T Wholesale on becoming a trusted partner in the age of AI and APIs
By James Pearce
Oct 6, 2026
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James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello and welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce and I'm in Amsterdam for CASA26, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Jacqueline Hennessy, who is from T Wholesale. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (00:15):
Thank you.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:17):
Let's start by having a look at where you see the biggest opportunity for operators to monetise network intelligence and communication capabilities.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (00:25):
Yeah, I think there's a really huge opportunity for the telcos to monetise on network APIs. It's such valuable information for the enterprise and it's real-time and it's not easy for customers or enterprises to get that information anywhere else. So there are some challenges with network APIs. The whole business model hasn't been completely built out yet. How do we charge for this? Customers don't really know what it is, but we can see that there's some traction in certain verticals like in the banking industry, specifically around fraud. So for a bank to be able to give a customer real live information that's an authoritative information coming directly from the telco network saying that this customer is actually in Amsterdam right now, they haven't swapped their SIM, they are roaming, it allows the customer to trust, but also just rely on that actual specific signal and then allows the customer to say, okay, well we've avoided a fraud case.
(01:39):
Or in another vertical it could be, okay, we have successfully allowed this person to pick up their parcel at a different point because they've used the location signals. So yeah, customers won't necessarily ask for this because they don't really know what it is, but if we package this properly and if we get the commercials around it properly, they'll see the value in it and hopefully they will pay for it. That should be the plan.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (02:07):
So let's talk about some of the hot topics that are going on in the industry. How important are sovereignty and data residency and trust becoming as AI is embedded into communication services?
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (02:20):
Well, sovereignty and trust is a really... It's quite a boring topic for sales guys. It's not interesting for the sales guys that want to make a commission and want to sell to the customers. For customers, it's also quite a boring topic. It's regulation, it's like ISO certifications, it's questions like where is my data held? Who's processing my data? Who has access to my data and where and for how long? Why are you holding my data? So all of these regulatory and compliance questions are critical. It doesn't matter what type of solution a sales guy works together with a customer on. It can be a fantastic solution that will bring ROI to the customer or will cut costs for the customer or will increase conversion for the customer. But if it's not compliant, then we can't go anywhere. So this type of compliance has to be built in from the product level, so compliance by design in the features and functionalities so that the customers know that they're buying a compliance solution.
(03:31):
Also, when we get to AI where in the future, well, in the not too distant future, it will be AI agents that are consuming the API and not developers, human developers. And how do you deal with compliance then when you've got AI? So hopefully the customers will feel that they're, especially with T Wholesale, that they're reliant on a reliable partner that is compliant in the EU, that has a huge regulatory internal team working to make sure it's compliant and obedient to all of the new rules and regulations in Europe. And so hopefully the customers will feel so trusted in the T Wholesale Deutsche Telekom brand that then they'll also see us as a trusted advisor when it comes to AI because it's new. How do we deal with compliance when it comes to AI? It's going to be something that we have to work together with, but it's going to be a hot topic and something we definitely have to dig into and certainly something we're investigating with our own internal security teams.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:34):
It definitely is. One of the things that I noticed during a lot of your answer there that you kept on referring to is the customer's needs, customer's wants. I can tell that's a really important part of what you do. Maybe you can talk us through some of the conversations that you're having with your customers, what they're demanding from you as a supplier, and kind of how the industry might learn some lessons from that as well.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (04:53):
Yeah. So the customers, especially in the wholesale sector, because T Wholesale is the wholesale division within Deutsche Telekom, we have our own CPaaS solution that's built in-house. So for that, customers want simplicity. They want a simple API. In some cases they want a universal API. So connect once to the API and then you've got voice, you've got SMS, RBM, and also connections to the network APIs in one simple portal because what we're talking about this telco landscape is complicated and it's too complicated for a regular customer to understand. So we want to mask the complexity for the customer, but also to give them high quality and high quality that is compliant is extremely important. And also to know that we're a trusted advisor in the future so that we can scale with them. And what's really important for us is to know the customer's priorities.
(05:53):
So if we're aligned with the customer's top three priorities in the next six to 12 months, then we can grow together with them and we can stay relevant with the customer. If we don't, then we get degraded in priority. So it's trying to act like a trusted, I know the word trust is used a lot in these few days, a trusted advisor that is compliant, that will help the customer grow and to keep it simple and for the customer to scale together with the customer and to stay as a top priority for the customer. I think they're the main demands that we're seeing from customers and how we want to align with our customers.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (06:34):
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us on TelecomTV.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (06:36):
Thank you so much. Pleasure.
Hello and welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce and I'm in Amsterdam for CASA26, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Jacqueline Hennessy, who is from T Wholesale. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (00:15):
Thank you.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:17):
Let's start by having a look at where you see the biggest opportunity for operators to monetise network intelligence and communication capabilities.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (00:25):
Yeah, I think there's a really huge opportunity for the telcos to monetise on network APIs. It's such valuable information for the enterprise and it's real-time and it's not easy for customers or enterprises to get that information anywhere else. So there are some challenges with network APIs. The whole business model hasn't been completely built out yet. How do we charge for this? Customers don't really know what it is, but we can see that there's some traction in certain verticals like in the banking industry, specifically around fraud. So for a bank to be able to give a customer real live information that's an authoritative information coming directly from the telco network saying that this customer is actually in Amsterdam right now, they haven't swapped their SIM, they are roaming, it allows the customer to trust, but also just rely on that actual specific signal and then allows the customer to say, okay, well we've avoided a fraud case.
(01:39):
Or in another vertical it could be, okay, we have successfully allowed this person to pick up their parcel at a different point because they've used the location signals. So yeah, customers won't necessarily ask for this because they don't really know what it is, but if we package this properly and if we get the commercials around it properly, they'll see the value in it and hopefully they will pay for it. That should be the plan.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (02:07):
So let's talk about some of the hot topics that are going on in the industry. How important are sovereignty and data residency and trust becoming as AI is embedded into communication services?
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (02:20):
Well, sovereignty and trust is a really... It's quite a boring topic for sales guys. It's not interesting for the sales guys that want to make a commission and want to sell to the customers. For customers, it's also quite a boring topic. It's regulation, it's like ISO certifications, it's questions like where is my data held? Who's processing my data? Who has access to my data and where and for how long? Why are you holding my data? So all of these regulatory and compliance questions are critical. It doesn't matter what type of solution a sales guy works together with a customer on. It can be a fantastic solution that will bring ROI to the customer or will cut costs for the customer or will increase conversion for the customer. But if it's not compliant, then we can't go anywhere. So this type of compliance has to be built in from the product level, so compliance by design in the features and functionalities so that the customers know that they're buying a compliance solution.
(03:31):
Also, when we get to AI where in the future, well, in the not too distant future, it will be AI agents that are consuming the API and not developers, human developers. And how do you deal with compliance then when you've got AI? So hopefully the customers will feel that they're, especially with T Wholesale, that they're reliant on a reliable partner that is compliant in the EU, that has a huge regulatory internal team working to make sure it's compliant and obedient to all of the new rules and regulations in Europe. And so hopefully the customers will feel so trusted in the T Wholesale Deutsche Telekom brand that then they'll also see us as a trusted advisor when it comes to AI because it's new. How do we deal with compliance when it comes to AI? It's going to be something that we have to work together with, but it's going to be a hot topic and something we definitely have to dig into and certainly something we're investigating with our own internal security teams.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:34):
It definitely is. One of the things that I noticed during a lot of your answer there that you kept on referring to is the customer's needs, customer's wants. I can tell that's a really important part of what you do. Maybe you can talk us through some of the conversations that you're having with your customers, what they're demanding from you as a supplier, and kind of how the industry might learn some lessons from that as well.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (04:53):
Yeah. So the customers, especially in the wholesale sector, because T Wholesale is the wholesale division within Deutsche Telekom, we have our own CPaaS solution that's built in-house. So for that, customers want simplicity. They want a simple API. In some cases they want a universal API. So connect once to the API and then you've got voice, you've got SMS, RBM, and also connections to the network APIs in one simple portal because what we're talking about this telco landscape is complicated and it's too complicated for a regular customer to understand. So we want to mask the complexity for the customer, but also to give them high quality and high quality that is compliant is extremely important. And also to know that we're a trusted advisor in the future so that we can scale with them. And what's really important for us is to know the customer's priorities.
(05:53):
So if we're aligned with the customer's top three priorities in the next six to 12 months, then we can grow together with them and we can stay relevant with the customer. If we don't, then we get degraded in priority. So it's trying to act like a trusted, I know the word trust is used a lot in these few days, a trusted advisor that is compliant, that will help the customer grow and to keep it simple and for the customer to scale together with the customer and to stay as a top priority for the customer. I think they're the main demands that we're seeing from customers and how we want to align with our customers.
James Pearce, TelecomTV (06:34):
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us on TelecomTV.
Jacqueline Hennessy, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom (06:36):
Thank you so much. Pleasure.
Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.
Jacqueline Hennessy, Senior CPaaS Product Manager, T Wholesale, Deutsche Telekom
Jacqueline Hennessy, senior CPaaS product manager at T Wholesale, a division of Deutsche Telekom, discusses packaging APIs in order to monetise them in verticals such as banking or logistics, positioning compliance-by-design at the centre of the sovereignty story, using expertise and legacy to build trust in AI, and why putting customers first is central to the T Wholesale story.
Recorded September 2026
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