Insights from ITW

GCS recently attended this year’s ITW in Chicago.   We had a great time, met with customers and partners and, even better, learned a lot.

The interconnect voice industry continues to evolve. New carriers are entering the market and old ones are leaving or getting gobbled up as the swing to industry consolidation continues. Meeting with our customers is always a great thing. We get feedback as to how we are doing, what the market is needing, and get to put faces to names and emails.

This industry is tough and challenging and it’s easy to stay back behind the computer and pretend that the person on the other end of the internet isn’t real. So, we really make it a point to spend time with our customers, thanking them for trusting us with their business and partnering in their success.   

And then we get to learn.  

We got insight into some of the new challenges that are happening in Central and South America. We also got deep insight into the current status of Origination Routing in Europe (what we call International Ani-Zone routing & rating).

Finally, we got to learn more about the struggles of the Tier 3 carriers that are getting squeezed as carriers implement systems like ours. In the current market, it’s harder than ever to be a pure-play arbitrage player and those carriers are looking for opportunities to help them withstand the squeeze.

So, it was a great learning opportunity and a great time to interact with the marketplace in real-time. Next year, ITW will move to Atlanta leaving the familiar confines of Chicago. We’ll be there to meet with our customers and partners and can’t wait to see what we will learn.

Hope to see you there!