Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:07):
Hi, I'm Tony Poulos and I'm at the AI Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf. It's a TelecomTV event, and with us today we have Karim Kotobi. Welcome, Karim. You're the Senior Manager of Digital Product and Transformation at Vodafone. That's a big role. Look, let's start off. Vodafone recently signed up to be one of the first AI Native Telco Accelerator partners. That's TelecomTV's ANTA program initiative. And what made Vodafone want to join ANTA and why is this initiative so important for the industry?

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (00:38):
Yeah, thank you for having me. So in my opinion, if you want to become an AI native telco, AI native operator or move towards autonomous networks, obviously this comes with great possibilities for your organisation. At the same time, we are facing massive challenges and massive ambiguity. I believe that a cooperation like ANTA can help us here to share those challenges, work on best practices together, and face it as a common organisation.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (01:04):
But tell us more about your role at Vodafone and how it fits in with the ANTA initiative.

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (01:08):
Yeah, I lead the Global Digital Product Management and Transformation team within Vodafone, within the networks organisation. So obviously we have a big challenge ahead of us. And for me, it's all about connecting real value and digital solutions. So it's not enough to talk about AI. It's not enough to deploy an AI agent, right? You really need to embed it into the organisation. And this is basically my personal mission to achieve this at Vodafone.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (01:33):
One big challenge across the industry is moving from AI pilots to measurable impact. We're hearing a lot about, at this event in particular, what's happening with these constant proof of concepts and pilots, but how are you tackling that at Vodafone and what advice would you give to our viewers that are embarking on this road?

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (01:50):
Yeah. On the top level, I would say don't fall into the pilot trap. I think we heard it yesterday in one of those panels, right? I think everybody's facing this challenge because the excitement is really high about AI. But what you really need to do is you need to talk about accountability and scalability when it comes to those AI solutions. So it's not enough to just keep this as a digital topic, but it's an organisational transformation topic. So you need to move accountability to where it really belongs, to the people who need to transform their processes, and then start from there.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:19):
But why are we doing so many copilots or so many test procedures and proof of concept? Is it because our board is insisting on that? Are we trying to prove that the technology works? What's the driver for them?

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (02:31):
Actually, I think it's both, as well as the current momentum of time, right? The technology is new, so everybody wants to prove that it works, but it's not enough to prove that it works. You need to prove that it can create value, and this is the transformation part where it needs to shift in the organisation and mature.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:46):
And what do you see as the biggest challenge for AI adoption within the telcos?

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (02:52):
Yeah, I think there are many challenges. We talk about data foundation, right? Which seems to be a huge issue for many organisations. Organisational model, transparency, AI governance. There's a large number of topics, but what I would tackle first is the governance part, to be honest. We need to make very clear who holds accountability and then we can start from there.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:13):
You mentioned the data issues, and that was yesterday at the sessions. We talked about data. They talked about data on and on and on, not just the accountability of the data, whether it's true data, or is it in the format that we can use? Will we be using it in real time? And so how are we going to over-- We've been talking about data for 25 years in the industry, getting our data right. We never seemed to quite grab it.

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (03:33):
Yeah. Maybe the pressure was not high enough. That's my opinion. I feel like AI in many regards accelerates issues or makes them very transparent. So if you really want to rely on an agent to do a job, obviously you can't rely on some knowledge which some engineer has in his head, right? So it needs to be documented and I think that's a crucial point here.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:52):
Well, you're at the cliff face, as we say, of this challenge.

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (03:56):
Yes.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:56):
Karim, it's been great to talk to you. Thanks so much for being with me.

Karim Kotobi, Vodafone (03:59):
Thank you so much.