Panel moderated by Amy Cameron (STL Partners) with Sebastian Schumann (Deutsche Telekom), Colm Sunderland (Head of Hyperscale, Indirect & CPaaS, BT International), Wendhy Kusumaatmadja (VP Digital Initiative, Telin), and Ahmed Omer (VP EngageX, e& enterprise)

At CASA25, Amy Cameron of STL Partners led one of the most forward-looking panels of the event — “The Telco of the Future.” Featuring senior leaders from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the discussion explored how major operators are reshaping their networks, organizations, and business models to thrive in an AI-driven, platform-based world.

e& enterprise: Breaking Up to Speed Up

Ahmed Omer, VP of EngageX at e& enterprise, shared one of the boldest transformation stories in telecom. Once part of Etisalat’s legacy structure, e& enterprise now operates as an independent business with its own P&L — designed to move faster and innovate more freely.

“When you spin off a business, you take full accountability,” Omer explained. “It forces agility. You fail fast, learn, and move forward.”

Under his leadership, EngageX integrates the entire customer interaction journey — from marketing and CRM to CPaaS, contact center, and loyalty. That end-to-end approach allows e& enterprise to evolve from telco to full customer-experience provider.

Omer argued that future success depends on openness and collaboration:

“Telcos need to stop guarding margins and start sharing value across the ecosystem. You might give up margin now, but you gain magnitude later.”

He also highlighted E& Capital, the group’s venture arm, as a catalyst for non-organic growth — investing in startups, JVs, and acquisitions that complement the portfolio.

BT International: Building the Network for AI

Colm Sunderland, Head of Hyperscale, Indirect & CPaaS at BT International, described a transformation rooted in infrastructure and flexibility.

BT’s Global Fabric is a next-generation “any-to-any” platform built to deliver on-demand connectivity with sovereignty, security, and seamless integration.

“You can’t be a telco of the future if your services aren’t consumable,” Sunderland said. “The world expects on-demand, real-time capabilities — and the network has to match that.”

He envisions a world where bandwidth behaves like cloud capacity — elastic, intelligent, and dynamically priced. When Amy suggested “surge pricing for bandwidth,” Colm smiled:

“Exactly — like Ticketmaster or Uber. When demand spikes, capacity should reflect its real-time value.”

For Sunderland, digitization will ultimately define the future:

“It’s about giving customers a single digital pane of glass — low touch, high value, high speed.”

Deutsche Telekom: From Minutes to Meaning

Sebastian Schumann of Deutsche Telekom offered a wholesale-driven perspective. His team is developing a Digital Services Platform that unifies CPaaS, RBM, identity, and network APIs in one architecture.

“It’s not about selling APIs,” he said. “It’s about making what you already have consumable — in the way customers want to consume it.”

For Schumann, success means telcos moving beyond connectivity and participating directly in value creation:

“You don’t need to teach voice salespeople to sell APIs; you just make sure APIs are there when the customer needs them.”

Telin: Transformation Through People and Purpose

Representing Telin, the international arm of Telkom Indonesia, Wendhy Kusumaatmadja, VP Digital Initiative, brought an inspiring Southeast Asian perspective — one grounded in people and culture as much as technology.

“Innovation isn’t an instruction; it comes from people,” she said.

Telin’s transformation began by embedding agile culture across the company, empowering teams to act fast and work modularly. When asked to deliver a CPaaS platform in nine months, the team completed it in three — proof that transformation can be driven by mindset as much as tools.

“We start with what customers want and work backward,” Kusumaatmadja added. “We don’t want to fight alone — we want to be part of an ecosystem. It’s not competition; it’s co-opetition.”

Partners, Platforms & the Path Ahead

When Amy asked whether future growth would come from direct sales or through partners, the panel leaned decisively toward ecosystem collaboration.

Sunderland pointed to BT’s extensive global partner network; Omer described e&’s “partners of partners of partners” model; and Kusumaatmadja highlighted the value of learning through global alliances like TM Forum and MEF.

As Omer put it:

“Thirty years ago we built the towers. Now we need to build the ecosystems.”

What Will Drive Tomorrow’s Revenue?

Each speaker identified a different catalyst for growth:

• Wendhy Kusumaatmadja — Agentic AI: embedding intelligence in every customer interaction.
• Sebastian Schumann — Participation: moving up the value chain.
• Colm Sunderland — Digitization & orchestration: making everything consumable.
• Ahmed Omer — Moments: using AI to personalize every customer journey.

A New Identity for Telcos

Ultimately, the “telco of the future” is defined not by infrastructure but by mindset — shifting from control to collaboration, from services to experiences, and from networks to ecosystems.

As Amy Cameron concluded:

“It’s not just what you sell, but how you sell it — and how you connect people, partners, and possibilities along the way.”

Insights from the CASA25 Panel Moderated by Matt Townend (Cavell)

At CASA25, one of the most anticipated discussions centered on vCons — the emerging standard for capturing, structuring, and sharing conversational data across platforms and channels. Moderated by Matt Townend of Cavell Group, the panel brought together four perspectives spanning the ecosystem:

Robert Galop, CTO of Creo Solutions (software and AI platform innovator) Jon Brinton, CRO of Crexendo (NetSapiens platform, powering 235 service providers) Sebastian Schumann, Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) (building a sovereign CPaaS platform) Mark Ianozzi, CEO of Superior Contact (and longtime Cloud Communications Alliance leader)

Together they explored how vCons move from theory to impact — and where opinions diverged on the road ahead.

1. From Standard to Solutions

A recurring theme was the need to move beyond the technology itself. All panelists agreed that enterprises don’t buy “vCons” — they buy outcomes.

Robert Galop put it succinctly: early discussions focused on selling vCons as a concept, but “we’re quickly progressing to what we can build on top of them.”

Jon Brinton echoed the sentiment, warning against confusing customers with another acronym: “The last thing we should do is try and sell vCons. We should sell intelligent engagement.”

That closing phrase — intelligent engagement — became a shared reference point, linking this session back to the overarching CASA25 theme.

2. Use Cases: Where the Value Starts to Show

Robert Galop illustrated how some service providers are already deploying vCons to analyze every conversation, using AI to provide feedback loops that were previously impossible.

Example: a small business uses vCons to grade every call against a script, then gives front-desk employees instant coaching on what could have gone better — democratizing tools once reserved for enterprise contact centers.

Jon Brinton expanded this with two clear value drivers his partners are seeing:

Coaching at scale: moving from sampling a few calls to analyzing every conversation for agent improvement. Upsell optimization: correlating conversational data with sales outcomes to train staff on what drives higher transaction values.

Mark Ianozzi, speaking from his BPO perspective, emphasized data portability as another use case: enabling clients to migrate between contact-center platforms without losing historic conversational context. In his words, “the money is in the data,” and vCons turn that data into a transmittable asset.

3. The Telco Lens: From Minutes to Context

For Deutsche Telekom, vCons fit naturally into their sovereign CPaaS platform strategy.

Sebastian Schumann described how DTAG views vCons as an enabler for “contextual communication,” where a call is no longer just a call:

“A minute is a minute is a minute — but now minutes have different values.”

By embedding vCon capabilities into their platform, DTAG aims to transform legacy traffic into data-rich, AI-ready interactions. Schumann stressed that telcos won’t necessarily own the end-user layer, but can provide the trusted, compliant interface that others build upon — particularly important in regulated sectors like healthcare or government.

4. The Ecosystem Debate: Who Moves First?

Townend challenged the panel on whether there’s a race to claim ownership of the vCon layer — between telcos, CRM platforms, or communication vendors.

Jon Brinton acknowledged the urgency: those who “get out in front” and deliver tangible use cases early will likely control more of the data and value chain. Robert Galop agreed, describing a pragmatic path of launching simple, horizontal tools first to gain traction, before layering in vertical solutions that drive revenue growth.

Sebastian Schumann saw it differently: rather than a race for ownership, he envisioned a cooperative ecosystem, with telcos serving as the enablers providing trusted infrastructure and APIs, while innovators build the applications.

5. Vertical vs. Horizontal Paths

There was consensus that vertical specialization will emerge naturally.

Galop noted that quick-win, horizontal solutions help get telcos “in the door,” but real revenue growth comes from tailoring insights to industries — from healthcare compliance to automotive retail.

Brinton reinforced that many early adopters are already doing this: “They’re intimate with their customers’ workflows and building for specific problems, not platforms.”

6. Trust, Governance, and the Data Gold Rush

Mark Ianozzi brought the discussion full circle to AI governance and compliance. With regulators scrutinizing how AI uses data, vCons could become the audit trail of the AI era — a verifiable record of what was said, by whom, and when.

This sparked nods across the panel: vCons don’t just enable AI insights; they make AI accountable.

7. From Minutes to Meaning: The Road Ahead

As the session closed, Matt Townend asked the simplest but hardest question: Will we still be talking about vCons in five years — or just about better customer experiences?

The unanimous answer: outcomes over acronyms.

vCons will fade into the background as the invisible layer powering trusted, contextual engagement. Service providers who act early — building skills, partnerships, and initial use cases — will lead. Telcos that embed vCons into their infrastructure can finally turn their “minutes” into meaning.

🧭 The Next Step

CASA25 made clear that vCons are moving from concept to execution. But their real power lies in what comes next — an ecosystem of partners turning conversational data into trusted intelligence across industries.

If your organization is working on vCon use cases — whether in contact centers, telco platforms, or enterprise AI — the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance invites you to share your story and contribute to the evolving Case Directory. Together, we can turn this trillion-dollar idea into measurable impact.

In a powerful and refreshingly down-to-earth keynote at CASA25, Sebastian Schumann of Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier pulled back the curtain on one of the most ambitious initiatives in European telecom: building a sovereign CPaaS platform, purpose-built for the wholesale market — and for a world increasingly defined by trust, sovereignty, and intelligent engagement.

This isn’t just another API platform. It’s a blueprint for how telcos can reclaim the CPaaS narrative, embed themselves deeper into enterprise value chains, and offer something that the tech giants simply can’t: control, compliance, and carrier-grade connectivity — at scale.

🔍 The Why: It All Starts with Sovereignty

Deutsche Telekom’s CPaaS platform was born out of a hard regulatory reality. As Sebastian shared, their prior communications tech stack — hosted on a US-based hyperscaler — was abruptly deemed non-compliant for sensitive sectors like healthcare and government.

“We couldn’t even use infrastructure that belonged to the big US hyperscalers,” Sebastian explained. “So we built our own — in Europe, for Europe.”

This shift became an opportunity, not a setback. In fact, it became a key differentiator. European enterprises, especially in regulated industries, are increasingly demanding data sovereignty, local hosting, and compliance with EU laws like GDPR and Schrems II.

Deutsche Telekom’s new CPaaS platform is hosted completely within Europe, built with open-source components like SignalWire and Mation, and architected to be disconnected from third-country data jurisdictions.

It’s not just a product. It’s a position — one that’s uniquely valuable in today’s world of rising digital nationalism and privacy expectations.

⚙️ The How: Telco Assets + Software Mindset

What makes Deutsche Telekom’s approach stand out is their clear focus on building, not buying.

Their team assembled a CPaaS platform from the ground up, layering modern APIs on top of decades of core telco infrastructure:

• Billions of voice minutes already flow through their aggregation stack
• SMS and RCS connectivity is managed directly or via Google’s hub, with Telekom handling the commercial aggregation that’s still a pain point in RCS
• The CPaaS layer is carrier-owned, carrier-operated, and extensible via open standards or compatibility layers

And they’ve embraced developer-centric principles without falling into the telco trap of waiting on standards committees.

“We didn’t wait for the standards. We used what’s already the de facto standard in the market,” Sebastian said. “Real-world compatibility is more important than agreement by committee.”

To ease onboarding, they even offer compatibility layers for customers migrating from “the big guys,” allowing them to reuse existing integrations and switch endpoints without rewriting applications.

🛠 The What: Not Just APIs — Solutions

This isn’t about API counts or developer dashboards. Deutsche Telekom’s platform is designed to solve real customer problems, with a special focus on wholesale enablers and enterprise resellers.

In fact, Sebastian made a point to say:

“You don’t sell APIs. You sell what’s behind them — the capabilities. And really, you sell a solution to a problem.”

That’s why the platform includes a low-code integration layer, allowing customers to connect CPaaS capabilities directly into systems like Salesforce or other CRMs — without needing deep technical teams or external SI support.

Think of it like this:

You’re an enterprise who needs to trigger a voice notification from Salesforce You don’t want to hire developers Deutsche Telekom’s platform lets you drag and drop that integration as part of a managed service — fully hosted in a European sovereign cloud

This is what Intelligent Engagement looks like in practice:

CPaaS that starts with a use case, not an API spec.

🤝 A Platform and a Product: White-Label CPaaS for Carriers

Here’s where it gets really interesting.

Deutsche Telekom isn’t just offering CPaaS to large enterprise customers — they’re enabling other telcos to plug in their own trunks, white-label the platform, and run their own branded CPaaS on top of Telekom’s infrastructure.

It’s a multi-layered go-to-market model:

Serve direct wholesale traffic generators Enable partners and telcos to offer CPaaS under their own brand Offer full-stack capabilities: from local trunks and termination to CRM integration and billing

For smaller telcos looking to enter CPaaS or modernize their enterprise offering, this could be a fast track to market, bypassing years of development.

📚 The Roadblocks: Education & Awareness

Despite the technical readiness and regulatory fit, the biggest challenge isn’t code — it’s culture.

“Educating our own salespeople was tough,” Sebastian admitted.

“They know how to sell SMS and voice — now we’re asking them to sell something that helps others sell voice and SMS. It’s a different mindset.”

And enterprise customers don’t always speak the language of CPaaS. They don’t ask for APIs — they ask for automation, web interfaces, and ways to simplify communication workflows.

This underscores the need for solutions storytelling, not just product specs.

🧭 Why This Matters

Deutsche Telekom’s CPaaS initiative isn’t just a technical feat — it’s a strategic blueprint for European telcos looking to stay relevant in a cloud-first, AI-driven, privacy-sensitive world.

• ✅ It reclaims telco value by combining connectivity with software
• ✅ It meets rising enterprise demand for sovereignty and trust
• ✅ It turns legacy assets into future-facing solutions
• ✅ It empowers other telcos to participate in CPaaS without building from scratch

And most importantly, it does all this without waiting for the perfect standard or the next committee meeting.

“It’s not black and white,” Sebastian said. “But if you have the numbers, the routes, and compatibility — you’re in the game.”

🚀 Final Word

At CASA25, Deutsche Telekom showed what’s possible when a telco leans into its strengths, learns from the platform players, and delivers value the European way — with control, compliance, and real-world business models.

It’s not just CPaaS. It’s CPaaS with purpose.