Get the latest announcements from MEF Members across the mobile ecosystem globally in this weekly review of member news…
GMS shifts to the AI-driven future of customer experience
Baar, Switzerland, February 20: Today, GMS announces that it has made the strategic decision to expand beyond a legacy messaging provider and become an AI communications solutions partner for mobile operators and enterprises. GMS’ deep understanding of MNO and enterprises messaging business, network protection, and global connectivity set the foundations for this growth.
“Delivering a private APN with an enterprise VPN is normally a tedious process for both the service provider and their enterprise customers, which can take weeks to complete,” says Philipp Rimli, Product Manager at Swisscom. “With Enea IoT CCS, we can automate the delivery of VPNs for private APNs through a customer self-service portal.”
“We are immensely proud to have been selected winners of another IoT Industry award. This was our eighth time,” says Roland Steiner, SVP and Head of Business Groups Network Performance and Applications at Enea, “Enea IoT CCS adds a smart and secure layer in the signalling and traffic plane over the mobile core. With IoT CCS, our IoT CSP customers get a competitive edge, allowing them to go beyond traditional IoT connectivity services.”
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Enea Wins Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s Mobile IoT Innovation Award 2024
Enea’s IoT Connectivity Control Service (IoT CCS) has won the 2024 Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) award in the Mobile IoT category. Now in its nineteenth year, the ‘MEFFYS’ awards series celebrates innovation, creativity, and ingenuity across the Mobile Ecosystem.
Enea’s IoT CSS is a truly unique offering in the market, which effectively solves multiple long-standing challenges for IoT Connectivity Services Providers (IoT CSPs).
2024 is set to be a landmark year for eSIM, with initial eSIM IoT specification commercial deployments set to launch. Functionally, this offers improved and much-needed long-term flexibility over the lifecycle of such devices. In the smartphone market, eSIM and iSIM look set to gradually become de facto part of designs from around 2026. Combined, these factors will lead to a 21% CAGR in total eSIM/iSIM shipment growth between 2023 and 2028.
Kaleido’s Research Lead Steffen Sorrell commented: “Average annual eSIM or iSIM shipment growth is forecast to exceed 16% in all global regions between 2023 and 2028. Today, over 1,200 Remote SIM Provisioning platform instances have been deployed globally, with customer sustainability, flexibility, and efficiency demands providing the key drivers towards widespread adoption.”
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BICS and Cognigy develop AI Agent for customer support in China
International communications enabler BICS has unveiled a new customer support AI Agent tailored for customers in China. Developed in collaboration with the conversational AI platform Cognigy, the chatbot assists customers via the popular Chinese social media super app, WeChat. Users can communicate seamlessly in their native Chinese language, as the AI Agent instantly translates the interactions into English for the BICS support team and backend systems.
While BICS already provides a similar English-based bot on WhatsApp in various regions, the absence of this channel in China prompted the development of a WeChat-specific solution. WeChat, being a cornerstone of digital life in China, encompasses messaging, social media, mobile payments, and business communications, filling the void left by the absence of global apps like Facebook.
“This is a significant enhancement to the user experience for our Chinese customers,” says Malcolm Chan, Senior Vice President, Enterprise, Asia Pacific at BICS. “It not only tailors our chatbot services, available in most other markets, to the region but also meets our customers where they are, using their preferred platform. Users can easily make queries in their mother tongue while accessing BICS’ global support team, made possible by recent advances in generative AI and the excellent support and platform from our partners at Cognigy.”
Philipp Heltewig, CEO and Founder of Cognigy adds to this achievement, “We extend our congratulations to BICS for their impressive tech solution for the Chinese market. BICS has demonstrated great innovation in overcoming unique market challenges, and we commend its commitment to enhancing customer experiences.”
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Dotgo ends 2023 with big bang, registers 1 billion RCS traffic in Q4
MWC Barcelona, February 26 2024: Dotgo, a leading provider of Rich Communication Services (RCS) Business Messages, today announced that RCS business messaging traffic over its platforms doubled in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2023, growing from over 500 million in the previous quarter to over 1 billion. This milestone firmly establishes Dotgo as one of the largest and most scalable RCS business messaging platforms globally.
“We are thrilled to see such tremendous growth in RCS business messaging traffic on our platform,” said Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO of Dotgo. “This validates the increasing demand from brands for rich, secure, engaging, and conversational messaging. Our exceptional delivery rates, read rates and response rates showcase how Dotgo’s RCS solutions drive meaningful interactions between businesses and customers.”
Twilio Report Reveals Customer Data Platforms are a Critical Foundation for AI-Driven Customer Insights
San Francisco — February 20, 2024 — Businesses are integrating customer data platforms with AI and analytics to personalize customer experiences and drive business success, according to a new report from Twilio Segment (NYSE: TWLO). The fifth annual Customer Data Platform Report, which reflects the findings of anonymized usage data from Twilio Segment’s 25,000+ customers, finds that businesses are prioritizing data quality to harness the power of AI and quickly act on nuanced customer insights.
“In 2024, more and more brands will turn to AI to deliver better, more personalized experiences for their customers. Our report showcases the essential role customer data plays in maximizing AI’s effectiveness,” said Kathryn Murphy, SVP of Product and Design at Twilio. “With data warehouses, and data lakehouses like Databricks becoming central to customers’ data strategies, it’s crucial for CDPs to support seamless integration with these data warehouses. At Twilio, we’re seeing a significant trend towards leveraging the interconnectedness of AI, data warehouses, and digital communication channels. The ability to interoperate with data warehouses is essential, ensuring that CDPs act as a pivotal technology for brands eager to leverage AI and data to forge even stronger relationships with their customers.”
Cellular-Connected City Street Lights To Exceed 219 Million By 2028
22nd February 2024, London, UK: – New research by connectivity experts Kaleido Intelligence shows how increasing sustainability concerns will drive up the desire for efficiencies in urban planning, driving smart lighting growth of over 200% from 2023 deployments.
The new research, Cellular IoT Connectivity Series: Smart Cities Opportunities & Forecasts, has found that 39% of all city streetlights will be connected to a cellular control and analytics platform to a degree, although cellular will not be the only connectivity technology used in this sector.
Several European countries have declared national strategies to use unlicensed LPWAN (Low-Power Wide Area Network) technologies like LoRaWAN or ZigBee for their lighting, and a common use for cellular in smart cities will be for a single cellular gateway to collect and transmit data from a group of streetlights that relay their information via unlicensed connectivity.
“Smart cities have such a diverse range of applications that connectivity will very rarely be a one-technology game,” remarked research author James Moar. “Cellular connectivity can act as a strong connective tissue, but connectivity providers need to be ready to act as aggregators and collators of many different types of data if they are to be truly useful in this ecosystem, rather than providing all the answers themselves.”
