Skyvera, an affiliate of TelcoDR, has acquired CloudSense! It’s a telco-specific CPQ tool built on top of Salesforce that helps businesses launch, sell, and fulfill complex B2B solutions. The cloud-based solution is specifically designed for the telco industry to handle high-end enterprise quoting on top of the world’s leading CRM platform. We are super excited to add AI capabilities to the product (with Totogi's BSS Magic!) and to support customers such as British Telecom, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone, and more. Appledore Research wrote a research note on the acquisition (paywalled) calling it, "Totogi's most strategic move to date." James Crenshaw from Omdia also gave the deal a shout out on LinkedIn. Interested in learning more about CloudSense? Give me a call!
T-Mobile will pay $100 million over three years to use OpenAI’s generative AI (GenAI) technology as part of an agreement announced in September. Wow! This is great for OpenAI. But I don’t know how good it is for T-Mobile? That’s A LOT of money to spend on GenAI, especially when AI prices are still dropping. Is the operator getting locked into a higher price? It’s definitely putting all its eggs in one large language model (LLM) basket at a moment when there’s no clear leader and the tech is changing fast. If I were running a Tier-1 telco, I’d keep my commits low, play the field, and watch the prices fall. Once things started to settle, THEN I’d lock in my terms. But hey, T-Mo, you do you! Rest of you telcos: watch out.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son had big news to share at the NVIDIA AI Summit Japan last week. Their teams have successfully piloted the world's first combined AI and 5G network that runs both telecom and AI workloads simultaneously. The resulting numbers are jaw-dropping: telcos could earn 5x in AI inference revenue for every $1 of new AI-RAN CapEx invested, while using 40% less power than traditional networks. Plus, SoftBank estimates profit margins of 220% for every AI-RAN server added to its infrastructure. With over 300-million base stations globally running at just one-third capacity today, this technology could unlock billions in new revenue opportunities for operators. Can telcos execute on the idea? Tune into an upcoming episode of Telco in 20 when we interview Chris Penrose, NVIDIA’s global VP of business development, available in December!
Also last week, NVIDIA and partners launched a major initiative in Indonesia to develop sovereign AI capabilities tailored for the nation’s 277 million Indonesian speakers. Central to the effort is “Sahabat-AI,” a collection of open-source Indonesian LLMs that will support local industries, government, and educational institutions in building AI-driven applications in local languages. NVIDIA is leaning in hard towards sovereign AI, probably to promote the idea of building private clouds as opposed to customers going with the public clouds (and the AI chips of the cloud). The AI Wars are heating up!
Sticking with the sovereignty play, Azure just announced updates to its Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty that will help telcos meet regulatory compliance and data sovereignty requirements more efficiently. The enhancements include policy portfolio updates that will help telcos map to regulatory frameworks, and a secure mode of PubSec Information Assistant that leverages Azure OpenAI for enhanced data protection and privacy when querying in regulated environments. I get the whole sovereignty thing, but also this will be *the most expensive way* to do cloud. If you’re looking to maximize your savings, you should avoid this approach and don’t default to “everything has to stay on premise and in country.” MAXIMIZE use of the PUBLIC cloud.
In “DUH” news: Four in ten event-goers are willing to pay for a better connection at sporting events, concerts, and other crowded venues. A new report from Ericsson ConsumerLab confirmed what Singtel put to the test in summer 2024 at a Taylor Swift concert and what I’ve been talking about for years. Doing this is a BREEZE when you use Totogi Charging-as-a-Service: we can set it up for you in days, create plans, and monetize any event (then break it all down again in a snap). Just give me a ringie ☎️ if you’re interested!
How will AI change work? Mitch Wagner at Fierce Network has some doomsday predictions about “the undead workforce.” His predictions? Employers making avatars of employees that keep working after the actual people leave; middle management cut by 20% in two years; CEOs second-guessed by AI agents; and employee morale: in the toilet. Whew! Sounds like the same fear, uncertainty, and doubt that people used to have for the public cloud a few years ago! Well, I already have my own Avatar—maybe you’ve seen it on Linkedin or X—and I think it's a way for me to have more impact, not less. Is AI all gloom and doom? I don't think so.
One of many things to love about Charging-as-a-Service from Totogi: when AWS lowers its prices on components we use, we can pass the savings on to all our customers, too! And we can do it immediately. Does your “cloud native SaaS” charging vendor do that for you? Doubt it. When you’re working with the real deal, not #fakeCloud #fakeSaaS shit, savings will automatically happen. Thanks, AWS!
Want to learn more about AI? Got five hours to spare? Check out this five-hour episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and two other leaders from the company. With this runtime, there isn’t much they don’t cover. Everyone on X was raving about the conversation where they cover *a lot* of ground. Save it for your next long-haul flight and give it a listen! 🛩️
"No man knows the future. All he can do is decide not to give up." This week, Rafael Nadal will compete for the last time as a professional tennis player in the Davis Cup competition, hosted in his home country of Spain. If you've ever seen Nadal play, you know he embodies the idea of never giving up, playing each point as if it's for the Championship, and leaving it all out on the court. I try to play tennis like that, and I try to work like that, too. He's my favorite player of all time, and I'm terribly sad to see him go. If you catch him playing a match on TV this week, pause on the channel for a few points and and soak up his intensity: it is legendary.
