The telco industry is in the midst of a generative AI (GenAI) revolution, with vendors and operators racing to integrate this technology into their products and services. In this episode, I sit down with John Abraham, principal analyst and leader of the digital enablement practice at Appledore Research. We dive into how vendors are applying GenAI to their products, major trends in BSS, how the costs of implementing AI can be justified by real business results, and more. Listen now to hear:
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
With over 16 years’ experience in the telecom industry, John Abraham is a principal analyst at Appledore Research and leads the digital enablement practice. Previously, he was at Analysys Mason for 11 years, where he led the Digital Experience research segment as Principal Analyst. He has experience working with a varied client base on topics including digitization benchmarking and procurement for CSPs; strategy and go-to market for vendors; and commercial and technical due diligence for financial institutions. Earlier, as a consultant at a BSS vendor, he led requirements gathering, solution definition, and implementation at multiple tier-1 telcos in Asia and Europe. John holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Anna University (India) and an MBA from Bradford University School of Management (UK).
The Telco in 20 podcast won 2024 and 2022 Hermes Awards, 2023 and 2022 MarComm Awards, and was recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a short review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
Get my FREE newsletter, delivered every two weeks, with curated content to help telco execs across the globe move to the public cloud.
Set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
According to John Abraham from Appledore Research, the three major BSS trends are: GenAI integration to improve customer experience and reduce costs, a booming B2B segment with operators better positioned than ever to serve enterprise customers (driving demand for CPQ systems), and lean monetization efforts to reduce the cost and complexity of legacy systems while making them more agile for emerging use cases.
Most vendors are focusing GenAI applications on two main areas: customer support agents and marketing teams. For customer support, use cases include bill explainers that reach out to customers proactively, and various tools to make agents’ jobs more efficient. For marketing, vendors are developing automated offer creation and recommendation engines. However, most marketing applications are still in the demo phase, while customer service examples are closer to live deployment.
BSS Magic uses AI for code generation rather than creating copilots or chatbots. It generates actual software code—team members can describe what they want in natural language, and it produces code to change screens or add functionality. The revolutionary aspect is that it’s not a new stack to swap to; it layers on top of existing BSS solutions from any vendor, understanding and modifying the current systems telcos have in place. Totogi calls it a “CR killer” because it eliminates costly change requests.
GenAI pays for itself when focused on use cases generating business value. For example, using AI to handle support tickets autonomously can shrink support departments by up to 50%, directly replacing the cost of people with the price of tokens. Additionally, organizations that are already using the public cloud in the right ways should see costs decrease, freeing budget for AI investment. Rather than worrying about token pricing today, telcos should focus on effective use and building applications that can switch between models as prices drop.
Code generation represents the most advanced use of GenAI, moving beyond 20-30% productivity improvements from copilots to creating autonomous agents that complete whole jobs. At the full spectrum, you tell the system what you need, and it creates code to do exactly what you’ve asked—eliminating weeks or months of traditional coding, debugging, and change requests. As demonstrated by Danielle Rios and Totogi, this approach can save telcos millions of dollars in development costs while dramatically accelerating their ability to implement new features.
Between Mobile World Congress and TM Forum’s DTW Copenhagen (roughly three months apart), there was a significant shift from exhibiting flashy GenAI use cases to focusing on what’s actually accessible and how it can realistically be implemented. Copenhagen was more about getting closer to reality, with vendors demonstrating more practical applications. However, many demos remained repetitive, with five or six vendors showing similar capabilities like bill explainers, indicating the industry is still in early stages of differentiation.
Apple Podcasts 
Spotify 
YouTube 
