Podcast

Ep 73 – Can telco compete in CPaaS?

August 22, 2023

This week’s guest

Yesmean Luk

Principle Consultant and Practice Lead STL Partners

The Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) market is expected to hit $60 billion by 2030. Telcos deserve a big piece of this revenue—after all, their networks power CPaaS. But up until now, they’ve lost customers and revenue to companies like Twilio that make it easy for developers to add capabilities to products without having to navigate complicated telco organizations.

But the landscape is shifting. With the cloud native capabilities of 5G and initiatives like the GSMA’s Open Gateway, there are signs that telcos can take back the CPaaS reins. For this episode, I talk with Yesmean Luk, principle consultant and practice lead at STL Partners, about the future of CPaaS and what telcos need to do to recapture lost enterprise revenue.

Listen now to hear:

Why CPaaS is a huge opportunity for telco [04:32];
What needs to happen to make Open Gateway work [07:13];
Why enterprise developers will be key to recapturing lost revenue [14:49]; and
How having a software mindset can help [16:09].

Links and resources

Don’t miss my September 5 TelecomTV talk about why now is the time for telcos to take on Twilio. It includes a sneak peek at an awesome new Totogi CPaaS product.
The Totogi team will also be demonstrating our CPaaS offering and our game-changing Charging-as-a-Service at TM Forum’s DTW – Ignite in Copenhagen from September 19 – 21. (And of course we’ll be throwing an awesome party. DM me on X or LinkedIn for details and an invite!)
Yesmean and I met when we took part in a CPaaS Acceleration Alliance panel. Check out its recent State of CPaaS report.
Recent headlines confirm that a lot is happening in the CPaaS space:
- March 8, 2023: Skyvera Acquired American Virtual Cloud Technology Assets
- July 17, 2023: Proximus Group acquired a nearly 60% stake in Route Mobile
- July 21, 2022: Ericsson completes its $6.2B acquisition of Vonage
Read my recent blog, Telco execs: Are you jealous of Twilio?
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Yesmean and I both think telcos are ready for a CPaaS comeback. Check out this highlight reel from one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history, when the New England Patriots rallied from being down 28 points to beating the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in Super Bowl LI.
When you’re done, take a look at this video of LL COOL J’s Mama Said Knock You Out, aka “Don’t call it a comeback!”

Guest bio

Yesmean is a principal consultant at STL Partners and leads the Private Networks practice. She has led major strategic growth projects with both operators and technology companies globally. Her focus has been on helping clients figure out how to drive growth in a B2B2X ecosystem, including in domains such as private networks, network slicing, edge computing and network APIs. She has also authored several thought-leadership reports across these areas and is a regular speaker at renowned industry events. Before joining STL, she held various consulting roles at Deloitte and IBM.

Follow DR

Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow Telco in 20 on Twitter @TelcoIn20
Follow DR on Twitter @TelcoDR

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.

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!