Although responsible for some of the most complex discoveries in physics and mathematics, Albert Einstein once – apparently said: “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”
Today, the idea of dismantling complex ideas and systems – whether to understand or improve them – is a reputed strategy in education, business and other arenas, but it exists in an increasingly complex world.
For telcos, communications companies and service providers, that complexity increases by the day, while business pressures are compounded by such things as the rapid erosion of interconnect and roaming margins.
Enter TOMIA. Formed in 2019 following the merger of Starhome Mach and Telarix, the firm develops blockchain-based solutions to create efficiencies in the global carrier market and, promising to “transform global connectivity”, its mission is to bring simplicity to the complex.
Already, TOMIA serves more than 400 operators including 30 tier ones and six of the industry’s largest groups.
TOMIA launched with 5G, VoLTE and FV services, but it is blockchain that has set it apart.
Its first solution – also an industry first – allows the international carrier and MNO market to manage global roaming and interconnect margins in real-time, through a cloud-based, blockchain settlement platform.
Specifically, Corda open source blockchain architecture from R3, hosted on Microsoft Azure, with KPGM handling strategy development through to project implementation.
On announcing the optimised blockchain based solution in June 2019, Marc Mercuri, principal program manager of blockchain engineering at Microsoft Corporation, said: “Microsoft Azure and Azure Blockchain Service helps TOMIA deliver solutions that allow communication service providers to focus more on their customers’ experience and less on managing servers and daily operations. The Blockchain Settlement solution addresses a variety of issues related to the telecommunication industry and allows CSPs to take advantage of the flexibility and enterprise-grade reliability that Azure provides.”
Meanwhile, David E. Rutter, CEO of R3, said: “As the telecoms market becomes increasingly digitised, there is a significant opportunity to improve the efficiency of settlement and dispute management processes, saving time and costs.
We think the Corda blockchain, with its focus on security, scalability and performance for enterprise use, provides the ideal technology platform for developing new solutions.”
It’s early days, with PoCs pending and operators and carriers still calculating the exact returns.
But as the use cases build, the operational efficiencies that can be achieved, and the potential new revenue streams, have received widespread approval.
“Once you have the B2B supplement in place you can think of many more use cases where operators able to charge each other for more services, for example one of the services people are thinking about is bandwidth on demand, so you can scale up and scale back bandwidth,” says Nick Wennekers, director of product management at TOMIA.
“What we have at TOMIA with a lot of customers is real time services. So we, in real time, find a service level for specific customer devices or enterprises. We believe we have more future use cases than just the supplement use cases and that’s where the real business value for our customers will come,” he adds.
The industry is taking note. Last year, the Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF) selected TOMIA to participate in its development of a blockchain solution for commercial settlement infrastructure.
The Communications Blockchain Network (CBN) is backed by 11 carriers and TOMIA is one of more than 10 additional tech providers for the project. Rounding off the year, TOMIA scooped the Best Blockchain Innovation prize at the Global Carrier Awards.
Building efficiencies
Taking the next step, TOMIA is now rolling out its Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE), a technology Wennekers says goes “hand in hand” with the earlier roaming solution.
“BCE can optimise the cashflow for operators by making sure they can settle with each other much faster than they do now.
For example, if they are exchanging millions and millions of dollars with each other every month and there is a dispute, it can run into months where nothing is being paid. This is the immediate benefit of these kinds of solutions,” Wennekers explains.
While the progress appears to come in leaps and bounds, Wennekers remains level-headed and ever mindful of the challenges that remain.
“There are still a lot of challenges in the market and the main one we are dealing with on the supplement side for example is that technologies right now don’t talk to each other,” he says.
Citing the proliferation of ledger technologies as a primary contributor, Wennekers says that the opportunity in blockchain can only be realised if different technologies can become interoperable.
“We don’t want to make this too complex. Blockchain should fix certain operational efficiency problems in the supplement and help the supplement operate in a more efficient way,” he says.
“If we start making it very complex by building a lot of new interoperability layers then I don’t think this will become a success and we will lose all the benefits of blockchain potentially can bring.”
Assisting the efforts – and supporting Wennekers’ desire for an “open ecosystem”, where partners are selected on the quality of their software – a series of industry working groups are already tackling the issues.
Among them, the GSMA-initiated the Interoperability Data Specifications and Settlements Group and the Internet Group.
“There are a lot of good opportunities and I really think this will change the industry, but it still needs to be proven that we can do this on a large scale working with different technologies,” says Wennekers.
Global development
Internally, collaboration is core to TOMIA’s ability to innovate. Of a total staff of 500, 120 are in R&D, powering the process from TOMIA’s bases in Virginia, Vienna, India and Israel.
For both of TOMIA’s blockchain innovations, 2020 will be a year of Proof of Concepts and rolling out the minimum-level product, but there is plenty more on the drawing board when it comes to innovation, says Wennekers.
“The supplement use case is only one of the first ones we will push to the market. I believe there is a much bigger future,” he says.
“If you look at identity services and edge computing, blockchain will definitely be the next steps. Once we solve all the challenges around the supplement use case and we have the B2B settlement chain working and up and running, there are many more use cases to come.”
