James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello and welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce and I'm in Amsterdam for CASA26. I'm delighted to be joined today by Ievgen Martsin, who is from Proximus Global. Thank you so much for joining us today. Let's start by looking at enterprises and whether they actually want to buy APIs. They want a business outcome more than the API itself. So how does that change the way operators need to develop and package their network capabilities?

Ievgen Martsin, Proximus Global (00:30):
Thank you very much. That's a very interesting question. So first of all, indeed, like in your question, it is important to talk about solutions. Enterprises are not buying the raw API by itself, first of all, because there are so many technicalities behind it that they completely don't understand from the technical world, and they should not. So they simply want to make sure that whatever they consume from you is going to be done in a very seamless type of way. So in that sense, it is important to understand that MNOs are indeed playing an important role, and that's basically related to pricing. So what we see today is that, of course, it's a known commodity product like SMS OTP that has already been on the market for quite a few years and consumers understand what it is. And now basically you need to bring another type of network API technologies, like silent verification or SIM swap.

(01:22):
But what is important right now, the narrative is that, okay, in terms of commercial pricing that is there, it is just piggybacking on one another. So okay, we know that this is a foundation. Let's start with that foundation and build, let's say, the pricing for those services in a new way. But what is super important—and I think this is the next opportunity for the industry and for mobile network operators themselves—is to build, let's call it, subscription packages where all of a sudden, coming from one API being SMS, you have a variety of APIs and you need to charge for them accordingly as well. You cannot simply say, "Okay, now for all 10 APIs that will be in a row, you will have to pay 10 times," because simply that solution will be priced out of the market. So that's something to think about.

(02:06):
We see really good adoption in certain markets depending on the market: silent verification and SIM swap. The next types of APIs are coming as well in a row, but at the same time, indeed, this adoption of solutions and explanation to enterprises of what it does is extremely important. And going further, implementing them into digital use cases, that would be the task for the industry to solve.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (02:32):
Where do you see the greatest opportunity to monetise the intelligence and data embedded within telecom markets?

Ievgen Martsin, Proximus Global (02:39):
Again, this is something that is more a solution itself. So intelligence, we do have it ready today. What it looks like is that we are sitting on a lot of metadata about the number itself as a termination endpoint, with the user behind it. So with the intelligence, we're capable of seeing that, okay, certain numbers are already fraudulent even before you try to send an SMS. There are certain other types of capabilities, like components where you can understand that even sending a certain type of signal, be it SMS or silent verification, will not have reachability. So all of that has to be part of the solution. So the first ones are the known channels—it's just termination endpoints, and those are commodities. And the second type of components that have to be there in the solution are the components that will give that type of, again, like I said, intelligence.

(03:33):
Don't send the SMS or WhatsApp or silent-ification if you know it's not going to be reached. And also trying to put in the AI component. So this is something super important as well because fraud is also evolving. And so the solution will also have to have the ability to determine certain things that will indeed drive your solution against those types of fraudulent transactions.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:04):
So let's look at AI, because you mentioned it. How will AI change the products and services that enterprises expect operators to provide over the next few years?

Ievgen Martsin, Proximus Global (04:13):
I'm not sure that this is going to be immediately the operators. Enterprises themselves are basically on the open market and they, I would say, follow the electricity rule: the shortest path will take priority. So taking that into account, if this would be the best solution coming from the operators, they will definitely go to the operators. At the same time, the typical known bottleneck is that you will have to implement that solution in multiple types of regions and also with multiple operators. So it's just commercially and technically not feasible. So that's a role where the aggregators should play. In terms of that, super important ones are related to voice. So I think indeed this is a super great opportunity right now for a voice component because during CASA, there were so many discussions about not just having black-box voice calls happening and that's it.

(05:11):
Now you can actually have the whole conversation flow. You could implement certain AI agents that will support the customer with it. You can also do spam or scam filtering using the AI component. So adoption of that technology and bringing that again in a very solution-friendly way to the customer, be it SMBs or bigger enterprises, is where the opportunity lies. But we see indeed that multiple organisations are playing a role. Today was a very good overview of how the ecosystem looks with 11 different types of players in the network API scope. So depending on who's going to take priority, towards the enterprise it's typically the aggregators and the service providers playing that role because they have direct communication, as MNOs are just basically on the other side of the spectrum. But at the same time, yeah, the market is open and I see many players are playing in it, as are we, and looking forward to indeed addressing this opportunity of AI.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (06:19):
I just want to ask one more because you mentioned voice and AI voice, and it's obviously been a big topic here, given that Proximus has had such a legacy in that kind of space. Why do you think that's been growing so much? Do you think it's the enterprises demanding it or do you think it's operators seeing that there's a use case there for AI voice?

Ievgen Martsin, Proximus Global (06:36):
I must say that this is a super interesting one because of the simplicity of understanding it. So again, the earlier part of the discussion was about silent-ification. If I have to explain to my son what silent-ification is, it's super complex. Explaining what the value of an AI voice call is super simple. Again, there was an example mentioned during CASA: you take any kind of plumber or electrician who is, of course, doing a certain type of work, and during that work he will not be able to speak and talk to customers. So you need to have an AI assistant that will do it. And with the capabilities of the technology on the market today, this is something that is clearly deliverable. So basically you think of it as a 24/7 agent for a subscription—let me say for 500 euros a month, you have somebody who will really deal with all your calls, who will deal with your planning and everything else.

(07:32):
It's a great value because that's exactly where a person, again in the example of the electrician or plumber, will benefit immediately. So it is for SMB enterprises as well. They could take multiple types of agents that would perform certain types of tasks where in the past they had to have human agents. And what is also great is that now all of this journey is having the right transactions. So you really can transcribe all the information, you can learn from it. Of course, a product and the adoption of that on day one will be super different compared to year-on-year evolution. So enterprises have to be engaged in a continuous learning journey and adoption, as do operators and service providers of the solution as well. So this should be the next cycle of evolution. Indeed, in one of the presentations we saw, we are really in the beginning of the market.

(08:26):
I think it was from McKinsey that we are in 1.2 to 2.2-fold productivity, but the real opportunity is to get to 20-fold opportunity with the correct implementation of these types of AI solutions, specifically for voice.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (08:42):
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Ievgen Martsin, Proximus Global (08:44):
Super. Thank you very much as well.