Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:08):
So we're in Barcelona. It's MWC 2025. I'm here with Peter Arbitter, he's the chief commercial officer at Aduna, the recently formed network, API joint venture. Peter, great to see you. Thanks very much for joining us today. So can you tell us about your new role and how that came about? Because the last time we chatted, of course you were still at Deutsche Telecom. Yes,

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (00:31):
Ray, thanks a lot for having me and it's exciting times and absolutely right. It's not that long ago that I had a different color on this beautiful shirt working for Deutsche Telecom. Now I'm now the chief commercial officer working for aona and that means that our teams are in charge for the demand side, so northbound as well as the supply side. Southbound, since we're talking about a platform business, this is always crucial how you get these two sides working and that will be my pleasure in

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:06):
The future. Okay, well this is certainly a great time to be involved in this part of the industry. There's so much activity and in this new role, you are still right at the heart of the network, API sector, which is what you were doing at Deutsche Telecom as well. From your perspective, why is this so important to the telecom operator community and what can network capability exposure via standard APIs bring to digital service providers?

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (01:34):
Yeah, so let's first look at Aduna again. And first of all, it's great that we have a name and no longer talk about the venture or Yuko or whatever. So these 10 founding members had invested into something which is really new for the industry. And out of the many discussions I had here at MWC, people hardly believe that we came up with that setup. So let me briefly explain this one again. So Aduna is all around speed. So we would like to ensure that these APIs will be existing on a global scale, let's say within the next 12 to 24 months. So it's really about speed of now the rollout and the adoption. Secondly, it's about ease of consumption. So because we as telcos we are super hard to handle with, and if you think about a developer who wants to consume an API, if this person had to deal with all of us, it would be an unpleasant experience.

(02:39):
And the third one I would like to call out is about efficiency because there are so many things one would need to do individually as A CSP. Let me think about the application onboarding. So if you do that individually for each CSP, you spent quite a lot of resources. But Aduna could do that for the telco industry just once and then every CSP could take the result over. So this is also about efficiency gain we can generate. So this is the core of why we have found Aona and let me call out again, one important thing which was really important to mention in these discussions, Aduna was set up not to generate profits over the own costs. So Aduna will just generate as much money to cover the own costs of the platform, but it's not there to now create the next profit pool. And this makes it so interesting. And this is also the breakthrough I believe, for the network APIs because we were going to solve a problem at lowest cost in the maximum speed we can achieve.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:53):
Okay. And the importance of these network APIs to the telcos, the digital service providers, what can this actually do for the individual companies that are engaging with a doula, whether they're an investor or just a partner?

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (04:10):
So I mean I was now focusing with my first part of the answer more on the CSP side. So on the supply side, now let's look northbound also there. We haven't done a good job in the past in now communicating to the market. Let's just take the example of these mobile connect APIs. Now we have a Camara version, we're still have the mobile connect version, a lot of irritation in the market. Now two things do I use sim swap in that color, in that color? So UNA can really help streamlining, UNA can help on reducing complexity of things we have seen and a DOA can help. And this is really almost again one of the most important things with a roadmap proposal where now if Aduna proposes a roadmap of APIs to be deployed in networks, Aduna does that based on the market feedback we get. This makes it significantly easier for CSPs to get some orientation because CSPs are not allowed to talk to each other due to antitrust reasons. But Aduna can talk and can be that middleman in now aligning all the different interests. So it comes with a lot of benefit for the CSPs. It comes with a lot of benefit for the northbound and the service providers.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:36):
I mean there has been an awful lot of activity in the past year. Obviously the creation of this new entity is one of the important developments. But can you give us a sense of where you think the whole network API sector is right now in terms of development and engagement? And do you feel like that there is full cross-industry support for what Adona and other aggregators and other companies are doing?

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (06:07):
Yeah, so I think we are still at an earlier stage of our journey. We have now seen the first APIs being implemented, being offered through aduna like number verification and sim swap. But if I look at our roadmap, I just talked about this one, I mean there are like 10 more to come within the next 12 months. And we are seeing the first use cases which are built on these APIs. So we always talk about authentication and fraud prevention. So this ID identity part of the house, but there are many more things. Let me talk briefly talk about the retail experience we gained in Germany. In Germany, and this is not just valid for Germany, but with the partners there, we had discussed the challenge of what they call hyper-personalization. So their problem is the retail industry's problem is that if you walk in a store, they don't know who you are. In the online world, you're super transparent in this on-prem world, you have black box, you have black box walking through the entire store and at checkout. When they then ask you for your customer loyalty program or you show them their app, then you know they know who you are and then they have a profile about you. And at that point of time, they could come up with a good proposal and a voucher or anything, but you are checking out, it's too late.

(07:39):
Now with network APIs we can solve that problem and assuming that you give consent as a consumer, this is the base. So this is your own decision as the consumer. You could then allow that we know who you are, we know where you are with location APIs, we know who you are with number verification APIs, we have KYC, know your customer. And with that we could map your identity to the profile this company has from you. Again, just if you also accept that as a consumer, but you probably want to because you get a better price, you get some discounts. And this is a new way of customer loyalty programs we are currently discussing because all a sudden you are quite transparent or you can be quite transparent if you wish. And these are capabilities the network brings to the table. They haven't existed before and there are many, many more examples. We don't have probably the entire time to walk through, but this is just the start. And the more APIs we receive, the more capabilities we see and by now Aduna aligning these things that makes it easier to be consumed by then the enterprise customers.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:55):
Okay. So would you say that one of the potential attractions for Duna then is this hive mind, this shared collaboration of ideas and interests and developments that can help pretty much any operator that engages and is looking to develop new services? Goodness knows, after all these years we're still talking about trying to get new revenues from 5G for example.

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (09:23):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So yes, and we have seen that already kicking in and we have these two components. We have a chance to drive new businesses, new revenues by enabling these new workloads in a much faster and easier to be consumed version. And we have the chance to reduce cost and complexity by now. Streamlining things a do not does just once. And since there is no scaling telco, it's always if you have a global challenge, you need at least 200 CSPs. But we can somehow make that life easier and not individually talking to 200 CSPs.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:05):
Okay. And you had a very specific role at Deutsche Telecom. Deutsche Telecom is a pretty large network operator, service provider in this industry. And some of the other larger operators as well have created units or divisions or individuals who are in charge of this. But for those tier two, tier three operators, who is it within those organizations that you think should maybe be the ones engaging with Aduna and the ones with the most to bring to the table and the most to get out of it? Is the CMO, is it the CIO? Is it the CTO? What's the relationships there?

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (10:47):
That's a very good question and really an interesting thing to observe now with the CSP community. So at Deutsche Telecom we have chosen a setup where we brought many things together. So from the CPA side of the house as well as the network, API side of the house. And if A CSP is listening in, that would be my proposal because there will be a lot of workloads which currently are handled through the CPAs capabilities, but they're going to shift and it would be easier for you to oversee the somehow legacy part and then also the newer part and not have a competition amongst each other. So that would be one advice to have both things being brought together. And also I was a strong believer in having an expert sales team because the sales organization is too new for them and you'd rather want to have some experts which can help and reach out to which you keep. So that would be my advice. And then the question is how is it rich from an organizational standpoint structured, I've seen implementations under the innovation and technology. I've seen implementations under the wholesale department. I don't believe from an organizational perspective it's a right or wrong. You need to pull different things together. And then the question is whether you are capable to really collaborate independent from where this unit sets.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:19):
Okay. And finally Peter, what do you think needs to happen next in the whole industry to move this the needle again in the network API sector and encourage more companies to get involved and help them to believe that there's some benefit and even gold at the end of the rainbow here?

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (12:43):
So first of all, the momentum is there. I mean I am in this very concrete meetings, be it on the customer side, be it on the supply side and things are tangly be happening there still, I believe there are, let me call out three things what I believe it need to change. The one thing is I think we are currently as CSPs confusing the market with a different identity. API versions we have on the table, we still have the mobile connect version, we do have the Camaro version. I see CSPs who have somehow competing teams and bringing both things still to the market. We shouldn't do that. So that's the one thing to really ensure that also the future development is just in one portfolio and not on both sides. The second one is there will be APIs which substitute SMS, let's face it. Number verification will be the substitution of S-M-S-O-T-P.

(13:46):
Now from a CSP perspective, you might look at your SMS revenues as of today and then you come up with the idea that you're probably going to price number verification on the same level as the SMSs. That could be an option. The problem is your customers also have different options. Speed, email, be pass keys, be all kinds of authentication. And what we are currently seeing is that these customers are walking away from the telco industry. If we are not starting thinking about a different pricing strategy by not now protecting our business because with that we will be out of that game. That's the second advice. And then thirdly, I mean these are now information retrieving APIs. We have not talked about the real nuggets, which are then quality on demand. And this one means we need to still invest a little further. But 5G without 5G as a is not the full 5G potential. So as soon as we have done so as the telco industry, there's much more to monetize with 5G as a.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (14:58):
Okay. Right. Yeah. The push and the hope, the dream of standalone is, I've heard a lot already at this show. And now of course there are operators talking about the experiences they're having by having deployed standalone and the games and the advantages. So that might tip a few more over into that next era of 5G. Peter, great to chat. Thanks very much for joining us today and good luck with the rest of MWC.

Peter Arbitter, Aduna (15:31):
Thanks a lot.