Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello and welcome to our preview of this year's Telco as a platform summit, part of our year round DSP Leaders coverage. I'm Guy Daniels, and this is the second year of this summit where we focus on the creation and monetization of APIs to stimulate innovation and create opportunities with enterprises and consumer facing service companies. And as always, we bring you a mix of panel discussions, analysis, and insights from our partners. Now, these programs will be available to watch on demand from 7:00 AM UK time each morning of the summit. We then bring you our live q and a programs, one per day streaming from 4:00 PM UK time. So watch the videos, send in your questions, and then settle back for the live show. Well, let's take a detailed look at the agenda for the telco as a platform summit and give you a little taste of what to expect. Day one starts on Tuesday the 15th of April, and our first panel discussion of the summit looks at applying platform economics to telco services. Should telcos become platform businesses, and if so, how can they leverage their digital platforms to create value? To address this key issue, we have panelists from BT Cult Technologies, Rakuten Symphony and Wind River. Now, we recorded the panel last week. So here's a sneak peek for you.

Colin Bannon, BT (02:05):
Platformization is to get to the scale and to get to the unit economics. In this new world, you absolutely need it and you need to change the way you serve your customers. Platformitizing is essential to change the way the agility of a telco, which traditionally has not been very agile.

Vivek Murthy, Rakuten Symphony (02:24):
If we can somehow get to that situation of being a platform led, ecosystem led play, the benefits are absolutely there for us to harvest.

Warren Bayek, Wind River (02:34):
So while their core business may always remain connectivity, building a core business of a digital platform is critical to their connectivity and their economic future going forward.

Fahim Sabir, Colt Technologies (02:46):
I think the question isn't about should they? I think the question is what would happen if we didn't, and I just don't think that we will have a role to play unless we actually start exposing what we do as digital platforms.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:02):
We also have a CSP interview for you at the recent LFN event in London. We spoke with Laura Lacarra of Telefonica and she explained why Telefonica built a dedicated portal and created programs to help the developer community access and use APIs.

Laura Lacarra, Telefonica Open Gateway (03:24):
There are people that don't know this initiative, they don't know the potential. They don't know that they can do a login or a citation very, very fast with using our API, which is number verification, and they can save lot of steps and they could do safety, security, and anti-fraud. With these APIs, they don't know the potential. So mostly what we do is awareness,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:48):
And at 4:00 PM UK time, it's our live q and a broadcast. Please, if you do want to ask a question, send it in nice and early. We receive a lot of questions for our live shows, so the more interest in the question, the greater the chance of it getting onto the show. Well, day two follows on Wednesday, the 16th of April, the second and final day of our online event, we have a panel discussion for you that looks at how to maximize the telco API opportunity. And we talk about the challenges to realizing the full potential of Telco APIs and how API use cases are evolving into more profitable areas. And we've got panelists from the GSMA Appledore Research and Connectivitree. And here's another brief preview for you.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (04:40):
Some of the delay in achieving those easy wins was because of the transformation that needed to be done in our networks to be able to take advantage of any sort of automation. But in particular, APIs,

Henry Calvert, GSMA (04:57):
We're in anti-fraud. We want to move out to comms quality and we want to ensure that quality on demand is one of the kamara based APIs that are fully utilized to actually provide more opportunities.

GRant Lenahan , Appledore Research (05:10):
And it's all got to be done in a way that's really convenient for a third party developer to do this. If we want the maximum uptake, it's going to be like going on Amazon. I don't need to know a lot to buy something. Hopefully it's going to be just as easy to do business with our clients.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:30):
We have another CSP interview for you. On day two, my colleague, Rayla Matra, editorial director here at telecom tv spoke with Marcus Kule of Desha Telecom and they discussed how the industry has moved on from the standardization of APIs with Kamara to the exposure of APIs, with the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, and now with the scalability of APIs.

Markus Kuemmerle, Deutsche Telekom (05:56):
But then we learned where the business is. It's not in a single operator API target for a market. We need scalable business, and it's all about aggregation. A lot of customers are asking for market coverage and only will use the APIs if the coverage is there in the country. And so this aggregation piece is very key, and that's the last step we have now done. We have now players like Nokia, like Adona, who are aggregating the APIs for markets, and now we are really first time able to deliver.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:34):
And at 4:00 PM UK time, it's our final live q and a broadcast. We'll be joined by our panelists who are going to answer as many of your questions as they can. Well, that's a preview of the programs we have in store for you, but we're also running a viewer poll. We do this for every summit. As part of DSP leaders, this is the question we are asking you, what are the main benefits to network operators of a telco as a platform strategy? There are seven answer choices. Just select whichever ones you think are the most important, and you can cast your votes. Now it's up and live on the telecom TV website. Don't leave it too late, and we'll take a look at the progress of the voting during our live q and a shows. Then the week after, I'll be joined by my colleague Ray La Mara for a special extra shot program. Ray will present his analysis of the results and the two of us will discuss the highlights of our panels and interviews and bring together the major themes and outcomes. Don't forget to register at telecom tv to view the summit videos. There's no charge. Join our community and be part of our ongoing DSP leaders coverage. And I hope to see you for the Telco as a platform summit starting Tuesday the 15th of April. Until then, goodbye for now.