TeleGeography recently had the pleasure of designing a platform for carriers to access data on the state of the market and benchmark it against their own. The result? i3forum Insights—a brand new market database to track and analyze international voice services.
Today we're answering a few quick questions about how this database works and how other carriers can reap the benefits.
How does i3forum Insights work?
Participating carriers sign up for the service with the i3forum, a nonprofit industry body focused on accelerating transformation across the carrier ecosystem. Users upload their voice traffic data into a system operated by TeleGeography on behalf of the i3forum.
All data is anonymized and aggregated.
Each participating carrier will be able to compare its own data against the anonymized, aggregated data provided by other participating carriers using a state-of-the-art analytics engine, Tableau.
Data provided by a given carrier is kept 100% confidential at all times; no other party will be able to access it.
Who can use i3forum Insights?
This service will be available to international carriers, whether or not they are i3forum members.
This generally includes those that carry 100 million+ international wholesale, non-fraudulent voice minutes a year.
To benefit from the service, carriers need to agree to contribute their data.
How much does it cost?
The i3forum determines the price based on the number of participating carriers. As more carriers join, the annual cost will be reduced. All the more reason to come onboard. (Tell all your carrier friends, too.)
What are the associated carrier obligations?
While i3forum holds the direct commercial relationship with participating carriers, in signing onto the solution each carrier must agree to a number of commitments with TeleGeography to keep this tool running seamlessly:
- Designating a primary data administrator as the main point of contact for submitting carrier data and working with us to review any issues uncovered with contributed data
- Submitting a 24-month historical archive of data when joining the solution as part of the onboarding process
- Maintaining a running list of end-users who require access to the solution, and alerting us when new users need to be added or old users deleted
- Submitting monthly performance, traffic, and other core KPI data to the solution, either via the ingest API or Tableau upload
- Submitting all data in an agreed-upon standardized format
- Reviewing and editing any flagged data that is identified as potentially erroneous (either via automated flagging or human review) on a monthly basis, after uploading member data to the solution
- Maintaining anonymity within the solution by keeping identifying customer or company information out of submissions
- Working with TeleGeography during the onboarding phase to review how the tool works, what data streams are required to participate, and how such data must be formatted and submitted
- Researching and providing explanations for data abnormalities that are real or genuine (not a mistake in feed), as needed
- Maintaining a minimum 24-month historical archive of core KPI data
