If you missed it, see Part 1 of 2 that covers two decades of missed opportunities in trader voice technology that would have helped us be better prepared for a global pandemic.

What trader voice manufactures and network providers learned.

In June of 2012 a report published by Gartner, Evaluate New Trading Turrets Alongside Your IT Strategy, evaluated the flagship turret providers with their trading turret solutions combined with their network offerings. Sadly, everything they could or were planning to do then, still hasn’t been fully adopted today leading to an overly complex and inflexible environment.

What we did see were mergers and acquisitions making rivals stronger and resulted in reduced competition, limited choice and disincentivized innovation that would benefit the consumers of trader voice technologies.

The trend we see as a result of recent events is a rush to monetize existing solutions by checking a few additional boxes when it comes to trader voice technology and the necessary adoption of session initiation protocol (SIP):

  • SIP turret solutions & soft turrets
  • Remote connectivity
  • Voice recording support
  • Closed trader voice networks and extranets to match competitors
  • SIP private wires to connect to their specific SIP turret solution

As proven once again, trader voice needs global flexibility and open integration as we see in the rest of the voice industry. Natively connecting SIP private wires to SIP turret solution provides the solution the industry needs, but there is an extreme hesitation by incumbents in order to protect existing TDM private wire voice networks revenue.

Instead, we see a rise in sales of premium SIP turret systems paired with media gateways to convert TDM to SIP and back again. Incumbents have prioritized their bottom line over providing the best services to their customers – the consumers of trader voice technology.

Most of the providers today are creating closed networks that allow you to easily connect and collaborate with your trading counterparts. That is only if they have the same trader voice solution and network that supports it.

Is your provider helping you protect your investment?
or just keeping you investing in them?

New faces on old solutions.

In March of 2020, a press release was issued regarding an industry first trader voice service for business continuity (BCP) events. This was literally days before the world shutdown due to COVID-19 and the trader voice industry needed a service like this. Oddly, the press release ended with a disclosure about forward-looking statements pertaining to their new voice service.

Why have this disclosure when you’ve just launched a groundbreaking industry first service offering for consumers of trader voice technologies?

It wasn’t a new service but a new face on an old solution. The press release was a way for them to monetize as a ‘team’ during a pandemic and keep their positions in the trader voice market as competitors preserving their closed trader voice communities and existing revenue. This service was clearly for the providers benefit, not their customers — the consumers of trader voice technologies.

The reality is this offering only allows access to private wires from one system at a time. The private wires ring on both trader voice systems, but audio is only available to the first party that answers the call, not both parties at the same time. This is not useful for traders, unless they plan to take turns with their private wires and play nice during volatile markets. The providers claim this service is an industry first worthy of an award for innovative tech.

Conclusion – Connectivity for consumers of trader voice technologies.

As many global financial institutions (FSI) have traders returning to the trading floor and preparing for a mix of traders working remotely and in the office, the main focus of FSIs should be the underlying trader voice connectivity before traders burn out. “Burnout” as defined by the World Health Organization is “workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and is rapidly increasing in finance, consulting, and tech.

FSIs all have different plans for what the future of work will look like, and are making independent decisions for the needs of their firm. Having said that, your trading counterparts alike will be rotating between locations and using different trader voice solutions to trade with – you could trade with voice perfectly one day and not have access to your counterpart the next because the connectivity is not there.

FSIs need to understand that their existing trader voice offerings may appear to meet the needs for trader voice connectivity as the new world of work evolves, but with the closed voice communities that you are currently leveraging connectivity will remain a challenge and fail due to rotating workplaces.

If your incumbent trader voice providers haven’t explained these issues to you there are other Tier 1 telecommunication providers that can help. For example, Telstra has an innovative service offering for flexible, endpoint agnostic connectivity including trader voice, which deserves a serious look.

See their LinkedIn post and data sheet describing the proposition:

Trader Voice Connect, globally transforming the legacy to SIP

Telstra’s Trader Voice SIP Connect Data Sheet

For more information on the options that you have, please contact us!