To David Thake, founder and director of Malta-based Vanilla Telecoms, working in the VoIP and cloud PBX space is a lot like being an astronaut. “We have to make decisions very quickly and we have to change direction very, very often,” he explains.
Telecoms like Vanilla must constantly adapt. There are the repeated waves of technological change. The emergence of new competitors. Consumer demand for lower prices, more convenience, and expanded services. And, perhaps most frustrating, the ever-present threat of regulatory decisions that could completely overturn your business.
To survive, Vanilla Telecoms knows from long experience that it needs reliable support and a flexible, modular UCaaS and telecom billing platform that can change with the landscape. The company launched in 2003, the same year that Malta integrated with the EU and embraced deregulation in the telecom industry. Facing a flood of new competition from multinationals entering the market, Vanilla turned to the PortaOne team for help. It was adapt or be overtaken, and Vanilla chose to adapt.
Read on to hear the whole story of how Vanilla Telecoms navigated that challenging shift, along with all the technological and regulatory headwinds that followed – and how PortaSwitch and the PortaOne support team are helping them thrive in the face of it all.
Unpredictable regulation: A challenge for telecoms of all sizes
Malta, a Mediterranean island nation, boasts a highly developed telecommunications infrastructure. But though the country is very small, the local market is dominated by large foreign companies. “Despite the fact that we are the only Maltese-owned telecom on the island, we still face a hostile regulatory environment – we are constantly being pushed out of the market by the regulators,” says Vanilla CEO David Thake. From marketing campaigns intended to undermine SIP to a recent ban on calls from Maltese CLIs that come in from international exchanges, Vanilla often finds itself having pivot around regulatory decisions that profoundly affect its business. “They are happy regulating the ‘big three,’ but they don’t want smaller operators,” he says.
From marketing campaigns intended to undermine SIP to a recent ban on calls from Maltese CLIs that come in from international exchanges, Vanilla often finds itself having pivot around regulatory decisions that profoundly affect its business. “They are happy regulating the ‘big three,’ but they don’t want smaller operators,” he says.
The move to join the EU also brought a raft of new compliance laws along with a ton of outside competition. But Thake knows that regulatory shifts are a constant reality for telecoms everywhere, which is why he sought out a platform provider that could help Vanilla stay ahead: “Having a switch that gives us the flexibility to adapt, and also the support from a team who understands what we’re up against and the skips and jumps and leaps that we sometimes have to do — that helps us work around these regulations and continue to do our thing.”
Even better, PortaSwitch enables Vanilla to deliver reliable, high-quality service while meeting all of those changing compliance and regulatory demands – something the company couldn’t always count on from its previous platform providers. “Before PortaSwitch we were using a VoIP platform that was crashing left, right, and center – I would wake up nearly every morning and the switch was down. But with PortaSwitch we have the reliability: we are able to simply keep providing a reliable service in the face of what the government is doing and saying. It makes a big difference.”
Staying ahead of changing telecom technology – and customer demands
Hostile regulation isn’t the only headwind Vanilla Telecoms has faced. In fact, it seems that every time they embrace a new business model, the market is disrupted again. Vanilla initially launched as an ISP, deploying a wireless network that offered an alternative to copper wire, only to see that advantage nearly obliterated by the advent of fiber to the home. So, the company shifted its focus to servicing remote households and offering faster upload speeds… just in time for the Starlink satellite system to arrive and erase that remaining competitive edge.
Luckily, PortaSwitch is just as flexible when it comes to expanding your product offerings as it is for adapting to regulation. Taking advantage of the flexibility of PortaOne platforms, Vanilla has united PortaSwitch with third-party tools to provide SIP and advanced cloud PBX services that it can customize to the specific needs of each enterprise customer.
When we switched to PortaOne, from that day I understood how nice it is to sleep a whole night and wake up without any problems in the morning. PortaOne has given us fantastic reliability… and their technical support is manned by a group of very educated and very knowledgable people who have consistently come back with the right answers
David Thake, CEO of Vanilla Telecoms
Navigating the next revolution: The rise of AI
Today, as AI, eSIM, and other burgeoning technologies bring even more change to the Maltese market, Vanilla Telecoms is ready to face it all. Long experience with industry disruption has given the Vanilla Telecoms leadership a valuable piece of knowledge: while governments may be slow to respond to technological change, seismic shifts like the rise of AI are inevitably followed by equally dramatic shifts in regulation. So, Thake and his team are counting on PortaSwitch to allow them to pivot once again whenever those regulations arrive.
“Everyone needs to be ready for this,” says Thake. “There is a lot of enthusiasm for AI, but at the end of the day you might be rolling out solutions that you are going to need to change in less than a year.” That could involve requirements to provide your subscribers with additional information about what is happening to their data, or it might mean adapting your backend to accommodate new compliance laws. Or, it could be something that the telecom industry hasn’t even imagined yet. All the more reason to have a flexible UCaaS and telecom billing platform, along with a support team you can trust.
“A lot of where we are today we owe to PortaOne,” says Thake. “The advantage has been in the availability of the support, and the ability of the PortaOne personnel to help us identify problems and overcome those regulatory requirements that are being thrown at us.”
Are You Change-Ready?
Whatever new industry disruption next arises on the scene, telecom customers will always choose the companies that can quickly integrate them into a seamless experience. Vanilla Telecom’s decision to choose PortaOne for its UCaaS and telecom billing platform has helped it turn potential business crises into opportunities for growth and innovation.
Are you prepared to navigate through the next regulatory technological revolution – and to transform it into success? Reach out to our team to find out how PortaOne can help you adapt to changing regulations and embrace the opportunity in AI, eSIM, IoT, and other change drivers. We’ll help you find the path forward to keep growing your business, no matter what comes next.
