May 2016

Premiere Experts Set to Speak at Summer RAG Conference in London, July 7th and 8th

by Dan Baker

Dear Colleague:

The Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), established in 2004, is the longest running event in the world of business assurance. Three free meetings are hosted every year in London providing a unique venue for assurance professionals to share experiences and informally discuss the issues of the day.

For the 2016 summer event, RAG is pulling out all stops to organize its largest event ever with an impressive two-day line up of professionals who will speak on many risk management topics.

The 2016 summer conference will be held in the stunning 170-seat auditorium of BT Centre, just a stone’s throw from many historic London sights, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Bailey, and the London Museum.

The conference is scheduled for Thursday 7th and Friday 8th July, with a planned running time of 10am to 5pm. Registration is free, but the organizers recommend you book early: RAG has already received registrations from a wide range of telcos in the UK, Africa, Middle East and across Europe.

The Agenda for the Summer RAG Program

The event will cover fraud management, revenue assurance, other kinds of business assurance, Enterprise Risk Management, and other kinds of risk management including information security and credit risk. The full agenda has yet to be finalized, but the following working draft is based on the speakers who have already confirmed they will contribute.

Day One, Thursday 7th July

Bernice DeMarco of BT will provide an opening keynote on the evolving scope of her assurance team.
A special panel will discuss what other industries can learn from the way telcos have tackled their operating risks. Confirmed panellists include Vernon Kitay of retailer John Lewis, Paul Masters of online grocer Ocado, and Luke Taylor of Neural.
Shoaib Qureshi will tell us how to implement an ERM program, based on his experience in Ooredoo Qatar.
John Bangs of Sky, Alex Cassettari of TalkTalk and margin maximization expert Guy Howie are some of the panellists lined up to discuss what are the most important challenges currently facing revenue assurance teams.
Marcus Bryant of MTN Group will share the insights he has gained as a result of overseeing the development of a common education program for all RAFM staff employed across MTN’s 21 operating companies.

Day Two, Friday 8th July

Jason Lane-Sellers of the Communications Fraud Control Association and Rene Felber of TeliaSonera Finland and the TM Forum will present the results of the global surveys they each manage, then debate the issues with gathering reliable data about leakages.
Hayley Daniels of Neural will walk the audience through the latest technological advances in the fight against fraud.
Fraud expert David Morrow will present a case study that shows why law enforcement, security and fraud management needs to be tackled using a single common strategy.
After working all over the world, Nixon Wampamba of MTN Ghana will explain why he feels Africa provides the toughest test for an RAFM manager.
Andy Gent of Revector will talk about strategies to mitigate the hottest threat facing telcos: OTT bypass.
The ‘wise heads’ panel will close the event by reviewing the themes covered during the conference, how the current status of risk and assurance compares to their ideals, and what they predict will be the key areas for development in coming years. The following well-known and highly-experienced professionals have already been confirmed: Lee Scargall, Geoff Ibbett, Mark Yelland, Hugh Roberts and David Smith.

Biographies of all the confirmed speakers can be found here.

Registration Information

Attendance at RAG events is free to anyone with a professional interest in communications risk and assurance, but we need you to register to ensure we have sufficient space to accommodate everyone, and to help us manage the number of lunches and coffees provided.

Use this form to register your attendance at our summer conference meeting. Please ensure you select which days you would like to attend.

If several people from your organisation wish to attend, please complete a separate submission for each individual. Please also check that you have correctly entered your email address, because we will contact you to confirm attendance.

Having held personal interviews with several of the speakers, I can attest to the strength of this program’s line up. The chief organizers, Rob Chapman of Cartesian and Eric Preizkalns, the editor of Commsrisk, have done a splendid job of recruiting experts participate. You owe it to yourself to drop by and hear the top flight pros and mingle with your peers.

Dan Baker
Research Director, TRI

Dan Baker

Dan Baker is research director of Technology Research Institute (TRI) and editor of the Black Swan Telecom Journal.

Technology Research Institute (TRI) has been writing analyst reports and researching telecom software and systems markets since 1994.

For the last several years, TRI has been following developments in telecom Fraud Management, Revenue Assurance and Analytics solutions.

Most recently, TRI is exploring telecom opportunities in IoT, connectivity, AI/ML and edge computing (4G and 5G) in the Asia Pacific market. Contact Dan via

Black Swan Solution Guides & Papers

Expanding the Scope of Revenue Assurance Beyond Switch-to-Bill’s Vision — Araxxe — How Araxxe’s end-to-end revenue assurance complements switch-to-bill RA through telescope RA (external and partner data) and microscope RA (high-definition analysis of complex services like bundling and digital services).
Lanck Telecom FMS: Voice Fraud Management as a Network Service on Demand — Lanck Telecom — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SHAKEN / STIR Calling Number Verification & Fraud Alerting — iconectiv — SHAKEN/STIR is the telecom industry’s first step toward reviving trust in business telephony — and has recently launched in the U.S. market. This Solution Guide features commentary from technology leaders at iconetiv, a firm heavily involved in the development of SHAKEN.
Getting Accurate, Up-to-the-Minute Phone Number Porting History & Carrier-of-Record Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers — iconectiv — Learn about a recently approved risk intelligence service to receive authoritative and real-time notices of numbers being ported and changes to the carrier-of-record for specific telephone numbers.
The Value of an Authoritative Database of Global Telephone Numbers — iconectiv — Learn about an authoritative database of allocated numbers and special number ranges in every country of the world. The expert explains how this database adds value to any FMS or fraud analyst team.
The IPRN Database and its Use in IRSF & Wangiri Fraud Control — Yates Fraud Consulting — The IPRN Database is a powerful new tool for helping control IRSF and Wangiri frauds. The pioneer of the category explains the value and use of the IPRN Database in this 14-page Black Swan Solution Guide.
A Real-Time Cloud Service to Protect the Enterprise PBX from IRSF Fraud — Oculeus — Learn how a new cloud-based solution developed by Oculeus, any enterprise can protect its PBX from IRSF fraud for as little as $5 a month.
How Regulators can Lead the Fight Against International Bypass Fraud — LATRO Services — As a regulator in a country infected by SIM box fraud, what can you do to improve the situation? A white paper explains the steps you can and should you take — at the national government level — to better protect your country’s tax revenue, quality of communications, and national infrastructure.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analysis Report from TRI — TRI — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.