James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:05):
Welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce and I'm at FutureNet World in London. I'm delighted to be joined today by Miguel Alvarez, who's the chief data and AI officer at Orange Business. Welcome, Miguel. Thank you for joining me.

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (00:18):
Hi, good to meet you.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:19):
So there's a lot to focus on on AI. Obviously it's a hot topic at the moment in the industry, especially around network operator efficiencies. However, I want to talk a bit about how it can be used to generate revenue, especially on the enterprise side. Maybe you can talk us through how Orange Business is pitching AI to businesses.

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (00:39):
Of course, AI needs to work both ways. We have made a strategy on AI that we use the same technology and the same competencies to create value internally. At our Orange Group level, we created €300 million last year. We're doubling that as part of our Engage 2025 programme, but also to generate new opportunities with customers. And customers will benefit from that in two ways. First, they will be able to consume and to buy the same solutions that we use ourselves, what we offer to them. That's what we call Live Intelligence. And we announced a new solution that we call Live Intelligence Studio recently at the Orange Business Summit in Paris. But they can also benefit from that because we're going to develop new features based on AI in our core product line and in our core services. So for instance, we've been in the customer experience market for a while.

(01:21):
We provide contact centre solution, contact centre as a service, and also managed digital customer experience solutions. And now those are all powered by AI as well. So we'll have agent assist, but now we're rolling out also things like virtual agents where you can have a direct conversation with a voice agent. And we're also improving how we do network as a service with the generative AI. So overall, what you see is that customers are looking for smarter services, smarter solutions, but what they're also looking for across the board is for trust. And we think that we can really occupy a very specific space in the industry by providing trusted AI services to customers.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (01:56):
You mentioned AI voice, which is part of your portfolio. What kind of specific services are being offered in terms of AI voice?

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (02:04):
I mean, AI is a new technology, and one of the things that is fantastic is that it can make interactions more natural. And what is more natural than voice? It's a really great channel. So I think that with AI, voice services are becoming sexier again. And we are trying to see what are the most natural ways to do that. First, of course, in customer experience, everything around contact centre and creating virtual agents as well as agent assist. And we have a good flagship case with our B2C operations in France where we've deployed voice agent to customers. But of course, you can build new services on top of voice. Like for instance, we have Live Memo, which allows you to summarise, transcribe, send you an SMS and register your CRM your interactions with customers. And you can do that just with the tap in zero when you're on the call.

(02:48):
So very easy interface to get into. And you can see that we can go farther than that. And for instance, something else that we are doing around collaboration and our own voice is deepfake detection. How can you detect in a meeting if someone is altering their face to look like Tom Cruise or altering their voice to say something that they shouldn't, maybe to try and pass themselves as your CEO or a decision maker. So you can see there's lots of things that we can do. And what we are trying to do is to use our platform capabilities and then our mastery of what is the real-time traffic to make it very seamless for customers.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (03:18):
Sounds like there's quite a lot there. And I think it's really, really exciting, as you said, voice is making a bit of a comeback as well. In terms of enterprises learning about all of this though, do they know what is available in terms of AI and what they can get in terms of what they need from their connectivity provider? I mean, won't they turn to other companies? There's obviously so much competition in the market. So how do you make sure that they don't turn to the hyperscalers or other providers and that they know Orange exists?

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (03:44):
I mean, first of all, we have a lot of respect for hyperscalers. We were chatting earlier about what we have learned about the past. And I think that we learned from the move to cloud is that we don't want to be in a position of an either or choice. We want to partner, we want to offer something that is complementary to what people can get from hyperscalers. And of course, an advantage that we have is that Orange Business, more than half of our revenue and outcomes from digital services. So there is lots of companies that we already interact with doing predictive AI projects or data governance projects or cloud or cyber security. So we have a lot of touchpoints in customer accounts that are aware that we have capabilities that are not just internet, private network, mobile, or things like that. And at the end of the day, what are they going to come looking for in us is a trusted partner that is offering them choice, multi-LLM, multi-cloud with sovereignty and trust built right in.

(04:33):
So you can have the same platform to do non-sensitive use cases that we can do on public cloud, but you can also have use cases that treat very sensitive data that you want to have on a private trusted cloud. So we can do both with the same platform. And I think that's very complementary to what people would want to get from a hyperscaler.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:50):
Just building on that, how should operators, especially Orange, sell to the enterprises? Should it come in a bundle form? Should it come as a kind of specific services? What would you say around that? What should be the approach?

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (05:06):
I mean, there is a number of things that we operators need to change in the way we work. And I think that we know each business we're very clear about the things that we are already changing. So first we need to change the way that we build. We need to have a much more platform approach. It used to be that we do very, very standard or not standard at all, and both of those options can have issues for customers in terms of flexibility or in terms of cost efficiency. Second, we need to treat each market segment the way that we address what they need. So for instance, if you are addressing the mid-market or small companies, they want something that is very easy to consume. So you are able to package a little bit or at least offer them a standard service that they can get.

(05:42):
But if you are going up to multinationals and to larger companies, they want to customise that. So then you need to have really an open platform approach where they can integrate through APIs, they can build their own experience and customer journey, and you are doing that in a way that is also cost-effective for them. So using different ways of selling. And the last thing, of course, is that we need to be strong about selling how we're using things ourselves and to show that we walk the talk. So we are able to implement critical services for our own core business with the same AI solutions that we're selling to customers.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (06:15):
Sounds like there's a load of opportunities there. Miguel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Miguel Alvarez, Orange Business (06:18):
Thank you very much. It was very good speaking with you.