We’re hosting a virtual conference for independent telcos – from Monday Sep 30 – Friday Oct 4, 2019.
We’ll be looking at the big questions facing anyone responsible for a voice network in today’s world.
- How do I deal with security threats from robocalls, toll-fraud and caller-ID spoofing?
- How do I operate a successful hosted business PBX product?
- How will my voice network evolve as TDM is fully replaced by VoIP?
So whether you’re a product manager, a CO tech or a leader responsible for the voice network, we’ll have something for you.
What’s a virtual conference?
At this event we’ll aim to replicate the key benefits of an in-person conference, but without the hotel coffee or the travel expenses.
Each day we’ll present a video panel discussion or a webinar focused on the theme of the day, and all attendees will be invited to join a real-time chat room – so you can connect with other attendees and continue the conversation throughout the day.
What’s the Agenda?
The conference runs from Monday September 30 – Friday October 4, 2019.
Each day at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT we’ll have a live-streamed video presentation – either a panel discussion or a webinar – and then we’ll host a chat room throughout the week so attendees can dig deeper into the topics and share their experiences with each other.
The topics for these 5 video presentations will be as follows.
TDM, VoIP, virtualization and the future of the PSTN
When: Monday, September 30
Guest Panelists: Ray Napoletano – VP Sales at Reinvent Telecom, Chris Wallace, Voice Architect at Education Networks of America, Vishal Sharma – Principal at Metanoia
Over the past 15-20 years we’ve seen large parts of the TDM-based PSTN replaced by VoIP. A generation of “softswitches” provide both TDM and VoIP functionality and act as gateways that allow voice calls to pass over both types of transport. In that time, much of the TDM access network has been replaced with VoIP, although we have more of a mixed-bag in terms of PSTN-connectivity, where most carriers have a mix of SIP trunks and ISUP trunks.
The last 5 years has seen the rise of virtualization, as the industry realized that specialist hardware was no longer needed to run a VoIP network, and moving our network functions into a virtual environment would provide greater flexibility, cost savings, and avoid the need for big capital purchases whenever a set of hardware reached the end of its useful life.
However many questions are still unanswered. In this webinar the panel will be discussing:
1. What does it take to finally “cut the cord” from TDM-based network connectivity
2. What benefits does virtualization promise, and are telcos currently receiving those benefits?
3. Do we have to go down this path? What happens if we stick with what we have?
4. What if a telco doesn’t have anyone with the skills to implement virtualization?
5. Is there even any point in running our own switch any more? Can’t someone just host this all for us?
6. Once we’ve set up a virtual infrastructure, what other services could we offer to our customers?
7. What will the PSTN look like 15 years from now?
Voice Network Architecture – When does redundancy become redundant?
When: Tuesday October 1
Guest Panelists: Stephen Denny – Senior Technical Consultant at Award Consulting
In this webinar we’ll discuss redundancy, geo-redundancy, clustered CFS, distributed UMGs – and how a telco can figure out the best architecture for their situation.
Security: toll-fraud, robocalling and caller ID spoofing
When: Wednesday October 2
Guest Panelists: Brian Ford – Senior Regulatory Counsel at NTCA, Jim Dalton – CEO of TransNexus
This session is going to cover two related-but-different topics:
Toll-fraud – where a hacker hijacks one of your subscriber’s accounts for the purpose of making expensive calls for free
Robocalling – where automated dialers call large numbers of people in quick succession and play a standardized message to each of them. Related to this is caller ID spoofing, which makes robocalling more dangerous and harder to stop.
We will discuss why and how people perform these attacks on your network, what you can do about it, and what the industry is doing about robocalling with STIR/SHAKEN.
Perimeta training – adjacencies, routing and MMFs
When: Thursday October 3
Guest Panelists: None – this is a straight training session led by me
This webinar is aimed at technicians who have a Perimeta Session Border Controller operational in their network but don’t have much experience changing the configuration.
Attendees will gain a fuller understanding of the functions available on the SBC and will learn the basics of manipulating SIP headers using the Perimeta MMF functionality.
Making our hosted PBX product work better
When: Friday October 4
Guest Panelists: Rick Wagner – VP Operations and Engineering at Access One, Jake Livingstone – Senior VoIP Solutions Architect at Reinvent Telecom (and formerly one of Metaswitch’s awesome training team)
In this webinar we’ll mix in some general discussion of Hosted PBX / UCaaS best practices with some practical advice on troubleshooting and provisioning.
What will it cost?
The standard conference pass is free, and allows you to attend all 5 sessions live, and also be part of the conference chat room throughout the week.
Premium registration is also available for $99. Premium Attendees will have permanent access to full-length video recordings of all 5 conference sessions. A corporate Premium registration for $250 allows the videos to be shared with anyone at the same company, so they can be an ongoing resource for your team. You may purchase Premium Registration through PayPal, or purchase corporate Premium Registration at this link.
Do I need to register in advance?
Yes. If you are interested in attending the event (or even part of it) we need you to complete the registration form below and to mark the time in your work calendar now, so you’re able to make the most of this unique opportunity.