Perspectives in Mobile

In this episode of MEF Perspectives, Dario Betti, CEO of MEF, speaks with Isabelle Paradis, Advisor, MEF; Cedric Mauvielle, VP Global IoT Subject Matter Expert and Partnerships, PCCW Global; and Rich Pellegrini, Senior Product Manager IoT, iBASIS.The discussion explores how wholesale IoT is evolving as connectivity becomes more complex, with interoperability, data consistency, IoT APIs, and travel eSIMs shaping the next phase of the ecosystem.The speakers discuss the importance of industry collaboration and shared best practices, while examining how greater interoperability and connected infrastructure can create new opportunities for IoT providers and enable more seamless global connectivity.

Mobile payments in emerging and mobile-first markets are no longer a peripheral layer of digital commerce — they are becoming core infrastructure. With mobile money ecosystems already processing trillions in value and banking penetration still limited across many regions, mobile has effectively become the default financial system in large parts of the world.But this expansion is running into its defining constraint: regulation and trust. As payments move across telecom, fintech, messaging, and content layers, fragmented and overlapping regulatory frameworks limit scalability and consistency. A “mobile civilization” could emerge once these frameworks converge toward shared standards of trust, identity, and accountability across markets.In this episode of MEF Perspectives, Riccardo Amati speaks with Isik Uman, CEO of tpay Mobile, exploring mobile-first behavior, RCS adoption, and AI-driven orchestration across emerging markets.The episode explores how messaging, fintech, and telecom infrastructure are increasingly collapsing into a single monetization layer, where mobile is no longer just a channel but the operating system of digital commerce.

Twilio is set to double down on AI agents and conversational experiences at Signal Berlin. The company will build on the themes introduced at Signal San Francisco, concentrating on helping enterprises use its platform to create better agentic customer experiences.As communications platforms evolve beyond traditional CPaaS, enterprises are increasingly focused on trusted, two-way engagement, AI-driven customer interactions and richer messaging experiences. At Signal San Francisco, Twilio introduced its vision for AI agents with memory — designed to retain context across interactions, channels and handoffs, so conversations don’t restart from zero every time a customer switches touchpoints or escalates from AI to a human agent.In this episode of MEF Perspectives, Riccardo Amati speaks with Jake Kanter, Vice President of EMEA Sales at Twilio, about Twilio’s Q1 financial results, growth and strategies, the future of messaging and voice, AI agents with memory, and what enterprise communications may look like in the next phase of platform evolution. Twilio is doubling its focus on AI agents and conversational experience, Kanter told MEF. The details will be revealed at the company's flagship conference Signal in Berlin on June 11, at the Clinker inside the historic  Backfabrik.

The biggest challenge in mobile communication today is knowing whether the person receiving a message is actually the intended audience. That’s the warning from Janak Joshi, Chief Digital Officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who says identity verification is becoming critical for trusted digital engagement.At a time when citizens face growing spam, scams and misinformation, governments are under pressure to deliver secure, trusted communication at scale.In this episode of MEF Perspectives, Riccardo Amati speaks with Janak Joshi, Chief Digital Officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about how governments are modernizing citizen communications, why mobile has become the primary channel for engagement, and what the private sector can learn from trusted public communication.

A global smishing campaign using fake toll-road, parking and traffic-fine messages is exposing the industrial scale of modern mobile fraud. Researchers uncovered more than 79,000 fraudulent SMS messages and over 31,900 malicious URLs targeting users across 12 countries.In this episode of Perspectives, the podcast exploring mobile technology, security and digital trust, Riccardo Amati speaks with Bogdan Botezatu, Director of Threat Research at Bitdefender, about the company’s Operation Roadtrap investigation.The conversation explores how cybercriminals are industrializing SMS fraud, why mobile users continue to trust text messages, and why researchers increasingly see smishing as a systemic infrastructure problem rather than a simple scam trend.

Mobile messaging should build connection and brand value—not just drive performance and scale. As brands use channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS more intensively, the risk is becoming intrusive or irrelevant. For brands and mobile ecosystem players, success depends on balancing automation with authenticity, using context, tone, and timing to create communication that feels personal and appropriate—not just efficient.In this episode of the MEF podcast Perspectives, Riccardo Amati hosts Shaziya Khan, a brand communication strategy specialist (with experience across Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and others) and author of Have Biscut /‘bis.ku:t/ - An Ode to Sweet Everyday Moments—a book that outlines a way of thinking highly relevant to brand communication and messaging.Khan explains how messaging channels can be brand-building platforms and not just utility or performance tools, if used with restraint and a human tone of voice.

Trust in business messaging is at risk not just because of scams, but because brands themselves are sending irrelevant, context-poor communications—turning even legitimate outreach into perceived spam, with major implications for customer engagement and brand reputation. In this episode of MEF Podcast Perspectives on Mobile, host Riccardo Amati speaks with Peter Bell, VP Marketing EMEA at Twilio, exploring how messaging challenges are driven both by fraud and poor targeting, whether RCS can realistically rebuild trust through verified identities and richer experiences, and how the rise of AI-generated messaging introduces both opportunities and new risks around transparency, manipulation, and scale.