Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we're in Copenhagen for DTW Ignite 2026. I'm here with Danielle Rios. She is CEO of Totogi. Danielle, great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us.

Danielle Rios, Totogi (00:16):
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:19):
So for years, this show has had quite a heavy emphasis on AI. We're now really getting into the beginning of what you might call the AI era in telecom, but still a lot of questions about what to do, how to do it, when to do it. Do you get a sense that the telecom sector has got to grips with what AI can really do and do for different parts of the industry?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (00:49):
I don't think so at all. I think we're really far behind and we're moving so slowly. I look at other industries, other software developers, especially within companies, and the pace at which they are building, and I really want to use that word carefully. It's building. Building apps, building new capabilities, ripping out old stuff and putting in new. Just so outpaces telco. We're still kicking tires. We're still getting RFPs. We're still getting people, "Hey, we're going to make a decision in the fall or late summer." And I'm like, "Guys, AI is passing you by." And the struggle for a vendor there and especially for Tatogi, whatever we write down, it's going to be obsolete in six months. So this pace just really needs to pick up, I think.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:35):
What can be done to help pick up that pace? I guess this is a relatively risk averse industry. Is it just a case of taking more risks?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (01:47):
I think so. I mean, that speed and I think freedom to fail and this is not an industry that likes to ever fail. We don't ever touch the network. Even CICD pipelines are sort of a new novelty in the industry. And so I think just massive experimentation, freedom to fail, understanding that mistakes will be made, but in that you have to, with AI especially, you learn by doing. It's not something you can read or study even because it's so nascent and everyone's still figuring it out. It's just a matter of doing. And then once your people, your employees start to get that experience, just their brains light up with ideas of what can be done and how we can go faster. And so tackle a low risk area but really add speed to it. I wouldn't tackle the network and the most important thing, but-

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:37):
And critical services and so on

Danielle Rios, Totogi (02:39):
And so forth. Yeah. I would start with something relatively safe so they can tolerate a little bit of failure. And I think everyone has really started with customer support and customer service. That's easy, that's done, but what's the next thing we're doing? And so when you talk to telcos, that's still their first area that's their prime example. And I'm like, "Okay, great. What was number two and number three?" And they're still flatfooted, I think.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:02):
I mean, Totogi in many ways, a relatively new company. So you've been able to build from the ground up. So you're very much an AI native company. And we spoke at MWC, which seems like a million years ago, but was only about four months. Anything new in your world? What's been happening in the past four months for you?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (03:26):
I mean, really we've been expanding with customers. So we've really narrowed our focus instead of, I mean, I would say maybe four years ago we were chasing a wide swath of different telcos, really focused in charging and our cloud charger, which still is, I think, one of the best chargers in the world. It's amazing. But we really kind of switched with AI. We almost had to and we've really been focusing on tier one telcos. And the way that it's been working for us is landing a pilot or some small use case and then people see how the Totogi Ontology works and then their brains lined up and they're like, "Okay, let's go to the next thing. Let's go to the next thing." And so I have two really great examples. We have one example in the Middle East that is combining network information with dormant cells.

(04:17):
We talked about this at MWC, but they're now combining it with fuel decisions to arbitrage best fuel prices and trying to figure out where you can turn off the network and save money because it's not being utilized and decide where you're allocating your energy spend. So that was like a really cool, interesting sort of mix

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:35):
Of- Is that Zane, if I do remember rightly?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (04:38):
Okay. Right. And then we have another one in Latin America that's coming online that's going to take marketing spend in the form of advertisements with network data to see which customers are clicking on certain ads. So I thought that was a really interesting idea of pulling two very different parts of the telco together to drive revenue forward and we're really excited about that opportunity. And so there's customers in Asia, we're getting a lot of people who want to accelerate their transformations, right? They're not necessarily moving to a Tatoki system, but they're moving from a source to a new target and maybe that's going a little bit slower than they'd like. Maybe the source vendor, then come up vendors and helping as much as they would like. And so they're calling us in, "Hey, can AI help with us?" And absolutely it can. So we're really excited about that.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:30):
Okay. Well, I'm glad you used the word accelerate there because another new thing that Totogi is involved with is the AI Native Telco Accelerator, the new initiative just announced by Telecom TV and a bunch of great partners. Now I'm not going to go into anta. Everybody can find out a lot about it on the Telecom TV website and the partner websites, but do you think this kind of initiative which brings different parties together and helps reveal what is really happening in the industry, that this can have a sort of catalyst effect on what's happening?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (06:08):
Yeah. I think it's kind of like the four minute mile, right? No one ever thought people could have run a mile in four minutes or less and then someone did it. And immediately afterwards, everyone was able to run a four minute mile. Well, maybe not everyone, but more than one, right?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:22):
Some fit people.

Danielle Rios, Totogi (06:24):
But I think same thing with Anta. I think this is the group that's really doing it and I think putting out the stories of how it's being done tactically, right practically will give other telcos ideas that this is possible in our industry and here are people who are really doing it. And so just like with a four minute mile, you see it happening and now everyone is doing it. And so I think that's going to be the key to ANSA is really highlighting those stories and sharing them and sharing them with the industry.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:53):
And measuring it and tracking it and being on top of it and to the point where I guess we can really see movements in days and weeks and so on and so forth and

Danielle Rios, Totogi (07:04):
Have breakthroughs. I think that's going to be, there's going to be a lot of ball necks like, how did you solve this and how did you get over ... We have a mainframe in our midst. How did you solve that problem? And these are real problems,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:14):
Right? Yeah, no, absolutely.

Danielle Rios, Totogi (07:15):
There's cold ball in the ecosystem. How are you breaking through these legacy systems that have been installed for literally decades and adding AI to them or extracting the information and using AI with it without moving to a data lake, which I think a lot of people think that is part of this. And I really don't think you need to do that because when you move things to a data lake, it's a snapshot of what happens, the historical record of what happened. And once you have that data, you need to take action on it. So you're going to go right back to those legacy systems. So moving to a data lake, I mean, sure you have clean data, but now you have to go back to where the data's all dirty and take action and make a change. So it'll be really interesting to see if this group can change, hasten the momentum in our industry, really teach and show other people how it's done and maybe we can be like Elon Musk on a rocket ship and take off.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:10):
Well, an interesting analogy to end with, but thank you for being part of Anton and thanks for joining us today and have a good show here in Copenhagen.

Danielle Rios, Totogi (08:20):
You as well. Thanks so much.