How do you move 100 million subscribers onto a single BSS stack without disrupting customers? In this episode of Talking Transformation, Robert Curran talks to Hitesh Kumar (SVP Consumer Technology & Digital Innovation, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison), Saurabh Sharma (ICT Program Director for IOH, Ericsson) and Appledore principal analyst John Abraham about one of the industry’s largest core commerce transformations.

They discuss:

• Consolidating a post-merger “architectural spaghetti” of billing, charging, CRM and catalog systems onto Ericsson’s Digital Monetization Platform
• Migrating 83 million Indosat and 40 million Hutchison subscribers in a matter of weeks, with minimal customer impact
• Using GPUs to cut migration windows from around 16 hours to under two
• Why removing customisation and staying out-of-the-box made delivery predictable
• Leading change through data, executive sponsorship and relentless communication (“95% people, 5% technology”)
• One-minute time-to-market, with product launches run by the business rather than IT
• Why generic systems struggle with telco concept-to-cash complexity
• Moving the BSS stack to Google Cloud alongside IOH’s AI and agent platform

#TalkingTransformation #BSS #DigitalTransformation #Telco #AgenticAI #Ericsson #IndosatOoredooHutchison

Can Agentic AI handle the complexity of modern telecom? In this episode, Dale Skeen, CTO of Vitria Technology, joins Robert Curran to discuss why simply having "more data" isn't enough for autonomous operations and how the "Semantic Knowledge Plane" provides the reasoning and context AI needs to succeed.

Inside this episode:

• The Data vs. Knowledge Gap: Why standard databases fail to capture the complex dependencies of 5G networks and how semantics define the true nature of network relationships.
• Building Trust in AI: How a knowledge plane provides guardrails and explainability, forcing LLMs to use "chain of thought" reasoning to eliminate hallucinations.
• Incremental Transformation: Skip the "big bang" failures. Learn how to build a "minimum viable knowledge graph" in 90-100 day sprints with measurable ROI.
• Real-World Results: Discover how operators are achieving 95% triage accuracy before customer impact and 20-30% year-over-year productivity gains.
• The Self-Evolving Plane: A look at tools that harvest knowledge from telemetry, troubleshooting guides, and closed tickets to create a self-learning system.

Whether you are looking for a competitive cost advantage or faster service innovation, this discussion explains why persistent knowledge is a telecom operator's most tangible business asset.

The goals of network and service assurance haven't changed - but just about everything else has. How should operators adapt their assurance strategies and established a modern assurance capability? In this episode, Robert is joined by two true veterans in this market and topic: Ashley Woods, from Blue Planet (a Division of Ciena) and Principal Analyst Patrick Kelly.

Talking Transformation: Navigating the AI Revolution with Orange

In this episode of Talking Transformation, Robert Curran sits down with Olivier Simon, Head of Data and AI Initiatives at Orange, to explore the front lines of telecom’s autonomous future. With over 300 million customers across 26 countries, Orange is a global leader driving the industry toward Level 4 autonomous networks—a state of closed-loop, self-healing automation.

• Strategic AI Implementation: Simon outlines how Orange utilizes AI across the entire network lifecycle, from optimizing multi-billion euro investments in site placement to fine-tuning thousands of radio access network (RAN) parameters.
• Driving Real ROI: The conversation delves into the pragmatic approach of targeting "high-cost pockets." For a group like Orange, where field services exceed €2 billion annually, even a 4–5% efficiency gain through AI and computer vision results in tens of millions of euros in savings.
• The Power of Digital Twins: Discover how Orange is breaking down traditional data silos. By creating digital twins, they build a unified representation of complex, multi-domain networks to automate incident management and analyze service impact in real-time.
• The Shifting Telecom Ecosystem: The episode examines the evolving boundaries between traditional operators, vendors (like Nokia and Ericsson), and hyperscalers (Google, AWS, Microsoft). Simon highlights how the "rules of the game" are changing as data-native companies enter the network space.
• Agile Innovation in the Era of GenAI: With AI technology accelerating at an unprecedented pace, Orange has shifted from long-term project cycles to pragmatic six-month cycles. This allows them to stay current with breakthroughs like Generative AI, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and AI agents.

This episode offers insight on how this pioneering operator is balancing long-term visionary goals with immediate operational efficiency. Essential listening for industry professionals looking to understand the cultural and technical shifts required to move from traditional standardization to a fast-paced, IT-centric way of working.

As the industry moves toward a "super intelligent" future, Simon provides a roadmap for staying relevant: be pragmatic, embrace open source, and prioritize short, impactful innovation cycles.

Grant, Francis and Robert explore the topic of autonomous networks in telecom, challenging some misconceptions, clearing up some misunderstandings, and generally taking out some of the mystery about how to go about establishing them.

In this week’s episode Patrick Kelly is joined by IBM Quantum Industry Partner, Imed Othmani, in a discussion on progress and obstacles in Quantum Computing. In particular, what and when will be the first practical applications of this technology.

It’s a fascinating insight into the path from pure research to business value, and IBM’s approach to finding it.

Not one but two guests this week, representing insights from Nokia's Digital Operations and AI teams - Deepa Ramachandran, Head of Portfolio Management for Nokia Digital Operations, and Henrietta Katajakoski, from AI & Analytics marketing. They both draw on plenty of time spent on real projects and customer discussions. Topics covered include Autonomous Networks, the Network Autonomy Chasm, Digital Twins, the size and impact of Agentic AI, and Nokia projects in North America and China.

Patrick Kelly takes the mic for this episode, with guest Andrew Coward from IBM, to discuss the accelerating story of telecom/IT convergence. But it isn't long before AI takes center stage. Offering solid perspectives on how to spot "real" AI from marketing froth, Andrew shares how AI in networks differs radically from enterprise use cases, and what the lifecycle of introducing AI into network operations really looks like.