Richard Thurston, TelecomTV (00:03):
We're here in London at the Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit here with Lucky la Riccia. How are you finding the Summit?

Lucky la Riccia, Ericsson (00:10):
Yeah, thanks for having us, Richard. It's a wonderful opportunity to bring the best of the industry here to the UK and attend such a summit. It's all about the no-nonsense conversations that the industry can drive. We've achieved a lot as an industry to date. However, there's a wave of innovation that's required to really take our networks and the services deployed on those networks to the next level. Looking at the agenda, it's an impressive agenda. A lot of conversation that we can have around autonomous networks. Such an important topic in the industry to date. We want to talk about data-driven intelligence, what we can do with the introduction of artificial intelligence, machine learning into our networks. And last but not least, monetizing beyond connectivity, really driving that next wave of revenues for our customers.

Richard Thurston, TelecomTV (00:59):
So those are really interesting opportunities. Can you drill down a bit more into those opportunities that your customers face?

Lucky la Riccia, Ericsson (01:06):
Yeah. For us, the platform is how to drive a 5G high performance programmable network. We're all about how do we get our customers to be able to sell, deliver, and then get paid for their services in that sense. Two key paradigms really are arising in that sense. The first is autonomous networks. What we can do around how we deliver services to market, both with better quality but quicker time to market in itself. The second is around the differentiation in the connectivity of the network that we can drive. Being able to provision a different type of user experience or a different type of experience for a different segment and do that with automation really brings down the complexity, but drives a quicker time to market. High performance programmable networks really are the future of being able to expose network characteristics and drive the next set of use cases to the industry.

Richard Thurston, TelecomTV (02:02):
Amazing. And could you tell me about some of the developments with your customers in OSS and BSS?

Lucky la Riccia, Ericsson (02:08):
Yeah. Europe, Middle East and Africa is a great array of different complexities, challenges, but opportunities as well. I said a little earlier, the key for our customers first is to sell, deliver, and get paid for what they do. Simplification is the big theme, what they can do around OSS/BSS to simplify in that sense. Maybe two examples I can draw upon. The first is Ooredoo Kuwait as an example, really setting up for 5G monetization. So they introduced the charging access function allows us to monetize the platform and 5G services in their market. And most recently there was an announcement in Orange across Europe, a lot of European operators, and what they're really looking at is network slicing orchestration to be able to automate and simplify the way they orchestrate and provision services across each of their operating companies. Really getting ready for that next wave of ecosystem and large scale innovation.

Richard Thurston, TelecomTV (03:08):
So it sounds like it'd be a lot to talk about in the rest of the conference. Lucky, thanks for joining us.

Lucky la Riccia, Ericsson (03:12):
Thanks for having me.