Viewpoint
Ahead of Carriers World 2017, Total Telecom caught up with Bankim Brahmbhatt, CEO of Bankai Group. With Bridgevoice having launched its Bridgevoice pluto platform, Bankim explained how this online offering is allowing carriers to access a range of alternative network providers, meeting capacity demand with quality assurance. He also gave us his exclusive thoughts on the issues he thinks will come to dominate the wholesale industry over the next few years.
What is your automated Carrier Platform, BridgeVoice Pluto?
BridgeVoice Pluto is the online platform offered by BridgeVoice which expedites trading and settlement of wholesale interconnect voice and SMS services. Tapping into the current market trends, BridgeVoice Pluto allows carriers to access a range of alternative network providers and carriers to meet the capacity demand with quality assurance. We secure our vendors with quick-pay services and settlement option, based on their product offering. This facilitates MNOs, MVNOs, Tier 1 Carriers, Calling Card Companies, Enterprise Customers and Service Providers with efficient network management, maximized network redundancy, and quality based routing mechanism with competitive pricing.
BridgeVoice Pluto also offers similar white label services to the partners globally. This helps in carrying out businesses digitally and ensures that revenues are multiplied by monetizing their untapped customers and upcoming opportunities.
Why did you decide to launch this platform?
The purpose of incepting BridgeVoice Pluto was to automate the carrier industry. We were keen on offering Wholesale Carrier Platform as a service and noticed that the carriers were losing business due to the traditional trading methodologies. This prompted us to create the mechanism where the carriers are free to access a range of alternative network providers and meet the capacity demand with quality assurance. Through BridgeVoice Pluto’s automated Carrier Platform, wholesale VoIP service providers and carriers are able to do business with Global Operators from anywhere in the world. We also included Unified Communications as a Service, integrating real-time communications to deliver a rich media experience across any workspace.
How will your platform benefit the wholesale industry?
As a carrier business pioneer and encompassing an extensive experience in wholesale voice business, we understand the pain area of operators, carriers and retailers. As we understand, the key concern today is the presence of multiple carriers through which a call travels before terminating. This process deteriorates the quality of the services and distributes the margin among various operators. BridgeVoice portal overcomes this pain by reducing the distance between operators and subscribers. We are inviting more and more carriers to this platform so they can deal with the operators directly.
What other future plans does BridgeVoice have?
We have been executing the launch of BridgeVoice Pluto in phases. Phase one was launched in 2016 and we have already connected 100 carriers with us. Currently BridgeVoice Pluto platform has a 15 operator capacity, which we aim to increase to a 100 operator capacity by the end of 2017. In phase two, we plan to add SMS and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) features to BridgeVoice Pluto. Our aim is to make the platform a full-fledged ‘Wholesale Carrier Platform’ which can be offered as a service directly. We expect that the connected small carriers and operators will not have any expenditure on technology when operating on BridgeVoice Pluto and can instead derive benefits out of the platform directly. Additionally, we are also trying to join hands with financial institutions so that the money is transferred to the operators immediately after the call or SMS is terminated. This is particularly useful for smaller carriers as they cannot always have access to the operators directly while the mid-size carriers make the most of this situation. Currently, the smaller carriers are required to make immediate payment whereas the mid-size carriers take the luxury to make late payments to the operators. We are trying to reduce this gap so that any carrier does not face financial crunch while running business.
What do you think are the major trends in that will dominate the wholesale industry over the next few years?
A sizeable part of the industry believes that the wholesale business is going through a tough phase with conventional methodology taking a backseat. However, in my opinion this is a phase of overhaul. Major changes are in line and we are currently witnessing trends which are novel even to the industry veterans. With VoIP services becoming mainstream, more and more calls are happening over the internet. This gives hope to the small carriers and to make the most of it, they must keep innovating with their services and technology. The trend is also boosting several regional carriers to venture ahead and Bankai Group would like to invite those carriers in order to add value to their services by equipping them with right technology. This trend looks to further grow with more retailers adding to compete with operators. I firmly believe that the carriers will have the upper hand in this scenario if they forego the traditional ways of doing business and continue innovating while adopting new technology and devising new ways to add more and more subscribers.
How do you see BridgeVoice evolving to meet those challenges?
BridgeVoice Pluto has been modelled envisioning these market trends so it is able to adapt itself to the ever changing technologies. It is the first ever automated carrier platform for online trading & settlement of voice & SMS. Market was facing the dearth of a quality routing mechanism with competitive pricing and real-time prepaid and near real-time post-paid billing solutions. BridgeVoice Pluto provided an exceptional gateway to the carriers along with class-4 switching, generating stable revenue streams in unstructured telecom ecosystems.
We aim to provide Unified Communications in multiple countries by partnering with other local operators or service providers. This will allow us to create retail traffic, leveraging the operators by having access to the traffic. UCaaS will be a boon for service providers with no investment of Capex as we are going to provide end-to-end Unified Communications Services through our own network and technology developed in-house.
Further ahead, we are planning to integrate our BridgeVoice portal with the banks to provide hassle free funding and settlement between carriers and service providers. This will help strengthen our technology and experience in carrier business for accessing subscribers directly and in launching our retail services.
Bridgevoice Pluto has been nominated for a prestigious Carriers World Award along with Bankai Group too. Vote for either company by clicking here!
