What We Saw, What We Said, and Where CPaaS Goes Next
ITW 2025 wrapped just days ago, but the energy in National Harbor is still pulsing. With over 6,000 delegates and 2,000+ companies onsite, the Gaylord turned into a living map of global connectivity – and a powerful reminder that wholesale telecom isn’t just alive and well, it’s hungry for bold ideas.
Across two packed days of meetings, panels, and hallway conversations, one theme kept rising to the surface: the telecom stack is finally ready to treat AI and open network APIs as twin engines of transformation, not siloed experiments. Again and again, the conversations circled back to a shared challenge:
How fast can we turn AI and network APIs into revenue, resilience, and better user experiences?
That question was front and center during our keynote panel, “From AI to APIs: How Are We Scaling CPaaS?” I was honored to moderate the discussion alongside industry leaders:
John Tolton (Telin), Sabina Majeric (HORISEN), Alex Pereira (Infobip), and Dylan Brown (Symbio Connect).
We kicked things off by pulling insights from the CPaaSAA Playbook, showcasing real-world results CPaaSAA members are delivering today – like 20–30% reductions in operational costs, response times dropping from days to seconds, and response and conversion rates improving by 50% to 90%. These aren’t just stats – they’re proof that CPaaS is evolving toward what we call Intelligent Engagement.
And the panel didn’t linger on buzzwords. Each speaker shared real customer stories, showing how infrastructure, APIs, and applications are coming together in market – today.
Two key takeaways emerged:
- Network APIs are real, in deployment, and already helping secure and streamline communications – not just as tech, but as part of a go-to-market strategy.
- Fraud and security remain top of mind, and solving them requires collaboration across platforms, carriers, and partners.
Oh – and let’s put this to rest: voice is not dead. Every panelist confirmed an uptick in voice traffic, with new use cases emerging alongside messaging.
When we shifted to innovation, I took the opportunity to introduce something I’m really excited about: vCons, an evolving standard at the IETF for Virtualized Conversations. vCons provide a standardized container to capture all communication modalities – voice, video, messaging, metadata – in one portable format. It’s going to revolutionize how AI is integrated into communications, and those in the room got a sneak peek of what’s coming.
To close things out, we officially announced the launch of SPEF – the Service Provider Executive Forum. SPEF is a new initiative inviting leaders from across the industry to join forces in accelerating innovation and moving our ecosystem forward – together.
For us at CPaaSAA, the week reinforced something we’ve believed since day one: real growth comes from marrying carrier-grade scale with software-style speed. The vision is clear. The collaborations are forming. And the next chapter in scaling CPaaS is already underway.
Let’s keep building.