Pioneering a New Era of Digital Communication with OXIO's Vision

Get ready to unlock the future of telecommunications with Axio's CTO, Adil,  whose pioneering vision is reshaping connectivity as we know it. Tune in as we dissect the game-changing potential of 5G and AI with Adil, and learn how Oxio is tearing down traditional barriers, enabling a new wave of entrants to the telecom arena. Imagine deploying telecom services in less time than it takes to binge-watch your favorite series – that's the reality Oxio is creating, akin to the seismic shifts brought on by giants like Uber and AWS.

As we embark on this episode, we also welcome the expertise of an illustrious new team member straight from the heart of initiatives like Google Fi. Hear firsthand the excitement surrounding Oxio's customer-first ethos and the transformative impact of technologies like eSIMs and AI on international travel connectivity. Wave goodbye to bill shock and hello to personalized digital experiences that tailor your telecom needs to your unique lifestyle. This isn't just a discussion – it's a glimpse into a future where telecommunications is not just a service, but an integral part of our digital identity.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Hey everybody, happy Friday. We made it through another week and I'm delighted to have the next guest's fascinating mission around reinventing telecom services and networks with Axio Adil. How are you? Pretty good. How are you, evan? Intrigued by you and your services and vision.

Speaker 2 0:25

So lots of questions, maybe before that jump right in as CTO, maybe introduce yourself your personal perspective and the big idea behind Oxio Excellent.

Speaker 2 0:39

So thanks for having me. By the way, this is exciting times for us, at least in the telecom space, like with 5G and AI and all the other admins that are actually taking place. But more importantly, like you know, for us you know so, by the way, adil Ballyhomji, cto of Oxio been with the company for now about seven months and really enjoying where we are and our trajectory in terms of like we plan on delivering for this year into next year. But back to telecom. I think it's an exciting place to be in because there are more and more things that you're actually seeing from 5G and from all the other innovations that are coming into play. But, more importantly, from our standpoint, it's all about, like you know, trying to get the right connection services available for MVNOs that are in the market that you're seeing like an explosive growth happening across the globe, not only just in the United States but on the outside also. So, yeah, beautiful times ahead for us.

Speaker 1 1:41

Indeed and maybe give us a snapshot of your vision of changing the game. For the traditional way, mobile networks are created and services are delivered to enterprises and users of all sizes.

Speaker 2 2:15

When you look at traditional networks as such. So you've got the, you know you've got a blueprint for an MNO, you've got a blueprint for an MVNO, and then you've got the SIs or the systems integrators, or the MV, fintech and other industries that actually do want to get into the telco space but just don't know how to get in there, and what they're given is this blueprint book, like you're either an MVN or an M&E or you're a systems integrator, and that's how you actually connect. And we've seen this actually happen in other industries where the game's actually changed, like whether you take Uber or you take AWS, where they've provided portals where you could effectively, in Uber's case, you get a ride share, it's right on your app. In AWS, you get a portal where you can sign up and you get compute power and it's available to you in seconds. There isn't anything like that that's there for telco. It doesn't exist and predominantly it's because of the legacy connectivity and the legacy nature of the industry itself.

Speaker 2 3:14

So what we are doing is we are propelling that into the future, where we are trying to bring in concepts that basically allow retailers or any of these industries that are out there that would like to be a telco or would like to participate and would like to provide that experience in their own space with telco connectivity, and I think if we are able to actually bring that to bear, where they can log into a portal and get those services whether it's voice, text and data made available through a screen and hook into the right MNO with the right commercials, at that point in time they are all set.

Speaker 2 3:53

They don't need to actually go through an SI and go through this long, arduous process of nine months of trying to get them integrated. So I think we believe that we have a great platform. We believe we've made it flexible, we've made it secure, we made it very much customer obsessed, if you will, to try to get to a point where they have the right connectivity in place. So that really changes the game in where new entrants make it easy for them, make it flexible for them, provide an out-of-the-box solution for them to actually integrate with MNOs, provide an out-of-the-box solution for them to actually integrate with MNOs, and we think that that's the path of the future, for the new age, if you will of telcos coming into the industry.

Speaker 1 4:36

Well, it certainly is exciting, and you talk about launching services in under three months, which is, as we know, in this industry unheard of. So what's the secret in moving so quickly versus the usual year and a half, two years plus in getting a service up and running in telco land?

Speaker 2 4:56

Right. So think of us as basically we tend to believe like we are in the space of an MBNX, if you will, where you know we have. We obviously have the platform that is hooked into, you know, various MNOs, whether it's in the United States or Mexico, and a lot of time region, and what we do is we provide turnkey solutions where MBNOs can actually sign up and create their plans, create their offering and provide the best customer experience, because we actually come in with a core. We are not just a systems integrator, so we have the entire core that actually hooks into an MNO's core, that allows you to get voice, text and data available through the interfaces that are there from the core directly and that provides then the flexibility that you can provide to the MVNO's customers, because it then gives them this turnkey solution where you can provide the platform, the intelligence or the business layer intelligence through an API set of economy.

Speaker 2 6:06

So you're not really going deep into, you know connecting. You know whether it's the OSS layer or the BSS layer or the provisioning. Like you know, those are like legacy thinkings and they're like legacy mindset software. You know, well, I need to have a billing platform to actually do this. No, you don't really. You just have the Opsio platform and it actually gives you a turnkey solution of all the things that you need, because what you're really caring about is just the experience that you're going to provide, rather than, you know, worrying about all the things that are there on the telco side. That's what we actually manage for them, no-transcript. Rather than worrying about like is my connectivity up? Is my OSS up? Is my PSS up, is my provisioning having a problem, like all that we manage and we make it available through an API to them.

Speaker 1 7:21

Wow, that's pretty compelling. And talk about your approach to multi-carrier networks versus a traditional single carrier kind of setup. It sounds intriguing, but how do you manage all that complexity with multiple carriers?

Enhancing International Connectivity and AI

Speaker 2 7:36

when you start thinking about, like the connectivity that you have with the MNOs over the carriers, you know, we would create separate profiles that would allow us to actually, you know, be on, you know, carrier A versus carrier B and, depending upon cost, depending upon connectivity, depending on coverage, we would then dynamically actually be able to move the customer into the right carrier at the right points in time. Now there might be certain MBOs that might say that we've got affinity and that's the only carrier that we want to be with, and so be it if they actually have that affinity. But we have the capability to multi-profile the sim in a way that you could actually jump through different carriers within country as well as globally. So now think about an international traveler, think about an MNO that wants to have cross-border plans, think about, you know, customers that basically want to pay for services for family members that are sitting in other countries, like there's just so many other types of offerings that could potentially be created that reside on top of the legacy you know MNO type of connectivity, because we would be hooking into, you know, carriers that are not only within country but also externally to that country, so you could effectively have, you know, plans that are created across countries.

Speaker 2 8:59

You could effectively have a SIM that is the single SIM and you're not, you know, getting surprised on your billing. You're not getting surprised on connectivity, you're not. You know, it's all predetermined and that's generally what customers want, right? They want, they want to know what to expect for and they want to know what to, you know, have when they're actually traveling. Nobody wants that uncertainty, nobody wants that. You know that dwelling of you know a shock or a bill shock that you would get after your travels are complete. So we believe that we basically have that secret sauce where we can actually enable the multi-carrier option and have the components available for customers to actually roam across multiple carriers, and you could trigger it based on AI, you could trigger it based on the settings that you'd actually create within the platform.

Speaker 1 9:51

That's fascinating and international connectivity has gotten so much easier over the years, particularly with eSIMs, and we're all in the industry just over at Mobile World Congress and it's just so seamless. But you're saying there's a lot more that can be done and most people don't perhaps even know about eSIM, so I imagine that's part of your strategy is making that much more accessible and open, easier for enterprises and users, right?

Speaker 2 10:19

Yeah, no, totally, I think. Look, you know, as you, as we start peeling the, you know the onion back in terms of, like, you know whether it's regulatory or whether it's in country. You know restrictions that are basically there. You know we hit upon all these legacy problems that MNOs are actually faced on right, but the virtue of us being actually connected into the MNO, we have that space actually quarantined as though they're riding on our core, if you think about it. So it's basically our core that's now blanketed across the globe. That allows you to then connect into multiple countries with multiple MNOs directly. So it's like a full MNO access that we actually have within that country.

Speaker 2 11:05

And think of the place where you're actually, you know following the customer, where you know you're being treated as the local rather than you're being treated as whether it's a roaming partner now or I need to care about international rates. I need to care about, like you know, my calling. Is my plan going to be subsidized or is my plan going to be throttled after I reach two GB of data or three GB of data? Am I going to fall into, you know, the less? You know talk and text minutes plan, like those are things that customers always worry about. But when you're on the Oxio core as such, when we actually start plugging away into multiple countries, you would effectively have that local rate that we would provide in that country.

Speaker 1 11:51

Wow, that's really a fascinating use case. The other thing you talk a lot about is AI and personalization, something that traditional telcos haven't really done much with. I think about my providers. You know I love them, but they keep my service up but they don't really know who I am or what I do and I don't know all that data they get they don't seem to do much with beyond maybe reselling it to someone else. So how do you see that as a game changer for personalization, customization of services and customer experience? Perhaps?

Speaker 2 12:26

Yeah, and see, I think you know, like no dig on, you know MNOs of the world. But you know, if you think about like how you know the telcos have graduated, if you will, into AI, right, so they have. They have created these systems on systems, on systems. So it's like this layer cake of you know systems that are basically there and what they basically have done is they've found use cases within those systems, within those platforms, and they've built AI on top of that, right, so now you've got multiple brains basically telling them how it should really be performed. So, in your example that you basically said, you know you walk into a store and you know it's like the first time they've met you. You, you know you call into customer service and it's the first time that.

Speaker 1 13:10

Except Apple. I would say when you walk into an Apple store, they know who you are, why you're there, and it's a brilliant experience. But we can't all be Apple, I guess.

Speaker 2 13:20

Well, you know. So I would argue that you know there could be a place where we could be right and that's basically what we're trying to get at over here is, you know, our components are, you know, when you think about the New York customer or, you know, have the 360 of the customer. We have the components that actually feed in from the telco layer, which is, we are gathering data that comes in from the telco side, but, more importantly, we are also feeding in data that comes from the not-bound interfaces, which is like the brand APIs that we expose out to the brand and that gives us that full customer 360. So we've got now think of it like the digital twin of the customer that actually stays within the corpus and we are very aware and very context-sensitive of what that customer really wants to do or has done. Right, so there are very, very much like AI models that could be built within that same corpus of the customer itself and going down to, you know, what we call a segment of one instead of, like you know, an audience of like thousands and millions, right, so you could effectively get to a place where you are now providing the right set of, you know, ai insights for the brands. But not only that, you're also providing them back to the telco gear, telling the telco gear what's potentially happening for that customer at that point in time.

Speaker 2 14:40

So you've got a full connected view now of what the customer is doing, what the customer is planning on doing, and you also have you know, we've got examples like in Mexico where it's a ride share app. We know basically where the customers actually travel based on the location gear that they've actually created and allowed us. We can effectively help them with the connectivity with the retailer. We can help them with the connectivity with their own app to give them a proper heat view of what's actually happening and transpiring off their customer base so they could then figure out where they're really required in terms of ride share, where they're required from a retail standpoint, provide those use cases that otherwise you wouldn't really get because of the lack of you know, the connectivity of the data right, so you don't have a connected corpus that you can't expose out.

Speaker 2 15:32

So, from a personalization standpoint, from a delivery standpoint and also, you know, helping the brands I mean you obviously have the standards where it's shown propensity models and you've got the you know, the buy propensity models and things like that that are there, which is, you know you're what I would call, is your plain vanilla, like where you need to really graduate to, is you know what are the experiences that you're going to provide that are differentiated from others, that could make a difference for the customer, right, and it's not about just buying and selling. It's also about giving them the best experience at that point in time, because it's very contextual. Right, I might have a drop call today, and you know that's what I'm really calling about, which was the most important call that I had to make and that's the one that really concerns me. I'm not caring about like, what next iPhone I'm going to buy, or you know what's my next service really going to be like.

Speaker 2 16:25

So, making it very contextual is basically, you know, the hyper-personalization for the segment of one, for that one customer, rather than you know the masses. So I'm pretty excited about you know what's in store, pretty excited in seeing, like, what could be the art of the future when it comes to the AI, very excited about, obviously, the compute power that we are going to have in terms of bringing in the personalization, because it's going to need that much computing, it's going to need those modeling to help actually benefit the customer at the end. So it's all about customer experience. It's all about being extremely customer obsessed in of like how we are actually going to deliver.

Speaker 1 17:10

Oh, that's really fascinating. And speaking of customer obsession, I'm reading here you're working with Walmart, maybe to the degree you can talk about it. What can you say about that partnership and you know some insights on your role in that relationship?

Speaker 2 17:31

Yeah, I mean not to dwell too much um into. So our relationship is um, you know, with mobile x, um at the moment and we are basically, you know, mobile x is in, is in walmart, uh stores. But you know, if I, if I were to zoom out and talk about, like you know what the, what the effect of that essentially is, when you know you for MVNOs to actually build out AI-driven plans, so there is a component over there that basically talks about how the plan you go into this trial mode and then you actually try it and then you buy it, or you go into a trial mode where we learn about your usage patterns and then we actually provide you the right, appropriate plan and these type of plans. Doing it in the legacy way, we would have to create thousands of them, right, because I would have to create every variation of the type of plan that you would have before I would actually jump into creating a voice, text and data plan.

Speaker 2 18:31

So we provide these capabilities where you know it's very different from how the legacy providers or legacy MNOs would actually provide, because they want a certain sense of certainty in terms of, like, what their ARPU is going to be, what their plans are really going to be like and if you flip that on its head and if you say, hey, if I provide certainty to the customer, I would generally get my certainty on the ARPU.

Speaker 2 18:58

So, if you think about the AI models, if you think about try and buy, if you think about the plans and services that you really offer out, we are structuring our products and services in a way where, through the APIs that we actually expose out, we provide the capability of allowing the MVNO to be in control of how they want to actually provide the services to their end customer and that gives them that clean flexibility of actually having plans and services and models defined, in a way where you've got an AI model created, you've got the plan that you actually offer and then you jump into whether it's unlimited or it's metered or whatever that might be, and it's just a fantastic way of actually getting things done.

Exciting Future of Oxio Telecommunications

Speaker 1 19:47

Indeed, yeah, really, really intriguing. Let's talk a little bit about yourself. You recently joined Oxio One of your colleagues also, Glenn. You know one of the key movers behind Google Fi, which I'm very familiar with. You know. Talk about joining the team and what you're most excited about in this. You could have gone anywhere, done anything in the industry, given your background, but why Oxio?

Speaker 2 20:22

Yeah. So, look, you know I've had the pleasure of being with Verizon for a very long time and really loved the place because it gave me the opportunity to grow within my career and see various aspects of the telco industry right, whether it's the OSS side, the network side, the products and services side. So you know very diverse in. You know where I was and I think you know when I started looking at, like you know, telco of the future and what that really would be. You know, building out the sub-brand for Verizon, which was visible, it really opened my eyes in terms of, like you know, trying to figure out, like, what that could be, what the state of the art really could look like. And you know, apparently, looking at Oxio and what their vision was at that time when I was talking to Nico, who is the CEO of Oxio, that the vision was very similar to what you know we were thinking about. You know and what I was thinking about and how we wanted to actually change the landscape. And I feel like we are sitting on a cusp of actually with 5G and with 5G SA and with the enterprise world and MEC and all the other things that could potentially come on. You really need a platform that could make this thing simple enough for people to have a turnkey solution. And if you don't have that, you're going to be always in that legacy spiral of a year to 16 months out to try to actually deploy any services that could be made possible.

Speaker 2 21:49

And I think we've got that secret sauce and to build upon that secret sauce with the years of experience that guys like myself and Glenn bring to the table, I think we have this acute opportunity of actually turning the industry on its head and having a platform and a solution which is much like the way we started off, like AWS or Uber or one of these that are out there.

Speaker 2 22:13

So, having the ability to have a strong you know connectivity, having the ability to provide maximum flexibility you know being completely customer obsessed, you know those are like all the core tenants of you know a strong player in the market. And I thought, like you know, this is one of the places where we feel like we are going to have that. We're going to have that very soon. And I thought, like you know, this is this is one of the places where we feel like we are going to have that. We're going to have that very soon and you know, in terms of like, the delivery, in terms of, like, you know, the the new advent of having a global footprint doesn't exist today, which is really a strong driving force as to what this could really be when it's all said and done. So, yeah, very excited, very thrilled to be here, obviously, and you know it's going to be an exciting 2024 and 2025,.

Speaker 1 23:07

I would say yeah, absolutely, and sort of my thinking is this could reshape the whole telecom space over time and the model could change dramatically. I mean, imagine getting your mobile services from Apple directly or from Amazon. Those are my words, not yours. I'm sure you know you have lots of ideas on how this might impact the industry. But what are you excited about as we head into the next couple of months? Any events, trips or travel, or is it more heads down and working with customers?

Speaker 2 23:44

Yeah, look, I think we've obviously created partnerships and ecosystems with third-party vendors who are going to actually provide and help us through this journey. And, you know, given the model that we have, we are going to push the limits on, you know, what legacy mindsets of Telco is going to be. So that's one where we're going to be hedged down on delivering for this year. You know we obviously, you know, are going to be working with our cloud providers and make sure that they actually can, you know, meet the needs of the business, meet the needs of the telco, meet the needs of the engineering. So definitely there's going to be a lot of you know, I would say you know innovation that would come in that space, because, you know, think about, you know, having a self-healing, programmable, you know, global network that is able to do those things using AI insights and using the capabilities of delivering on it.

Speaker 2 24:47

So, you know, there's obviously the compute piece of it, but then there's also the interconnects, there's also the you. There's also having a quote-unquote smart network, if you will, that basically is aware of capacity, is aware of throughput, is aware of number of subscribers and it's aware of how it should be shaped. So there are a few things in there that are really really exciting and really cool for engineers like myself to kind of build out and showcase. So we'll be pushing the limits. We'll be pushing the limits, we'll be pushing the boundaries, if you will, in certain cases, and meanwhile still having the right brand experience, still having the right you know brand experience, still having the right you know customer experience for our MVNOs through the API layers that we'll actually provide.

Speaker 1 25:41

So, yeah, very exciting to see what's going to come Well, exciting times and congratulations on all the success and the vision that you and the team have built, and onwards and upwards. Thanks, adil. Thanks for joining.

Speaker 2 25:54

Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 25:56

Appreciate it. Thanks everyone, and I look forward to more chats like this in the near future. Take care. Bye now.