Show me the money

Announcer: [00:23] This is “Telco in 20,” a podcast that helps telco execs achieve a competitive advantage with AI and the public cloud. It is hosted by Danielle Rios, also known as DR. Today, she has a message for the telco industry. Before you spend a dime on AI, make sure your vendor can prove the value.

Danielle Rios: [00:42] Hi, guys. I’m DR. MWC is just two weeks away. Here’s what you’re going to see when you get there. Every vendor on the floor with AI demos that claim to be ready to change everything. They’ll talk about potential savings. Actual profit to your bottom line? Not so much. So I recorded this talk to cut straight to what matters. In it, I explain why most AI fails the minute it touches your actual architecture. Your systems are connected, you’ve spent billions making sure of that, but connected isn’t the same as coherent. That gap is costing you millions. I also walk through how Totogi solved this exact problem for a Tier-1 operator and set them up to predict trouble before it happens. Forget demos, this is real revenue going to the bank.

[01:33] After you listen, you’ll know the one question to ask every vendor at MWC and you’ll spot instantly who can answer it and who cannot. That’s why I’m dropping my talk two weeks early, just in time to sharpen your strategy before you head out for Barcelona. The video version of this talk is on YouTube, the link is in the show notes. And I’m still live at MWC. Catch my fireside chat at the Agentic AI Summit Monday, March 2nd in Hall 6. So, let’s take 20.

[02:08] Hey, guys. You’re going to see three things this year at MWC. Number one, agentic AI. Number two, AI for Networks. Number three, every vendor out there touting their AI use cases. And they all have the same thing going for them. They won’t generate a single dollar of profit for you. There’s a simple test for any AI investment, can you show me the money? Not the potential savings in a business case, actual profit flowing to your bottom line because of this AI thing you bought. Most software vendors can’t pass that test. Oh, the technology works, the demos are real, but the actual economic value, almost no one can show it.

[02:54] Here’s what everyone’s been stuck on. A demo is a controlled environment, clean data, single system, perfect conditions. One use case isolated with a team of engineers behind it making sure nothing breaks. But your telco is not a controlled environment. The moment that demo touches your actual architecture, it’s going to fail. Not because the AI doesn’t work, because the AI is blind. It can’t see your business, it can only see fragments in different languages that don’t connect.

[03:27] Look at this. This is state-of-the-art in telco. It’s a mess. Hundreds of systems, a spaghetti bowl disaster of integrations. The BSS speaks French, the OSS speaks German and the network isn’t speaking to anyone. This is the problem everyone’s been trying to solve. You spent decades connecting systems, billions of dollars making sure everything can talk to everything else and it still doesn’t work because integration is not comprehension. Your systems are connected, they’re just incoherent.

[04:03] So when you ask your people a simple question like, “Why are customers complaining about loss of service when our dashboard says everything is fine?” Until now, there was no good way to answer it because that question requires understanding that crosses BSS, OSS and network boundaries and every one of those domains has its own version of reality. Questions like that get asked every day and every day, teams scramble for weeks to answer them. Let me show you what becomes possible when you solve this.

[04:35] Zain, one of the largest Tier-1 operators in the Middle East and Africa, came to us with something they call dormant cells. These are cell sites that look perfectly healthy, green lights, no alarms, every monitoring system says they’re fine, but they’re not fine. They’re carrying zero traffic. They’re dead and nobody knows until customers start complaining. By that time, Zain has lost revenue, lost subscribers and has dispatched a field team to fix the wrong problem.

[05:05] Typically, a Zain technician spends 48 hours chasing a dormant cell. Checking systems, cross-referencing logs, trying to figure out what’s going wrong. Why is this so hard? Because the data that shows the cell is technically operational lives in the OSS. Where the cell is located is in a network planning document. The customer care group is getting calls from subscribers wondering what’s going on and the data that shows here’s how much money you’re losing every hour lives in the BSS. Those systems are integrated, but no one ever thought it was possible to connect the data in this way.

[05:41] So we built Zain’s telco ontology. A semantic layer that understands what a cell actually is. Not just a network object, but a revenue-generating asset with subscribers, traffic and margin attached. Boom, dormant cells identified, revenue leakage spotted, millions of dollars found. 48 hours to fix became 30 minutes. But here’s where it gets really interesting. Now we can predict dormant cells before they happen. The technician isn’t chasing the problem, the problem never occurs.

[06:17] That’s not a demo. That’s millions of dollars of revenue loss prevented because the AI could finally see across systems and domains. And dormant cells, that was just the first question Zain asked. Once you have an ontology that understands your business, you can ask it anything. Churn risk, revenue leakage, network optimization. The same foundation answers it all. That’s not a use case, that’s revolutionary, but don’t take my word for it.

[06:47] Listen to Waleed Abdelmajeed, director of technology strategy and digital transformation at Zain Sudan. Here’s what he said about working with Totogi’s ontology.

Waleed Abdelmajeed: [06:58] Totogi is a very strategic partner that we’re really relying on. With the help of Totogi as well as the data ontology, and that’s the beauty, that’s where the magic happens, you get to solve one use case and get ready from a foundational point of view to the next use case. So it’s like LEGO bricks, once you build one floor, it’s already the foundation for the next floor. We love this and we think it’s actually the missing piece that we’ve been looking for when it comes to AI deployment. It’s something that’s really bringing value to Zain Sudan.

Danielle Rios: [07:30] Telcos have dynamic problems like this every day. You can’t predict what information you want to know. This is what I built Totogi to solve. To build a foundation underneath, the shared understanding that connects BSS to OSS to network to finance. The semantic layer that lets AI actually comprehend your business. We connect the systems, we capture the expertise, we build the model that makes AI actually valuable. Not in a demo, but for your business.

[08:00] But there’s one more thing I need to tell you. Usually, you pay vendors for the potential of success, you pay for the promise of AI. We are changing that today. If you don’t see the money, we don’t take the money. Who else does that? Nobody.

[08:17] So when you’re walking the floors in Barcelona, you’re going to see a lot of AI, what you won’t see is comprehension. But now you know the question to ask. Show me the money. Show me the actual real world profit you can prove this has generated. Because an AI that truly understands your business won’t just save you a little money here and there, it will make you money, and that right there is the only difference that really matters. Come see what happens when AI actually speaks telco. Visit me at the Totogi stand at MWC in Barcelona. It’s go time. Let’s do it!