A big thanks to all who celebrated our 10th anniversary and came to our 9th Annual Conference after International Telecoms Week (ITW) 2018 on May 9th. We had a great turnout and it was fantastic to see so many of you interested and taking part in the discussions.
It was a tremendous success with executives from across the Carrier ecosystem joining us. It was great to hear their insights on Blockchain, Voice Fraud, Operational Efficiencies and Transformation in the industry and how industrywide collaboration will help drive our success.
We’d like to thank all our members, friends and non-members who joined us on our panels to debate and discuss the topics that our industry is facing, along with delegates who attended the event and ITW. We’re proud to be supporting the transformation and growth of the telecoms market and really seeing the benefit from an event to discuss the industry.
Our conference began with opening remarks from our Chairman, Philippe Millet in the Montreux meeting room. He opened up the event by discussing what i3forum had achieved over the last ten years. He emphasized that as technology and market forces redefine our industry, it’s collective transformation that will be key for driving real change.
Industry transformation continued to be a key talking point at the conference with Daniel Kurgan, CEO at BICS. He delivered his keynote presentation discussing the importance of working together in this time of change to drive adoption and accelerate transformation across the international Carrier ecosystem.
Following on from the keynote, Shahar Steiff, VP New Technology at PCCW Global took to the stage to break down PCCW Global and Colt’s Blockchain Proof of Concept, sharing his insights on how it has the potential to drive our industry forward. This sparked discussion amongst the audience, with Philippe Millet asking, what are the biggest challenges to widespread adoption?
The first panel of the day led on from this to debate how Blockchain and other new technologies have the potential to improve operational efficiency. Mike van den Bergh, CMO at PCCW Global said that standardization and collaboration is critical for adoption on a big scale. By getting major players to work together, we can create momentum and drive change.
A session chaired by John Christian, Director, Product Management at Metaswitch and i3forum Board Member, along with Jussi Makela, Director at the Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF), discussed the work that both the GLF and i3forum are doing to fight against fraud. Their mission is to represent the Carrier community and accelerate widespread adoption with its joint initiatives. The session gave an update on how they are driving momentum from the industry-led Code of Conduct and continuing to collaborate and define best practices for fraud.
The conference closed with a final panel session that discussed our strategies for transformation. It answered the question. Where do we go from here? Our panelists including Carlos Dasilva, VP Products and Business Operations at PCCW Global, Christian Michaud, Senior Vice President Usage Based Services at Tata Communications, Luis Benavente, CTO at BTS and John Christian, Director, Product Management at Metaswitch, debated the different ways their own businesses are adapting to keep up with transformation in the industry.
After the panel came to a close, our members, conference participants and delegates joined together at our networking cocktail party to continue the discussions over some drinks.
We’d like to thank our presenters and participants who took the time to make the conference a huge success. Throughout the entire conference it was evident that collective transformation is key to serving new opportunities and driving change. It’s clear that we need to join forces to drive this industry in the right direction.
It is important that we involve players from across the industry to collaborate and define standardization and recommendations that benefit the entire ecosystem.
If you enjoyed the conference as much as we did, we would love to hear from you so please get in touch: info@i3forum.org.
We look forward to updating you with images and videos of the day. Keep an eye out on our website and Social Media channels.