PARTNER FEATURE: There are few industries that touch as many people’s daily lives around the globe as the telecommunications industry, particularly when it comes to mobile devices.

Today, consumers are faced with a barrage of new digital and AI-based services reshaping the digital landscape as well as an onslaught of the latest devices. At the same time, mobile operators are working at a furious pace to advance their networks beyond legacy systems to keep up and enable those new services and applications.

The challenges for operators also include financial and competitive pressures, misaligned agendas and evolving customer expectations as the new devices and services are rolled out.

For telcos, finding simple solutions to complex problems has never been more important as they work to meet customers’ demands while also driving profitability and sustainability.

During a recent panel at MWC25 Barcelona, industry leaders and experts discussed the impact of taking small steps to enable impactful changes across the telecoms industry.

Panel moderator Ben Wood, Chief Analyst and CMO at CCS Insight, set the stage by asking Kingfisher CEO Georgiann Reigle about the challenges of making meaningful changes across the sector.

Reigle said competing priorities, the perception that all changes are difficult, and legacy systems are hindering the industry from moving forward.

Focus on quick wins to build momentum
Accenture’s Jefferson Wang, Chief Strategy Officer, Cloud First, agreed with Reigle about competing priorities being a problem for operators, and added they create a natural tension across the business, operations and technology sectors.

“There’s a common misperception that transformation always requires a big bang approach—but in reality, many of the most successful transformations happen progressively. By breaking complexity into manageable pieces, starting small to create momentum, experimenting in controlled environments to unlock resources, and iterating quickly to scale fast, organizations can drive transformation without being overwhelmed,” Wang said.

“This approach not only accelerates transformation but also eliminates competing priorities along the way,” he added.

Orange’s gold medal performance
Orange’s Karine Dussert-Sarthe, managing director regional Paris, stated the Paris Olympics last year was an example of how the operator took small steps to affect big changes.

Orange had many accountabilities from broadcasting, connectivity and ticketing. Prior to the Olympics, Orange carried out several trial events using other sports venues to test its ability to change the way that it operates ahead of the big global showcase.

“I would say that test and learn and being customer obsessed are my two key pillars to make things happen,” she said. “I think it brought the team confidence that such a level of traffic could be handled by our network.

“So that gives us like a superpower of thinking that ‘Yes, we can do this.’”

Kingfisher creates a circular economy for devices
Wood noted 1.4 billion mobile phones will be sold in 2025 and that the industry needs to take a more responsible approach on what happens to them going forward.

He asked Reigle how Kingfisher is taking small steps to create a big impact for the industry and the environment

“We are trying to work towards a future of one-to-one, where anytime you get a new phone, you’re bringing that old phone back in.” she replied.

There are several key components for creating a circular ecosystem for returning mobile devices, according to Reigle. The first is making the return process as frictionless as possible, both online and in stores.

Operators need to set the expectation that when they sell phones to customers, those customers will return them, which creates a more linear business model.

Changing consumers’ expectations about returning their phones is also key. Orange’s Dussert-Sarthe stated that while 50 per cent of Europeans want to have a second-hand device instead of buying a new one, less than 10 per cent of the operator’s customer base is doing so.

Carriers can help manage customer expectations by providing pre-determined monetary values for the devices, and then sticking to those amounts instead of offering less when it’s time to trade them in.

“By setting those expectations with the consumer, making that trust with the customer that we are going to ensure that you get that value for their phone, you’re bringing that customer back into your store when they’re ready to buy their next phone. It extends that customer lifetime value,” Reigle said.

“Ultimately, that ends up being a win-win”.

A Katalyst for change
Kingfisher is transforming the mobile ownership experience through its Katalyst Circular Operating Platform.

Designed to maximise device lifespans, the Katalyst one-to-one device exchange model enables operators to offer customers flexible options for repairs, replacements, trade-ins, and upgrades at any time while ensuring 100 per cent of the devices are returned, repurposed or recycled.

It does so without requiring operators to make major operational changes to their systems.

The platform allows operators to respond to consumers’ changing ownership preferences when new devices are released while also improving satisfaction scores, generating new revenue streams and achieving sustainability goals. 

“Our Katalyst circular operating platform is purpose-built for the mobile community. It enables telcos to capture the value of emerging tech, respond to the new wave of consumers and do better for the environment, all without risking major disruptions to core operations,” Reigle said. “We can manage every aspect of that to help operators launch projects with less time and less investment on their side.”

Kingfisher, which was founded in 2016, was acquired in 2024 by Allstate Protection Plans, which is a division of US-based insurance company Allstate.

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Seligmann told Mobile World Live she is anxious, but noted there are now more people talking about, and innovating, on major issues including the ethical and humane use of technology than ever.

The executive is also excited at the potential shift the mobile industry could enable.

With the sector accounting for about 4 per cent of global electricity use, committing to be cleaner “sends a huge signal”.

Seligmann argued the industry is unique because it touches every single person. “There are few other industries that actually have that reach.”

The B team is a collective of 33 global leaders working together to make business a driver of sustainability, inclusivity and a better world, she explained.

It was founded by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and chair of Harley-Davidson Jochen Zeitz.

Outgoing GSMA director general Mats Granryd is a member.

The tech industry is “at the heart of the economy that we’re building, and we need to ensure that what we do is based on the values of how can we be good for people and how can we be good for the planet,” Seligmann stated.

Technology for the sake of technology might be cool, but “technology for driving a higher purpose, a world where everybody can connect into the economy, where everybody’s emissions and their environmental footprint can be smaller, is absolutely thrilling”.

Click here to watch the full interview.

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Mark Driedger, CEO of AppLogic Networks, formerly Sandvine, explains the thinking behind the new brand and the business strategy moving forward

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Arun Bhikshesvaran, CEO of Radisys, discusses the value of open ecosystems and his company’s multi-access portfolio and shared network-as-a-service model.

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Stéphane Fund, CEO of Trasna, outlines his company’s strategy in the IoT space and how its end-to-end solutions are evolving.

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Andrew Cole, Executive Chairman of Glow, outlines how his business is growing rapidly by disrupting device financing and device insurance.

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Paula Kant of Invest Hong Kong outlines why foreign companies should establish a presence in the vibrant Asian city.

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Juho Sarvikas of Inseego and Gautam Sheoran of Qualcomm explain how their companies are addressing the fast growing market for wireless broadband.

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Ron Poulin outlines how BTI Wireless is combining in-building distributed antenna systems, enterprise private networks and O-RAN to bring benefits to both venues and network operators.

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Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer of the GSMA, discusses the convergence of AI and 5G-Advanced and the ramifications for the telecoms industry and its customers.

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Boy Martirez of Smart Communications and Geeta Chaudhary of AWS explain how mobile network operators can use AI to deliver a far more personalised customer experience

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Kazim Mujtaba, President of the Consumer Division of Jazz, explains how his business has transformed itself from a traditional telecoms operator to a ServiceCo offering a range of digital services.

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In a panel session she noted the priority for the European Union is to get a boost of confidence and to move forward with a focus on innovation and investment, instead of only regulation.

Nikolay, deputy DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, added it’s great to see that the commission, not only European institutions, wants to increase competitiveness and also drive an agenda of simplification to look critically at its regulatory framework.

She noted regulation isn’t necessarily against innovation. “But the feeling is we have maybe a huge set of regulatory frameworks in Europe that need to be looked at in a context of are they still fit for purpose.”

Closing the gap
Dealroom.co CEO Yoram Wijngaarde (pictured, centre) cited data from a report attributing part of the productivity gap to the rise of the US tech sector. “You can see actually the US breaking away, not from just from Europe, but from everybody already in the 90s.”

Robert Lacher, founding partner of Visionaries Club (pictured, second from left), raised a question: could AI be the trigger applied to the industrial sector to lower the gap?

Nikolay added AI is potentially a game changer for Europe over the next two to three years to “move forward massively”.

Lacher noted people in Europe now don’t take things for granted after perhaps sleepwalking in the last 20 years. “For me as an investor and for the next generation of entrepreneurs, I think it’s a massive opportunity.”

Sufficient capital
For late-stage software development, he noted investors feel there is more than enough capital.

He believes current geopolitical shocks and tectonic shifts are always once in a lifetime moment for entrepreneurs. “There couldn’t be better opportunities in these times to build a new company. People are waking up, starting to take risks again and becoming hungry again.”

Factorial CEO Jordi Romero (pictured, far right) argued Europe should never strive to be Silicon Valley, “because we’re never going to win. There is only one Silicon Valley.”

Romero said the region has been losing brilliant minds to the US and other parts of the world for a few decades. He suggested short-term incentives to start pulling back talent from other economies to local start-ups to help them scale faster, such as a better tax regime, coupled with existing cost of living advantages.

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In a fireside chat with Brendan Gaffey, global co-leader for TMT at McKinsey & Company, Blair noted chief data officers often complain their teams are burdened by requests for more dashboards for running basic data analysis, keeping them from “all the really sexy stuff like building their own small language models on top of large language models to do stuff better”.

He argued a company cannot begin to think about AI meaningfully until it gets the data literacy piece right.

Multiverse is a technology start-up focused on training people on the job to do things better and faster, increase access to economic opportunity and help their organisations perform better, he explained.

Blair said corporate training had evolved from an employee benefit to a business benefit, with boards, CEOs, CTOs and CIOs often taking responsibility.

He insisted companies must invest in their people, explaining this could reframe a lack of desire in major economies to support immigration, and a general backlash against some elements of globalisation and outsourcing.

In education, the CEO pointed to a problem where students with personalised tutoring perform two standard deviations above those with no tutoring. 

Blair explained AI helped to overcome the problem because it can provide everyone access to a personalised tutor which can understand the unique context of their role, so allowing more people to be reached.

Turning to efficiency gains, Blair noted the world has not seen a material impact on productivity “despite the relentless march” of software tools.

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