New from RAG: Video Piracy, Sales Tax Fraud, and RA for Utilities

A change of policy by the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) means a greater number of their presentations will be shared publicly, and not just with current RAG members. As a result, three of the slide packs from their spring meeting can now be viewed on the RAG website. The topics and slides demonstrate the tremendous variety and quality of a typical RAG agenda.

  • David Morrow knows all about sales tax fraud, having fought fraudsters for Vodafone Group and chased criminals for UK Customs.  He gave a presentation on Missing Trader Tax Fraud and the implications for telcos, including the riveting story of an international scam which cost Italian telcos EUR400mn (USD450mn). David’s slides neatly explain the basics of sales tax fraud and gives practical advice on how to counter it. His slides can be found here.
  • André Roy of Farncombe talked about video piracy in the era of Netflix and streaming, and how comms and media businesses should combat it. There are plenty of facts and figures in his slides, which can be seen here.
  • Water and energy suppliers suffer revenue leakage just like telcos do, but they employ a very different approach to assurance. Dan Ret and Andrew McKinney of Sagacity Solutions shared their experience with RAG, giving an informative and often amusing comparison of how revenue assurance is performed in each industry. Their slides are available here.

The RAG’s new policy follows the decision to run an expanded two-day summer conference. As a consequence they seek to raise their profile by giving telcos around the world a better idea of the quality of content presented at RAG meetings.

There are already twelve confirmed speakers for the RAG summer conference, including representatives of BT, TalkTalk, Sky, Ooredoo and MTN. The international response to the event has been unexpectedly strong; the UK-based organizers recently allocated seats to telcos from as far away as Greece, Latvia and Saudi Arabia.

The RAG summer conference will be held on July 7th and 8th at BT’s headquarters in London, in an auditorium with capacity for 170 guests. Any professionals with a relevant interest may attend for free, but they need to book their place by registering here.

If you are not familiar with the RAG, I recommend you take a look at the presentations they have shared online. I have been to a lot of conferences, but it is rare that I see one presentation as useful and insightful as the three presentations that RAG have shared from their spring meeting. The presentations are a great advert for the RAG summer conference, which will have a much more extensive agenda. And with a quarter of the 170 seats already booked, it seems many telcos agree that the RAG summer conference will be an unmissable event.

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalnshttp://revenueprotect.com

Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), an association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers. RAG was founded in 2003 and Eric was appointed CEO in 2016.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press.

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