Ep 108 – ☕ Wake up and smell the BSS with Ray Le Maistre from TelecomTV ☕

The DSP Leaders Council is a formalized group of nearly 100 hand-picked telecommunications industry experts, including operators, vendors, analysts, and industry watchers. Created about 14-15 months ago, the council provides insights and advice on the evolution of communication service providers into digital service providers. TelecomTV surveys council members several times each year to produce DSP Leaders Reports on key industry topics, giving the organization access to a diverse range of perspectives from movers and shakers across the telecommunications sector.

According to TelecomTV’s Digital Support Systems (DSS) report, over 90% of respondents recognize the need to replace legacy OSS/BSS applications, with 50% looking to startups for new BSS solutions. This shift reflects a desire for innovation and fresh approaches to long-standing problems. However, telcos often define “startups” broadly—including new companies from adjacent IT sectors bringing AI expertise to telecom, as well as established companies that are new to specific operators. The challenge remains that procurement processes and risk-averse cultures make it difficult for new vendors to break through.

The most shocking finding was that 52% of survey respondents believe AI will help but isn’t totally necessary for their digital support systems transformation. Both Ray Le Maistre and Danielle Rios were stunned by this result, given AI’s transformative potential. This cautious stance may reflect uncertainty about implementation or concerns about getting it right. However, with rapid AI developments since the September report—including ChatGPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 3.5, and NVIDIA’s Agent Vision—industry experts hope a repeat survey would yield dramatically different results. Read more in DR’s blog post, 3 key takeaways from TelecomTV’s DSS report—one will surprise you.

Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they need the right skills and operational structure before upgrading their digital support systems. However, with AI evolving so rapidly, this wait-and-see approach means telcos risk never actually upgrading. By the time they feel “ready,” the technology landscape will have fundamentally changed. Historically, telcos take six to seven years to rationalize OSS/BSS systems. This slow pace, which some operators wear as a badge of honor, is incompatible with the speed of AI innovation and could leave telcos permanently behind.

Danielle Rios emphasizes that when it comes to AI, there are no incumbent providers—legacy players like Amdocs and Ericsson and startups like Totogi are all figuring out AI for the first time. She argues that the next wave of innovation will come from unproven companies building AI-first solutions from the ground up. DR encourages telcos to push back against procurement departments demanding traditional RFPs with multiple vendors and customer references, noting these don’t exist in the AI space. She advocates for telcos to explore what AI-native companies can offer.

The DSP Leaders Council will repeat 2024 surveys with additional questions to track industry trends, particularly around AI adoption, cloud-native telcos, next-generation infrastructure, and energy efficiency. New survey topics for 2025 include quantum-safe networking, ongoing Open RAN developments, and satellite-to-smartphone communication (direct-to-cell). By repeating surveys, TelecomTV aims to measure how rapidly the industry is evolving and whether attitudes—like 52% expressing AI hesitancy—shift significantly as operators gain more AI experience and see real-world implementations.