Telefonica and IBM partnership for international call blockchain

The global telecom giants are increasingly acknowledging the benefits of blockchain technology.  Telefonica, a Spanish multinational telecommunications company, has signed a partnership with IBM, a leader in open-source blockchain solutions, to employ IBM blockchain technology for superior administration of international call traffic.

Telefonica expects that the usage of the cloud-based IBM Blockchain Platform will help to improve the traceability of international call data, such as the origin of the call, its destination and duration. They will be able to detect fraud and address other challenges caused by the use of different networks and operators when routing international calls. Operators will have permissioned access to a decentralized platform, and perform real-time tracing of calls to achieve accurate billing processes.

“This project is one of our first initiatives to secure real benefits from the adoption of blockchain in our core business. We believe that the new paradigm of process decentralization that blockchain facilitates perfectly fits with the telecommunications industry and can help us to significantly improve the way we have been traditionally solving the integrations between partners,” said Gonzalo Martín-Villa, the Chief Innovation Officer of Telefonica.

IBM subsequently confirmed the partnership with Telefonica, saying that “Telefonica and IBM are collaborating in the development of a Proof of Concept based on IBM blockchain technology to help solve one of the major challenges of communications service providers, the management of international mobile phone call traffic.”

Ignacio Martín Santos, Managing Director for Telefonica Integrated Account at IBM, is convinced that “In a world that is increasingly focused on data, customer experience, trust and digital ecosystems, blockchain can help communications service providers to streamline internal processes, or as in the  project we are working with Telefonica, to increase trust among the different partners in the communications ecosystem, avoiding the need for call data reconciliation and thus achieving high potential benefits like reduced risk, time saving and cost removal.”