Interview: Proximus Group CEO Guillaume Boutin (pictured) pitched the company as a prime example of how telecoms operators can use diversification to bolster their balance sheets, telling Mobile World Live its affiliate companies are opening new doors while it maintains its incumbent business in home market, Belgium.
During a briefing in London, the executive noted Proximus’ units BICS, Telesign and Route Mobile were propelling a strategy to establish the group as a global leader in digital communications.
The companies head Proximus’ international ambitions, providing it with direct access to digital communications and identity sectors which sit adjacent to its core domestic telecoms proposition.
Boutin said the three businesses contribute more than €2 billion to group revenue, around 30 per cent of its total, are growing fast “and providing probably a unique set of ingredients compared” with its competitors.
The executive claimed at least a top-five position among global digital communications platforms, “depending on how you count things”.
Boutin based his assertion on elements including the more than 450 mobile operators Proximus’ enterprise connectivity unit BICS directly connects with, a number he said is key to success in terms of providing a uniform service.
Citing the sending of a message to an end-user in Africa as an example, Boutin noted a need for extremely low latency to enable near instantaneous delivery to maintain customer satisfaction.
Also in Proximus’ hand is Route Mobile, an India-headquartered cloud specialist offering communication platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) along with a path into what Boutin describes as a lucrative Asia-Pacific market.
Route Mobile targets enterprises, OTT players and MNOs in more than 20 countries. Boutin explained the unit orchestrates channels spanning SMS, OTT services including WhatsApp, voice and email “to be able to send the right message to the right person at the right moment” on their preferred channel.
“And on top of that you have the anti-fraud application, which is a service provided by Telesign,” Boutin said, explaining the unit provides assurances to enterprises over the authenticity of communications to maintain the quality of customer experience.
The executive noted the physical positioning of the businesses is also key, with Route Mobile in particular exposing it to India, “the fastest-growing market in the world”. Boutin noted this is a key element in a broader leaning towards the APAC region as a whole, targeting markets which are in the ascendancy and help to diversify the Belgian company’s revenue base due to the “different economic cycle”.
Boutin said the three divisions mean Proximus has “unique capabilities” as it moves to compete in the digital communication sector.
I don’t see any negative aspects of having in the same group a global platform business and…more traditional activities.
Guillaume Boutin – CEO Proximus Group
Digital transformation
Boutin spoke of being on a journey of softwareisation involving the cloud and the GSMA Open Gateway initiative to expose operator APIs to third-party developers.
The CEO admitted Proximus is “not yet fully ready for primetime” in terms of its API push, but argued it is on-par with European peers working towards the same end.
“[F]or the moment it’s just paperwork, it’s being developed but it’s not something that is massively used by our customers”, Boutin explained, adding at some point in the next decade, Proximus and others will move away from a traditional model of providing SIMs and internet connectivity “to exposure of the capabilities of our networks”, a “massive transformation” which is already happening.
Again, Boutin believes Proximus’ diversified strategy helps. Route Mobile’s platform approach, for example, creates an appetite for change away from a traditional telecoms business model to one focused more on software and services.
“I don’t see any negative aspects of having in the same group a global platform business and…more traditional activities, because convergence is going to bring the two activities a bit closer in the coming years”.
The CEO highlighted exposure to different pools of talent as a benefit of the API and software push, particularly in India, where he said the knowledge base provides another way to accelerate the company’s transformation.
Boutin noted the traditional telecoms model had to change: “even if you have still opportunities to grow in the B2B with the new technologies arriving” and standalone 5G “starting to get some traction, you are still operating in a market that is limited by your network footprint”.
“So if you want to continue to grow a bit faster you have no other option but to go beyond your boundaries or the frontier of your own networks, that’s where a shift is happening.”
Boutin expects the market in ten-years to be more converged, with greater use of OTT platforms to provide services to end-users and the potential for a more tailored approach. “The API that will be available soon to access the capabilities of our core networks is going to be an additional channel”.
Boutin noted the same convergence play is at work in Proximus’ approach to the IoT, with BICS likely to have a leading role in helping it tap what he believes is a global opportunity.
He noted some analysts predict 30 billion objects will be connected by 2030, “twice what we have today”, with a growing emphasis on these items interacting meaning the sector will become as much a part of Proximus’ engagement platform as real people are today.
Boutin predicts the increasing number of connected things will inevitably result in a surge in the amount of data which can be extracted and give rise to the use of digital connectivity twins. He is confident BICS’ current 450 operator partnerships leaves Proximus well-placed to capitalise.
But there is always room for innovation: Boutin noted Proximus is tapping connectivity opportunities for travellers through BICS, turning what may have been a threat to its traditional telecoms business into a prospect.
He estimates so-called travel SIMs could be a €3 billion opportunity in 2025, a “huge size”, which Proximus is already making headway in through a deal with French supermarket chain Carrefour, a relationship bringing BICS closer to the consumer sector.
Affirmation
Proximus’ board recently reconfirmed Boutin as CEO for another six years.
He explained the backing is important in many ways, not the least of which is in giving him time to complete the job of rejigging the operator.
The CEO noted the company is in the throes of a “huge transformation” and there are plenty of business-focused books available which explain that diversification strategies are fraught with pitfalls.
“I think what we are doing is quite unique and it takes time”, he said, pointing to efforts to integrate various businesses to create a unified organisation: “it takes a bit of time and I wanted to see the results of that transformation”.
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