Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Michael Downs, Director of Telecoms Security, speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the transition away from Huawei. Listen is as Michael answers the following questions and more:

How do you see the UK’s ban on Huawei equipment affecting the telecoms industry?

Some may think this decision can be solved by simply swapping out for an alternative vendor, but you don’t believe it will be that easy. Why, and what all do you see it entailing?

What does this mean for the 5G testing that has already been performed, and will that process need to be started over again? Approximately how long could that take?

How do you see it affecting UK’s 5G infrastructure in the long term? And could it also have an effect on older mobile networks?

Michael Downs

Positive Technologies (https://positive-tech.com/) is a global cybersecurity company that has pioneered research into telecoms security, discovering over 50 methods for exploiting telecoms vulnerabilities and dozens of zero-day flaws in telecoms systems. Through its work simulating the actions of would-be attackers to help network operators protect their subscribers and services, it was the first to discover security issues associated with communications protocol, Signaling Systems 7 (SS7), which can be exploited to remotely intercept phone calls and bypass 2-factor authentication for access to social media profiles. The company's testing has repeatedly shown that exploits—including signaling fraud attacks, customer data theft, and SMS interception—are still possible on all tested networks despite advances in LTE and 5G.

Operators working with Positive Technologies include O2, Telecom Italia Sparkle, VimpelCom (VEON), Ooredoo, Etisalat, Sky Mobile, SK Telecom, Wind Tre, Tele2, Telcel, Turkcell. Its flagship Telecom Cybersecurity Suite enables network.

For more information, go to: https://positive-tech.com/

by Gary Audin

COVID-19 has caused the explosion of remote workers and the use of online collaboration sessions more than 460% since January 2020. Meeting quality (bad calls) increased to 29% for cloud and 6% for on premises UCaaS from January through May 2020. Call abandonment (connection failures) topped 150% in March. Meeting sizes have expanded with groups of 50 or more participants doubling since January. This stimulated the significant growth in Microsoft Teams adoption.

Tim Armstrong, VP Product Marketing at Nectar www.nectarcorp.com and Gary Audin recorded this EDUcast to provide insights into testing and evaluating Microsoft Teams for collaboration sessions. Tim covers what makes Teams attractive. He points out that cloud providers like Microsoft Teams have made it clear that the responsibility for end-user experience remains with the enterprise including the networks and endpoints. Tim continues with:

Analytics as applied to voice and video sessions

The support of PSTN calls through SBCs and SIP trunks

What tools are necessary to manage Teams for better CX

Compares Microsoft’s Call Quality Dashboard (CDQ) does and does not do

The value of customized reports

What you will learn in this EDUcast:

User Experience Management in the Cloud

Conferencing Growth

Real World Analytics

Exploding Meeting Sizes

Microsoft Teams

SBC Health Monitoring

Session Health Diagnostics

Nectar 10 is the industry’s most powerful and easy-to-use multi-vendor reporting, monitoring and diagnostics tools. Purpose-built for voice, video and real-time collaboration, Nectar 10 is designed for the cloud era with best-in-breed support for hybrid, premise and cloud-based environments.

Nectar Services www.nectarcorp.com has been committed to delivering market-leading software solutions that empower our partners and customers to dramatically improve management, visibility, and service delivery across global and enterprise converged Voice-over-IP (VoIP), SIP and MPLS networks.

The Broadband Forum has launched a User Services Platform (USP) Agent Certification Program. The program is designed to provide assurance and confidence for service providers and consumer electronics companies looking to generate new revenues from Internet of Things (IoT) services. In this podcast Robin Mersh, CEO Broadband Forum and Jason Walls of QA Café and Broadband Forum’s User Services Work Area Director, discuss the new program. We learn about the Broadband Forum and why the organization views standardization in the broadband industry as critical. We learn about how the program works and how it benefits the UC community. We learn about the User Services Platform (USP) and IoT. As we move to a home-based economy, the User Services Platform (USP) Certification Program is a part of a larger initiative to improve the Connected Home ecosystem.

Visit https://www.broadband-forum.org/

by Gary Audin

You’ve added many remote workers who significantly expanded conferencing, collaboration, and call centers since the pandemic started. How well have your voice networks operated? Did you know that March 23, 2020 was globally the worst call quality day on record? We know this because 1.8 billion calls generating 36 billion data points were analyzed over a 3-month period using Virsae Service Management (VSM) artificial intelligence.

Ross Williams, CSO of Virsae www.virsae.com and Gary Audin recorded this EDUcast that provides a briefing on the global call quality impact of COVID-19. Ross discusses:

How voice traffic increased during the pandemic

The voice quality problems encountered especially the lower MOS

The limitations of traditional troubleshooting methods

How bias and errors are introduced from manual data interpretation

Where AI can rapidly zero in on the call quality problems

What AI can discover such as eliminating the network, UC and CC applications, and discovering that something as simple as changing the CODEC in use can resolve problems

How VSM customers use the AI generated results to improve their call quality

What you will learn in this EDUcast:

Call quality data

Poor call quality

Call quality improvements

Visibility

CX measurement

Analytics done right

The smarts behind UC service management, Virsae delivers the insight and foresight to enable flawless communication. Their cloud-based platform, Virsae Service Management (VSM), continuously processes billions of data points from thousands of deployments around the world – delivering AI-powered analytics and diagnostics to enable progressively smarter management of contact center and UC platforms.  www.virsae.com.

Communications competition at the edge is heating up. 5G seems to be the rage right now, but what about WIFI 6? It professes to have similar features to 5G and can be a serious contender for the edge market. Shrihari Pandit, CEO of Stealth Communications, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the Pros and Cons of both and then provides some good insight into the LEOS technology being deployed by SpaceX.

Shrihari Pandit

Could low earth orbiting satellites (LEOS) be a viable solution to helping with the digital divide and providing better connectivity options in remote/rural areas? Shrihari explains some of the options and discusses the current FCC LEOS concerns. One of the concerns is latency – how will SpaceX address the issue? Does SpaceX mesh network support inter-satellite communications? Listen in to find out more!

Stealth Communications is now one of New York City's preeminent Internet-gateways. It provides connectivity services to a broad roster of customers in telecom, finance, real estate, education, and government.  Based in New York City, Stealth Communications provides ultrafast Gigabit Internet connectivity to businesses since 1995. In 2013, the company received authorization from the City of New York to commence construction of its own fiber network. Laying every single cable and servicing each customer personally, Stealth offers some of the City's fastest and most reliable Internet service at a nominal cost, providing a platform for New York's businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive.

For more information, go to: https://stealth.net/

The digital transformation of UC and the revolution underway of work itself has created information floods and droughts within many enterprises. Organizations may have streams of data generated in parts of their network, while having limited visibility in other areas. “Every interaction has a value,” says Paul Holden, Head of Sales at Akixi. In this podcast, Holden outlines the benefits of call analytics solutions outside of large call center environments. He discusses why resellers must sell the value not the cost of business improvement tools, and how to go about this. Holden also discusses how to make data a useable, actionable tool while avoiding being overwhelmed, or even frozen by having to sort through large amounts of data, from practices of “data for data’s sake.” Holden discusses Akixi’s approach. “Born in the cloud,” Holden says that Akixi’s subscription-based model makes getting good data accessible to firms of all sizes. “No cloud-based voice connection should be without it,” says Holden.

Visit www.akixi.com

A better home office setup is a possible next step for many people

“Quite well,” says John Macario, Senior Vice President of Global Channel Marketing at Ribbon, reporting on how Ribbon’s partners are doing during the pandemic. In this podcast Macario discusses how Ribbon’s partners worked the past several months “spinning-up” UC, almost on demand, for customers in a big need to migrate in order to carry on basic operations. Last year, Macario relates that many customers were still making an unhurried migration but now years might have been compressed into months. “I think you’re going to have a lot of IT people asking themselves, ‘what went right and what went wrong in terms of the immediate migration to a distributed model’,” says Macario, who sees the changes of the past few months as part of a lasting change within the context of a large, long-term migration story. Macario sees channel opportunities in the need to create a “better home office setup” as people move from basic functionality to wanting to enhance their own personal professional image, and as companies begin to invest at the home office level in creating a more professional experience. We learn about how Ribbon has a special role to play as these transitions occur, as a company with roots that go to the beginnings of modern communications and with offerings that are designed to keep their channel companies with a portfolio of innovative offerings.

Visit www.rbbn.com

According to James Garvert, Senior Vice President and general manager of Caller Identification Solutions at Neustar, robocalling has so damaged the ability of enterprises to communicate with customers and others, that the public might be ignoring up to 75% of all legitimate calls. The Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on robocalls to cell phones last week, rejecting political consultants’ request to open the channel for campaign communications. In this podcast, Garvert updates us on recent legal and regulatory actions, that will require the telecoms to implement STIR/SHAKEN, and how these developments are critical if consumer behavior is to be changed and so restore outbound calling as a means of communicating with the public. Garvert outlines how Neustar is working with their customers to meet these goals, and to put new luster into traditional voice communications. Garvert is confident that with action now, the UC community can protect the major investments many organizations have in maintaining an outbound contact center operation, not to mention the simple ability of team members to place calls to clients, customers, partners and others in the public.

Visit www.neustar.com

“This is Masergy 3.0,” says Masergy’s Chief Marketing Officer Becky Carr. In this podcast Carr joins Terry Traina, Masergy’s Chief Technology Officer in a special podcast from the Cloud Communications Alliance and TR Publications as we learn about new offerings and a new point of view from Masergy on SD-WAN. Traina walks us through this week’s announcements: Masergy’s next generation SD-WAN, key elements of Masergy’s portfolio launch and a new approach to service level agreements. Carr discusses how Masergy’s plans to go to market with these new offerings through a new partner program. We hear about new opportunities and new user needs. Carr and Traina discuss how Masergy closely monitors customer and channel needs and remarks, and how the company’s new SD-WAN, updated portfolio, and new service level agreements are driven by customer and channel needs.

Visit www.masergy.com

Earlier this month Zoom announced an innovative subscription service: HaaS. HaaS is Hardware-as-a-Service. The program allows companies to basically utilize hardware such as headsets for a low monthly fee in place of an outright purchase. Poly was one of the companies involved in the announcement. In this podcast Laura Marx, Vice President Global Product and Alliance Marketing at Poly outlines what HaaS is, how it works and how it fits in with Poly’s larger plan to serve the pandemic and post pandemic needs of business and organization. Marx discusses how the program lowers the upfront costs to get the high-quality gear required to make WFH more professional. We hear about the benefits and the selection of products, including high quality video options. “The paradigm around hardware and software has shifted,” says Marx, adding, “…everything’s on the table now.” Marx stresses that while companies can continue to buy Zoom services and Poly products in a variety of ways prior to this announcement, all of which remain in place, many people are excited about having an added option. Marx sees the program as a way for companies that may not have budgeted for a digital transformation this year, to be able to enable their new home-based workers to experience high quality audio and video meeting and collaborations tools. Marx outlines the opportunities involved for both users and the channel.

Key takeaways of the HaaS program include:

Organizations can equip themselves with hardware solutions from leading vendors like Poly without the large initial investment, freeing up their budget for important projects and making hardware solutions more accessible for businesses of all sizes.

Zoom HaaS allows businesses to more easily scale up or down with high-quality devices designed for Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms, allowing them to maximize cost efficiency and manage their hardware solutions to fit their needs and budget.

IT professionals also have the option to add professional and managed services to their subscription, providing organizations with more hassle-free installation services and enhanced end-to-end management from Zoom’s professional services teams.

Learn more at www.poly.com