James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Carlos Palito, who is the CIO at Entel. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're here at the Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit. What are your expectations from an event like this, which brings together thought leaders from across the globe?

Carlos Palito, Entel (00:22):
Well, first of all, good morning. Thank you for the invitation. It's a real, real pleasure to be here once again at the Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit. I call it the NGOSS Summit instead of OSS/BSS because I believe that we're in the next level. Actually, what we are expecting to hear and to see here is to understand and see the experience from other operators around the world, the good and the bad, because it's important to understand also what are the bad, because we learn a lot from the bad. And of course, from our technology partner, Ericsson, understand exactly what are the insights that we can bring to Entel in order to guarantee that we have tangible values in Entel. But the main objective is to oversee the insights that can guarantee some tangible values for Entel. Specifically, what we are expecting to see here is AI at scale. How can we bring the embedded AI to understand what we can boost or not in our journey? Second, since we have a long tail of the landscape and technology transformation, we like to understand exactly what we can do in order to bring value from what we have today. Third one, practical use cases, of course, quick wins, because it's important to have some quick wins. How can we boost from what we have today? Because there are two speeds, one what we can do in the medium-to-long term, but of course, if we can bring value in the short term, it will be better. One thing that's very, very important is the lessons learned because we understand a lot. We know a lot from the mistakes, so we don't want to make the same mistakes. But it all comes to understand what are the insights that can bring tangible things to our business. We are closing our digital transformation cycle that will close next year, and we are preparing the foundations for what we call AI-native TechCo. So we are moving from a telco to a TechCo, a technology company, but we are concluding the cycle of the digital transformation and we are being prepared for the AI-native TechCo, and it will be a long journey. It's a normal long journey, but we are creating the foundation. So that's what we are expecting to hear here in this summit in Switzerland.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (02:48):
So you mentioned Entel's journey and shifting to a system of agentics will transform the role of IT and software teams from writing rigid business rules to managing AI agent prompts, policies, workflows, that kind of thing. How is Entel shifting its internal IT and culture to support this transition?

Carlos Palito, Entel (03:07):
Well, it's a good question. It makes part of our broader strategy that we have been putting in place. We started a few years ago. We are moving from or shifting from a capacity management strategy, resources and platforms, to a capability management where we develop and are based upon capabilities and all the things that go behind capabilities, namely adoption, embedded AI, and all this stuff. So basically what we are shifting is from a perspective of systems of engagement and systems of records to a system of outcomes that is based upon our landscape with embedded AI, machine learning and all this stuff. This is something that we are being prepared for. This is something that is major behind the technology shift. It is a cultural shift. So it's something that we need to be based upon. Our journey starts in one-click, then moves to one-touch, and now we want to move to zero-touch. It's something that we are based upon, but the main objective is to guarantee that we deliver capabilities based upon out-of-the-box solutions that are already embedded with AI in order to leverage and support the business. But that's the main objective, giving capabilities supported and leveraged by AI and embedded AI.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:27):
So you're operating in a very competitive South American telecom market. How do autonomous agents in BSS turn real-time subscriber context into instant hyper-personalized retention offers to help reduce churn?

Carlos Palito, Entel (04:41):
Well, it's a good question, but the problem is the same, churn and all the stuff around the client. So how we do it in Entel, we work with real-time data. We add embedded AI in order to guarantee that we shift from problem-solving to problem-avoiding, meaning that if we get and work with the commercial data, billing data, non-structural data, network data, all that combined, we guarantee that we can have better information of an issue in order to guarantee that we provide solutions or provide a better plan for the client and the next best action to the client before he has the trigger point of getting out from the company. So this is something that we are working with. Of course, we use embedded AI and AI in order to guarantee that all the things are controlled by the system itself, but are supervised by the human. But nevertheless, the main goal is to try to get the data, structural and non-structural from the systems, in order to guarantee that we have personalized solutions and offers to the client or next best offers to guarantee that it doesn't have the needs of the churn. Because we are in a very competitive market in LATAM and churn is an issue. It's a problem. ARPU is also a problem. It's not like in Europe. So that's something that we need to be prepared for, and we use data and AI models to guarantee that we provide that information and we secure what we call the paradigm shift from problem-solving to problem avoidance. So that's something that we are based upon, that's what we do. But it's the same problem as everything. We just add a very important piece of the topic, which is AI, to guarantee that we can move faster on providing the best solution for the client to avoid having the problem. So that's where we are putting all our dollars or pesos in order to guarantee that we can provide the information or the solutions, or the prices or the personalization to the clients before they get the idea to churn.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (07:05):
So how does moving to an agentic architecture allow you to scale intelligent business processes and next best actions across different operating companies and regulatory environments?

Carlos Palito, Entel (07:16):
Our core strategy, we embed in our agentic architecture, in our enterprise architecture, we are embedding agentics in order to guarantee that what we do and what we deliver can work in this new ecosystem. But the main goal, the main guardrails, will be our enterprise architecture that is embedded with our agentic architecture to guarantee that we simply do the steps and not add complexity, because the agents can complicate the architecture. But nevertheless, it's a very complex game since we are talking about a multi-vendor game, and it's crucial to have interoperability between all the technology vendors: Ericsson, Oracle, Huawei, Google. It's critical that all these ecosystems provide us with a common and standard landscape and a common data lake in order to guarantee and leverage what we intend to have and use in an AI-native TechCo. So if we don't have a common data lake and a standard architecture across all vendors, it's complex to achieve interoperability. So that's why we work with all the vendors, our technology partners, to guarantee that their interoperability is the real stuff, the standard is the real stuff. And we produce and create what we call a 'common data lake' to guarantee that we can take the best of architecture and the best of AI. If we don't have data, a common data structure, there is no AI. So this is something that we need to be prepared for since we are closing the digital transformation cycle, and we are creating the foundations for the AI-native TechCo. So it's the next cycle. And for that, we have to have good foundations. And for having that, it's crucial that we have a seamless architecture and an interoperable architecture between all the vendors considering that we have good ecosystems, and we work with the partners to achieve that. That's our goal.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (09:30):
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Carlos Palito, Entel (09:33):
Thank you.