RAG TV brings to your screen the same kind of information, discussions and audience interaction as found at RAG conferences. Season 3 of our live weekly interview show was broadcast on Wednesdays from 6th January to 5th May 2021, attracting an average audience of over 600 viewers per episode. All episodes were also recorded and remain available for replay. We will return with Season 4 later in the year. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our broadcast calendar to ensure future episodes are added to your diary automatically.
Live Streaming Channel and Audience Interaction
Episode Guide and Recordings of Previous Shows for Playback
| Episode | Date of Live Stream | Guests and topics | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPE4 | n/a | The final part of our special four-episode series on interpreting the results of the big RAG-Subex leakage survey. Eric Priezkalns, RAG Chief Exec, talks to Kiran Zachariah, VP of Digital Security at Subex, about the cybersecurity responses to the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. | replay video |
| SPE3 | n/a | The third episode of a special series of four. Nithin Gangadharan of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG take a close look at fraud and the ways it is managed as they review the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers, the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. | replay video |
| SPE2 | n/a | The second episode of a special series of four. Ashwin Menon of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG take a deeper dive in to business assurance discussing 5G, AI/ML, industry cost cutting and much more as they review the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers, the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. | replay video |
| SPE1 | n/a | The first episode of a special four-part series. Rohit Maheshwari of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG share their interpretation of the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers, the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. | replay video |
| S3E18 | 5 May 2021 | We close Season 3 in the style of a RAG ‘wise heads’ conference panel, with veteran experts debating the comms industry’s risk priorities. The panel also reviews the results of the new leakage coverage study. | replay video |
| S3E17 | 28 Apr 2021 | Michele Zarri, VP at Mobileum and ex-Technical Director at the GSMA, talks about the ways 5G will affect risk management. David Rogers MBE, Chair of the GSMA Fraud and Security Group, also shares his views. | replay video |
| S3E16 | 21 Apr 2021 | We take a deep look at wangiri fraud using data contributed to the RAG Wangiri Blockchain by 80 telcos plus many other sources of fraud intelligence. | replay video |
| S3E15 | 14 Apr 2021 | Trustonic CEO Dion Price discusses the ways comms providers can close the ‘digital divide’ by increasing access to the internet without risking the theft of subsidised handsets and other networked devices. | replay video | S3E14 | 7 Apr 2021 | Expert consultant Joseph Nderitu shares his insights into the risks faced by mobile money providers as their services are integrated with a growing number of offerings from other businesses. | replay video |
| S3E13 | 31 Mar 2021 | Emmy Léger of Araxxe explains how millions of test messages were used to measure A2P SMS bypass fraud worldwide. They discovered many mobile operators receive over 20% of traffic via bypass. | replay video |
| S3E12 | 24 Mar 2021 | Eric Burger, former CTO of the FCC, talks about the anti-fraud regulations imposed during his tenure and if they will be adopted in other regions. | replay video |
| S3E11 | 17 Mar 2021 | Brendan Cleary, CEO of Cellusys, explains how criminals intercept messages and invade privacy by exploiting poor security around network signal protocols like SS7 and Diameter. | replay video |
| S3E10 | 10 Mar 2021 | Jayaprakash Devaraj of Vodafone Qatar and Kerry Evans of BT walk through the process of benchmarking the leakage coverage of real telcos with help from Geoff Ibbett, creator of the RAG Leakage Catalogue. | replay video |
| S3E9 | 3 Mar 2021 | Pedro Rabacal, CTO of Vodacom Mozambique, and Jeffrey Ross, COO of GBSD Technologies and co-founder of 1Route, talk about the ways that CLI spoofing is exploited by fraudsters worldwide. | replay video |
| S3E8 | 24 Feb 2021 | Veteran consultant Moly McMillan shares stories from his varied career. After pioneering RA at the beginning of the 00’s he now uses the same principles to help firms in other sectors. | replay video |
| S3E7 | 17 Feb 2021 | Lawyer, Certified Fraud Examiner and forensic investigator Jacqueline Fick talks to us about the viral nature of fraud and how we need to treat cybercrime like a disease. | replay video |
| S3E6 | 10 Feb 2021 | Revenue assurance innovator Shahid Ishtiaq explores the impact of 5G on RA and, amongst other topics, why SQL will not support the evolving role of his function. | replay video | S3E5 | 3 Feb 2021 | Bartek Bukowski, Governance and Insights Manager at BT, talks about the challenge of performing a thorough root cause analysis (RCA) and ensuring issues do not recur. | replay video |
| S3E4 | 27 Jan 2021 | Author and analyst Edward Finegold examines the risks as more of who we are, and what we own, is maintained online. | replay video |
| S3E3 | 20 Jan 2021 | Nixon Wampamba, General Manager for Revenue Assurance at MTN Nigeria, discusses the reasons why some of the best risk mitigation controls are innovated by African comms providers. | replay video |
| S3E2 | 13 Jan 2021 | Bill Leahy and Nev Phillips of Symmetry Solutions tell the RAG team how usage data and automated tariff recommendations can be used to generate increased revenue whilst reducing churn and bad debt. | replay video |
| S3E1 | 6 Jan 2021 | Regular hosts Eric and Lee start the new season with a review of key events during 2020 and the results of the RAG RAFM Survey. | replay video |
| S2E10 | 19 Aug 2020 | Kathy Romano of Discovery discusses the evolution of business assurance across her work at Verizon and Discovery. Bryan Rowe of Six Degrees explains refiling fraud. | replay video |
| S2E9 | 12 Aug 2020 | David Smith tells us how the principles of revenue assurance emerged from the audit of British phone meters in the 1990’s, and why those principles remain relevant decades later. | replay video |
| S2E8 | 5 Aug 2020 | Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum, talks about A2P SMS fraud. Tony Sani of Orillion demonstrates a video game that teaches players about telecoms risk management. | replay video |
| S2E7 | 29 Jul 2020 | Ingrid Azzopardi, Internal Auditor at GO, the Maltese operator, talks about sources of risk intelligence and about the impact of COVID-19. Machine learning innovator George Bolt of Neural Technologies explains the current state of the art for fraud detection. | replay video |
| S2E6 | 22 Jul 2020 | Nikhil Sehgal of Colt talks about the principles of engineering governance, a discipline that maximizes the return on investments in network assets. Steffen Öftring of SIGOS discusses the acquisition of his firm by Mobileum, and the reasons why they sponsored the RAG Learning online education platform. | replay video |
| S2E5 | 15 Jul 2020 | Francis Afful of MTN Ghana talks about harmonization of tariffs for over 300 million people living in West Africa. Guy Howie of Biaas talks about number range management and how changes to foreign ranges can be exploited by fraudsters. | replay video |
| S2E4 | 8 Jul 2020 | Taher Talib of Shaw Communciations, Nitin Gangadharan of Subex and Tony Sani of Orillion discuss why telcos like Shaw are using the FMS of vendors like Subex to automatically exchange wangiri intelligence with the blockchain developed by Orillion. | replay video |
| S2E3 | 1 Jul 2020 | Dion Price of Trustonic talks about device management as part of a strategy for improving collection of revenues; Kingsley Unah contrasts bill accuracy in Africa and North America. | replay video |
| S2E2 | 24 Jun 2020 | Daniele Cellai of Hewlett Packard Enterprise talks about using various kinds of machine learning as part of automating the way businesses prioritize and respond to suspected frauds. | replay video |
| S2E1 | 17 Jun 2020 | Donald Reinhart of LATRO Services explains the need for a multi-layered strategy to combat bypass; Timo Vainionpää tells us how a small international carrier can win by offering quality instead of grey routing. | replay video |
| S1E5 | 29 Apr 2020 | Colin Yates shares insights into the changing patterns of international revenue share fraud (IRSF) and how he helps Europol with their investigations. | replay video |
| S1E4 | 22 Apr 2020 | Arnd Baranowski, CEO of Oculeus, explains how the adoption of SIP changes the risk exposure of telcos and how fraudulent calls can be identified in less than a tenth of a second. | replay video |
| S1E3 | 15 Apr 2020 | Joseph Nderitu, former Head of RAFM at Vodacom Tanzania, talks about corruption; Ray Green of Focus Data explains how to conduct a data-driven investigation. | replay video |
| S1E2 | 8 Apr 2020 | Gina Pesheva of Deutsche Telekom talks about the transition to business assurance; Tony Sani of Orillion talks about using blockchain to fight wangiri fraud. | replay video |
| S1E1 | 1 Apr 2020 | Jeffrey Ross of GBSD Technologies talks about authenticating caller IDs and the impact that STIR/SHAKEN will have on small telcos worldwide. | replay video |
| S1E0 | 25 Mar 2020 | Eric Priezkalns of RAG gives a brief preview the first season of RAG Television, explaining how to watch the live shows and ask questions to the guests. | replay video |
| Pilot | 16 Sep 2019 | Geoff Ibbett of Symmetry Solutions talks about the RAG Leakage Catalogue, the most comprehensive inventory of telco revenue and cost leakages. | replay video |
SPE4 – 30 March 2022
The final part of our special four-episode series on interpreting the results of the big RAG-Subex leakage survey. Eric Priezkalns, RAG Chief Executive, talks to Kiran Zachariah, VP of Digital Security at Subex, about the cybersecurity responses to the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. This was the first time that the annual survey had been expanded to include questions about cybersecurity risks and some of the results were unexpected. However, it was no surprise that telcos said leakages due to security breaches were greater than leakages caused by other kinds of threat, even though the number of thwarted attacks is far greater than the number of occasions when hackers succeed. The full survey report and all the raw data can be found at: RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021.
SPE3 – 16 March 2022
The third episode in our special series about the results of the RAG-Subex Leakage Survey. Nithin Gangadharan of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG take a close look at fraud and the ways it is managed as they review the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers, the RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021. The full survey report and all the raw data can be found at: RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021.
SPE2 – 2 February 2022
The second episode in our special series about the results of the RAG-Subex Leakage Survey. Ashwin Menon of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG take a deeper dive in to business assurance discussing 5G, AI/ML, industry cost cutting and much more as they review the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers. The full survey report and all the raw data can be found at: RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021.
SPE1 – 11 January 2022
A special episode. Rohit Maheshwari of Subex and Eric Priezkalns of RAG share their interpretation of the results of the biggest global survey of leakages suffered by communications providers. The full survey report and all the raw data can be found at: RAG RAFMCS Survey 2021.
S3E18 – 5 May 2021
End of season omnibus: regular RAG contributors Nixon Wampamba of MTN Nigeria, Tony Sani, co-creator of the RAG Wangiri Blockchain, and Geoff Ibbett, custodian of the RAG Leakage Catalogue, join host Eric Priezkalns for a wide-ranging debate about risk priorities in the style of a RAG ‘wise heads’ conference panel. The industry veterans also review the results of the leakage coverage benchmarking study that Geoff has just completed with the assistance of comms providers worldwide.
S3E17 – 28 April 2021
Michele Zarri talks about the impact of 5G on risk management, drawing on his experience as GSMA Technical Director and leader of multiple mobile standardization teams prior to assuming his new role overseeing the technology evolution of Mobileum’s product portfolio.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and David Rogers also discuss the UK government announcement that it will impose new laws to tighten security around networked devices like handsets, smart TVs and smart watches.
S3E16 – 21 April 2021
We take a deep look at wangiri fraud using data contributed by 80 telcos plus many other sources of fraud intelligence. Why do some telcos block millions of wangiri calls each month? Which number ranges are most abused? Tony Sani, creator of the RAG Wangiri Blockchain, answers these questions and more from the audience.
S3E15 – 14 April 2021
Dion Price, CEO of Trustonic, discusses the ways comms providers can close the ‘digital divide’ by giving more people access to the internet without risking increased theft of handsets and other networked devices. Smart credit risk management and robust device security are key to meeting social and legal obligations without encouraging a rise in crime.
Presenters Eric and Lee also discuss impact of data breaches on share prices and how this appears to be worse for telcos and technology firms.
S3E14 – 7 April 2021
Joseph Nderitu draws on his experience as a business advisor to explain how the leading mobile money providers are creating APIs that allow any business to build new offerings like insurance, savings, gambling and rent collection around the ability to access a customer’s mobile money wallet. How should telcos upgrade the skills of staff and enhance their automated controls to further mitigate risk?
Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss a new code of conduct that has encouraged Australian telcos to block 11 million wangiri calls and 44 million spoofed calls since December 2020.
S3E13 – 31 March 2021
Emmy Léger of Araxxe has deep experience of the business of testing for fraud and billing accuracy. She educated the RAG TV crew about A2P SMS bypass fraud, drawing on the data collated by her business by sending millions of test SMS messages across 106 different countries. The scale of fraud is high on every continent, and was found to be worth over USD500bn globally during 2020.
Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss the security of undersea cables and whether governments and the private sector need to do more to safeguard vital infrastructure.
S3E12 – 24 March 2021
Eric Burger, Georgetown University Professor and former White House advisor, talks about the anti-fraud regulations imposed during his tenure as CTO of the FCC, and if they will be adopted in other regions. Will other regulators choose to adopt an approach to verifying the origin of calls that depends on a central authority? What are the implications for international traffic and do the current US rules leave room for compromise?
Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss a worrying story about SMS hijacking involving a gaping flaw in how data managed by NetNumber is used to determine the routing of SMS messages. SMS is definitely not the 2FA the world needs!
S3E11 – 17 March 2021
Brendan Cleary, CEO of Cellusys, has spent his entire career enhancing the security that surrounds network signals protocols like SS7 and Diameter. Brendan explains how vulnerabilities are exploited by criminals and other bad actors to steal money and engage in espionage, and why there are still very many networks that have not hardened security by implementing firewalls.
Regular presenters Eric and Lee also discuss the shocking case of a British telco systematically overcharging hundreds of thousands of customers over a 15 year period whilst still receiving clean audit reports from their billing accuracy auditors.
S3E10 – 10 March 2021
Kerry Evans of BT and Jayaprakash Devaraj of Vodafone Qatar walk through the RAG Leakage Coverage Study under the expert supervision of Geoff Ibbett, consultant at Symmetry Solutions and creator of the RAG Leakage Catalogue. They compare their experience of monitoring and measuring all 25 categories of leakage, providing many rapid-fire observations about the challenges they have faced and the controls they have implemented.
S3E9 – 3 March 2021
The spoofing of calling line identification (CLI), also known as caller ID, is exploited by fraudsters around the world. Pedro Rabacal, CTO of Vodacom Mozambique, and Jeffrey Ross of GBSD Technologies and 1Route discuss the background, issues and new solutions that are in development.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also discuss the progress of RAG TV to date and the desire to get back to holding events in the real world!
S3E8 – 24 February 2021
Veteran consultant Moly McMillan shares stories from a career which has included leadership of the revenue assurance functions at Skype, Millicom Group and Virgin Media. With experience of an OTT provider, an international group of mobile operators and a multiplay cable company Moly has since gone on to become a business advisor to organizations in other verticals, applying assurance principles in very different areas such as digital currencies, asset management and property technology.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also discuss a rather brazen attempt to copy the RAG Wangiri Blockchain.
S3E7 – 17 February 2021
Lawyer, Certified Fraud Examiner and forensic investigator Jacqueline Fick draws on her experience of telecoms operators and cybercrime to highlight the similarities between the spread of international telecoms fraud and the spread of a virus. Jacqueline also shares her views on the impact of home working on the risk landscape for communications providers.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss how the launch of Elon Musk’s Starlink, and other similar satellite based ISPs, will affect the internet landscape.
S3E6 – 10 February 2021
Revenue assurance innovator Shahid Ishtiaq explores the impact of 5G on traditional controls and why SQL could not support the evolving role of his function. His model uses robotic process automation (RPA) to extend the controls paradigm by understanding all of a customer’s interactions with the provider.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall, referencing the overthrow of the government in Myanmar, discuss the working priorities for senior risk leaders in a telco when there is major upheaval like a revolution.
S3E5 – 3 February 2021
Bartek Bukowski, Governance and Insights Manager at BT, talks about the challenge of performing a thorough root cause analysis (RCA) and then ensuring issues do not recur. There are plenty of methods that have been developed to pursue RCA, but what sounds good in theory can be difficult to deliver in practice.
Presenters Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss collaboration in the industry with some good and bad examples of how to do it!
S3E4 – 27 January 2021
Author and analyst Edward Finegold examines the risks around digital identity, as more of who we are, and what we own, is maintained online. Who is liable when an account is hijacked or an interruption of services affects revenues? Recent events have intensified demands for legal change, but providers already face tough moral decisions.
Our hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discuss the reporting of SIM swap numbers in the UK press and how the facts seem to break down as you start to dig a little!
S3E3 – 20 January 2021
Our guest Nixon Wampamba, General Manager for Revenue Assurance at MTN Nigeria, discusses the reasons why some of the best risk mitigation controls are innovated by African comms providers.
Hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall talk about the implications of the facial recognition laws recently passed in Portland, Oregon, and the broader implications of local privacy laws at internet scale.
S3E2 – 13 January 2021
Our guests Bill Leahy and Nev Phillips of Symmetry Solutions join us to discuss Personalised Recommendation and Order (PRO) solutions and why the automated calculation of the best tariff plan according to each customer’s historic usage can increase revenues and reduce complaints.
Hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall also talk about the results of the recent Commsrisk poll of the most/least respected RAFM collaboration organizations and take a look at the management of bad debt by comms providers.
S3E1 – 6 January 2021
Regular hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall return for the RAG review of 2020 and with all the news since the end of Season 2. The news topics debated included Covid, industry consolidation and China, robocalls and mobile money. We also discussed the RAG Hall of Fame and the results of the RAG RAFM Survey which showed comms providers and customers are collectively using USD142bn per year to comms fraud and leakage!
S2E10 – 19 August 2020
Kathy Romano talks about the progression of revenue assurance during her time at Verizon, and how she now reapplies the same concepts to the pay-per-view content supplied by Discovery. Bryan Rowe of Six Degrees gives a deep dive into the factors that lead to refiling fraud and the various methods used to prevent it.
Hosts Eric and Lee also discuss the finding that 22 percent of data breaches covered by the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2020 were caused by human error, and draw an analogy with the underreporting of revenue leakages.
S2E9 – 12 August 2020
David Smith talks about the 2001 publication Successfully Managing Revenue Assurance, written by David in collaboration with Peter Carling and Richard Peachey, and how the revenue assurance principles it defined had emerged from the audit of British phone meters in the 1990’s. David also told us why those principles remain relevant decades later, remembers the development of the first revenue assurance measures and benchmarking, and reveals why his follow-up book about margin management has still not been published, despite requests to make it publicly available.
Hosts Eric and Nixon discuss US plans to curb Chinese surveillance through its ‘Clean Network’ program, and the ethical breakdown that leads some practitioners to claim they are ‘certified’ fraud officers although they gave the certificates to themselves.
S2E8 – 5 August 2020
Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), talks about messaging fraud and why his association is updating its A2P SMS Code of Conduct for telcos, aggregators, system providers and enterprises involved in sending A2P SMS messages. MEF’s A2P mobile messaging fraud framework can be found here.
Tony Sani, co-founder of Orillion Solutions, shows us around an exciting new video game that teaches players about the risks faced by telcos, and explains why teaching through play is much more effective than most other forms of staff training. A playable demo of the game can be found here.
Hosts Eric and Lee discuss the ramifications of allowing telcos to use analytics to automatically decide which calls should be blocked, and why low orbit satellites are a threat to the strategies pursued by some telcos.
S2E7 – 29 July 2020
Ingrid Azzopardi, who leads the internal audit function at Maltese operator GO, talks about the impact of COVID-19 and why it is vital to educate both customers and employees about fraud.
George Bolt, a scientist and inventor who is the Head of Analytics at Neural Technologies, discusses revenue assurance and fraud management use cases for pattern detection by machine learning.
Hosts Eric and Lee use coronavirus as a way to illustrate key principles in risk management whilst debating whether it will change the telecoms industry forever.
S2E6 – 22 July 2020
Nikhil Sehgal talks about his new role overseeing engineering governance for the Technology division of multinational network operator Colt. In this role Nikhil seeks to maximize the value from Colt’s spending on network assets, with the intention that he gains a comprehensive understanding of the use and profitability of every component of their network. During the interview Nikhil contrasts his current assurance and risk management goals with those of his previous position as Head of Business Assurance and Insights.
Steffen Öftring, Director of Revenue Assurance at SIGOS, explains why his firm decided to become the new sponsors of RAG Learning, our online training platform. Steffen also comments on the recent acquisition of SIGOS by Mobileum and the strategy to be adopted by the combined business.
Hosts Eric and Lee also talk about cryptocurrency scammers hacking blue-tick accounts at Twitter and the implications of the highest court in the EU overturning the EU-US Privacy Shield data protection deal, the second time this court has invalidated a personal data privacy agreement between the European Commission and the US government in just five years.
S2E5 – 15 July 2020
Francis Afful, Senior RAFM Manager at MTN Ghana, talks about tariff harmonisation across West Africa and how it will lead to the risk of negative margins for telcos. Francis also shares his views on bypass fraud and regulatory audits of telco revenues. Guy Howie of Biaas discusses the reasons why the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has proven unable to track changes to national number plans, and how fraudsters keep finding new ways to exploit loopholes in the way the plans are managed.
Eric and Lee also discuss the impact on Huawei of national security decisions made by the USA and UK, and the acquistion of leading test call firm SIGOS by RAFM market leader Mobileum.
S2E4 – 8 July 2020
Taher Talib of Shaw Communciations, Nithin Gangadharan of Subex and Tony Sani of Orillion discuss why telcos like Shaw are using the fraud management systems (FMS) supplied by vendors like Subex to automatically exchange wangiri intelligence with other telcos via a blockchain developed by Orillion.
Co-hosts Eric and Lee also chat about the relatively small proportion of US voice calls being authenticated using STIR/SHAKEN, and they celebrated RAG TV’s streaming channel exceeding 10,000 views since its launch!
S2E3 – 1 July 2020
Dion Price, CEO of Trustonic, talks about different ways to control the handset to encourage customers to pay their bills by selectively disconnecting some but not all services they can use. Kingsley Unah, formerly Financial Controller and General Manager for RAFM at Airtel Nigeria, contrasts telco billing accuracy and KYC in Nigeria and his new home, Canada.
Hosts Eric and Lee also talk about the dramatic fight to suspend mobile money services in Zimbabwe amidst government claims of money laundering and systematic ‘printing’ of digital money.
S2E2 – 24 June 2020
Daniele Cellai of Hewlett Packard Enterprise talks about case scoring for fraud cases, how this helps businesses to prioritize work and avoid wasting time on false positives, and the various kinds of machine learning that can be used to improve case scoring so decisions on how to respond to frauds can be made automatically.
Regular hosts Eric and Lee also discuss the risk of privacy breaches when participants register for webinars and virtual conferences.
S2E1 – 17 June 2020
Timo Vainionpää, owner of AurorA International Telecom, talks about the downsides to least cost routing and the impact that origin-based pricing is having on fraud. Donald Reinhart of LATRO Services explains the factors that encourage bypass and why he advocates responding with a mix of controls including test calls, analytics and interpretation of network signals.
Regular hosts Eric and Lee also discuss racial bias amongst telecoms risk professionals and the reuse of IMEIs.
S1E5 – 29 April 2020
Colin Yates is an authority on international telecoms fraud. He pioneered the practice of fraud management first in his home country of New Zealand, then worked with telcos worldwide by contributing to law enforcement bodies and fraud associations whilst leading the anti-fraud and police liaison function of Vodafone Group. Colin shares his insights into the changing patterns of international revenue share fraud, why police forces do not pursue telecoms fraudsters more often, and the accuracy of estimates of fraud losses. Colin also explains why he has been sharing his fraud intelligence with Europol, free of charge.
Regular hosts Eric and Lee also chat about the problems created by the aggressive sales tactics of some RAFM vendors, the lack of innovation in revenue assurance relative to fraud management, and the beginnings of a telecoms cold war between the USA and China.
S1E4 – 22 April 2020
Special guest Arnd Baranowski, CEO of Oculeus, speaks about the ways SIP signalling can be exploited to help or hinder telecoms fraudsters. Arnd also discusses the research performed by his business in collaboration with the University of Kassel; this involved using machine learning to review SIP signals so fraudsters are identified and disconnected within the first 100 milliseconds of a call.
Hosts Eric and Lee also talk with Arnd about the FCC decision to make STIR/SHAKEN call authentication mandatory for all IP networks in the USA. STIR/SHAKEN adds a SIP signature which the terminating network can use to confirm the caller ID with a central authority, but depends upon the end-to-end implementation of SIP and STIR/SHAKEN across all the telcos handling the call. One FCC Commissioner stated the adoption of STIR/SHAKEN would cost some telcos “tens of millions” of dollars, begging a question about how many telcos and countries will voluntarily follow the lead of North America by adopting STIR/SHAKEN, and what happens if an increasing number of robocalls terminating on US phones are found to have originated abroad. The team also debated the merits of two alternative ways of authenticating the origin of a call: SEISMIC and the A & B Number Handshake.
S1E3 – 15 April 2020
The two guests are Joseph Nderitu, an RAFM consultant who has worked for various telcos around East Africa, and Ray Green, Director of Focus Data Services and a winner of the GSMA’s Outstanding Contribution Award for his efforts to fight fraud.
Joseph recounts the story of when he and four other executives working for Vodacom Tanzania, including the CEO, were detained without bail on trumped-up charges of conspiring to help another business to commit bypass fraud. Joseph also explains how the Tanzanian government habitually imprisons telco managers to force their employers to pay hefty fines for alleged crimes that are never tried in open court. Ray shares his advice on how to use data to conduct an investigation, and he also gives real-life examples that illustrate the need for telcos to exchange intelligence about fraud. Hosts Eric and Lee also discuss the challenges when seeking to manage operational risks with teams that are working from home, and the FCC proposing a USD6mn fine for Tracfone after the American MVNO claimed government subsidies for low-income subscribers who did not really exist.
S1E2 – 8 April 2020
The show is joined by two special guests: Gina Pesheva, Senior Manager for Business Assurance and Billing at Deutsche Telekom and Tony Sani, founder of Orillion Solutions. Gina talks about the reasons her team created an animated video to explain the transition from revenue assurance to business assurance; click here to find Gina’s video on YouTube. Tony speaks about his business partnering with RAG to deliver the RAG Wangiri Blockchain, used by a consortium of telcos to exchange intelligence about wangiri fraud. Hosts Eric and Lee also discuss the destruction of 5G masts by believers of fake news spread using WhatsApp and social media, and the FCC threatening to block all traffic from international gateway telcos if they continue to connect coronavirus scam robocalls to the US network.
S1E1 – 1 April 2020
Special guest Jeffrey Ross, COO of GBSD Technologies, talks about STIR/SHAKEN, the framework for validating the originating number of voice calls, and how it can still be cost-effectively adapted to suit the circumstances of non-IP networks and smaller telcos. Hosts Eric and Lee also discuss the Tanzanian government arresting telecoms executives and the ways spammers are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic.
S1E0 – 25 March 2020
Eric Priezkalns previews the first season of RAG Television, with guests lined up for each Wednesday of April.
Pilot – 16 September 2019
Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall discussed topical matters including: national revenue assurance audits and the dispute between GVG and the state of Guinea; mobile ad fraud in the USA; and academic research into turning internet pirates into paying customers. Special guest Geoff Ibbett also joined the show, talking about the responses already received to the RAG Leakage Coverage Survey.