It’s 10 a.m. in Amsterdam, and the Tobacco Theater is buzzing. The lights dim, the cameras roll, and CPaaS Acceleration Alliance founder Rob Kurver steps onto the stage. “Wow. Good morning, everybody,” he begins. “Welcome to Amsterdam. It’s so amazing that after a couple of years of building this alliance, we have this group here together — telcos, CPaaS players, analysts, technologists, investors… and then some.”

The room, a mix of deep industry veterans and new innovators, breaks into smiles. This is CASA25 — the third edition of an event that’s fast become the gathering place for those shaping the future of communications.

From Swamp to Innovation

Rob kicks things off with a bit of history about the venue. The Nes, the old Amsterdam street where the theater sits, was once a swamp, reclaimed in 1342. Over centuries it evolved — first home to churches, then to traders, and later to a tobacco auction house. “You can turn anything into a hype cycle,” he jokes. “We went from the swamp — the innovation trigger — to the peak of expectation with the churches, to the trough of disillusionment with tobacco, and now the plateau of productivity.”

Then comes the punchline: “If you think about it, instead of five churches, we now have five big LLM guys — Mark, Sam, and the others. The role of the church centuries ago has been replaced by the role of Big Tech today.”

Three Years, Three Days, Three Big Moves

There’s a running theme in Rob’s welcome: the power of three.

• Year 1: Connect — bringing telcos and CPaaS together.
• Year 2: Grow — exploring real use cases.
• Year 3: Accelerate — creating impact.

“Kevin and I started this thing three years ago,” Rob recalls. “The idea was to bridge the gap between telcos and CPaaS. Those early conversations were… interesting. ‘You’ll be our first member!’ doesn’t always sell.”

Today, with 120+ active members and partners representing roughly half a trillion dollars in market cap, the Alliance is no longer an experiment — it’s an ecosystem.

And CASA25 marks a milestone with three announcements:

• The State of CPaaS 2025 Report, written by Andrew Collinson, examining how the industry moves from $30B toward $100B — not in theory, but in practice.
• A new investment partnership — “putting our money where our mouth is” to accelerate growth across the ecosystem.
• The Case Directory, expanding last year’s Playbook into a living repository of use cases and business outcomes.

“We Want to Make a Difference”

This, Rob emphasizes, isn’t about yet another conference. “We don’t just want to have an event and some dinners. We really want to make an impact. This alliance was built to change something — to move the industry forward together.”

Kevin Joins the Stage: “The Moment We’ve Been Building Toward”

Enter Kevin Nethercott, co-founder and master evangelist. He laughs as he takes the stage — “I might be the oldest guy in the room now, but I’ve never been more excited.”

Kevin draws a parallel to the early days of VoIP: “When we moved from TDM to IP, the world changed. SIP alone enabled nearly a trillion dollars of new business. What’s coming next — AI, vCons, and agentic automation — is that level of transformation all over again.”

He teases what’s ahead: the launch of a new working group focused on vCons, and an afternoon exploring AI’s disruption of the communications stack. “When I first saw Netscape, I knew the world would never be the same. That’s where we are now with AI.”

The Road Ahead: Two Days of Doing, Not Talking

The rest of Day 1 dives into Intelligent Engagement — starting with Vonage’s Neelam Sandhu, followed by the unveiling of the State of CPaaS report and a debate among analysts about the market’s future.

The afternoon shifts gears to AI disruption and vCons, followed by a preview of the new investment partnership. “And then,” Rob smiles, “there’s only one thing to do — get drunk.” Attendees laugh as he announces the evening party at the Chin Chin Club — a speakeasy-style celebration complete with Amsterdam’s famous bitterballen.

Day 2: The Fight Club Rule

Kevin sets the tone for the next morning. “We start at 10 a.m. with Fight Club. And the first rule of Fight Club? You can’t say CPaaS.” The audience chuckles. “Tomorrow is all about customers, use cases, and monetization. We’ve talked enough tech. Let’s focus on what drives value.”

The day features a keynote from Gamma, a showcase of real-world enterprise use cases, and sessions on Network APIs and Open Telcos. It ends with the CPaaS Showcase Challenge — “where American Idol meets CPaaS,” as Kevin puts it — before everyone gathers again for drinks.

Workshops and Day 3: Rolling Up Sleeves

New this year are hands-on workshops, hosted by sponsors like Radisys, Crexendo/NetSapiens, GSMA and the vCon Foundation. With limited seats (“and the right to strike competitors from the list,” Rob jokes), these small sessions dive deeper into the how.

Day 3 caps off the week with the GSMA Open Gateway Analyst Summit, a focused, invite-only deep dive into the future of network APIs — and the next step in bridging telecom and innovation.

From Connection to Impact

As Rob wraps up, he gestures to the crowd. “Three years ago, we set out to connect telcos and CPaaS. Now we’re ready to create impact. Let’s make these three days count.”

The lights fade, applause fills the theater, and CASA25 officially begins — not as another conference, but as a movement built on collaboration, curiosity, and a shared determination to shape what comes next.

At CASA25, Melissa Holtz, Senior Research Manager at IDC, led a high-energy discussion on one of the most strategic questions in communications today:

how can telcos reclaim ownership and differentiation in an API-driven, AI-infused world?

The panel — featuring Michael Brandenburg (RingCentral), Nicola Fidanzia (Ooma/2600Hz), Jörgen Björkner (iotcomms.io), and Jon Brinton (Crexendo/NetSapiens) — explored how service providers can build their own platforms without depending entirely on hyperscalers or global CPaaS vendors. The result was a candid look at what “platform sovereignty” really means — and why vertical APIs and agentic AI may finally make it possible.

APIs as the Glue in a Fragmented Ecosystem

Melissa opened with a key observation:

“It’s not just about CPaaS or network APIs. APIs are the glue connecting everyone across the ecosystem.”

Indeed, all four panelists represent different layers of that ecosystem — from UCaaS/CCaaS platforms to deep API frameworks and full-stack CPaaS offerings. What unites them is the belief that flexibility and control matter again. Telcos want the ability to deploy locally, meet compliance and sovereignty requirements, and build services that reflect their customers’ realities — not someone else’s roadmap.

From Open Platforms to Vertical APIs

RingCentral’s Michael Brandenburg reminded the audience that the company’s journey toward an open platform started more than a decade ago — long before “CPaaS” was a mainstream term.

“We don’t really call it a CPaaS, but everything we do is API-enabled,” he said.

“The milestone moment was when we opened our platform and built around APIs — that’s what allowed UCaaS, CCaaS, events, and AI to converge.”

That convergence has made RingCentral’s approach increasingly “verticalized.” Financial services, healthcare, and retail clients now expect communication tools that speak their business language.

“Standalone solutions are no longer a go-forward strategy,” Brandenburg emphasized. “Every engagement starts with integration.”

iotcomms.io: Bottom-Up Innovation and AI Data Bridges

For Jörgen Björkner, co-founder of iotcomms.io, the story starts from the bottom up. His company works closely with developers and telcos to solve specific problems, often co-creating solutions before standardizing them for others.

“Instead of saying, ‘here’s our standard API, good luck,’ we collaborate deeply with our partners. Every challenge we solve becomes a reusable module for the next one.”

That hands-on approach led to AI Connect, an AI-enabled service that unifies real-time telco data and metadata for AI systems. It bridges the messy world of codecs, networks, and protocols — feeding AI platforms clean, contextual streams.

For Björkner, the lesson is clear: innovation happens when telcos and developers meet halfway, not when they operate in silos.

Crexendo (NetSapiens): Compliance, Customization, and the Partner Edge

Jon Brinton, CRO of Crexendo (NetSapiens), described a company that powers over 7 million users through 235+ service providers worldwide — often invisibly.

“We’re the NVIDIA inside their experience,” he said. “End customers don’t know it’s NetSapiens — our partners are the ones bringing vision and vertical specialization.”

That partner-led model has created surprising success stories, from financial compliance use cases to pest control field services — all powered by APIs. The challenge, Brinton noted, is balancing agility with reliability and security:

“With that many deployments, you can’t break what’s already working. Every update has to respect compliance frameworks, privacy, and sovereignty.”

Crexendo uses early-access programs and iterative DevOps cycles to test new AI capabilities safely — echoing a theme across the panel: AI can’t just be plugged in; it has to be governed.

Ooma / 2600Hz: Voice Reimagined, ROI Proven

Nicola Fidanzia of Ooma/2600Hz highlighted a white-labeled platform that lets telcos and niche providers build their own branded UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS offerings. The flexibility is crucial, but the results speak louder.

He shared a case study with ServiceTitan, a platform for electricians, plumbers, and HVAC installers:

“By integrating our APIs with their preferred AI provider, they went to market in under two quarters — and increased lead conversion by 11%.”

Fidanzia also pushed back on the “voice is dead” narrative:

“Voice is still king. AI gives it a second life as another data channel — one that’s natural, human, and incredibly powerful.”

His advice for telcos experimenting with AI was pragmatic: start small.

“Don’t chase impossible problems. Begin with simple AI tasks in voice, see real outcomes, and build from there.”

Beyond Tech: Cultural Transformation and DevOps Mindset

For Björkner, the hardest challenge isn’t APIs or AI — it’s culture.

“Technology is the easy part. The real shift is how you organize around it.”

He contrasted today’s agile DevOps loops with the old telco model of multi-year feedback cycles.

“In the past, it took a year to learn something was broken — and another year to fix it. Now, the same team builds, runs, and fixes in real time.”

That mindset shift — from silos to speed — is what telcos must internalize if they want to own their platforms rather than rent them.

Guardrails for an AI-Driven Future

As the discussion closed, Holtz returned to AI’s risks — hallucinations, toxicity, and loss of control.

Brinton summed up the group’s philosophy:

“Start with the problem. Involve customers early. Use AI as a pillar, not a starting point. Feedback from partners and users is the best guardrail you’ll ever build.”

Key Takeaways

• Ownership matters again — telcos want flexible, sovereign platforms they can deploy locally.
• APIs are the new backbone — enabling integration, verticalization, and business differentiation.
• AI is here — but governance and culture determine success.
• Voice is reborn — as a rich, data-driven input channel for intelligent engagement.
• DevOps and co-creation are replacing the old vendor-carrier model with something faster, more collaborative, and ultimately, more human.

CASA25 once again showed how the CPaaS, UCaaS, and network API worlds are converging — and how telcos can finally build platforms they truly own.

Moderated by Žiga Lešnik, Simon-Kucher, with Markus Kümmerle (Project CAMARA), Mark Harvey (XConnect), Álvaro Navarro (Vonage), and Andrés Burgoa (Aduna)

At CASA25, Žiga Lešnik of Simon-Kucher hosted one of the most dynamic and candid panels of the week — bringing together leaders from across the emerging network API value chain. What unfolded was a mix of celebration, hard truth, and cautious optimism about the road ahead for network APIs.

The New API Economy Takes Shape

The session opened with Markus Kümmerle of Deutsche Telekom — one of the original driving forces behind Project CAMARA — recounting how far the ecosystem has come.

Five years ago, he started Deutsche Telekom’s API program “as a one-man show,” building the GitHub, website, and onboarding the first 1,300 members himself. “We learned early that we only win together,” he said, describing how CAMARA’s success was born out of collaboration.

His point landed with the audience: telcos have tried to do APIs alone — and failed five times before. This time, as several panelists agreed, feels different.

Collaboration, Not Competition

Mark Harvey, Chief Identity Officer at XConnect (following Sekura.id’s acquisition), described the evolution from “API spaghetti” to the current wave of standardization.

“It’s very rare to see competitors like us sitting side by side,” he said. “We’ve finally realized that no one can crack this on their own.”

Both Álvaro Navarro from Vonage and Andrés Burgoa from Aduna echoed this sentiment. Vonage represents the CPaaS and developer experience side, Aduna the aggregator layer connecting multiple operators. “Our job,” said Burgoa, “is to make the life of these gentlemen easier — aggregating APIs globally so they can focus on developer relations and enterprise solutions.”

He summarized Aduna’s role neatly: “We’re the piece of the puzzle that nobody knew was missing.”

From Promise to Reality

A year ago, network APIs were still a promise. Now, they’re live.

For Vonage, that means focusing on developer experience and coverage — ensuring APIs work seamlessly in multiple countries and can be tested easily. “Even if it’s fake data, give developers a playground,” said Navarro. “That’s how adoption grows.”

Aduna, meanwhile, is solving the scalability challenge. Instead of every CPaaS negotiating with dozens of operators, Aduna handles the coverage and compliance complexity once. “We want Alvaro and his peers to focus on building solutions — not chasing legal contracts,” Burgoa explained.

Kümmerle confirmed that wholesale aggregation now represents 80% of Deutsche Telekom’s API business, with examples like RTL and Associated Press using live video APIs for major events. “It’s no longer theory — it’s production,” he said.

Focus: The Word of the Day

If there was one word that united the panel, it was focus.

“There are 181 CAMARA APIs,” warned Harvey. “We can’t focus on 181 things. Let’s stop adding new ones and start generating revenue.”

He argued for shifting attention away from “developers” and toward product owners inside enterprises: “They’re the ones with the problems — developers just implement. Let’s listen to the product teams, not just publish APIs and hope someone uses them.”

Kümmerle agreed: “We expose everything we have, but that’s wrong. The customer has one question: is it fraud — yes or no? That’s what we should build for.”

Three to Five Years Ahead

The panel looked forward to 2030 projections — figures as high as $300 billion in annual API revenues. While most saw this as achievable, the message was clear: it won’t happen by itself.

Burgoa highlighted regional momentum, noting that Aduna recently hosted its first summit at AT&T’s Dallas HQ with Verizon, T-Mobile, and international carriers. “If you had told me three years ago that all three U.S. operators would sit together to talk about network APIs, I wouldn’t have believed you,” he said.

But he was also realistic: “We’re spending more time in small rooms than on stages, negotiating commercial, legal, and operational alignment. It’s slow, but it’s real.”

Challenges Still Ahead

As Žiga pushed the panel to name what’s not working, the mood turned refreshingly honest.

Burgoa admitted the story still needs to “propagate” deeper inside operators. “It’s still a niche layer at the top. We need the operational people to start executing, not just hearing the story.”

Kümmerle pointed to over-regulation in Europe as a drag on innovation: “Privacy and sovereignty are essential, but the balance is off. We need to talk with regulators about how to enable innovation without compromising trust.”

Harvey reminded the audience that progress is often invisible: “Just because it’s not in the news doesn’t mean it’s not happening. TikTok and Google deals are massive milestones. We should celebrate small wins.”

Takeaways: Building the Road Ahead

Focus on fewer, higher-value APIs. Fraud, identity, and authentication are clear starting points. Talk to product owners, not just developers. Solve real enterprise pain points. Simplify language and onboarding. Developer experience is still a major adoption barrier. Collaborate, don’t compete. Aggregation, trust, and shared standards are key. Engage regulators early. Privacy and innovation must evolve together.

In the end, the tone was pragmatic but hopeful.

“We’ve fallen off the bike five times,” Harvey said, smiling. “But this time, we’re pedaling forward — together.”

Want to help shape the future of network APIs?

Join the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance and contribute to our ongoing work on The State of CPaaS 2026 and Network API Roadmap — where we turn conversations like this one into collaborative action.

Panel moderated by Amy Cameron (STL Partners) with Sebastian Schumann (Deutsche Telekom), Colm Sunderland (Head of Hyperscale, Indirect & CPaaS, BT International), Wendhy Kusumaatmadja (VP Digital Initiative, Telin), and Ahmed Omer (VP EngageX, e& enterprise)

At CASA25, Amy Cameron of STL Partners led one of the most forward-looking panels of the event — “The Telco of the Future.” Featuring senior leaders from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the discussion explored how major operators are reshaping their networks, organizations, and business models to thrive in an AI-driven, platform-based world.

e& enterprise: Breaking Up to Speed Up

Ahmed Omer, VP of EngageX at e& enterprise, shared one of the boldest transformation stories in telecom. Once part of Etisalat’s legacy structure, e& enterprise now operates as an independent business with its own P&L — designed to move faster and innovate more freely.

“When you spin off a business, you take full accountability,” Omer explained. “It forces agility. You fail fast, learn, and move forward.”

Under his leadership, EngageX integrates the entire customer interaction journey — from marketing and CRM to CPaaS, contact center, and loyalty. That end-to-end approach allows e& enterprise to evolve from telco to full customer-experience provider.

Omer argued that future success depends on openness and collaboration:

“Telcos need to stop guarding margins and start sharing value across the ecosystem. You might give up margin now, but you gain magnitude later.”

He also highlighted E& Capital, the group’s venture arm, as a catalyst for non-organic growth — investing in startups, JVs, and acquisitions that complement the portfolio.

BT International: Building the Network for AI

Colm Sunderland, Head of Hyperscale, Indirect & CPaaS at BT International, described a transformation rooted in infrastructure and flexibility.

BT’s Global Fabric is a next-generation “any-to-any” platform built to deliver on-demand connectivity with sovereignty, security, and seamless integration.

“You can’t be a telco of the future if your services aren’t consumable,” Sunderland said. “The world expects on-demand, real-time capabilities — and the network has to match that.”

He envisions a world where bandwidth behaves like cloud capacity — elastic, intelligent, and dynamically priced. When Amy suggested “surge pricing for bandwidth,” Colm smiled:

“Exactly — like Ticketmaster or Uber. When demand spikes, capacity should reflect its real-time value.”

For Sunderland, digitization will ultimately define the future:

“It’s about giving customers a single digital pane of glass — low touch, high value, high speed.”

Deutsche Telekom: From Minutes to Meaning

Sebastian Schumann of Deutsche Telekom offered a wholesale-driven perspective. His team is developing a Digital Services Platform that unifies CPaaS, RBM, identity, and network APIs in one architecture.

“It’s not about selling APIs,” he said. “It’s about making what you already have consumable — in the way customers want to consume it.”

For Schumann, success means telcos moving beyond connectivity and participating directly in value creation:

“You don’t need to teach voice salespeople to sell APIs; you just make sure APIs are there when the customer needs them.”

Telin: Transformation Through People and Purpose

Representing Telin, the international arm of Telkom Indonesia, Wendhy Kusumaatmadja, VP Digital Initiative, brought an inspiring Southeast Asian perspective — one grounded in people and culture as much as technology.

“Innovation isn’t an instruction; it comes from people,” she said.

Telin’s transformation began by embedding agile culture across the company, empowering teams to act fast and work modularly. When asked to deliver a CPaaS platform in nine months, the team completed it in three — proof that transformation can be driven by mindset as much as tools.

“We start with what customers want and work backward,” Kusumaatmadja added. “We don’t want to fight alone — we want to be part of an ecosystem. It’s not competition; it’s co-opetition.”

Partners, Platforms & the Path Ahead

When Amy asked whether future growth would come from direct sales or through partners, the panel leaned decisively toward ecosystem collaboration.

Sunderland pointed to BT’s extensive global partner network; Omer described e&’s “partners of partners of partners” model; and Kusumaatmadja highlighted the value of learning through global alliances like TM Forum and MEF.

As Omer put it:

“Thirty years ago we built the towers. Now we need to build the ecosystems.”

What Will Drive Tomorrow’s Revenue?

Each speaker identified a different catalyst for growth:

• Wendhy Kusumaatmadja — Agentic AI: embedding intelligence in every customer interaction.
• Sebastian Schumann — Participation: moving up the value chain.
• Colm Sunderland — Digitization & orchestration: making everything consumable.
• Ahmed Omer — Moments: using AI to personalize every customer journey.

A New Identity for Telcos

Ultimately, the “telco of the future” is defined not by infrastructure but by mindset — shifting from control to collaboration, from services to experiences, and from networks to ecosystems.

As Amy Cameron concluded:

“It’s not just what you sell, but how you sell it — and how you connect people, partners, and possibilities along the way.”

At CASA25, a standout panel dove deep into one of the most critical—and least understood—aspects of the vCon revolution: how to handle consent, compliance, and data provenance in an AI-driven world.

Moderated by Thomas Howe of Strolid, the panel brought together a mix of perspectives from across the ecosystem: Jason Goecke (Creo Solutions), Nima Golchini (Enea), Tony Nuzzo (Approved Contact), and Ben Curtis and Dean Landsman from JLINC. Together, they explored how programmable trust and verifiable consent are becoming the new foundation of intelligent communications.

From Permissions to Provenance

Tony Nuzzo of Approved Contact opened with a simple but powerful premise: trust starts with permission.

His company’s new Permissions product lets brands validate consent explicitly — not just “we think they agreed,” but clear records of whether customers allow their voice to be used in AI, or whether they want to receive texts or calls.

“You want to be a trusted brand, not just a brand,” Tony said. “And the VCon gives you a way to prove that trust.”

By capturing this consent inside verifiable conversation data, VCons effectively become an insurance policy for brands — proof that engagement is both compliant and authentic.

Security First: Cleaning the Pipeline

Nima Golchini of Enea then connected the dots between consent and cybersecurity.

Enea provides messaging and signaling firewalls that filter spam, block malicious content, and enforce regional compliance rules across operators and CPaaS providers.

He explained how AI models now detect campaign drift — where a registered campaign sends unrelated content — and help enforce national codes of conduct, like France’s restriction on promotional messages during weekends.

“It’s about keeping a clean pipeline,” Nima said. “Security, compliance, and monetization all depend on it.”

JLINC: Proof That Data Stays True

The discussion moved to data provenance, where Ben Curtis and Dean Landsman from JLINC outlined how cryptographic signatures and zero-knowledge auditing can verify the flow of data without ever exposing its contents.

Ben explained how their system ensures that data shared between systems — for example, between AI models or CPaaS platforms — is traceable, trusted, and compliant with privacy regulations.

“We can prove that the data went where it was supposed to go, and came from who it was supposed to — without ever revealing the private data itself.”

Dean added that this capability turns compliance into something verifiable and automatic:

“From the moment data begins to the moment it ends, it still belongs to its originator. That’s the essence of trust under GDPR and every new data law to come.”

Smart Contracts for Consent

When Jason Goecke of Creo Solutions joined the exchange, he described VCons as the foundation for programmable compliance.

“It’s like a smart contract for communication,” he said. “Consent travels with the data itself. That gives you ownership, transparency, and interoperability — the foundation for trusted applications.”

VCons, in this view, turn consent into code — allowing businesses to automate trust, not just declare it.

The New CRM: Conversational and Consumer-Centric

Closing the panel, Dean Landsman reflected on how VCons could transform CRM systems.

Traditional CRMs were designed to collect and exploit data, not to protect it. The next generation, he said, will be conversational and consumer-centric — powered by verifiable, user-owned data.

“CRM hasn’t really had guardrails before. VCons bring them,” he said. “They ensure customer data stays their own — and make the system finally work for the customer.”

From Compliance to Confidence

The message from this CASA25 panel was clear: VCons aren’t just about storing conversations — they’re about redefining digital trust.

They turn compliance into a design principle, enable verifiable provenance for AI, and make consent portable across every layer of the communications stack.

As Thomas Howe closed the session, he summed up the mood perfectly:

“This isn’t about regulation slowing us down — it’s about trust becoming programmable.”

Insights from the CASA25 Panel Moderated by Matt Townend (Cavell)

At CASA25, one of the most anticipated discussions centered on vCons — the emerging standard for capturing, structuring, and sharing conversational data across platforms and channels. Moderated by Matt Townend of Cavell Group, the panel brought together four perspectives spanning the ecosystem:

Robert Galop, CTO of Creo Solutions (software and AI platform innovator) Jon Brinton, CRO of Crexendo (NetSapiens platform, powering 235 service providers) Sebastian Schumann, Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) (building a sovereign CPaaS platform) Mark Ianozzi, CEO of Superior Contact (and longtime Cloud Communications Alliance leader)

Together they explored how vCons move from theory to impact — and where opinions diverged on the road ahead.

1. From Standard to Solutions

A recurring theme was the need to move beyond the technology itself. All panelists agreed that enterprises don’t buy “vCons” — they buy outcomes.

Robert Galop put it succinctly: early discussions focused on selling vCons as a concept, but “we’re quickly progressing to what we can build on top of them.”

Jon Brinton echoed the sentiment, warning against confusing customers with another acronym: “The last thing we should do is try and sell vCons. We should sell intelligent engagement.”

That closing phrase — intelligent engagement — became a shared reference point, linking this session back to the overarching CASA25 theme.

2. Use Cases: Where the Value Starts to Show

Robert Galop illustrated how some service providers are already deploying vCons to analyze every conversation, using AI to provide feedback loops that were previously impossible.

Example: a small business uses vCons to grade every call against a script, then gives front-desk employees instant coaching on what could have gone better — democratizing tools once reserved for enterprise contact centers.

Jon Brinton expanded this with two clear value drivers his partners are seeing:

Coaching at scale: moving from sampling a few calls to analyzing every conversation for agent improvement. Upsell optimization: correlating conversational data with sales outcomes to train staff on what drives higher transaction values.

Mark Ianozzi, speaking from his BPO perspective, emphasized data portability as another use case: enabling clients to migrate between contact-center platforms without losing historic conversational context. In his words, “the money is in the data,” and vCons turn that data into a transmittable asset.

3. The Telco Lens: From Minutes to Context

For Deutsche Telekom, vCons fit naturally into their sovereign CPaaS platform strategy.

Sebastian Schumann described how DTAG views vCons as an enabler for “contextual communication,” where a call is no longer just a call:

“A minute is a minute is a minute — but now minutes have different values.”

By embedding vCon capabilities into their platform, DTAG aims to transform legacy traffic into data-rich, AI-ready interactions. Schumann stressed that telcos won’t necessarily own the end-user layer, but can provide the trusted, compliant interface that others build upon — particularly important in regulated sectors like healthcare or government.

4. The Ecosystem Debate: Who Moves First?

Townend challenged the panel on whether there’s a race to claim ownership of the vCon layer — between telcos, CRM platforms, or communication vendors.

Jon Brinton acknowledged the urgency: those who “get out in front” and deliver tangible use cases early will likely control more of the data and value chain. Robert Galop agreed, describing a pragmatic path of launching simple, horizontal tools first to gain traction, before layering in vertical solutions that drive revenue growth.

Sebastian Schumann saw it differently: rather than a race for ownership, he envisioned a cooperative ecosystem, with telcos serving as the enablers providing trusted infrastructure and APIs, while innovators build the applications.

5. Vertical vs. Horizontal Paths

There was consensus that vertical specialization will emerge naturally.

Galop noted that quick-win, horizontal solutions help get telcos “in the door,” but real revenue growth comes from tailoring insights to industries — from healthcare compliance to automotive retail.

Brinton reinforced that many early adopters are already doing this: “They’re intimate with their customers’ workflows and building for specific problems, not platforms.”

6. Trust, Governance, and the Data Gold Rush

Mark Ianozzi brought the discussion full circle to AI governance and compliance. With regulators scrutinizing how AI uses data, vCons could become the audit trail of the AI era — a verifiable record of what was said, by whom, and when.

This sparked nods across the panel: vCons don’t just enable AI insights; they make AI accountable.

7. From Minutes to Meaning: The Road Ahead

As the session closed, Matt Townend asked the simplest but hardest question: Will we still be talking about vCons in five years — or just about better customer experiences?

The unanimous answer: outcomes over acronyms.

vCons will fade into the background as the invisible layer powering trusted, contextual engagement. Service providers who act early — building skills, partnerships, and initial use cases — will lead. Telcos that embed vCons into their infrastructure can finally turn their “minutes” into meaning.

🧭 The Next Step

CASA25 made clear that vCons are moving from concept to execution. But their real power lies in what comes next — an ecosystem of partners turning conversational data into trusted intelligence across industries.

If your organization is working on vCon use cases — whether in contact centers, telco platforms, or enterprise AI — the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance invites you to share your story and contribute to the evolving Case Directory. Together, we can turn this trillion-dollar idea into measurable impact.

The Case Directory session at CASA25, moderated by CPaaS Acceleration Alliance’s research lead Andrew Collinson, brought together three sharp minds to explore how real-world examples can accelerate enterprise adoption of CPaaS, Network APIs, and Intelligent Engagement. Joining Andrew on stage were Amy Cameron (STL Partners), Robert Galop (Creo Solutions), and Hélène Vigue (GSMA). The conversation, while rooted in the Case Directory itself, became a much broader discussion about where enterprise demand really lies, what telcos are missing, and how partners can bridge the gap.

From Playbook to Case Directory

Andrew opened the session by introducing the Case Directory, a searchable repository of over 120 case studies drawn from the CPaaSAA Playbook, GSMA’s Open Gateway library, and other industry sources. The tool allows members to search use cases by industry, solution type, and business outcome, offering a fast way to see what’s working — from number verification APIs to customer engagement platforms.

“The idea,” Andrew explained, “wasn’t just to collect examples, but to make them useful — for inspiration, for learning, and maybe even as a sales enablement tool.”

He highlighted that most current case studies come from telecoms, finance, and technology, leaving whole sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, or agriculture largely untouched. That observation set the tone for the panel: if so much of the world’s economy depends on services and people, are we still focusing too narrowly on digital-native sectors?

“We’re Ignoring Half the World’s Workforce”

Robert Galop picked up on that point. Having worked across both enterprise IT and customer contact environments, he cautioned against over-focusing on digital-first industries.

“Two-thirds of global GDP comes from service businesses,” he reminded the audience. “Half the world’s workforce delivers services — yet most of our CPaaS use cases are still built for digital companies.”

For Robert, the next growth wave lies in bringing intelligent engagement to these under-served industries — those where people talk to people every day. “Automation and AI are great, but the real opportunity is in understanding conversations — capturing the voice of the customer through things like vCons (voice conversations in a standard format) — and using those insights to improve service quality and outcomes.”

Telcos Need to “Eat the Technology First”

Amy Cameron brought a healthy dose of realism from STL Partners’ enterprise research. Her assessment: enterprises may trust telcos, but they don’t see them as innovation partners yet.

“Enterprises usually put telcos fifth or sixth on their list of preferred digital transformation partners,” she said. “They see them as reliable, but not necessarily relevant.”

Her advice was simple but pointed: “Eat the technology first, then feed it to someone else.” Telcos, she argued, need to apply CPaaS and AI to their own operations — to improve how they engage with customers — before pitching those capabilities to enterprises. “They’re sitting on the data, the channels, and the customer base to do it better than anyone. They just don’t always use it.”

When it comes to enterprise demand, Amy sees a strong pull toward better connectivity, faster provisioning, and easier integration with IT systems — but not yet a rush toward telco-led transformation. She also noted that smaller, specialized service providers often outperform larger telcos because they act as consultants, packaging connectivity with practical solutions.

APIs Are Just Ingredients — Solutions Are the Dish

Hélène Vigue echoed that perspective from the GSMA side. “Enterprises don’t buy APIs,” she said. “They buy solutions to problems.”

Drawing on her experience with Mobile Identity and the Open Gateway initiative, she described how telcos are learning to embed APIs into real-world identity and security solutions. “In age assurance, fraud detection, or payment verification, mobile signals become part of a broader identity and access management solution,” she said. “That’s what enterprises want — not the API itself, but the problem solved.”

She noted that while early traction comes from financial services, demand is spreading across industries, from gig economy platforms verifying drivers to manufacturers ensuring trusted access to systems. The key, she emphasized, is partnerships: “Operators aren’t delivering these solutions alone. They rely on identity aggregators, security providers, and integrators to make it work.”

The Mid-Market Goldmine

The panel also converged on one overlooked segment: small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Robert shared a recent case where a five-location hotel chain didn’t even know why customers were calling — until CPaaS analytics showed clear patterns. “They just needed simple insights,” he said. “That’s where we can make the biggest impact fastest.”

Andrew agreed, recalling his own experience running an SME unit inside a telco: “Large enterprises are complex, slow, and bureaucratic. Mid-market companies move faster and buy faster — if you solve a clear problem.”

Cloud Thinking, Network Delivery

The conversation naturally returned to network APIs — and what developers actually want from them. Amy shared findings from STL’s developer research: “When we asked developers what they’d pay telcos for, the top answers were network performance visibility and on-demand control — exactly what they already get from their cloud environments.”

In other words, developers get the value of APIs; they just don’t yet see it coming from telcos. As Amy put it, “There’s latent demand. It’s not about teaching them what APIs are — it’s about making them easy, available, and consistent.”

Hélène agreed, pointing out that Open Gateway is starting to make that happen — especially in China, where API adoption is surging thanks to clear regulation and strong government backing.

Audience Insights: “Make It Easier to Find and Use”

An audience member captured a sentiment shared by many: It’s still too hard to know where to find these APIs or how to integrate them. Both Hélène and Robert agreed — developers don’t naturally go to GSMA websites to search for APIs. They discover them through partners like Infobip, Sinch, or others.

As Hélène said, “The partner ecosystem is the delivery mechanism. Next year, we’ll put even more focus on making access and integration easier.”

Where Would You Invest?

Andrew closed the session with a playful but revealing challenge: If you had a pot of money to invest in telecom innovation, where would you put it?

Hélène chose age assurance — a hot, regulation-driven use case where identity APIs can deliver real social value. Robert naturally backed vCons — not just for analytics, but as the foundation for smarter automation and customer intelligence. Amy combined both ideas, saying she’d build a cybersecurity solution for small businesses that wraps these technologies into something simple, trusted, and easy to bundle with connectivity.

Takeaway: From Examples to Execution

The Case Directory is more than a library of success stories — it’s a mirror of where the industry stands. As the panel made clear, enterprises want simplicity, trust, and outcomes, not just APIs.

The challenge for telcos and CPaaS providers is to turn those case studies into living examples — solving real problems for real businesses, from financial fraud to age assurance to service automation.

Or, as Andrew summarized offstage later: “The magic isn’t in the number of APIs. It’s in how we use them to make businesses — and people — work better.”

Get Involved — Help Grow the Case Directory

The Case Directory is being released to CPaaSAA members as a shared resource to accelerate learning, collaboration, and innovation across the ecosystem.

If you’d like to contribute a case study, test the tool, or help expand coverage into new industries, reach out to andrew@cpaasaa.com or contact the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance team.

Your example might be the next one that helps the whole industry move forward.

At CASA25, the “State of CPaaS 2025” panel—moderated by Andrew Collinson—brought together four of the industry’s most experienced analysts and strategists: Nick Lane (MobileSquared), Amy Cameron (STL Partners), Raúl Castañon (S&P Global Market Intelligence), and Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey).

Rather than debating forecasts, the group aligned on something more important: Intelligent Engagement as the right framework for the next chapter of CPaaS evolution. They endorsed the core recommendations of the State of CPaaS report and added their own perspectives on how to drive growth—by improving trust, eliminating friction, and creating real business outcomes.

🧠 Shared Support for “Intelligent Engagement”

The panel broadly supported the idea that CPaaS, Network APIs, vCons, AI, and even CCaaS are no longer separate markets, but interdependent components of a single, evolving ecosystem.

This idea—Intelligent Engagement—shifts the focus from technology layers to business value:

• Using intelligence and data to create context-aware, proactive engagement
• Balancing automation with trust and consent
• Building an ecosystem where communication, identity, and AI reinforce each other

As Andrew put it, “It’s not about 80 or 100 billion—it’s about how these capabilities go together, and what value they unlock.”

🧩 The Analysts’ Recommendations

Each analyst offered practical advice on how telcos and CPaaS players can accelerate Intelligent Engagement, reduce friction, and rebuild trust.

Nick Lane (MobileSquared)

• Educate brands and consumers about richer, two-way communication.
• Help enterprises move beyond one-way alerts to conversational engagement.
• Tackle the trust deficit in business messaging by improving quality and verification.
• Learn from mobile advertising, where user engagement and ARPU are much higher.

Raúl Castañon (S&P Global)

• Focus on user experience, not just security: “Reduce friction first, revenue will follow.”
• Recognize that the success path is already proven—aggregation, developer ecosystems, and enterprise co-creation.
• Telcos need to close the execution gap, not wait for perfect conditions.

Amy Cameron (STL Partners)

• Prioritize anti-fraud and identity APIs—they solve a real enterprise pain point.
• Develop location and IoT-related APIs that can scale without full market coordination.
• Push toward 5G Standalone, since network monetization depends on it.
• Look at AI and automation as critical to operationalizing API use cases.

Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey)

• Trust must become the foundation: consumers no longer trust anonymous channels.
• Fix inflated or fraudulent traffic—clean up CPaaS to be the trusted layer of digital interaction.
• Recognize that the opportunity isn’t in technology alone, but in becoming the trusted broker that connects enterprises and customers safely and intelligently.

🧭 Different Perspectives, Shared Direction

While their expertise comes from different vantage points—Nick from messaging, Amy and Ferry from telco APIs, Raúl from a vendor-revenue base—they converged on one point:

The definitions may differ, but the direction is clear.

All agreed that fragmentation, slow API rollout, and poor communication of value are holding the market back. The path forward is not to obsess over individual segments or metrics, but to synchronize innovation across the ecosystem.

🔁 From Forecasts to Outcomes

Andrew closed the session with a reminder:

“We need to stop talking in acronyms, and start talking about outcomes.”

The real opportunity is not whether the market reaches $30B, $80B, or $100B—but how fast we can:

• Deploy APIs and services that solve real business problems
• Build trust into every interaction
• Reduce friction in communication and onboarding
• And align as an industry around Intelligent Engagement

🔚 Final Word: Trust as the New Growth Engine

Every forecast, every strategy, every API ultimately leads back to one thing: trust.

Consumers ignore messages they don’t trust. Enterprises hesitate to adopt what they can’t control. Developers disengage from complexity and inconsistency.

If the industry can make Intelligent Engagement synonymous with trusted, value-driven communication, growth will follow naturally.

Because in the end, Intelligent Engagement isn’t just a framework—it’s a mindset.

A call to work together, connect the layers, and make digital interaction smarter, safer, and more human.

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→ Read the full State of CPaaS 2025 report to explore how CPaaS, Network APIs, vCons, and AI converge into Intelligent Engagement—and what the industry must do next to accelerate it.

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Can CPaaS (and its adjacent technologies) grow to $100 billion or more?

The discussion was data-driven, often dense—and more importantly, deeply revealing. Because behind the market forecasts and API adoption charts lay a bigger truth:

The real opportunity isn’t in any one forecast—it’s in how we work together to unlock business value across the ecosystem.

📊 Where’s the Money? Mixed Forecasts, But Closer Than They Seem

Each panelist arrived with a different model and number. At first glance, they seemed miles apart. But dig into the definitions, and the picture gets clearer.

• Nick Lane (MobileSquared) focused on business messaging, especially SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS. Nick recently cut his CPaaS forecast for 2029 due to Meta’s new WhatsApp pricing. He now expects ~$11B rather than $19B by 2029, highlighting how sensitive messaging revenue is to platform moves.
• Amy Cameron (STL Partners) projected ~$31B in Network API revenue by 2030, but emphasized that STL uses a bottom-up use case model, estimating demand across fraud prevention, connected vehicles, predictive networking, and more. STL’s model includes APIs beyond the current Open Gateway set and even future capabilities like predictive network performance.
• Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey), often cited for the famous $100–$300B figure, clarified that the “core” Network API revenue is around $30B—but McKinsey adds in enablement revenue (e.g., edge compute) and telco-delivered solutions built on top of APIs to reach their broader total. His perspective focuses on what telcos could earn if they build full-stack, API-enabled enterprise services.
• Raúl Castañon (S&P Global) brought the grounded reality check, using a bottom-up approach based on observable revenue from today’s CPaaS providers like Twilio, Infobip, Sinch, etc. He agreed the potential is there, but emphasized that the key enablers still need to be delivered—especially real services, go-to-market skills, and trust.

🧭 A Word on Definitions: When “CPaaS” Means Different Things to Different Experts

One of the most important takeaways wasn’t in the charts—it was in the disconnect.

Each analyst defines CPaaS differently.

Nick focuses on messaging-centric CPaaS, anchored in the realities of commercial traffic volumes and pricing models. Amy is focused on telco platform potential and how mobile networks evolve to support new use cases. Ferry looks at the network API economy, and how telcos can monetize their infrastructure in an API-first world. Raúl focuses on actual financial performance, rooted in existing vendor results.

No wonder the numbers vary so widely. It’s not disagreement—it’s different slices of an evolving puzzle.

If anything, this diversity shows that the industry urgently needs a shared framing—a bigger umbrella that can encompass the shifting tech stack and unify business strategy.

💡 Intelligent Engagement: A New Umbrella for a Fragmented Industry

That’s where the concept of Intelligent Engagement comes in.

Intelligent Engagement reframes the market not in terms of CPaaS vs. APIs vs. AI vs. CCaaS—but as a connected continuum:

CPaaS remains a foundation for programmable communication. Network APIs bring context and capability from the network layer. AI and vCons make interactions more autonomous and personalized. CCaaS, where it aligns, becomes the operational layer for engagement.

This is no longer about technology layers in isolation. It’s about:

• Reducing friction
• Adding trust
• Creating meaningful business outcomes for brands, platforms, and end users.

✅ Analyst Recommendations: How to Unlock the Value

The panel closed with each expert offering actionable advice—not on how to predict the future, but how to shape it. Their top priorities:

🧠 Nick Lane (MobileSquared)

• Educate brands and consumers on two-way communication
• Help businesses move from alert-style messaging to real engagement
• Recognize that trust and relevance are key to consumer responses
• Learn from mobile advertising—where ARPU is 10x higher than messaging

🧠 Raúl Castañon (S&P Global)

• Focus on frictionless user experiences, especially for authentication
• Study how early CPaaS players scaled—aggregators, developer tools, use cases
• Telcos must stop saying “we don’t have the skills”—and start finding partners who do

🧠 Amy Cameron (STL Partners)

• Prioritize anti-fraud and identity APIs now—they’re real, needed, and monetizable
• Explore location and IoT-related APIs with direct enterprise relevance
• Push for 5G Standalone adoption—it’s the gateway to future network monetization

🧠 Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey)

• Focus on building trust—CPaaS and messaging have a spam problem
• Become a trusted channel consumers can rely on
• Deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right way—even silently
• Clean up inflated traffic and make RCS or future channels truly trustworthy

🔁 It’s Not About the Forecast. It’s About Working Together.

The final message from Andrew Collinson summed it up best:

“We need to stop talking in acronyms, and start talking about outcomes.”

The truth is, the difference between $30B and $100B is not a number—it’s a mindset.

The market will not grow because of forecasts. It will grow because:

• Telcos move faster
• APIs become productized
• Trust becomes the foundation
• We stop duplicating effort and start aligning strategies

And most importantly: we tell a better story. A story not about APIs or messaging formats, but about Intelligent Engagement—the outcome every enterprise is chasing.

🔚 Final Word: Trust Is the Starting Point

If there was one thread running through every analyst’s comment, it was trust. Consumers don’t trust anonymous messages. Enterprises don’t trust vendor lock-in. Developers don’t trust empty promises.

Becoming a trusted broker of intelligent engagement—for identity, communications, and AI interactions—is where the real long-term value lies.

That’s the real opportunity for telcos, platforms, and innovators. Not to chase forecasts, but to lead the next era of engagement by building smarter, safer, and more connected digital experiences.

To dive deeper, download the full State of CPaaS 2025 Report and explore how CPaaS, AI, Network APIs, and more are converging into the era of Intelligent Engagement.

Where CPaaS Meets American Idol

The grand finale of CASA25 wasn’t just another panel or pitch. It was a showdown. A live challenge. A little bit of circus, a whole lot of talent—and just a dash of demo chaos (because what would a live tech demo be without that?).

Welcome to the CPaaS Showcase Challenge: where four ambitious players took the stage not just to talk, but to show what CPaaS can do. Think “American Idol” for programmable communications—complete with judges, a live audience vote, and an evening reveal of the winner over well-earned beers.

And after the smoke cleared, Creo Solutions walked away with the top honors. But each contestant brought something unique to the stage—turning this into one of the most exciting sessions of the entire event.

💡 The Format: Live Demos, Real Judges, Big Stakes

Each contestant had 10 minutes to demo a live product or prototype. A panel of judges—Amy Cameron (STL Partners), Andrew Collinson (CPaaSAA), and Mike Mills (Gamma)—asked the hard questions. The audience joined as the 4th judge, voting in real-time across five criteria:

Innovation Ease of Deployment API/AI Integration Commercial Relevance Presentation Style

Let’s meet the four contenders and their demos:

🚀 Telnyx – “Ask Your Assistant, Not Your Developer”

Presenter: Pete Christianson

Telnyx opened strong with a vision for voice-first AI assistants that anyone—not just developers—can spin up. Pete demonstrated a scheduling bot built entirely by a non-technical product marketer. The voice AI handled calls, recognized users, and even interacted using natural language prompts.

Despite a hiccup during the live demo (we’ve all been there), the message was clear: self-serve CPaaS is moving from low-code to no-code to language-native.

🧠 Standout Insight:

“The future of CPaaS isn’t about asking your developer—it’s about asking your assistant.”

💬 Judge Reactions:

• Loved the infrastructure and vision.
• Strong voice-AI play, especially for SMBs.
• Questions about GTM, channel strategy, and fraud controls.

🧠 Radisys – Agentic AI, Natively in the Network

Presenter: Adnan Saleem

If Telnyx imagined a no-code CPaaS future, Radisys delivered the network-native AI reality. Adnan dialed a phone number—no apps, no installs—and activated a personal voice assistant that joined a 3-way call, understood context, answered questions, and sent a post-call summary via SMS.

Agentic AI, integrated directly into the IMS core, running on telco infrastructure. A jaw-dropper.

📲 Why It Mattered:

Fully app-free experience Personal and contextual assistant Works on any device, not just smartphones

💬 Judge Reactions:

• Monetization path for telcos is clear
• Real concerns around privacy, hallucination, and AI trust
• Strong vision with real-world use cases

🏃‍♂️ XConnect – The Global API-Driven Marathon

Presenter: Mark Harvey (Sekura.id, now part of XConnect)

XConnect brought the most creative use case of the day: a global marathon app powered by 12 GSMA Open Gateway APIs. From seamless login and geolocation to crowd control, KYC, and roaming detection—this app wasn’t just about running. It was about showcasing the power of layered APIs in a real-world scenario.

The app even triggered interest from a major sports brand. Not bad for a prototype built “just for fun.”

🎯 Big Idea:

APIs are like LEGO blocks—alone they’re fine, but together they build real value.

💬 Judge Reactions:

• Loved the story and ambition
• Pressed on go-to-market and monetization
• Disappointed they couldn’t see the live app in action

🧠 Creo Solutions – The Conversation Intelligence Cloud

Presenter: Robert Galop

Last up—and eventually the winner—was Creo with a vision for Conversation Intelligence at Scale. By ingesting VCons (voice conversations as structured data) across telco networks and apps, Creo provides call summaries, alerts, insights, and co-pilots for every type of customer—especially SMBs.

The demo? Seamless. Calls became structured records. Emotional alerts triggered owner follow-ups. Action items synced with apps. And everything was API-enabled for partners to plug into.

📈 Why They Won:

Business-ready product Clear revenue lift for telcos and UCaaS/CCaaS providers Strong vision, great execution, and killer pitch

💬 Judge Reactions:

“This doubles ARPU.” Concern over data overload addressed with usable dashboards Scalable, telco-friendly, and enterprise-relevant

🏆 And the Winner Is…

🥇 Creo Solutions

After the judges debated and audience scores were tallied, Creo was crowned the winner of the CASA25 CPaaS Showcase Challenge. Their conversation intelligence platform ticked every box: innovation, commercial relevance, scalability, and polish.

🎤 Closing Time: From Demos to Drinks

With the Challenge concluded, Rob Kurver came on stage to thank everyone—especially Nicolai Schaettgen for his brilliant emceeing and Laila van Hooff, the behind-the-scenes mastermind who made CASA25 run so smoothly.

The audience gave them a big hand—and then did what every great tech event should end with: walked next door to the Beer Factory for some final rounds, deeper conversations, and warm goodbyes.

CASA25 was a wrap. But the impact—and momentum—will carry into CASA26 and beyond.

Want more from CASA25?

Explore all the blogs, sessions, and videos here – including thought leadership on Agentic AI, Network APIs, Intelligent Engagement, and the future of programmable communications.

See you next year. 🧠📲🍻

Why CPaaSAA is All-In on vCons — And Why You Should Be Too

Imagine if every conversation your company ever had — by phone, email, SMS, chat, or video — could be captured, structured, and made useful. Not just for compliance or analytics, but to fuel AI, improve customer service, and scale your best people. That’s the promise of the vCon. And at CASA25, it took center stage.

When Kevin Nethercott (CPaaSAA) sat down for a fireside chat with Thomas Howe (Co-Founder of Vconic) at CASA25, it was more than a reunion between two industry veterans — it was a milestone moment. Together, they laid out a vision for how the vCon (short for “virtual conversation”) can become the next foundational standard in communications — following in the footsteps of SIP, HTTP, and other Internet-era breakthroughs.

💬 The Holy Grail: Listening at Scale

Kevin kicked things off with a simple but powerful truth:

“If I could have a 360-degree view of what my customer really thinks and wants — I’d pay a lot of money for that.”

But today, that insight is fragmented across five, ten, even twenty different communication platforms. Email, phone, CRM, live chat, WhatsApp, web forms… they don’t talk to each other. Worse, we don’t really listen — not in a way that’s structured, ethical, and scalable.

Thomas put it bluntly:

“Every time a customer spoke to us, it was like a new day. We didn’t remember the last conversation — but they did.”

So they built vCon: a new file format and open standard, now on track with the IETF (the same body that gave us SIP, DNS, and TLS). A vCon can wrap any interaction — a call, an email thread, a chatbot session — into a single, secure, portable digital record.

Think JPEG for conversations. XLS for communications.

📦 What Exactly Is a vCon?

A vCon is a structured file format that captures:

• Who participated
• When and how they communicated (voice, text, email, etc.)
• The actual content of the conversation
• Metadata about permissions, compliance, and ownership

It’s designed from the ground up to be secure, portable, and privacy-respecting — addressing growing concerns around AI, biometrics, and compliance in a post-GDPR world.

“We didn’t just want to listen to customers — we wanted to do it ethically.”

The vCon standard ensures data control remains with the originator, not locked in a vendor’s silo or swept into a black-box AI model.

🧠 AI’s Favorite Data Format?

The timing couldn’t be better. AI is hungry — but it’s being fed garbage.

Large Language Models are trained on messy, unstructured public data. Meanwhile, telcos and communication platforms sit on oceans of valuable, structured, first-party data — but it’s locked in silos.

“VCons are robot food,” said Kevin. “They’re secure, accurate, and ethical. Small language models, not large ones. That’s the future.”

And it’s already happening. VConic’s first large implementation — for Strolid, a car sales company talking to 250,000 customers a month — uses vCons to scale their coaching and agent support. The internal project was affectionately named “Papa in a Box”, after Strolid’s founder’s father who once coached every sales call — until the business grew too fast for human memory.

Now, vCon-based copilots help every agent, every time.

🔄 Standards Create Value

Both Kevin and Thomas have seen this movie before. SIP, once an obscure acronym, became the backbone of VoIP and unified communications. Now it underpins an industry worth hundreds of billions.

“In five years,” Thomas predicted, “we’ll see widespread adoption of vCons in customer-facing applications — starting with compliance and governance, then moving into AI and service creation.”

vCons break open the walls between providers, networks, and apps — enabling true interoperability of conversations. That’s when things get really interesting.

“Today, most companies analyze the conversation and the AI in the same place. That’s like AOL in the 90s — one closed system. But tomorrow? You’ll move conversations between AI agents across networks. Just like the web broke AOL, vCons break the silos.”

🚀 CPaaSAA Is All-In

As Kevin closed the session, he made it clear:

“We’re not just interested — we’re committed. CPaaSAA sees vCons as the foundation of a trillion-dollar opportunity for our industry.”

The math checks out. If SIP helped create $700–800 billion in value over two decades, vCons could easily surpass that, especially as enterprises move toward AI-native communication models.

Already, CPaaSAA members are experimenting with vCon implementations — for compliance, AI training, smart routing, customer intelligence, and more. Some report 2x to 3x revenue growth from existing customer bases just by unlocking conversation data.

🌍 What Comes Next?

Following the fireside, a panel explored specific use cases, from healthcare to finance to telco B2B — all showing how vCons create value while respecting trust, privacy, and data rights.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway was this:

VCons are not about tech. They’re about listening.

At scale. Ethically. Intelligently.

And just like the early days of SIP, the industry now has a choice:

Be an early mover. Shape the future.

Or wait — and pay to catch up.