Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:02):
We're at the Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit 2025 in London. I'm here with Gabriela Styf Sjöman from BT Group. Gabriela, always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for joining us again today.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (00:13):
Thank you, Ray. Always a pleasure.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:16):
Now BT is co-hosting this summit with Ericsson. What are you seeing as the key themes and topics that need to be addressed by the industry?

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (00:25):
So I'll talk about the themes that we have heard about this morning are very much, it's around the challenges that we face, the opportunities about autonomous networks, programmability, the tools that we need, how we manage data. And so I think this is what I think is great, is that we're coming together really cross industry and I think Ericsson is really enabling that cross industry knowledge sharing. What I would like us to talk much more about is re-imagining the role of OSS and BSS. How can we reimagine networks, the role of networks, true customer-centric networks that not only connect but really anticipate customer needs and react on them. And that requires, of course a different layer of intelligence to be able to live up to that.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:16):
Yeah. So I mean, as you would imagine and as there is across the whole industry, AI, massive topic, but particularly in the software domain and the AI-native telco is now a thing and a big topic of conversation. What does that mean to you? Why is it important for telcos to become AI-native?

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (01:37):
AI. Everybody talks about AI and one of the things that we are doing now in BT is to say applied AI. Because otherwise, if you're not clear about what you're going to use AI for, it's difficult to design the actions and the objectives. So now we say AI for networks versus networks for AI. One is how do I use AI for how I build and operate my network versus what's the role of me as a telco to deliver products and services, connectivity and comms services for a world where adoption of AI is increasing? But let's take the first one which I think is more relevant for this discussion. And there we say, what does applied AI, well we say AI for intelligent operations, that becomes really concrete. AI for cybersecurity. The use of AI is absolutely fundamental for cybersecurity, AI for sustainability, and AI for build, which is robotics.

(02:32):
So those are the kind of fields that we do. And that's, for me, it means, and in general what it means, it means that you leverage on the data. For me, the networks are also, I was talking to a colleague of mine, a person in my team, very intelligent person who said, Gabriela, the networks are the big sensor. I mean the networks are so distributed. Imagine the amount of data and what we can sense. So for me, AI-driven telco is you use that data, you translate it for augmentation, for automation to serve your customers in a better way.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:06):
Now talking of customers, how is all of this development with or without AI impacting the customer and helping to give them a better experience?

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (03:17):
Well, once again, I think it always starts with a customer. And we see that our customers are not as it was in the past, where you build a network, kind of that best effort network customers require much more hyper-personalization. They have their needs. So we need to those really service intent-driven networks that react on the service. A device that has to come together in how the network serves. So of course the North Star is a programmable network, but that's what it needs to be, what it needs to serve, it needs to be service, intent driven in a way. And then how it all comes together is of course you need to make sure that you have intelligent infrastructure, you have the layers of how you collect the data, how you process the data, how you validate it, how you store it. And of course the actionability is what is needed. And it's all about predicting customer needs and reacting on them near real time.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:14):
Yes, that would be great for all of us.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (04:17):
Yes, that would be, that is the north star and we have to get there because if we are going to reclaim, I think that the biggest opportunity for telcos is to reclaim our value in the value chain. It's we are introducing so many valuable functionalities in the network, the whole disaggregation, delayering, more AI led talk about AI RAN embedded in the domains. We need to translate to a value proposition and reclaim. And I think the reclaiming for me is really, that's why OSS is so important. Reclaiming for me is what are the new products and services beyond connectivity? And even if it's, we call digital connectivity, it's connectivity and communication services. What are those new services? And that's where I say also OSS/BSS plays a very important role in this network world where we expose more new network capabilities through the APIs that everybody talks about. We have to ask ourselves, is it the API that is the value or is it that it's a catalyst for new product innovation that really ties the network with the application. So these net compute ads, apps, and what does our role as telcos to actually be developing those products and not give it away for somebody else?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:33):
And of course, key to all of that is not doing everything internally. Collaboration, partnerships, really important. Now you are co-hosting the summit with Ericsson. How is Ericsson helping BT to achieve some of its goals? With all of this?

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (05:49):
Ericsson is absolutely a key partner of ours. Not only are they a key partner of ours for the infrastructure, so in the mobile network, they're also a key partner for us in this space. What we do with data and AI. And actually today we are, and tomorrow we will have a joint catalyst with Ericsson around policy driven slices and that end-to-end orchestration. So they're super relevant for us, not only as a vendor but as a partner where we co-innovate together and looking forward to more partnerships, expanding that partnership with more telcos of course.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:24):
Okay. Excellent. Well, collaboration and action. That's what people want to see in this industry. So Gabriela, thanks so much for joining us today, great to talk to you again.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT Group (06:33):
Thank you, Ray.