Orange Wholesale International CEO Valerie Cussac (pictured) sat down with Mobile World Live (MWL) to set out a strategy to accelerate the company’s shift to an API-driven Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) provider, primed to meet the demands of the AI era.

Since taking the helm in August, Cussac explained her top priority now is to “accelerate the shift to NaaS”.

She explained: “We’ve been transforming our network by adopting containerised, cloud-native technologies, effectively turning our infrastructure into software. And now, we are ready to make it available for customers and this is what NaaS is all about.”

Cussac described the overhaul as “a shift in the way we are doing our job”, calling it both structural and cultural. “We used to sell products – mobile, data, voice – and now we are selling services,” she remarked. To that end, he company has been showcasing 5G Core-as-a-Service, enabling operators and MVNOs to deploy flexible core functions on Orange’s telco cloud.

She identified scale as the crucial differentiator. “The more we add services in a point of presence, the more cost-effective it is. Thanks to the cloudification of network functions, it makes possible for us to enter the kind of cost effectiveness that we see in the cloud economy.”

To keep pace with the rapid transformation, around 800 employees are being retrained through an upskilling programme focused on cloud, IT and software-defined networking, she added.

AI uncertainty
On AI, Cussac pointed to practical deployments and “very impactful use cases on the network monitoring and incident management side” already delivering value. Indeed, the company’s partnership with US-based AI and machine-learning platform Augtera has “reduced network alarms by 70 per cent and enables predictive network management”, she explained. “This is the kind of efficiency we can get from AI,” she added, noting the technology also boosts “the cost effectiveness of our network”.

Cussac believes the AI boom is reshaping wider infrastructure priorities, creating “huge demand in capacity” and urging operators to rethink network structures. “It will impact the topology of our networks,” she warned.

She acknowledged overhanging doubt over where computing power will ultimately sit: “Would it be central? Would it be at the edge? Would it be even on device itself?” Ultimately, she said that this is the kind of uncertainty “we will have to live with”. However, keeping in step with “what is happening in this data centre topography” will allow the industry to mould capable networks “for the AI needs of tomorrow”.

Decades of cooperation
Despite the disruption, Cussac remains optimistic about the mobile sector’s trajectory. “Three things – cooperation, standards interoperability and carrier-grade quality of service – make me confident that in the future, this industry could definitely build the foundation for this new digital economy.”

For the chief, collaboration remains the industry’s greatest strength moving forward. “We have to move all together with this next generation of networks,” she concluded. “This industry relies on decades of cooperation. We have this strength as a community… this is an advantage that we should absolutely leverage.”