Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:11):
Hello and welcome. I'm Tony Poulos and I'm delighted to be joined here today by Vikram Sinha, who is the president, director and CEO at IOH. And with him Razvan Teslaru, who is the VP and head of strategy and portfolio for business area software and services at Ericsson. Gentlemen, welcome. We're going to be talking about how IOH is continuously evolving and how Ericsson is supporting the evolution with its OSS/BSS products and services. Vikram, can I start with you? You've achieved remarkable success with your BSS transformation. Tell me how you're envisioning that at the outset and what are the problems that you were solving?

Vikram Sinha, IOH (00:52):
So Tony, let me put it this way. It was a lot of hard work and long journey, but I must say Ericsson was very supportive and when we started, we didn't have answer to everything, but one thing was very clear right from the top leadership that we go all in because we believed in what we are doing. We were trying to simplify our customer life, our customer journey. The most difficult thing to do is to do simple simplification. And this is what the full stack of Ericsson, which is from a broken multiple vendor. It is a lot to do with how we work horizontally on getting everyone together for working for the mission. So I'm happy to say that we have, first we migrated close to 60 million customer. Now we are migrating our second brand, so close to a hundred million customer. And this was something which had never done before at this scale. So this is something as a team we have come along with.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:07):
Razvan. How did Ericsson support IOH in this massive transformation?

Razvan Teslaru, Ericsson (02:13):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think massive is the right word there. I think as Vikram always says, and making something simple is hard. And I think we worked very hard together and I think now we have, I think it's the largest full stack instance in the world. I think what made it a successful journey for both of us, I think it was three things. First, it was a very strong vision and leadership coming from your side, Vikram, I think very clearly the direction was very clear. A digital telco where the BSS stack is intelligent and is agile and is cloud native. And I think that worked very well. We were able to meet on that vision level. I think the second is that we took a holistic approach, right? This wasn't a simple lift and shift. We looked at it holistically, end to end from a process perspective, technology stack, perspective, strategy perspective.

(03:06):
And it resulted in the digital monetization platform right now, which is end-to-end. And again, it's the largest in the world. And I would say we also monitor and operate the infrastructure now, which resolves also the challenge that was there before on accountability. So now it's very clear where the accountability lies and the BSS stack is now an enabler of the business. And I would say the third thing very important since we're here at Ignite, is openness. I think the stack that we have is of course TM forum aligned and based on open APIs. And that enables that agility that you always guide us towards. I think Vikram in the sense of if you onboard a new channel partner, it cannot be a two month SI project in itself, right? It must be done immediately. So agility and how you take partnerships and products to market is now a lot faster for Indosat.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:06):
And what about automation and AI that we keep hearing about?

Razvan Teslaru, Ericsson (04:10):
Absolutely. I mean, that's a great question. And I think the great thing about the platform that you have in place now is that it gives you the opportunity to build on it now as we move into autonomous networks. And I think a lot of that has to do with how do we move towards operating networks based on intent? And now with this very strong foundation in place, it's the largest digital monetization platform instance in the world. Now we're building generative AI and agentic AI capabilities and also moving to cloud so that we can leverage the platform that you have in place now to build even more automation and monetization capabilities going forward.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:50):
Well, Vikram, of course, we're talking about AI now and it has to be underpinned by cloud. Of course. What's your cloud strategy?

Vikram Sinha, IOH (04:57):
So Tony, last year in August during the capital market day, we articulated our AI North Star and we have first pillar, which is we want to become a AI native telco. And for that, I'm so happy that I have two best partner because these things need to be done in collaboration and you have to do it with the best in the world. So Google Cloud and Ericsson, we are making sure that we are taking full leverage of this partnership and we will be one of the first, because already on our AI native telco, we are working with Google Cloud and we want to migrate the whole full stack to cloud. What does it mean? It will again help me create a product factory. It'll help me reduce my churn, it'll help me increase my ARPU, even reduce cost. So look, I focus on growth first for sure. We need to have cost leadership, but that is also for growth. So what really excites me is how this whole ecosystem and my Indosat side being a AI native telco, this will be a great showcase between Ericsson, Google Cloud, and Indosat, how it is fuelling growth.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (06:27):
Okay. Vikram, here is my last question, I promise. How is all the things we've been discussed actually helping you with your business and what improvements do you see?

Vikram Sinha, IOH (06:36):
Most important thing I keep talking about, if AI and all these things are not in your p and l, it is just waste of time. So where it is helping us on our p and l is helping us reduce churn, helping us increase RPU, and then again in six months time, we want to make sure that we convert this into a product factory. We are not there yet. January, 2026, January, 2027, we will talk in 18 to 20 month, we will talk that how this is helping us create new revenues. But today it is helping me on my core business. I can only do new things if I'm doing well on my core. So it has been a good journey.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (07:27):
Well, hopefully we can get back to you in 26 and 27 to see how the progress is going. Vikram, Razvan, thank you very much for being with me today. Thank you.

Vikram Sinha, IOH (07:35):
Thank you.

Razvan Teslaru, Ericsson (07:36):
Thank you.