AI And Telcos: From Hype To Revenue

AI is loud at MWC, but we wanted signal, not noise. We sat down with Angus CEO from BeyondNow to unpack how telcos can turn hype into real revenue by building an “AI factory” for SMBs, digitizing the front office, and orchestrating partner ecosystems that deliver complete, easy-to-buy solutions. The conversation gets practical fast: what it takes to package connectivity with AI-driven services, why data readiness still gates everything, and how to replace price wars with a disciplined upsell motion that deepens relationships and boosts stickiness.

We explore the shift from back-office obsession to front-office acceleration—where CPQ discipline, guided selling, and AI agents create a faster, cleaner path from quote to cash. Angus breaks down why B2B is different from B2C, how standard blueprints cut complexity, and where prompts can and can’t launch new services yet. Instead of betting on magic, the focus is on proven building blocks: structured data, simplified migrations, partner co-selling, and outcome-based offers that customers immediately understand.

If you work in telco, MSP, or enterprise networking, you’ll hear a playbook for growth: unify internal stovepipes into coherent bundles, add partners to enrich the solution, automate fulfillment end to end, and use AI to amplify—not replace—sound operations. We also touch on Beyond Now’s 45% growth trajectory, portfolio expansion, and plans to bring AI factories to life across adjacent markets. Ready to connect AI buzz to booked revenue? Follow the show, share this episode with a colleague who needs a better upsell strategy, and leave a review with your biggest AI roadblock—we’ll tackle it next.

Transcript

Setting The Stage At MWC

SPEAKER_00 0:01

And I'm here day one, MWC with Angus from Beyond Now. Angus, how are you? I'm great. Great to be here. Well, it's been a minute. What's new? What's new at Beyond Now? What are you excited about as we head into the annual get together in Barcelona?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Well, I think the real buzz here is around AI and how AI can help transform telco operations, how it uh we'd be a springboard to grow revenue, uh, some of the things like infrastructure as a service, selling GPUs, selling new solutions, like AI factory, um, a lot of focus around how uh in the small and medium-sized business, the SMB sector, um, how they can be better served by telcos who create uh an AI factory to create solutions which can be packaged up with connectivity uh for those customers.

What Beyond Now Actually Does

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Wow, that's a lot to unpack. But how do you describe Beyond Now to someone who's maybe not familiar with you and your background and your journey? Um how do you describe yourself these days?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

So we always see ourselves as an ecosystem orchestration company, and that is helping uh companies work with partners. Those partners might be on the buy side, they might be uh part of a solution to solve a problem, or they could be on the sell side where you sell through different channels, whether that's MSPs or specialist, you know, uh channel partners you want to work with.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

What are the biggest challenges, roadblocks that you're seeing the MSPs, the telcos service providers uh have these days? I mean, obviously, revenue is number one. Number one is revenue. What else are they struggling with?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I I think you know there's a lot of talk about AI, and I'd be really interested on to hear today, because everyone thinks that AI is like magic beans. The question is: have the telcos done enough digitization of their own business to have the data, the structured data, which they can then monetize through AI. Uh and so for me, uh I'd be interested to hear how efforts on the old digital transformation, yesterday's theme, are progressing because really super important to have some of those foundational building blocks to really be able to exploit AI.

From Back Office To Digital Front Office

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Brilliant. So uh beyond now, maybe describe how the team works, where you you guys are, OSS, BSS, as we used to call it, with kind of a back office function no longer, right? I mean, the back office is incredibly important for it is incredibly important.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Uh, you know, monetizing, you know, is kind of the one of the core tasks. But but you know, what we see is this uh this need to really move and to digitalize the the front office, to be able to sell digitally, uh, to create new channels to market, um, to be able to use AI and agents to have an amazing customer experience. But also uh for the telco, when it comes to ecosystems, not just work working externally with partners, but today many of the telcos owned businesses are far too difficult for their customers to navigate. So those ecosystems can actually be internal divisions. So we've seen a lot of interest, particularly in the US, for example, around how do I create um uh simple offers where I'm packaging together all the things that I do together with partners. So, how do you bring in all the various elements of your own organization, step across the stovepipes within your business to create full solutions, and then add partners to do to create to enrich the solutions, and then on really on the sell side, looking at how best to serve the customer, and is that through digital channels? Is that uh is that through partners as well? So, how best to serve those customers? Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

And it sounds like the the business side, enterprise side is a big part of your value proposition, something kind of a lot of telcos have missed out on over the years, really serving within the enterprise. How's that going? How are you helping them?

Upsell Over Discounts And Stickiness

SPEAKER_01 3:49

So I saw I actually saw one of your your podcasts, and you very neatly uh talked about 5G monetization, and that was a work in progress. And I think the B2B space is really where the big opportunity has always lied. And you know, for us, a lot of what we've done over the last you know three, four years has been in the B2B side, helping transform some of those key functions within B2B. B2B is very different from B2C, so things like how you serve those customers, things like configure price quotes, CPQ, um the sort of offers you create. I think one of the big movements is that um telcos traditionally have competed a lot on price. And if you need to win a new customer and you offer a discount, then that's a one-way ticket, you know, to prices going down. Whereas uh if you move to an upsell uh sales motion, what you're effectively doing is you're saying, how can I better serve, get closer to my customer, understand a broader set of problems they have, and how can I bring partners in to perfectly solve those problems and create richer solutions? That means greater customer loyalty, greater stickiness, growing revenue, but also it's five times easier to upsell an existing customer than to win a new one. And your core connectivity, which is at the heart of what you offer, becomes more sticky. And so you know you put connectivity at the core, you have those bigger relationships, uh, more revenue, uh, and then you automate the fulfillment and all the back end to that and use AI to create an amazing customer experience.

Can Prompts Launch New Services

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Fantastic. Well, let's talk about that. Traditionally, you know, when you worked with the telco to deploy new services, there was you know, COBOL code to change. There were teams of internal developers, you had technical debt, you know, you had to bring in a giant systems integrator to get it all working. When will we get to a point where I can put together a prompt and create a new service within my telco? Is that day coming? Um yes and no.

Blueprints, Migration, And Simplicity

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Uh so it's it's all very easy to say, oh, AI will come and revolutionize. A lot of what we've been doing over the last you know, 12 to 18 months is making that B2B transformation a lot simpler. And that's really basic things. So we we have blueprints. So rather than saying what would you like, we say this is what we recommend. And so on day one of a program, starting off with a fully configured solution uh and saying this is what we recommend you do, uh, it's really fast-tracking the implementation. Uh, and so taking some of the optionality away, uh, and then you know, uh having a simple implementation. B2B is complex. I mean, there's no way around it. You know, it can be extraordinarily complex. How do you migrate customers, complicated enterprise agreements, how do you draw that migration? And yes, AI will have a huge part to play in that, um, but also in taking that bit the business online, making it more digital, uh, creating agents, that will be a uh a huge step forward. But at the same time, some of the basics around the core implementation, the migration, um, and shutting down the legacy systems um, you know, requires simpler ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Fantastic. Simpler is better. What are you excited about as we head into uh the next phase beyond this MWC? What are you uh keen on uh this year?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

So we're we're growing our business by 45% per year. Wow. And uh, you know, there's pressure on us to, we've got a new investor on board, uh, and then there's pressure on us to continue that growth over the next four or five years. So we're looking to really drive our top line growth. Uh, we're looking at a you know bigger portfolio of solutions, uh, more acquisitions, uh, probably stepping into adjacent markets as well. Um AI is a really key part of that mix for us. Things like AI solution factories uh and how we identify our business so we keep on top of what our customs are looking for.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Very exciting. What a full plate. Very uh fascinating stuff. Congratulations on all the success onwards and upwards. Thank you. Thanks so much.