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.”

“This is the biggest period of innovation since the internet — but we’re innovating and disrupting faster than ever before. Buckle up.”

It started with a warning.

Not about AI. Not about APIs.

But about the industry itself.

Charles Reed Anderson, analyst, strategist, and telco provocateur, took the CASA25 stage with one of the most unforgettable keynotes of the event. It was fast. It was sharp. It was uncomfortable. And it may have been exactly what this industry needed to hear.

His message?

Telcos have built everything — and monetized nothing.

And unless something changes, they risk repeating the same pattern with AI, APIs, and the next wave of digital disruption.

💔 The Love-Hate Relationship with Telco

Charles kicked off with the line that set the tone:

“All bars, no bucks.”

Telcos have poured billions into infrastructure — from GPRS and 3G to 4G and now 5G. But again and again, the profits went elsewhere:

• GPRS? Blackberry and RAM.
• 3G? Telcos squeezed out short-lived profits from high roaming fees.
• 4G? App stores and OTTs captured the upside.
• NB-IoT? China made it work. The rest, not so much.
• 5G? Hyperscalers are paying peanuts and printing money on the back of it.

“We’ve overhyped the networks, oversimplified the use cases, and underdelivered against the promise.”

Telcos are exceptional at connection. But when it comes to collection — actual monetization — they consistently fall short.

🔍 Innovation ≠ Tech Hype

The heart of Charles’ argument was clear: Tech doesn’t matter unless it solves a real problem.

Innovation isn’t about 5G, AI, or “smart cities.” Those are just enablers.

What matters is the pain point you solve, who you partner with to solve it, and how you monetize it.

He shared a campaign from Singtel during their 5G launch. It tried to explain to everyday consumers the differences between SA and NSA network modes.

“No one cares. They care about what it does for them — not how it works.”

Too often, the industry is still marketing technology instead of value.

🇦🇺 Telstra: A Case Study in (Almost) Getting It Right

Charles pointed to Telstra as an example of what can happen when a telco genuinely commits to innovation:

• They created Muru-D, a startup incubator.
• Rapidly built a leading IoT portfolio in just 12 months.
• Partnered with Microsoft to develop digital twins.
• Launched internal GenAI tools like AskTelstra and one-sentence customer summaries.

For a moment, they had it all: new services, rapid time to market, genuine differentiation.

But over time:

• The startup program was shut down
• Key innovators left the company
• Growth slowed
• Digital twin projects were deprioritized
• Bureaucracy and internal blockers returned

The result? An innovation engine that once led the region is now struggling to maintain momentum.

“Even if you build the right thing — if the culture, buy-in, and skillset aren’t there — it won’t scale.”

🍔 Network APIs, Explained via Cheeseburgers (and FEBO)

Then came the slide no one will forget.

Charles explained the network API ecosystem through a Dutch vending machine cheeseburger — yes, really.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Hungry customer = Business buyer
• FEBO (legendary Dutch fast food wall) = Traditional telco
• Restaurant = Telco with added value services
• Uber Eats = CPaaS platform
• Ingredients = Network APIs
• AI agent = Personal assistant who knows your context and preferences

“If you understand how to get a burger from FEBO, you understand the network API ecosystem.”

The takeaway?

In this new stack, CPaaS vendors are the orchestrators.

Telcos are at risk of being commoditized, unless they start acting like full-stack solution providers — or at least learn to partner with them.

Even worse? Hyperscalers and system integrators are now building their own orchestration layers — their version of Deliveroo — and they’re coming fast.

🤖 GenAI: Hype, Hope, and Hallucination

Instead of riding the AI hype wave, Charles challenged it.

95% of GenAI projects deliver no measurable business impact. 70–88% of digital transformations still fail. Most companies don’t have clean data, robust systems, or the right strategy.

Even more dangerously: GenAI hallucinates.

Charles shared how ChatGPT invented a scandal involving Uber Eats and a racist chatbot. He almost put it in a keynote deck before realizing it was completely fabricated.

“That could have ruined my credibility. Now imagine it’s your company, your brand, your chatbot.”

We’re pushing GenAI into production with no governance, no safeguards, and no real understanding of the risks. The brand risk is real. And it’s rising.

⚠️ The Next Threat: AI-Native Telcos

Charles then sounded the alarm.

MVNOs have already chipped away at traditional telcos — with better CX, sharper brands, and faster operations. But now, AI-native platforms are emerging.

He described a founder who built and sold an MVNE platform, then discovered the power of agentic AI and moved to Silicon Valley to build it all over again — AI-first.

These startups don’t need large teams.

They don’t need legacy systems.

They don’t sell SIMs. They sell outcomes.

And it’s not just the consumer market.

“Imagine AWS launching its own enterprise phone, preloaded with its AI stack, bundled for every developer team worldwide. Who needs a telco?”

We’re on the edge of seeing hyperscalers bypass operators altogether — and telcos may not see it coming until it’s too late.

🧭 What Now? Five Urgent Moves for Telcos

Charles left the crowd with five immediate takeaways. These weren’t buzzwords. They were a survival guide:

• Benchmark differently. Stop copying slow-moving incumbents. Watch E& (Etisalat) and STC — they’re pushing the boundaries with real deployments.
• Watch the AI-native players. Look beyond telco. See how AI-native startups are reshaping ERP, customer service, retail, and CX. That wave is headed for you.
• Track real innovation hubs. Europe isn’t the hotspot. The Middle East is where it’s happening now. Subscribe to Middle East AI News. It’s where the future is being built.
• Train your people properly. No more half-measures. Deep AI fluency is now a basic requirement. It’ll save time, reduce OPEX, and attract better talent.
• Solve problems, not just sell tech. Every new product, platform, or partnership must start with this question: Who are we solving for, what problem, with whom, and how do we monetize?

🎤 “Buckle Up.”

Charles didn’t offer a tidy ending.

He didn’t say “everything will be okay.”

He ended with this:

“You’re either part of the disruption… or you’re in its way.”

And if you’re in telco, cloud communications, or CPaaS, this was your wake-up call.

The AI era is not coming. It’s already here.

The question is whether your organization — your culture, your partners, your mindset — is ready.

🎥 Watch the Replay

💡 Want help navigating the AI, CPaaS, or Network API wave?

That’s what CASA is all about: not just talk — but real use cases, real change, and real outcomes.