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Ep 43 – Telco’s Pinball Wizard: Neil McRae
BT Chief Architect Neil McRae talks about the company's digital transformation and strategies for working with hyperscalers … and pinball, of course!
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Ep 19 – Double your ARPU with customer ❤️❤️❤️
Last week I did a kickass talk and Q&A as part of Mobile World Live Themed Week. It was all about how telcos are network people, not customer people, and how that’s holding them back. For every tech company like Netflix or Uber that’s killing it when it comes to customer care, there’s a telco making subscribers cry their way through a crappy user experience.
This has gotta stop. It’s bad for customers and bad for the bottom line. And telcos, the secret to making subscribers love you is right in front of you. Your most valuable asset, your network, could help you deliver a personalized experience that will leave them with hearts dancing in their eyes – while your business enjoys 50%+ growth in ARPU.
I believe so strongly in this vision that I’ve turned my MWL talk into a podcast episode to share it with the world. (There’s also a link to the original video version below. You should totally watch the Q&A portion because it is FREAKING HILARIOUS. I like the part where I tell MWL publisher Justin Springham that people should throw away their Amdocs shit.) Listen now to hear:
- Why striving to be better than your competitors is a lousy barometer [4:16];
- What tech companies are doing right when it comes to customer love [5:27];
- How becoming customer-centric can double your ARPU – without doubling your CapEx [6:32]; and
- How a public cloud startup called Totogi can help [9:11].
Here’s a podcast episode we released a few months ago that introduced Totogi as “the new ant at the picnic.” Totogi is poised to help telcos leverage their network interactions to become truly customer-centric, and boost customer loyalty and revenue in the process. A few weeks from now, you’ll be able to see Totogi in action at MWC21.
Intrigued? Curious? I hope so! Listen now, and then book your flight to Barcelona so we can talk about all of this in person.
Links and Resources
- You can find the transcript for this episode here.
- Watch the video version of my MWL talk and Q&A and definitely listen to the Q&A, it’s epically hilarious. I was in rare form that day. I’ve rewatched it 3x and keep laughing at my jokes. (Your own jokes are the funniest, as you well know!)
- Check out my DSP Leaders World Forum talk about webscale applications and Totogi
- Listen to Telco in 20 episode 15 about Totogi – “the new ant at the picnic”
- Take a look at the dumb Verizon ad I mention at the top of this episode
- Read about Grab’s $40B valuation
- Check out this Twitter thread from strategist Lillian Li about the secret sauce of super apps being the high frequency of user interactions per day
- Visit the Totogi website
- Get ready for MWC21:
- Find out about all the cool stuff you’ll find in CLOUD CITY and book a meeting with the TelcoDR team
- Read more about the event on the MWC Barcelona website
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The Telco in 20 podcast won a 2022 Gold Hermes Award and was recognized on Forrester’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Channel Podcasts and Feedspot’s Top 10 Telecom Podcasts list.
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Podcast Credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios Royston, TelcoDR
- Executive Producer: Kristin Donelson, OneLouder Marketing
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Editor/Producer: Alisa Jenkins Wilson, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editing: Andrew Condell
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why are telcos losing ARPU to tech companies instead of to each other?
Telcos have long competed on network quality rather than customer experience, which means they’ve ceded ground to tech companies that prioritize customer love. Platforms like Netflix, Uber, and Amazon have NPS scores near 70, while telcos hover in the 30s. Subscribers are spending more with OTT and super app providers—not rival carriers—because those companies deliver experiences that keep users coming back.
2. What is a super app, and why does it matter for telcos?
A super app is a platform that bundles multiple services—payments, deliveries, financial tools, entertainment—into a single, high-frequency experience. The key metric isn’t daily active users; it’s frequency of use per day. Companies like Grab, valued at $40 billion, started in rideshare and expanded into wallet, delivery, and investing. Its ARPU now exceeds telcos operating in the same markets—a clear signal of what’s possible.
3. How can telcos realistically double their ARPU without doubling CapEx?
The path to doubling ARPU doesn’t require building new infrastructure—it requires using what telcos already have. Subscribers interact with a carrier’s network ten times more frequently than with any super app, but telcos don’t convert those interactions into customer engagement. By leveraging network data through a cloud-native platform, telcos can build personalized, high-frequency experiences that grow revenue without a massive capital investment.
4. What is Totogi and why did Danielle Rios invest $100 million in it?
Totogi is a public cloud startup designed to help telcos turn network interactions into valuable customer engagements—the foundation of a successful super app. DR invested $100 million in Totogi because she believes it can transform the way carriers relate to their subscribers: moving telcos from network-centric to customer-centric, improving NPS, boosting app ratings, and ultimately driving significant ARPU growth.
5. What do successful tech companies do differently when it comes to customer experience?
They design every interaction around making customers love them—because they have no network oligopoly to fall back on. Netflix offers easy monthly cancellation. Amazon does no-questions-asked returns. Uber shows real-time driver ratings. These aren’t accidents; they’re deliberate strategies that produce NPS scores close to 70 and app ratings above 4.5. Telcos that want tech-level valuation multiples need to start competing on this same turf.
6. What does Danielle Rios say telcos need to change about how they measure success?
DR argues that benchmarking against other telcos is a losing strategy—every carrier’s NPS is in the 30s, so being “less shitty” than a competitor is a low bar. Instead, telcos need to measure themselves against customer-focused tech companies and adopt new KPIs: NPS in the 70s, app ratings of five stars, and frequency of daily app interactions. That shift in mindset, enabled by tools like Totogi and the public cloud, is what unlocks transformative ARPU growth.