Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello, you're watching the Telco as a Platform summit, part of our year-round DSP Leaders Coverage. I'm Guy Daniels and today's discussion looks at the case for a platform-based approach to services. Now in the pursuit of profitability and an improved return on investment, there's growing interest around facilitating new digital services. How would offering up the Telco's infrastructure as a platform help address these issues? What would a telco as a platform strategy look like and more importantly, would it work well to find out, I am joined on the program today by Rahul Atri, President, OSS Business Unit, at Rakuten Symphony, Terje Jensen, SVP Business Security Officer and Network & Cloud Technology Strategy, for Telenor, Mark Gilmour, Chief Technology Officer, ConnectiviTree Europe, and Robert Curran, Consulting Analyst, Appledore Research.

(01:33):
Hello everyone. It's good to see you all, lots to talk about today on this first panel of our new summit. First of all though, can we actually define a platform? What do technology platforms have in common? How do they appeal to developers and service creators? And also what makes for a successful platform? Terje, perhaps we could start by asking you as to what exactly do we mean when we talk about a platform?

Terje Jensen, Telenor (02:02):
Yeah, thanks Guy. Of course, it's one of the questions we are battling with these days, but we see platform as one place to go in order to deliver number of different services and also supporting a range of customer needs and partner needs. So platform actually in that sense enables both the support and delivery of a number of components which then can be used, the components can be used individually or together in order then of course to deliver a value to our customer. So in addition to, of course, these components is necessary to define what we call the rules of engagement. So both the rules for being present on the platform and also rules for consuming the components on the platform. So what we achieve with this is of course first thing we achieve reuse all different modules. So which of course is good for scale and efficiency, but we also speeding up the innovation as we are lowering the for implementing new offerings and also for working more flexible together with new purchase and also co-creating with customers.

(03:07):
So the platform also allows a bit of separation of concerns between what we call the northbound interface and the southbound interface for example. So it's also introduce a modularity, which we think is a good thing from the architecture point of view. Then we see that of course portal the platform. We need to define the APIs and what as I said, the rules of engagement or to consume those APIs. And to some extent we can see in my mind at least the platform as a technical perspective and the commercial perspective is more like the marketplace, which then can have access to a number of components. So it's a platform and marketplace what we need to put together. So it's not only the technical part of it, but it's also the business and the incentives for different parties to contribute to this. And that's also important I think.

(03:56):
So of course the platform is not only a technical system, but is also need to describe, as I said, the rules for working what we call an operating model and also the money flow incentives on the who get what part of the money and how we split the pie in that sense. So it's more important to capture all these components in the platform. Then of course the benefits or why we should do that, which is also part of the question is we think, as I said, lowering the threshold both for the developers to promote, put new components on the platform for system integrated to be able to select components from the platforms from the customer to simply consume it, for example. But we also see the platform coming as an internal component within an operator for example, or telco. So one way to harmonize the products for example, and making it possible to sell this stuff in different components through the different market channels. So there are a number of perspectives on this platform, but of course it's also a journey to get there. We should probably come back to later in the session.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:01):
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you Terje. And we certainly will, we'll develop some of these aspects you raised as we move along. So let me get other views in from our guests as to what constitutes a platform. And I'm going to start first of all with Mark. So Mark, what's your take on what a platform is?

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (05:19):
Well, Terje's answer was very comprehensive actually. So I'm just going to comment on a couple of things or add from a kind of user or a experience point of view. One of the defining characteristics for me as of a platform is that a platform is just that. It is something that is extensible that can be built upon. And so one of the characteristics there that I want to see in a platform, whether it be a technology platform, whether we're talking in telco or in any other environment, is that it's got that capability to, as Terje mentioned, define all the rules of engagements and the operating or the environment in which it's, it's going to exist, but not necessarily limit the capabilities of where it can go to. It is a foundation piece, but in saying that there are some things that also we need to bear in mind.

(06:29):
It's got to have ease of use and reach. I think a thing that makes a platform successful is that it's got a large reach, whether that's to a customer base, whether that's to number of users, eyeballs, those sort of things on it. Normally a successful platform is defined by the scale that it reaches. So I think these are kind of important factors that delve into what does a platform look like and therefore when we consider it in the realm of telco, we've got to be considering these sort of things and how is that platform going to be consumed and what will that platform also enable and making sure that we don't restrict upon that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (07:17):
Yeah, good points. Thanks Mark, for those additional factors, I'm going to come to Robert next and then Rahul, but Robert, let's get your comments from what you've heard so far and additional thoughts.

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (07:28):
Yeah, very comprehensive answers already. I think there's two aspects I want to just bring up here. I think by definition a platform is not only something that contributes value to some other business process, but I think it's inherent in it that it also takes away some problem or complexity. Why would you go to a platform rather than any other mechanism for solving that issue? It needs to provide a way of inherently providing aggregation or what mark's alluding to that sense of reach. How do you take a problem working with one telco or working with 50 telcos and remove that problem? And I think that's an integral part of what a platform proposition is. In addition to all the other things that were mentioned, there's some other aspects to that which is that obviously in this context you want something that's going to scale gracefully and that works both for the provider of the platform as well as for the user of that platform. I want to be assured that there's a completely seamless mechanism no matter where I'm using it for two customers or 2 million customers, it's the same software, it's the same experience as far as I'm concerned, access to the APIs. So that scalability is an ly integral thing, but those are two things I think are quite important. What does the platform, what complexity or difficulty or challenge does the platform take away? As well as what value does it add? And then secondly, making sure that the scalability is a key part of the promise.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:52):
Yeah, great. Thanks Robert. Two really important areas there to remember when we're talking about platforms. Rahul, I promise to come to you and let's come across to you now for any additional thoughts you have on what makes a platform and anything you've heard so far.

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (09:09):
I think all my colleagues cover up all the great points. I think the simplified version of that would be something which brings the user and the producer together to bring the innovation on the floor. If I'm talking about the users, how do a platform hide the complexity, stack the complexities of the programmable telecom networks and expose them as APIs or maybe the use cases. And if I think from the platform or the telecom perspective, how do they reach out to more end users enterprises to have the scale and monetization which they look forward to? If you are able to solve these two things from outside in from user perspective and then inside out from telecom operator perspective, whatever comes out of that is a platform. APIs are one way of exposing the others are use cases. The third one could be any of the vertical stacks like enterprise edges and other things, but coming all together, it's all about making time to market much more dynamic and runtime today. That's one of the problems which Telco operators faces. The technology is not a problem. We have technologies like edges, we have technologies like Slice, we have other capabilities as well which are needed by the enterprises, but the time we take to launch those services is what is not working in our favor. And if the wrapper of a platform can solve that can make it much more simplified, hide away the complexities, I think that's the way to go forward.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:43):
Great. Thanks so much Rahul. And as you say, it's more than just APIs. It's important to remember the distinction here and how everything fits together. Well, we've had four great answers there. In a way, we've created our own platform for this discussion. So let's go into some more detail now. And Robert, I'd like to come back to you next because why should telco's consider platforms? How would offering up a telco's network and infrastructure in such a model as a platform, how would it make any significant difference to their digital services capabilities?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (11:16):
Yeah, it's a good question. Of course we've touched on some of the answers to that already. Firstly, introduction, it is about growth, it is about revenue, it is about monetizing networks. Obviously a lot of this conversation goes up in the context of 5G, but not only mobile networks, it's in a fixed context as well. It's another channel to monetizing the network in different ways. The other word Terje had mentioned at the start as well, which is innovation, more offerings, greater, a variety of offerings, more ways to do anything, things with customers. So as an additional channel to revenue and maybe one that works a little differently, it works at a faster pace, more chance for experimentation and more chance to grow. I think those are really some of the key reasons why telcos ought to consider platforms. It's not that telcos have to provide platforms at any, sorry, at a single layer. I think there are lots of different platform expressions for a telco. Again, as Terje referenced a minute ago, component services could be end-to-end services could be infrastructure in a more or less raw form, integrating, presenting a business interface to tower companies and so on. There's a lot of opportunity to define what sort of platform you want to provide as a business proposition. So I think it gives telcos more room to do something innovative, do something different, and ultimately to try and extract more revenue from the infrastructure that they've built at different layers, different levels.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (12:46):
Great. Thanks very much. Robert. Rahul wants to come in as well, but Mark, let come across to you first

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (12:53):
And thanks Guy. To answer this question, maybe I can just share a brief experience that we had at connectivity in kind of the foundation of the company and the idea. I mean we started off life with the vision of building a pan-European wholesale network that helps to resolve some of the challenges of long distance backhaul, sorry, backbone transport. But as we took that to the market, took that to industry, it was fascinating to me that what really stood out for our partners, for our potential customers and in the industry was the combination of the network with a global alliance that is part of that proposition, but then with the software automation to be able to consume and deliver that. So I wouldn't say we stumbled across a platform, but actually it was the combination of the three, the network plus the reach, the global reach, and that ability to consume those services on a global scale easily and swiftly that actually made the difference.

(14:19):
That's what excited them then people as we spoke to them and really gave us the encouragement to move forward with our project to move forward with forming the company and stepping into the market. So as RA mentioned earlier, that bringing together or bringing closer of the producer with the end user, we saw an immediate need for that and an immediate market. So this for me has been a huge driver as why the platform approach basically enabling our network to be consumed readily and simply and swiftly. So in that kind of as a service sort of model became very attractive very quickly. So that's been our driver. I can only speak from our point of view, but that's been our driver there.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (15:12):
Thanks Mark. Very powerful story there. Rahul, why should telcos consider platforms?

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (15:20):
The answer is very simple. There's no killer use case right now, and when we talk about the use cases of the future, especially with B2B, B two X, the enterprises included, every use case would be different and there will be days. An initial part of the journey would be creating customized use cases. And if you have to create those use cases, the ROI would never sustain. If you don't do that in a platform way, create repeatable assets like Terje and Robert was mentioning earlier, if you want to deploy edge, please make sure that the edge is deployed as a platform, as a self-service on top of it. If you want to deploy a host of application, enterprise application, please do that to create a vertical stack. So if you're not thinking about the platform approach, we will never achieve the monetization aspect or the ROI in this case, and that's why there's no other way to do it manually or semi manually or the legacy way of doing things. So platform is the only approach to go forward till the time we replicate and start understanding that these are the monetization use cases of the future. Platform for me is not only technology but also part of the culture and the culture is to solve certain things in an agile manner and also create repeatable assets which later on become your self service portal or the marketplace, which Terje was talking about.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:40):
Very clear message. Thanks Rahul, for that. And Terje, let's come across to you now following up from your opening comments during this discussion, why should telcos consider as a platform as a business model?

Terje Jensen, Telenor (16:54):
Yeah, no, I fully agree with all the previous comments on the comment, but maybe offer another kind of supplementary perspective. We believe it's going to be very, very important at least for telcos to move away from this additional integrated operating model. That means that we have a lot of assets and capabilities that we would like to expose. And the reason for that we believe that these assets and capabilities are not fully utilized as long as we are only using it internally and how do we expose these capabilities or assets? Yeah, we are exposing it on that platform. So that's one way to think about the platform in our context. One simple, maybe tri example is that we are exposing for example what we call infrastructure capabilities, meaning fiber base stations, data centers, IP connectivity and so forth on a platform, but that we actually make it much easier to consume I think these kind of capabilities or assets if you want for partners, for customers and also for internal telco market units, which then put together these components into one offering for example into a B2B offering.

(18:09):
So we think about platform in the sense of both exposing capabilities from ourselves but also of course getting capabilities from partners which can be part of this platform. So platform is helping them of course to drive scale. It's also helping to lower the threshold for any customer and any customer means external customer and it also means partners and internal consumers of these assets. So it's a bit of a different maybe way of thinking a platform in the way we are approaching it for the moment. And of course it's a lot about the scale and the reach I think what was commented from Mark for example earlier. So that's kind of driving the business motivation for doing this in addition to cost to innovation.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:55):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks very much Terje. Before we move on to our next question, Rahul, let me quickly come back to you Rahul, for some additional thoughts.

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (19:03):
I think I agree with Terje on the point that we should not stick around with only network as a service and APIs of exposing the network capabilities. When we talk about platform, it's a host of services and capabilities being exposed. Some of the use cases which we are also working on is exposing the data analytics to partners or probably the business lines, demographic data, traffic patterns, use these patterns and services experiences at different areas and I think telecom operators and service providers have a lot of data to understand and create value out of not only for them to improve the customer experiences services, but also to help businesses grow and take the right decisions. For example, if somebody wants to open a new restaurant, what is the right place? What is the demographics? How many people are going out and doing transaction and have the footfall in certain areas? All those information sets and analytics and insights can be exposed. Telcos could actually start offering Google API layers to say, if you buy this, this is the enterprise layer which your business can use when you are doing certain analytics or probably planning where to start your business on. So once you have the platform layer, the technology part is sorted, there are possibilities which can help telcos even monetize their assets, data or value and the customer experience metric.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (20:28):
Okay, thank you Rahul. Now we've looked at what a platform is. We've spoken about why telcos should adopt this strategy, but what would the strategy actually look like? Mark, let me come across to you. What would this strategy be like? What would be involved? Can you implement it with minimum disruption? Do you have to spend more money doing it? What does the strategy look like basically to Atoka who's thinking about going down this route?

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (20:59):
Well, Rahul's answer just then was really intriguing because he was speaking there of where once you have a platform in place where it can take you, and so I think the very first port of call really in establishing this strategy when it comes to going down the platform route is what are you trying to solve in the first instance? And because those other things can come in due course, but really understanding what is that main driver and where are you focused Now we've got the huge benefit of being a greenfield operation and a greenfield build, which is fabulous for us. However, we are working in an established industry with established partners with their own processes so that brownfield piece starts to come into it. So a key part of, for example, our strategy and we are focused as the network layer, as network as a platform that can be consumed easily.

(22:03):
That's where our focus point is and we're in the fixed long haul market rather than in the cellular access piece, but understanding what the demand is and how do we simplify those process, all those things that we spoke about earlier, how we enable those, but then having a very clear strategy of how to integrate and extend into our partners and through our partner. So that's through APIs and understanding where they are in their API on automation journey. So a key part of our strategy is to be able to meet our partners at where they are ready, where they are ready and where they are capable and build the automation journey, the automation story, the platform consumption story at a pace that they can meet as well. So for us that's been a key part of building the platform and building the platform success and then understanding I think some of the other things that have to come in this are culturally we've kind of touched on that, an understanding of being able to work in this environment think slightly differently.

(23:24):
And a thing that I always think is important is you kind of need to let the corporate ego get out, get out the way because we can't all be the end customer facing when we're talking about a platform, a telco platform for example, a network platform that exists across a multitude of networks, it becomes almost network agnostic to the end customer. And so I think it's important to understand that sometimes the ego needs to step aside in order to create the greatest value for the customer. So that would mean for example, that us as a wholesale provider sitting behind from a customer portal point of view or the consumption into that platform sitting behind that and it's our APIs that are talking into the front end that is being used by one of our platform partners and customers to their end customer. So it's understanding the market that you want to play in and understanding then how the platform can solve some of those challenges and then adopting the culture that will allow to allow it to grow and then I think you start to reap some of those benefits. That role then mentioned about where the platform then extends the capabilities and the options and the monetization possibilities too.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (24:56):
Thanks Mark. And I'm going to come on to the market and customers very, very soon, but I just want to go back now to Rahul. Do you want to build on your previous answer because Mark was referencing your comments there. How do you see a strategy in this area developing?

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (25:14):
So for me, there are three main layers for this platform which we talk about. The first is intent layer. The intent layer is where the end users or the enterprises come and say, this is what I'm expecting or this is what I want as simple as expose me your infrastructure capabilities and tell me what are the infrastructure towers where I can install one or more ENT antennas. The second layer is where the intent gets converted into a policy in case we want a guaranteed quality of service for ar vr game as an intent, the policy kind of reads that intent and convert that into actions and configurations that could be activating a slice, could be configurations of new UPF for example at dh could be deployment of new application scale out scaling. And then the third layer is the programmable network itself, whether we run them on top of cloud at software defined applications or we figure out a way to scale them out or define different configurations on the schedulers.

(26:17):
These three layers together along with the data, each of the layer collect and build on top of it intent layer, build more use cases as catalog the policy layer, build autonomous network as the AI policies to run the lifecycle of the network and the programmable network itself understand better take decisions to say when I need to create a new slice or when I need to do scale out, scale it, all these things working together is the platform and the capabilities which we want to expose and create in the future. Now, when the intent is the use cases catalog, if it is an exposure of API, great, we open up a Kimara based open API and the API gets exposed. If the intent has to be a configuration of new a PN for that exact users, we do that. We probably do an EIM profile on the fly.

(27:09):
If the intent requires to instantiate a slice, we do that. But these three layers coming together is the platform and that's what I feel is the platform where the ecosystem can collaborate. The users community, the producer community, even the end customer community can come together probably act as sandbox and say let's play together, create this playground and start realizing some of the use cases and intends to drive the network. The most important aspect is the network which is programmable in this case, not open, not talking about cloud, but making sure that the network itself is infinite, it's scalable, it's always available and that's for me, the platform is, and that's how the strategy is. You start building probably the programmable network first. You start the second orchestration or policy management as the universal action orchestration, and then you probably come on the layer where now it's easier to convert the intent into actions not have static product catalog, but the use cases catalogs as marketplace or a PS or intent management routers on top of the platform and exposures.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (28:23):
Great. Thanks Rahul, this is absolutely fascinating. Terje, I'll come to you in a moment, but I want to go to Robert first. Robert, lots of ideas here. What are your thoughts for the right strategy for telcos?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (28:35):
We've got great expertise on this panel today, it's fantastic. I think something I'd like to add in two things I'd like to add in. The first is telcos a platform isn't a technical strategy. There's lots of technology in it, but it has to be a business strategy, has to be a reason to do it. Mark's touched on his experiences in engaging customers in conversation and finding market need, platform strategy only work if there's some element of scale, a market scale there. So our industry has been through various iterations of making network APIs available. They haven't really been successful today because we haven't tapped into that problem of where is there a large scale global issue to be addressed. And telco as a platform is as much a business strategy as it is as a technical strategy. So in terms of this question was phrased, what does the platform look like?

(29:21):
And that's one element that has to be understood. Where do we get scale from this business? Where are there thousands of customers running millions of transactions to be solved? If you can't answer that, then maybe you don't need this as a strategy, you need something different with some of the technology, but as I say, I think it's a business strategy. The second part goes in hand with that, which is, and again we've talked about it several times already, and this is more than network APIs. If you're going to put something in a developer context and expect developers to use it, you need all the supporting machinery and incentive for that to be effective. So it is the routine things. It is code snippets, sample code tutorials, training, easy onboarding, all of that ease of use and all of the commercials. If again you want developer to use it and gain value from this and be part of a value share, developer's got to know from day one what's it going to cost me and what am I going to get in return? We've talked to a number of operators involved in various projects around this area where the commercials are not yet known and that's going to be an obstacle that's going to limit the scale question in due course. So Telco as a platform for a strategy has to have all these other things around it as well. They're not hard, but the strategy is incomplete because they're only looking at just the technology part.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:43):
Great points, thanks very much Robert. We'll come back to Rahul in a minute, but Terje, let's come across to you for your thoughts on the best strategy approach and what a strategy may look like.

Terje Jensen, Telenor (30:56):
Yeah, so the best strategy approach I think we can probably argue, but at least I very much very strongly agree on what we just said. The platform strategy is not only a technical strategy, definitely needs to cover the business part of it and also the different roles and opportunities there from not only from the business and technology point of view, but also from the tools to be supported and all the kind of things which needs to be addressed in order to complete the picture of the ecosystem and all the things and all the companies we need to collaborate in order to make it happen. So that's the more they complete I think the platform strategy and all the aspects. Then of course, I think Mark was mentioning this in the very beginning that it might be different steps of course in order to achieve this strategy depending on are you a more a greenfield, you don't have a lot of legacy or are you at the other end of the scale?

(31:51):
You have a lot of legacy and overall you moving that what someone also referred to us as Broadfield. And of course the steps might be different depending on what kind of systems you have. Again, back to clearly it depends on what kind of business ambitions you have in the market. It might also depend of course what market you are in and how you want to serve the customers, for example there. Then I think we also are of course there are a number of concrete initiatives in the industry on putting components into this platform story together. For example, on the open gateway initiative by GSMA, there's also TM Forum Network as a service and connectivity as a service and so on. And if you have any of these components of course already implemented, you need to figure out are these components to be reus and then going to be replaced and so forth. So it's a kind of holistic approach which needs to be captured. But then I think it's also important, which was I mentioned before, you probably cannot aim for the ideal estimate end of the journey in one step. You need to break it down into number of steps. And in order to do that, I think it's important to work together with partners, work together with the customers to document and validate that these steps are in the demand and you bring value to all the partners and the customers.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (33:08):
Thanks very much Terje. And that leads very nicely to our next question. There's been a lot of talk about collaborating with and understanding customers and focusing on the business case. So what would be the attraction to enterprises to vertical industry customers and digital content providers? Basically, is there a market for telco as a platform? Robert, let's start with you.

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (33:37):
Yeah, I think mediating the journey to the customer, to the customer are our systems integrators and there's a huge amount of interest in this integrators. People who build application software for enterprises large and small have a lot of interest. When you look at the membership of the open gateway initiative for example, and how that's grown in a single year, there are something like 200 companies involved in the application development firms and something like 50 different operator operator groups. And again, GSMA will tell you it's 200 plus mobile network represented. There's huge interest in doing this in solving interesting sets of problems, often in vertical contexts. It doesn't have to be every vertical, but part of what we're seeing at the moment is these early use cases come to light. A lot of interest currently in finance, for example, around fraud detection prevention. That's really interesting because it's not that that's converting directly into monetizable revenue, but there's an indirect benefit as purely financial.

(34:41):
So as part of a way determining whether a transaction is safe to proceed with or not, it's information that can be extracted from networks to help banking institutions, financial institutions make a judgment call. That's really interesting. So I think there are lots of applications, lots of potential contexts like that that are really attracting attention here because as Raul says, there's lots of information available and there's capability available in networks not only mobile but fixed as well. That with just that little bit of extra could make a real difference in a customer experience in the business process or in some other kind of context. So I think there's a huge amount of interest in doing this, and as I start removing a lot of the complexity of dealing with networks, I mean the last thing that anybody wants is for developers to have to become network experts. That's totally not going to work as a strategy, but it doesn't mean that they can gain some awareness of what's accessible there. So again, another way to add another dimension into an experience into a business process is part of why there's such a frenzy of activity around this area and the technologies are coming together now in a way that they weren't there even five years ago to make this much more realistic, much more feasible, much more achievable. So I think that's part of what contributes to making this a really interesting upside market opportunity.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (36:05):
Great. Thanks very much Robert. And we'll come to Mark in a moment, but Rahul, let me just go straight back to you and ask you elaborate on why you think there is a market for telco as a platform.

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (36:17):
The short answer is I think Telco is one of the most trusted organization along with the lines of banking systems and others. People trust telecom networks. We all trust, we live with the network day in day out. Our telephones or smartphones today are our banks are our digital wallets. All the information about me is residing on my smartphone and that gets connected to the network. Every transaction is done via network. Every content I watch is via, every search I do is by my telco provider, although the O TT applications are provided by somebody else, but we trust it and then we live by it. It's lifeline and I'm very sure if more services are being offered by the telco network providers, we will be the first one to adapt. And I really hoped we would have done that. All the O OTT apps could have been one of the use cases from telcos, but the world doesn't end there.

(37:13):
Like Robert just said, integrating the transaction management system or the banking system with telecom today should be by default. Whenever I do transaction internationally, I get a call from my bank. I don't want to get a call, I just want my bank to verify where my location is with from my network and say, yeah, this seems to be the legit location of Raul. He happens to be traveling and that's why the international transaction was done. And there are lot more use cases as that, which can be integral part of the services plan itself. And I as a customer would love to pay for them, some of them. And there can be monetization, there could be experience, there could be lifecycle value of the customer coming in through there are capabilities which network today has, which can be even exposed to the external customer like we discussed. So there's no one short solution, but I think just the fact that telcos are one of the most trusted organization, we live by them all our data travels to them, and I'm as good as my digital footprint today. Everything I do, even when I'm speaking on this forum today is being digitally working via the network. So I don't see any other reason or no other reason for not doing that. If not Telco, then who?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (38:31):
Yeah, good question. Good point. Thanks Rahul. Mark, you spoke about meeting customers where they're at at the moment. Is this one of the keys to ensuring that telcos do have a market for as a platform strategy?

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (38:45):
Yeah, yeah, definitely in my space, I'm in that wholesale environment. My customers are other carriers and partners in that environment, but also then the end customers, their customers, and we've been speaking to both and the real challenge that we have faced, so I've got quite a narrow use case here that I'm working with a narrow view here about, and it was mentioned earlier that telco, we have a reputation for being slow to deliver, particularly when we start talking about global reach and global networks and global connectivity. It can take a long time for those services to be not just turned up but to be found and interconnected and then turned up. And so we wish we realized, and it was very quickly in our conversations with our customers, with our potential customers and with their customers that being able to turn up these services swiftly and effectively and securely and provide that service in a way that really they're experiencing in many other industries.

(40:11):
We are now used to a consumerization of enterprise services and so that is happening on a much wider scale. The consumer market, well actually it's the same people in enterprise. They're just why do we tolerate a less than consumer-like experience on the enterprise or the business side? Why does it take months to turn up a service? And so those are the sort of things that can be enabled when you adopt a platform strategy with the automation layers, with the ability to do self-service, the portal side of it, those sort of things that come in. But it's not just about that. It's reaching in and so therefore there really is a demand that we have seen for these sort of capabilities and consumption models. And then the interesting thing is it opens up the opportunity to do new things to enable new services. A very simple example, in the world of wholesale connectivity, you have to interconnect, you physically have to do some interconnect work.

(41:31):
And now that can take time when you're trying to connect a whole raft of operators together to create a global service. Now if you've, seems very straightforward, but if you've got those physical connections in place ahead of time, then you can really move to the world of turning up service immediately. But being able to understand where to have those interconnects in place and not at what point to do them so that you don't have resources just sat there tied up doing nothing, those are the sort of things that can be enabled through a platform approach, which is giving back real time analytics on real enough time. The things don't have to be split second when you're looking in that sort of range, but those are the sort of things that start to become available when you take this sort of approach. And it's all driven by, there is this customer problem, how do I solve this customer problem?

(42:33):
And it becomes, I think it was Robert that said, it's not just a technology piece, it is really a business process and commercial. And then you can start to offer the sort of commercial models that the end customer really wants. And we all become winners then in that scenario because ultimately we're in the business of selling capacity on networks. That's what we do. We build these networks for them to be used. That's how we make money. And so different ways to consume those services. And if we are consuming them effectively and efficiently, then we're also fulfilling some of those sustainability challenges that we look at. It's a whole different approach that we can take. Yeah, we've seen that there is a market and we've seen that there are benefits that can come to the customer.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (43:27):
Thank you Mark. Great possibilities here. Now we are approaching the end of our program, but I do want to get in one final question because I want to ask, given all we've spoken about and all the possibilities here, can we actually do this? Do we have the capability to create the necessary extensive and innovative ecosystems that are going to be required to make this a success? And Terje, I'm going to come across to you to start us off. Thank you.

Terje Jensen, Telenor (43:58):
Yeah, thanks. So my short answer is yes, we can do this. And just to add onto to that, let's not wait and sit and wait and figure out those amount kind of things we need to get started. And we also can build on what we already have in place, what I referred to earlier as a about brownfield setup because it's a matter of fact that we are offering a number of capabilities today through what you can call maybe platform components, even legacy systems like voice and messaging for example, is indication and how they're attracting new use cases and being consumed in different settings and by different customers and different partners is for me an indication that this is something we can do. Of course, we need to put them together into a broader perspective, what we might call the platform strategy, but I believe we already have demonstrated that we are relevant as a telco, for example, to provide and offer different assets.

(44:57):
And I think it's important that what we also addressed earlier that we need to open up and expose new capabilities. And I think also I will point to that when we do this, you're actually not your journey, which actually allows us to pursue new roles, work with partners and customers in completely different ways. And I think Mark coin it and in that way we'll all become winners. So that could be maybe a guiding star on the collaboration, which are needed in order to do this. And I think it's also needed to get going to demonstrate the value through concrete activities, work together with customers, and also work together with partners.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (45:39):
Great. Very positive. Thank you, Terje. Well, let's come back to Mark. If we do this right, we could all become winners. Mark, do we think we have the capability to achieve this?

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (45:50):
Yes, we definitely have the capability. Question is do we have the desire across the industry? I think we are seeing that there's been a number of initiatives that have been driven over the last few years. I'll come from the area where I'm in these days now and things such as the work that's been done in the TM forum, TMF, and then also INF with some of the lifecycle service orchestration APIs that start to create a little bit of a standardization platform having spent many, many years in the cellular market. I understand the value of global standardization because here we're talking about scale, so there's value in that, but we also can't get caught in the hangup of standardization in that it takes a decade to get there. So this comes back to, I think Raul mentioned about the fail fast, fail quick and move on approach that I think is really important. So yeah, we have the capability. I also think that the desire is there in the industry as such, and I think there need to be a few key drivers that are pushing this forward and really creating that ecosystem and marketplace, that environment to thrive because ultimately we will all benefit from that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (47:27):
Great, thank you very much. Mark. And Robert, you mentioned earlier, we've been working on this for a number of years now is the time, right? Do you have faith that the industry can achieve this and will make it

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (47:38):
A success? Yeah, look, I think we've got all the pieces in place. I think collaboration and corporation is great, but I wouldn't want to overstate it. I mean, again, what we've seen is to some extent this dug as a platform is highlighting some of those differences between the internet world and the telco world. Simmering differences between how those two industries work and the internet world works by trying stuff out and iterating it and moving forward, proving what's successful and moving forward. That's not to say there isn't a role for standardization. There absolutely is a role, but this won't progress by the world as a whole, agreeing that it's a good thing to do, it will progress by getting enough standardization to allow some companies to collaborate and put something in market and see if it works and build some success on it. The likes of WhatsApp, even a s and so on, those didn't start out as standardization efforts.

(48:33):
They started out as companies trying to solve problem, even someone like Twilio. So I think we're yet to see a few companies emerge who are like that, willing to take what's there, but also willing to overhang a little bit and lead the industry. But that'll be exciting because those companies will start generating money and that will attract a lot more interest from other companies in how to do it, a replicate or how to partner with it. And that's I think what we're going to see. It's not everybody has to move as one together. We'll never get there. We do that. We have all the pieces mark's, right? We need the attitude, the ambition. We also need a little degree of Juba if you like, or entrepreneurial spirit that will say, you know what? We're going to lead the industry. We're going to stretch beyond what we know already and maybe be a pioneer in doing this. So that's exciting about it, but we absolutely have all the pieces.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (49:25):
Fantastic. Thanks very much Robert, and let's end our discussion with some final comments from Rahul.

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (49:32):
I think, like everyone said, find the right partners partner in this instance. For example, if we are a telco, who is our potential future customer? For example,

(49:43):
Banking systems could be the partner of the future. Why don't we partner with them and say, we're going to expose an API to you, which can be queried at I VD transaction. Reach out to the smart connected vehicles, Teslas Yds of the future today. Why don't you have our eim and we offer you five different configurations and profiles when you want to go for a software release upgrade, this is what we can do for you whenever you go via told, this is what we can do for you, and these are the services, which as network platform we can provide to you. I think if we start doing some of these key partnerships, make one or two successful use cases, show that this really work and obviously some of these are value and also the scale banking is transactions, millions of transactions per day. Cars on the road, we already know.

(50:35):
And there are multiple such partnerships which I can think about today where networks exposure and network monetization and network APIs and exposing network capabilities will play a role. I think it's all about getting started, not just getting blocked into strategy standards and thinking about what the future vision of the telco as platform look like. It'll take time, it'll need a push and some successful case studies to make that thing happened. 1, 2, 3, successful use cases. I'm very sure the world will follow because that's the only way to monetize network. Further, we have reached to the data limits. We have reached to what SMS or voice call could reach to. We can load more things as use cases. There's no killer use case for 5G to eat away more data and consume more bandwidth or even to activate Slice. I think we have to start looking into more venues and the partnership model to say a telco partnered with banking, partnered with smart car, partnered with insurance, partnered with somebody else, is the entity or probably the use case of IT, customer require in their day-today life.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (51:44):
Great. Thanks Rahul. Well, we've started this journey. Let's see where it goes. But for now we must leave it there and I'm sure we will continue to debate this topic during our live q and a show later. For now though, thank you all for taking part in our discussion now. If you are watching this on day one of our telco as a platform summit, then please do send us your questions and we'll try and answer as many of them as we can in our live q and A show. And that's coming up very soon indeed. Now the full schedule of programs and speakers can be found on the telecom TV website, which is where you'll also find the q and a form and also our poll question. Please go ahead and fill that out for now though. Thanks for watching and goodbye.