communications mitigation may in the medium and long term turn out a similar outcome.

TNS’ robocall data expert Tyrrell discusses some of the most compelling 2021 data narratives, including:

Americans aren’t feeling pandemic robocall drop. Despite robocall volume declining significantly since pre-pandemic levels, only 38% of Americans recently surveyed by TNS believe they have received fewer robocalls during the pandemic than before it.

Tier 1 carriers stepped up in 2021. The top US carriers made significant progress with STIR/SHAKEN implementation and reducing robocalls last year. In fact, less than 5% of high-risk robocall activity originated on Tier-1 networks in 2021.

VoIP is the new robocall battlefield. So where are the unwanted calls now coming from? VoIP providers, which now account for 68% of high-risk calls in 2021.

Scammers didn’t stop for the 2021 holidays. The TNS survey found that 48% of Americans received one or more robocalls/robotexts this past Thanksgiving Day. Further, 45% of respondents believe they have been targeted by an Amazon online holiday purchase scam via robocall, robotext, email or weblink in the past.

Visit https://tnsi.com/

Neil Anderson, senior director of Network Solutions at World Wide Technology (WWT) speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about his insights into the channel and what customer needs reflect. Neil has over 30 years of experience in software development, wireless, and networking technologies so he is uniquely qualified and positioned to identify what is shaping up for the future. Topics cover:

Neil Anderson

Mobility - Wi-Fi 6 - 6G - private cellular networks like LTE

Cloud Edge – Secure Access Secure Edge – security moved to the edge

Infrastructure automation goes mainstream

With these trends in process, they will have an affect on the channel. Listen is to hear what needs to be done to stay ahead of the curve in SASE, SD-WAN, Wi-Fi 6 and more.  Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) shared spectrum is also making serious strides in Campus/manufacturing type environments.

 

About: World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global technology solutions provider with $13.4 billion in annual revenue that combines the power of strategy, execution and partnership to accelerate transformational outcomes for large public and private organizations around the world. Through its Advanced Technology Center, a collaborative ecosystem of the world’s most advanced hardware and software solutions, WWT helps customers and partners conceptualize, test and validate innovative technology solutions for the best business outcomes and then deploys them at scale through its 4 million square feet of global warehousing, distribution and integration space. WWT has over 7,000 employees and more than 55 locations around the world. WWT works to bridge the gap between business and technology to make a new world happen for its customers, partners and communities.

For more information, go to: 4 SASE Use Cases  or  5 Criteria for Evaluating SASE Solutions  or  Private 5G / LTE  or  Infrastructure Automation  or  https://www.wwt.com/

OneBill Software has added a newly enhanced shopping cart feature to its billing platform, a change that goes well beyond a method of gathering the parts of an order. Opaque billing, customer issues with not understanding an invoice for services, or worse, being surprised by unanticipated charges, fees, and taxes, has been a long-standing issue in telecom. Meanwhile, the virtual shopping cart became more and more a standard feature across many industries. Shopping carts automatically tally immediate and ongoing expenses, itemize services, and much more that gives the customer a complete view of billing. In this podcast JK Chelladurai, Founder & CEO of OneBill discusses this innovation and what it means to our industry. “It’s all about OneBill enabling the business growth of our customers,” says Chelladurai. “It’s a faster way of acquiring customers,” Chelladurai adds, noting how a shopping cart provides a simple place where a customer can add services, instantly know what the billing or cost impact will be and know exactly what’s being purchased. It also means the time to market, the time to revenue and the time to delivery are all sped up. The customer makes his choices, pays, or begins a recuring billing level, and then takes instant or near instant delivery of those new services. Many of the promises of the cloud being something new, are fulfilled. Chelladurai notes that people like to see the “…breakout, they want to see where these charges are coming from.” The newly enhanced shopping cart is a part of OneBill’s approach, where billing is more than administrative function, but a place to improve sales, customer satisfaction and revenue.

Visit www.onebillsoftware.com

“Operators need to be able to go wherever their customers are working,” says Micah Singer, Managing Director, TeamMate Technology, “… and TeamMate facilitates that.” TeamMate now sells through the Microsoft AppSource Marketplace.  This co-sell ready status coupled with certified Microsoft SIP gateways puts TeamMate in exclusive company as a certified and integrated partner with Microsoft.  It creates a trusted space, where partners can get the TeamMate solution quickly and easily. A free trial is instantly available from Microsoft's marketplace to try out integration of an existing PBX to Microsoft Teams.  Singer discusses how their availability on the AppSource Marketplace signals a practical milestone in simplifying how easy it becomes to try TeamMate technology. “You can try it before you buy it,” adds Singer noting that the marketplace offers a frictionless simple way to do a test drive, free of charge, and at a time and place of the customer’s or partner’s choosing.

Visit the Microsoft AppSource Marketplace

More at www.teammatetechnology.com

State of Video Conferencing Report by Dialpad surveys people in major industries and turns up surprise findings

Mondays are preferred. Not all video meetings demand video. People like to join meetings without having to download new apps. Real estate has embraced video conferencing. Marketing and advertising like to conference, a lot. These are among the interesting findings of a survey of the video conferencing market by Dialpad. In this podcast Grace Lau, Director of Growth Content at Dialpad discusses some of the very surprising findings of their recent polling of people in industries who have turned to conferencing as a basic communication and meeting tool. You might be thinking too many meetings are the number one complaint. Finding? Issues with bad audio and poor video, not to mention having to fumble around on a phone with an unfamiliar application, are often “bigger points of friction”. Lau takes us on a tour of these findings and then shares thoughts on how we in the UCaaS industry might improve.

See the report at https://www.dialpad.com/blog/video-conferencing-report/

Visit www.dialpad.com

‘We’ve become reliant on instant communication,” says Rusty Scioscia, product line manager at Eaton, noting how penetrated information systems have become in daily life. A vulnerability is power. In January, Eaton introduced its new 5PX G2 uninterruptible power supply (UPS), bringing enhanced connectivity and cybersecurity protection to its legacy backup power solution. In this podcast Scioscia talks about the product and the critical role of power management in providing continuous uptime for telcos, particularly those operating distributed or “edge” IT environments. He’ll provide insights into why enhanced connectivity is essential to enable integration with remote monitoring and management software, and why it’s essential that connected devices be designed with cybersecurity as a top consideration. Scioscia discusses real field applications of the product and explains the opportunities involved in talking to customers about this new product.

Visit www.eaton.com

Provisioning cloud-native direct routing services for Microsoft Teams with Automated Onboarding Workflow via Service Control

“Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft has a feature rich PBX,” says Dean Manzoori, Chief Technology Officer at UniVoIP “It is a good phone system,” Manzoori continues, asserting that the product’s evolution, combined with changes in the level of options for Teams users, all adds up to a powerful case to make Teams into the platform an organization should prefer to deliver real time communications. In this podcast, we learn how UniVoIP is making it easier for Teams users to adopt Teams for their voice or telephony needs. Manzoori discusses how his company simplifies the migration process and then continues to provide ease of use after adoption. We learn about this easier path and the opportunities that this simplification creates. “We help our customers in the on-boarding process,” adds Manzoori noting how his customers can leverage his company’s path, avoiding pitfalls, costly delays and expensive administrative time.

Visit www.univoip.com

“We came to solve the problem of B2B commerce,” says Eran Haggiag, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of ClearX. ClearX, is a blockchain-based clearing and settlement solution that allows for the most complex deals to be made and settles them automatically and securely, without the need for manual labor and mishandling information. ClearX works with many companies in the industry, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, HKT and more, and it strives to help businesses understand how digitizing contract settlements is not enough - but the process must be automated too. In this podcast Haggiag makes the case for blockchain. Haggiag tells us that from the first interactions of a customer where bids are being made to billing, blockchain creates efficiency, improves time to money and provides a better customer experience. “The customer experience is extremely improved,” says Haggiag who notes how the customer not only gets improved information and care, and at the same time the volume of emails and waiting time customers are used to in traditional ordering, is reduced. Companies can deal more confidently with a wider range of customers and buying and selling can occur much more efficiently, with improved confidence in all parties. We learn about ClearX’s approach to blockchain and how the company’s services compliment the type of services many in the telecom community now offer by selling cloud based services.

Visit www.clearx.io

Having extensive experience in the Telecom industry, Chris Felix explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News how he is already applying his years of channel experience to establish a more cohesive regionally based national team for the support of the channel and enterprise users. Ultimately, this will enable Kajeet to provide much more extensive support to the existing educational facilities as well as  also providing for easier onboarding of educational facilities and enterprise in the future.

Chris Felix

Kajeet’s premium wireless solutions and advanced cloud-based analytics platform enable them to be a value-add to their partners’ portfolios. For educational solutions, the WiFi in buses is a great example of significant enhancement to the student experience.

Listen in as Chris covers additional details of the Kajeet educational and channel strategy.

About: Kajeet provides optimized IoT connectivity, software and hardware solutions that deliver safe, reliable, and controlled internet connectivity to nearly 3,000 businesses, school districts, state, and local governments and IoT solution providers.

Kajeet is the only managed IoT connectivity services provider in the industry to offer a scalable IoT management platform, Sentinel®, that includes complete visibility into real-time data usage, policy control management, custom content filters for added security and multi-network flexibility.

Whether to empower companies to connect and control devices in the field, enable digital access that ensures student success or offer support and a platform to launch a complex mobile solution, Kajeet is trusted by many to make powerful and flexible wireless solutions easy. Kajeet is available for hybrid and multi-network access across all major North American wireless networks, globally in 173 other countries and on multiple licensed and unlicensed networks. Kajeet holds 40 U.S. patents in mobile technologies.

To learn more, visit www.kajeet.com  and follow them on Twitter at @Kajeet.