FAQ

General

1. What is the purpose of the i3Forum?
The i3Forum, established in 2007, is a non-profit industry body focused on enabling and accelerating transformation across a trusted international communications ecosystem through an open and inclusive model.
2. What benefit does i3Forum bring to the marketplace?
The i3Forum is an organization of the International Communications ecosystem that brings together all stakeholders (carriers, aggregators, operators, platform providers, vendors, enterprise service providers, regulators, etc…) to help restore trust in international communications, understand consumer behavior, leverage technology, and adapt to regulatory requirements.
3. What are the core i3Forum deliverables?
Through meaningful collaboration, members of the i3Forum deliver practical recommendations, solutions, policies, and awareness with a common understanding to complex issues facing our industry. The i3Forum’s approach is open, simple, and pragmatic. We favor an easy-to-implement, operationally focused modus operandi.
4. How does the i3Forum help me grow my business?

As a member of the i3Forum:

I can share and learn from the community: get educated on industry trends and evolution, better understand the requirements of my customers and the market environment, and benchmark my own practices, strategies, and products.

I can benefit from community actions and work: leverage i3Forum’s work in order to develop the right approach & make the right decisions, use i3Forum’s recommendations and best practices to streamline my business, save time, effort, and money and speed up the implementation of the industry transformations that I need in order to develop my business.

I can influence the community: shape and drive the vision for the industry, understand and influence other industry stakeholders so they develop what I need, influence other industry bodies.
I can promote my vision with the community and the Industry: develop relationships, leverage i3Forum’s brand to demonstrate compliance, enhance credibility, and demonstrate quality.

5. What are the key initiatives driven by the i3Forum?

Restore Trust Initiative – I can restore trust in international communications. Trust has been compromised due to increased fraud, origination spoofing, and malicious robocalling through international voice and messaging networks. I can change the trajectory of international communications by shaping the future of our Restore Trust initiative, in partnership with a wide variety of industry stakeholders and global regulators.

i3Forum Insights –subscribe to the most accurate and updated international voice market trending and benchmarking service. Enhance your company’s voice business and market planning functions, drive business growth and organizational alignment through measurable objectives, and improve your company’s voice termination cost and quality performance.

i3Forum Numbering Plan Community – join a community and platform to exchange accurate and updated numbering plan data and information with industry peers including numbering plan experts managing their company’s global numbering plan and business users of numbering plan information (routing, pricing, billing, fraud prevention, and other similar business lines). Foster collaboration by engaging with other participants to share best practices and useful information, discuss Numbering Plan related issues, request clarification, etc.

6. Who is developing the i3Forum recommendations?

Members of the i3Forum participate in work groups directly reporting to the Board of Directors (BOD). Work groups are created based on membership input, industry insight, and board priorities.

Our roadmap focuses on topics that require industry collaboration and is updated on an annual basis and discussed at our Annual Conference held in May in conjunction with ITW.

Work Groups are led by board-appointed chair people. They agree to their own objectives, timelines, deliverables, and schedules (guided by BOD oversight).

The i3Forum’s Board of Directors is a very hands-on team. In addition to creating work groups, the BOD establishes project committees to tackle priority topics at the board level, outside, and in parallel to regular BOD monthly meetings. The critical initiative to Restore Trust in International Communications is a great example of a board-driven initiative created based on industry trends, regulatory requirements, and consumer behavior.

Governance & Operational

1. How is the i3Forum governed and operated?

The i3Forum is incorporated in the state of Delaware, USA. It is governed by several documents including Bylaws, IPR and Antitrust policies, and Work Group Procedures, that can be accessed here

The i3Forum is a not-for-profit, membership funded forum. It is not a standardization body.

2. Who runs the i3Forum?

The governing body is the Board of Directors with currently 12 Board members. Board members elected among and by Full Members for a two years mandate (renewable). Board seat belongs to Member company, not individual. The Board of Directors has full authority and makes all decisions on behalf of the forum.

Board members can appoint an alternate or deputy representative that can participate on behalf of the board member and their member company. One alternate per board member is permitted, and encouraged. Having an alternate helps ensure member company’s views and votes are present during board meetings when the regular board member is unavailable.

If the board member and the alternate join the same board meeting, they have one vote between the two of them, the one vote belongs to the one member company.

3. Who advises the i3Forum and board of directors?
The Advisory Council is made up of industry experts and trusted advisors. Members of the advisory council have in depth industry experience and offer guidance and consultation in their areas of expertise to progress the forum’s objectives. There are currently 6 Advisory Council members.
4. What are the membership classes/levels?

The i3Forum welcomes various categories of members from the International Communications ecosystem: carriers, service providers, platform providers, aggregators, vendors, partners.

    • International Carriers – Persons who are telecom operators selling international wholesale (B2B) services such as: voice termination, IP transit, messaging termination, roaming services, signaling, managed and unmanaged data transport
    • Service Providers – telecom operators not qualifying as International Carriers
    • Platform Providers – Persons who are cloud communications platform providers which deliver communications applications and services
    • Aggregators – Persons who are consolidating messaging communications services and work through third parties to provide communications services
    • Vendors – Persons providing network equipment (including video communications equipment), IT, services (e.g. hosting, clearing house, testing)
    • Partners – Institutions, industry organizations (GSMA, PPM…), Media partners and analysts, individual contributors

The following Membership Tiers are be available:

  • Board Member – elected by and among Full Members
  • i3Forum Officers – Board elects a Chairperson, Vice Chairperson,Treasurer, and a Secretary, which are Board members
  • Full Member – can contribute and vote. Can be elected as Chair of Working Group and as Board Member
  • Observer Member – can attend work groups but not eligible for WG chairperson role or Board of Directors, and no voting rights
  • Partners – by invitation can attend work groups but not eligible for WG chairperson role or Board of Directors, and no voting rights. Annual Membership Dues:
    • Board members: 16,500 USD
    • Full members: 11,500 USD
    • Observer members: 8,050 USD
    • Partners: free (reserved for Institutions, Industry organizations, Media partners and analysts, Individuals…)
5. How do I join a working group?

Your company needs to be a Full or Observer Member in order to be able to send participants to Work Groups and Support Groups. Partner Members may participate by invitation only.

6. How long does it take to complete the membersip process?

The membership process is very simple. You first need to apply by contacting the Chairperson or Vice Chairperson (use Join Us or the click contact), explaining briefly what your company does and why it wants to join. You will then be asked to sign and return the Membership Agreement (available for download), and then you will get the invoice for the membership dues if applicable. Upon payment you’re a Member and your team can join the Work Groups.

Q&A

1. What are the short and medium term goals of the forum and how will these be achieved?

At i3Forum we bring the International communications ecosystem together to enable and accelerate transformation through collaboration. Our members decide the challenges and topics to address and through our open and inclusive approach, we provide a platform for members to explore, share and debate the challenges facing our industry. The i3Forum, as a non-profit organization, then creates and supports actionable, “by the industry for the industry” solutions for the benefit of the industry – be it recommendations, guidelines, community approaches, platforms or services.

Members are empowered by a shared purpose and mission to shape the future of our industry. Active participation from key stakeholders who have a vision for the industry and are looking for collaboration with their peers is key. Consequently, growing the membership is a powerful engine to keep increasing our relevance and impact to the industry, for the benefit of all. We have been achieving this goal consistently to form a total of 24 members to date.

Our key initiatives at this time include restoring trust in international communications. Trust that has been compromised due to increased fraud, origination spoofing, and malicious robocalling through international voice and messaging networks. Change the trajectory of international communications by shaping the future of our restore trust initiative, in partnership with a wide variety of industry stakeholders and global regulators. We are also focused on fighting fraud, both in international voice and A2P messaging, through the promotion and enforcement of Codes of Conduct, best practices and operational cooperation.

We are also building on the impressive initial success of our not-for-profit Insights solution, which allows participating carriers to track KPIs for international voice services by aggregating and anonymising actual performance monthly data. From its initial trial, development and official launch ein January 2020, the platform has really grown into one of the most useful data sources for the industry. Contributors to the database include BICs, BTS, iBASIS, Orange, Tata, TIS, Telefonica, and Telstra. Future Insights development is focused on fraud tracking capabilities and A2P messaging service trending and benchmark reporting.

We also collaborate on industry wide solutions such as the global numbering plan community platform, a place for industry experts to exchange numbering plan data and information. The i3Forum’s global numbering plan community improves the accuracy of numbering plan data while harmonizing members’ common view of the global numbering plan (key to filling holes commonly exploited by fraudsters).

2. What are the most pressing concerns today for the International Communications Ecosystem?

In this very competitive industry, stakeholders are more and more looking for ways to collaborate in order to improve their business. Given the highly interconnected nature of our activities, collaboration involves pooling resources, sharing expertise, and working with like-minded peers to establish operational standards and shared solutions that benefit everyone, improve overall efficiency and help bring about change.

The most urgent issue facing the international communications ecosystem today is restoring trust in our services. Increasing fraud, specifically origination (including CLI) spoofing and malicious robocalling, have resulted in substantial damage, consumer distrust, and a rapid disjoined regulatory response. Our industry needs a coordinated response to restore trust in our services by working with all key industry stakeholders and national regulatory bodies to achieve a holistic and effective approach.

Fighting fraud continues to be a high priority. Fraud across the international communications ecosystem costs a significant amount of time and resources. Our industry understands that fighting fraud requires a coordinated and collaborative effort. No single company will solve its fraud challenges alone. It takes the support of the entire community, which is what i3Forum’s Fight Against Fraud workgroup is for. i3Forum Work groups are actively fighting both voice and messaging fraud, positioning our members for success as voice and messaging service convergence continues.

3. What do you feel are among the most exciting new development you are witnessing? e.g. new technologies?

In today’s market, we’re seeing so many new developments and technologies that are really exciting and have the potential to shape the future of our industry. There’s a growing number of collaborative efforts across the industry which is great to see, and we’re proud to be playing a big part in this at i3Forum.

5G / 6G, AI / ML, network slicing, blockchain are certainly all topics with enormous potential and multiple use cases, and we are closely monitoring the various initiatives led by some carriers, and plan to contribute when the time is right for industry alignment.

4. How can the forum help the individual players build a sustainable business?

Individual players that join i3Forum have access to work groups that include, Fight Fraud (Voice and Messaging), Market Data (Insights), Numbering Plan, and Technology. Members also have access to special initiatives such as Restore Trust in International Communications and Insights for Messaging Services. This helps them to build a sustainable business by working together with other work group members to build solutions for key challenges, and to gain new perspectives on how to optimise their business.

On top of this, they can join i3Forum Insights to benefit from new intelligence, visibility, data and insights to power informed decisions and better serve their customers’ needs. They can also join the i3Forum global numbering plan community to help shape the future of this innovative solution.

More broadly, i3Forum members can learn from each other, discuss and implement collective approaches that improve their businesses, create new initiatives and influence their peers in order to bring about industry-wide transformation that supports the execution of their strategy.

In this industry, collaboration is key to progress.