Last November Swisscom launched a ’spam filter‘ for landline phones. Together with Katia, a startup from Martigny, which invented the filter, the corporation makes telco history.

Imagine you just got back from a hard working day. You take off your shoes, hop on the couch and try to rest for a while. Suddenly the phone rings. ‚Hey there! Do you have a minute? I would like to talk to you about your insurance!‘ We all get these annoying calls from several call centers. We all get angry by them. The #1 Swiss telco corporation Swisscom took notice of this problem and delivered a solution. In November Swisscom presented a call-filter, which was invented by a Swiss startup called Katia.

The testing and implementation of the filter took a little more than a year and nicely shows the mutual roadmap both companies went together: When the collaboration started, Katia was at the beginning of its journey and had a prototype of its solution. Therefore, Swisscom decided to start with a ‚Proof of Concept‘ phase, in which the startup and the corporation developed a stable system.

Penny Schiffer: “It’s a typical case of a successful cooperation between a startup and Swisscom.”

StartUp Challenge
The startup reached out to Swisscom in an early stage. Therefore, the corporation and the startup conducted together a ‚Proof of Concept‘. Because of the intricacy of the IT-infrastructure at Swisscom, it is little surprise that the project lasted 1,5 years. 20 users tested the filter and the results were satisfying. During that time Thomas Martinson, Head of Communication Services at Swisscom, was in touch with the startup and supported the project very strongly.

Penny Schiffer, Head of Startup Initiatives at Swisscom, is glad that the project came to fruition: ‚It’s a typical case of a successful cooperation between a startup and Swisscom. We both learned from each other and tried to achieve the best for the customer.‘ The startup applied for the annually Swisscom StartUp Challenge, but did not win. Although Katia did not make the trip to Silicon Valley, Swisscom kept an eye on the startup. And the call-filter is the outcome of it. If you want to succeed like Katia did, you have to apply for this year’s edition of the StartUp Challenge.