April 2015

From Rules Design to Adaptive Learning Systems in Telecom Fraud Control

interview with Shankar Palaniandy

You admire this tower of granite, weathering so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this wall, and the hand that built it can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand — and nimbler — was the invisible thought that created the wall. Everything looks permanent until its secret is known.
R. W. Emerson, Circles, from Essays: First Series (1841)

What an incredibly dynamic — and impermanent — marketplace we work in! Ten years ago there were no smartphones or big data platforms. Social media and the cloud were just getting started too.

So how did we adapt to all these changes? Many of you held a totally different job ten years ago. And even for those holding the same job title, the skills required of that job have probably broadened quite a bit.

The other irony is that many of the job success principles you followed ten years ago probably wouldn’t work today. And yet somehow — inexplicably — you adapted: you dove into something unfamiliar, made mistakes, and then course-corrected yourself so you could move forward.

So tell me: how can we program machines to think and act as flexibly as we humans do? That question is at forefront of R&D in fraud management systems today. And the task is devilishly hard to deliver because fraudsters are experts at devising new schemes that skirt around detection techniques — techniques that were considered state-of-the-art only a short time ago.

One person who’s thought a lot about how to move the telecom industry to a more adaptive and behavioral learning world in FMS is Shankar Palaniandy, CEO of FRS Labs, a boutique fraud solution vendor in Bangalore. For a small shop, FRS Labs is stirring its R&D ladle in quite a number of fraud management pots — IRSF detection, subscription fraud, application fraud and voice biometrics — to name a few. And in the interview that follows, he points to some of the more exciting areas FRS Labs is exploring.

	Dan Baker: Shankar, your personal career required a rather flexible and adaptive path of its own. Your heritage is India, and you worked and studied in the UK for 10 years. Then there was also a one-year stint at Boeing in Seattle. But I understand these foreign business adventures didn’t really prepare you for the challenge of starting up a company in India when you returned.

Shankar Palaniandy: It’s true, Dan. There are many different permissions and regulatory hurdles you must overcome to start a business in India. And the biggest factor of all is bribery. And all of this was a big shock to me because I had lived in the UK and US and had not seen those things.

So the trick was to navigate without having to pay a bribe. And this was especially challenging for us because the charter of our company — as a fraud management software developer — was to reduce bribery! So I could rightly say, if you ask us for a bribe, we might as well close our company.

The second big challenge was hiring people because when engineers come into a small company, they don’t see this as a viable place to work. So, during the interview if they asked me how many people we had — and at the time we had just two or three people — well, that was the end of the conversation.

That forced me to change my practice a bit. Instead of inviting them to the office, I met them at business centers and cafes to tell them about our good clients and products. But it was still very hard to convince people.

So I had to come up with a new strategy. And it was this: instead of trying to hire people from the top engineering schools, we aimed at hiring them from the mid-tier institutions instead, professionals often overlooked by big companies.

And that tactic, while risky at the time, turned out to be the right path for us. It was ideal because we had little money, and some of the engineers we hired, who are still with us, didn’t ask for a great deal of money. They were mostly asking for an encouraging work environment, good training, and the chance to do exciting and important work.

There are of course rough edges in terms of high level communication, so we spend some time reviewing emails and documents, but in terms of engineering quality, well, I think we have some of the best people anywhere — the kind of talent you would expect to find in London or Mountain View.

	Learning systems is your specialty at FRS Labs. And you’ve made a mark delivering such systems to the Vodafone Group, your biggest customer. So tell me, how would you distinguish the kind of systems you build against more traditional FMS tools?

Fraud management systems have traditionally been built as rules-based systems. If a certain threshold is exceeded, they create an alert. But our system, developed in partnership with Vodafone Group, learns by itself. It builds a profile or fingerprint of subscribers based on their actual call and handset usage: there are no rules to be built.

The system does continuous fingerprinting of a subscriber’s activity and it will pop up an alert if another subscriber comes very close to an existing fraudulent profile.

And if after reviewing that alert, the analyst decides this guy is a good customer, then that input goes back into the learning process, so the system adjusts itself to that new categorization.

But the difference is not just around writing explicit rules vs. machine-learning behaviors, our system also works on a network level, while other fraud systems work on an individual alert level. Let’s say you have three or four people working together. Our system will build up a social network profile of those people. So if a person in the group is doing something suspicious, he, himself, may not be committing fraud, but his links may actually be fraudulent.

	In what applications are behaviorial learning systems most useful?

Well, they are extraordinarily useful in subscription fraud situations.

The broken link in subscription fraud is where the fraudsters goes to a store or an online site to sign up for a service. If we can actually stop the fraud at that point, we can reduce lots of subsequent frauds such as IRSF and PRS.

For this purpose, Vodafone Ireland uses our Atreus, another fuzzy-matching and connecting mathematical modeling system. And let me briefly explain what it does.

Generally the first credit check a telecom makes when signing up a new subscriber is with a credit bureau. Identity theft is widespread today and if I steal your ID, I can easily get a phone if you have a decent credit history. Not only that, I can go to 10 different phone stores the same day, and by slightly altering the information I supply, I can obtain a phone at each store. There is enormous pressure to sell at stores, so fraud checks take a back seat — bad for business but good for fraudsters.

So what Atreus does is sit before the credit bureau check. It uses many sources of internal data — invoices not paid, bad debts written off on customers, confirmed fraudsters, suspected fraudsters, people on a watch list — and puts that all in the Atreus database. And using a fuzzy technique, it can search Dan Baker or Baker Dan or Dan Patrick or D. Baker. It also searches variations of telephone numbers, bank accounts, address, email etc. All of this in real time. So no matter what the fraudster does, it will come up with a network of matches so when the fraudster visits the second store, they will be alerted that this is the same account that obtained a phone at the first store a few hours ago.

And all of this saves Service Providers money because you reduce the number of times you run a credit bureau check. If every credit bureau check costs 5 or 10 dollars per customer and you are doing a million credit bureau dips per year, that’s a significant savings if you can shave off 20% or 30% of that cost. Also, imagine markets where reliable credit bureau data doesn’t exists — it’s a goldmine for fraudsters.

	One final area I’ll ask you about is “voice biometrics”. Why do you put a lot of R&D in that area — what’s the pay-off for telecoms?

Dan , biometrics is a very crowded space right now: lots of people are developing this kind of software. And we are focused on applying the technology in telecom fraud control.

Here’s how it works. Before we make a sale or before we activate a particular device, a SIM, or a service, we capture the spoken voice of the customer, either in agreement with all the privacy policies in place or passively when he makes a phone call to activate his service. We record the voice so we can create a voice print.

Now to do this requires very heavy mathematical models. Fortunately, plenty of research has already been done, and we use the research papers to help unpack the mathematical models to build into our product.

So if we have a voice print of Sally Smith in our files, whenever you order a new service, whether it’s a phone or broadband connection, to activate you are required to call a particular number where the voice print verifies that it is actually Sally Smith calling and Sally Smith is a good customer and not someone barred from ordering the service.

Going forward, the voice will play a bigger role in identifying you and what belongs to you. The reason voice biometrics will become more important is that mobile communications is already very extensive and the mobile technology form factor will shrink more and more to the point where wearable devices and speech input will become commonplace. So we are preparing to address the FMS needs in that new era.

	Thank you, Shankar, for this fine tutorial on advanced FMS systems and learning systems. It’s been highly interesting.

Shankar Palaniandy

Shankar is the Founder and CEO of Fraud Risk and Security Research Labs (FRS Labs). A Certified Fraud Examiner, Shankar’s experience range from business planning and analysis to development and deployment of complex intelligence systems. Over the past 18 years his work has included enterprise architecture, new product development and fraud prevention for Telecoms, Financial Institutions and Governments.

Shankar obtained his Engineering from PSG College of Technology, India and an MBA from University of Leicester, UK. Shankar is also a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and ACFE Bangalore Chapter. Contact Shankar via

Black Swan Solution Guides & Papers

Expanding the Scope of Revenue Assurance Beyond Switch-to-Bill’s Vision — Araxxe — How Araxxe’s end-to-end revenue assurance complements switch-to-bill RA through telescope RA (external and partner data) and microscope RA (high-definition analysis of complex services like bundling and digital services).
Lanck Telecom FMS: Voice Fraud Management as a Network Service on Demand — Lanck Telecom — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SHAKEN / STIR Calling Number Verification & Fraud Alerting — iconectiv — SHAKEN/STIR is the telecom industry’s first step toward reviving trust in business telephony — and has recently launched in the U.S. market. This Solution Guide features commentary from technology leaders at iconetiv, a firm heavily involved in the development of SHAKEN.
Getting Accurate, Up-to-the-Minute Phone Number Porting History & Carrier-of-Record Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers — iconectiv — Learn about a recently approved risk intelligence service to receive authoritative and real-time notices of numbers being ported and changes to the carrier-of-record for specific telephone numbers.
The Value of an Authoritative Database of Global Telephone Numbers — iconectiv — Learn about an authoritative database of allocated numbers and special number ranges in every country of the world. The expert explains how this database adds value to any FMS or fraud analyst team.
The IPRN Database and its Use in IRSF & Wangiri Fraud Control — Yates Fraud Consulting — The IPRN Database is a powerful new tool for helping control IRSF and Wangiri frauds. The pioneer of the category explains the value and use of the IPRN Database in this 14-page Black Swan Solution Guide.
A Real-Time Cloud Service to Protect the Enterprise PBX from IRSF Fraud — Oculeus — Learn how a new cloud-based solution developed by Oculeus, any enterprise can protect its PBX from IRSF fraud for as little as $5 a month.
How Regulators can Lead the Fight Against International Bypass Fraud — LATRO Services — As a regulator in a country infected by SIM box fraud, what can you do to improve the situation? A white paper explains the steps you can and should you take — at the national government level — to better protect your country’s tax revenue, quality of communications, and national infrastructure.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analysis Report from TRI — TRI — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.

cSwans of a Feather

Registered Caller: A Centralized Registry Service to Collect, Vet and Send Enterprise STIR/SHAKEN and Rich-Call-Data to Consumers — interview with George Cray & Tom Sawanobori — A fraud control solution vendor and national wireless association have teamed up to drive adoption of a new, central cloud service for enterprise vetting and validation to leverage STIR/SHAKEN info for telecoms in the U.S. market.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analyst Report on Subscription Fraud, Identity, KYC and Security — by Dan Baker — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
How an Energized Antifraud System with SLAs & Revenue Share is Powering Business Growth at Wholesaler iBASIS — interview with Malick Aissi — A classic case of risk management driving a major boost in a telecom’s business. Learn details on the commercial offer, antifraud ystem upgrades, Do It Yourself customer portal and reporting.
Webinar: Wangiri Warriors: Solutions & Strategies for Fighting Call Back Fraud — interview with Arnd Baranowski & John Haraburda & Igor Skutsenya & Colin Yates — A virtual webinar where four telecom fraud control experts give their perspective on Wangiri, the callback fraud. They discusses strategies and explain the solutions they offer to service providers.
Black Swan Guide: Lanck Telecom’s Voice FMS as an On-Demand Network Service — interview with Igor Skutsenya — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SAS Manages an Analytics Hub of Internal, 3rd Party, and AI Data for Telco-Specific, Holistic Fraud Solutions — interview with Sundeep Tengur — A leading cross-industry fraud analytics firm provides: a picture of telecom threats; perspective on subscription and onboarding fraud; parallels to fraud control in banking; and a rundown on its telco-specific approach to solving fraud problems in a holistic way.
Lanck Telecom Raises Fraud Alarm for International Brands, Enterprise Call Centers & Carriers: Beware of Wangiri 2.0 — interview with Sergey Okhrimenko — An international wholesaler gives details about a new traffic pumping fraud dubbed Wangiri 2.0. The fraud is hard to detect and targets businesses who do lots of international calling.
In the Era of Telecom Security Breaches, Mobileum Brings Signaling’s Deep Detection Capability to the Fraud Fight — interview with Miguel Carrero — Security-breach-driven fraud is on the increase as fraudsters gain deeper knowledge of telecom spheres such as roaming. Using five fraud cases, an expert shows how advanced signaling techniques are taking fraud control to a higher level.
Tethering Fraud: How Guavus Blocks the Pumping of Mobile Data Traffic and Tools Up to Deliver 5G Service Management — interview with Kent McIntosh & David Yates — How is analytics being applied to next generation data threats? Learn how tethering fraud occurs and is detected. Also discussed are: data volume reduction at the network edge, IoT fraud concerns, and automating the healing of high-quality 5G data services.
How GBSD Enables Advanced and Flexible Real-Time Fraud Blocking with its High-Trust, Mobile-Network-Embedded Softswitch — interview with Jeffrey Ross — Learn about a close-to-the-network platform that blocks mobile fruad, Reading a variety of protocols and integrated with external applications, it’s being used to combat: Wangiri, IRSF, SIM box bypass, and mobile money fraud.
Mobileum on the Move: Attracts Several Operators to its IRSF-Analyzing & Opex-Saving Counter-Fraud Machine — interview with Avnish Chauhan — What’s the value of machine learning in fraud control? CTO of a leading counter-fraud solution provider discusses ML, biometrics, and voice service analytics in the context of fraud, roaming and security.
Tracfone’s Anti-Fraud Controls and Law Enforcement Actions to Stop Cell Phone Trafficking — by Dan Baker — A conversation with an executive at Tracfone Wireless leads to lessons on MVNO fraud control and the significant law enforcement steps Tracfone is taking to stop cellphone trafficking, curb the violent of organized crime, and bring people to justice.
Fraud Management in Music City: The 2017 Equinox Protector User Group Meeting — by Dan Baker — Program details of an upcoming fraud management conference in Nashville, Tennessee in November 2017. It’s the Equinox Protector User Group Meeting.
Mobileum Brings Analytic Scans & Minimally Invasive Treatment to Fraud Removal — interview with Jason Lane-Sellers — Advanced analytics-driven fraud detection has arriving. It enables targeted treatment of fraud cases, lessening customer experience mistakes such as blocking calls to legitimate businesses.
WeDo Offers Fraud Detection via a New Cloud Platform — interview with Thomas Steagall — A leading vendor introduces a cloud fraud control solution to serve the low cost, easy-to-deploy-learn-and-support requirements of many new operators, OTTs, and MVNOs.
A Herculean Task: Battling Fraud in an Increasingly Complex Comms World — interview with Michalis Mavis — A fraud control expert walks through some interesting cases, gives us his advice on FMS software, and offers four key lessons on the path to fraud management excellence.
The Early Warning Power of IPRN Test Call Detection in Blocking IRSF Fraud — interview with Colin Yates — Detecting the test calls made to International Premium Rate Numbers (IPRN) is helping telcos block IRSF fraud. An expert explains fraudster methods and the value of IPRN databases.
Calculating the Fraud Risks of the Digital Era — by Dror Eshet — Digital and mobile technology are an integral part of our daily lives. Not only is the technology evolving at a frantic rate, but a leading fraud expert explains how fraudsters now team with one another to commit their crimes and magnify the risks to users, companies, and global infrastructure.
SIM Box Bypass: The Damage to Developing Nations and the Actions Regulators Must Take — interview with Lex Wilkinson — Bypass fraud via the SIM box causes great revenue loss and poses many other dangers, especially in developing nations. An expert discusses the regulator issues and recommended actions in the fight to control bypass.
Nine Simple Strategies for Protecting an Operator or MVNO from Telecom Fraud — interview with Jim Bolzenius — An expert in telecom fraud management explains essential strategies for aiming a carrier’s or MVNO’s fraud prevention program in the right direction.
A Sweeping 239-Page Research Report on Fraud Management Solutions & Strategies — by Dan Baker — TRI has released a comprehensive analyst report on fraud management solutions. The study is based on interviews with three dozen leading FM consultants and solution experts. Download the free Executive Summary.
SMS Bypass Blocking: A Service that Protects & Maximizes A2P Revenue for Mobile Operators — interview with Claire Cassar — A2P messaging is a multi-billion dollar revenue stream that mobile operators need to protect. In this interview, you’ll learn how a managed service solution blocks bulk marketing messages and other bypass fraud in enterprise-to-operator SMS traffic.
Device Intelligence and Big Data Linkage: Guarding Consumer Access Points from the Fraudsters — interview with Matt Ehrlich — Preventing subscription fraud today means supplementing traditional identity checks with a host of new processes, technology, and big data analytics. A credit and fraud risk expert explains the roles of predictive scores, device risk assessment, and linkage analysis.
Mapping the Interconnect Resale Routes of Fraudsters: How a Global Robot Network Detects Voice and SMS Bypass — interview with Xavier Lesage — SIM box voice bypass is a persistent problem, but now, bypass is spreading to SMS, OTT apps on the smartphone, and ghost trunks. This interview explains the fast evolving bypass scene, highlights the strategy of fraudsters, and provides case studies.
Law Enforcement & Security in a World Where Industry and National Boundaries are Blurred — interview with Mark Johnson — Are we destined to be forever reactive over security, fraud, and risk issues? Or will we put wise standards, regulations, and frameworks in place that allow us to deliver technology that’s relatively secure and fraud-resistant?
Thinking Outside the Comms Box: A New, Cross Industry Fraud Check Service that Telecoms can Leverage — interview with Jim Rice — For decades, telecoms have done fraud and identity checks using comms industry data. This interview explains the power of using cross-industry data to pinpoint known fraudsters and suspicious individuals in finance, retail, and other industry data sets.
Integrated Test Call & CDR Analysis: A New Tool in the Fight Against SIM Box & OTT Bypass Fraud — interview with Kenneth Mouton — Why not combine the virtues of FMS CDR analysis and test call generators to create a single integrated tool for bypass fraud control? The benefits of that idea, a tutorial on test call systems in SIM box detection, and OTT bypass via mobile services like VIBER are all discussed in this interview.
White Paper: How to Defend Your Network Against the New SIM Server Threat — by Dan Baker — SIM box bypass is a very stubborn fraud problem: fraudsters are succeeding despite carriers‘ best efforts to defeat the fraud. This white paper explains the impact of SIM Servers as a powerful stealth weapon of the fraudsters. In turn, the paper discusses new technologies and strategies that can defeat the more sophisticated types of SIM box fraud emerging.
Intelligent Routing: The Case for Blocking IRSF Fraud at the SIP Session Border Controller — interview with Jim Dalton — A bad fraud event can be a huge loss, especially to OTT players who provide a VoIP service. In this interview, you’ll learn about an anti-fraud solution that works in concert with intelligent routing.
A Privacy-Enabled Data Exchange that Expands Analytics Uses in Fraud, Credit Risk and Beyond — interview with Michelle Wheeler — Analytics data today is managed in a privacy-negligent way. This interview discusses an ingenious privacy and analytics exchange that allows telecoms, banks, and money lenders to trade fraud, credit risk and other data with each other in complete confidence and control.
From Rules Design to Adaptive Learning Systems in Telecom Fraud Control — interview with Shankar Palaniandy — Adaptive and behaviorial learning systems are at the forefront of R&D in telecom fraud management systems. Here an expert developer explains their usefulness in use cases such as IRSF detection, subscription fraud, application fraud, and voice biometrics.
Protecting 900+ MVNOs around the Globe from IRSF Fraud Pirates — interview with Colin Yates — Telecom fraudsters are seeking a new, more vulnerable path to riches. Their target: 900+ MVNOs around the globe who generally own no mobile networks, but sell mobile service virtually. This interview with a fraud control expert explains what steps MVNOs must take to protect themselves from IRSF fraud.
Combating SIM Box Fraud: Network Protocol Analysis to the Revenue Rescue — interview with Lex Wilkinson — International call bypass is fraud perpetrated through SIM boxes equipped with dozens to hundreds of SIM cards that disguise international calls as local domestic phone calls. This article give a backgrounder on SIM box detection techniques and talks about a new, rapid-detection technology based on network protocol analysis.
Making the Retail Operator Case for Anti-Fraud Protection via Wholesalers — interview with Jan Dingenouts — Small retail operators are highly vulnerable to fraud, so enlisting the anti-fraud assistance of wholesalers is a great idea. This interview explains useful negoiating tactics for retail operators and shows how wholesalers can lend support and grow their business at the same time.
A Wholesaler’s Fraud Prevention Creed: If You Lose the Trust, You Lose the Traffic — interview with Robert Benlolo — Large wholesalers play a major role in keeping a lid on international telecom fraud. In this interview, a wholesale voice and fraud management expert explains the role of its vendor systems and multi-threaded internal processes in protecting customers from fraud losses and shady wholesale suppliers.
Telecom Fraud & Credit Protection: A Desperate Need in Unbanked Regions of the World — interview with Luke Taylor — Mobile money plus related fraud and credit protection are crucial to the prosperity of developing nations where most “unbanked” people live. This article discusses the special issues of the unbanked market as well as broader revenue protection challenges and opportunities.
The Grey Market in Prepaid: Tactics to Combat International Bypass via the SIM Box — interview with Ahmad Syed — SIM box fraud is one of the toughest revenue threats that telecoms face. It is the redirection of international calls via the internet to drop illegal VoIP traffic onto mobile networks. This interview with an expert RA and fraud manager provides a detailed overview of the threat scenario, current SIM box tactics, and some creative ideas for bringing this problem under control.
Why Deep Packet Inspection Analysis is Essential for Detecting IP Fraud — by Dror Eshet — The IP and mobile broadband revolution is in full swing: time for fraud managers to totally rethink their existing controls and areas of exposure. In this article, a fraud expert discusses the power of DPI technology and the key impact its analysis is having in an FM world where knowing what’s inside the packets is as important as figuring out where those IP packages are going.
Flexibility & Fraud Management Systems: 8 Questions for Luke Taylor of Neural Technologies — interview with Luke Taylor — Meeting today’s fraud threats is not just about technology, but also the speed of threat detection, the scanning of data outliers, and being enormously flexible. A leading fraud management vendor takes a bead on current FM issues and points to where software is headed.
What Makes Good Fraud Management Software? 9 Questions for Tal Eisner of cVidya — interview with Tal Eisner — How do you know if the fraud management software you own or are considering is a good one? That’s the starting point of a conversation Black Swan had with a product strategist of a leading FMS vendor. The article discusses everything from maturity and customer collaboration... to PBX hacking and enabling the FMS to actually enhance the relationship a telco has with its enterprise customers.
Fraud Management at Kyivstar in Ukraine — interview with Anton Pivala — Kyivstar from Ukraine is a leading mobile operator in both voice service quality and consumer value. This case study gives details on Kyivstar’s fraud control program, reveals some of the unique operator challenges faced in Eastern Europe, and explains how Kyivstar is successfully winning the battle against IRSF and SIMbox fraud.
Gratifying Ghana: Why Listening to Operators Trumps Vendor Technology and Size — interview with Ludvig Lindqvist — The value of technically excellent software is negated if the solution is not implemented right. This article makes a strong case that vendors need to focus on first things first — get in full synch with a service provider’s business, capabilities and unique needs before you recommend or implement any software. Topics discussed include: the benefits of retaining in-house expertise, implementation challenges in Africa, and the meaning of “thorough engagement” with the client.
“Fraud Is a Wind that Always Blows” and Other Wisdom From a 28-Year Old Software Firm — interview with Gary Beck — Here’s the amazing story of how Beck Computers was pulled out of a Tier 1 account only to be brought back in a few months later. The article explores software vendor service and support challenges, real-time computing requirements, advanced fraud management functions, and ways to educate management on the value an FMS investment.
Fraud & Credit Risk Software: Setting the Client Free to Innovate — interview with Luke Taylor — Not every operator wants the freedom to configure its own fraud management solution, but certain providers wouldn‘t live without such a “framework” approach . This article discusses: the reasons why operator choose this strategy as it covers many other fraud and credit software implementation issues.

Tokopedia, Indonesia’s E-Commerce King, Partners with 11 Million Merchants; Adopts Multi-Cloud to Drive Innovation — interview with Warren Aw & Ryan de Melo — Indonesia’s Tokopedia, founded in 2009, has grown to become one of world’s leading e-commerce players. Read about its success, technology direction, and multi-cloud connectivity adoption.
Bridge Alliance: Knocking Down Regional & Mobile Connectivity Barriers so Connected Car Markets Get Rolling in Asia — interview with Kwee Kchwee — The CEO of an Asian consortium of mobile operators explains how they help simplify and harmonize their members‘ operations in support of multi-national corporations. This integration is enabling two huge industries to come together in Asia: auto manufacturing and telco.
Epsilon’s Infiny NaaS Platform Brings Global Connection, Agility & Fast Provision for IoT, Clouds & Enterprises in Southeast Asia, China & Beyond — interview with Warren Aw — Network as a Service, powered by Software Defined Networks, are a faster, more agile, and more partner-friendly way of making data global connections. A leading NaaS provider explains the benefits for cloud apps, enterprise IT, and IoT.
PCCW Global: On Leveraging Global IoT Connectivity to Create Mission Critical Use Cases for Enterprises — interview with Craig Price — A leading wholesale executive explains the business challenges of the current global IoT scene as it spans many spheres: technical, political, marketing, and enterprise customer value creation.
Senet’s Cloud & Shared Gateways Drive LoRaWAN IoT Adoption for Enterprise Businesses, Smart Cities & Telecoms — interview with Bruce Chatterley — An IoT netowork pioneer explains how LoRaWAN tech fits in the larger IoT ecosystem. He gives use case examples, describes deployment restraints/costs, and shows how partnering, gateway sharing, and flexible deployment options are stimulating growth.
ARM Data Center Software’s Cloud-Based Network Inventory Links Network, Operations, Billing, Sales & CRM to One Database — interview with Joe McDermott & Frank McDermott — A firm offering a cloud-based network inventory system explains the virtues of: a single underlying database, flexible conversions, task-checking workflow, new software business models, views that identify stranded assets, and connecting to Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Pure Play NFV: Lessons Learned from Masergy’s Virtual Deployment for a Global Enterprise — interview with Prayson Pate — NFV is just getting off the ground, but one cloud provider to enterprises making a stir in virtual technology waters is Masergy. Here are lessons learned from Masergy’s recent global deployment using a NFV pure play software approach.
The Digital Enabler: A Charging, Self-Care & Marketing Platform at the Core of the Mobile Business — interview with Jennifer Kyriakakis — The digital enabler is a central platform that ties together charging, self-care, and marketing. The article explains why leading operators consider digital enablers pivotal to their digital strategies.
Delivering Service Assurance Excellence at a Reduced Operating Cost — interview with Gregg Hara — The great diversity and complexity of today’s networks make service assurance a big challenge. But advances in off-the-shelf software now permit the configuring and visualizing of services across multiple technologies on a modest operating budget.
Are Cloud-Based Call Centers the Next Hot Product for the SMB Market? — interview with Doron Dovrat — Quality customer service can improve a company’s corporate identity and drive business growth. But many SMBs are priced out of acquiring modern call center technology. This article explains the benefits of affordable and flexible cloud-based call centers.
Flexing the OSS & Network to Support the Digital Ecosystem — interview with Ken Dilbeck — The need for telecoms to support a broader digital ecosystem requires an enormous change to OSS infrastructures and the way networks are being managed. This interview sheds light on these challenges.
Crossing the Rubicon: Is it Time for Tier Ones to Move to a Real-Time Analytics BSS? — interview with Andy Tiller — Will tier one operators continue to maintain their quilt works of legacy and adjunct platforms — or will they radically transform their BSS architecture into a new system designed to address the new telecom era? An advocate for radical transformation discusses: real-time analytics, billing for enterprises, partnering mashups, and on-going transformation work at Telenor.
Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise-Search — interview with Benedict Enweani — Enterprise-search is a wildly successful technology on the web, yet its influence has not yet rippled to the IT main stream. But now a large Middle Eastern operator has deployed a major service assurance application using enterprise-search. The interview discusses this multi-dimensional topology solution and compares it to traditional network inventory.
The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade. Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution. Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change. Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating. In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care. In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems. But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
Hadoop and M2M Meet Device and Network Management Systems — interview with Eric Wegner — Telecom big-data in networks is more than customer experience managment: it’s also about M2M plus network and element management systems. This interview discusses the explosion in machine-to-machine devices, the virtues and drawbacks of Hadoop, and the network impact of shrink-wrapped search.
The Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Boom: Is Your Sales/Engineering Team Equipped to Win? — by Dan Baker — The build-out of enterprise clouds and data centers is a golden opportunity for systems integrators, carriers, and cloud providers. But the firms who win this business will have sales and engineering teams who can drive an effective and streamlined requirements-to-design-to-order process. This white paper points to a solution — a collaborative solution designs system — and explains 8 key capabilities of an ideal platform.
Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.

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