At MWC Barcelona, LotusFlare CEO Terry Guo sat down to discuss how the company’s DNO Cloud platform is transforming how telecom operators monetize their network assets. Designed as a cloud-native, digital enablement and monetization platform, DNO Cloud helps CSPs scale efficiently, deploy updates weekly, and launch new revenue streams with ease.
Guo highlighted the growing demand for API monetization, eSIM solutions, and MVNO opportunities. With major partnerships, including T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, LotusFlare’s DNO Cloud simplifies API management, allowing telcos to capitalize on emerging trends. Whether enabling eSIM resellers or helping influencers launch MVNO brands, DNO Cloud provides a seamless, multi-tenant approach to network monetization. Watch the full interview to learn how LotusFlare is shaping the future of telecom.
Alejandro Piñero:
All right, Terry, thanks for having us here at MWC Barcelona. Let's start with what LotusFlare DNO Cloud is, and what service does it provide for your CSP clients?
Terry Guo:
All right. DNO stands for Digital Network Operator. It is a monetization, commerce, and digital enablement platform that we specifically built for telecom operators. The reason we decided to build DNO 10 years ago was, at the time, we noticed that there were a lot of internet companies that was really good at building highly scalable software cheaply, and then operating them cheaply. We wanted to bring that practice to the telecom world.
DNO, at its core, has all the capabilities you would expect from a BSS and more. Data capability, for example, is built directly into DNO. That's a shortcoming that we saw in the legacy BSS. Digital capabilities and other capabilities, again, was a shortcoming, and we built that directly into DNO. The other thing that we did with DNO is that it's cloud-native, meaning that we take full advantage of the cloud. This gets you things like be able to continue to deploy.
For all of our customers, in fact, we deploy on a weekly basis. That means they're getting new features on a weekly basis. That means their consumer's getting new features on a weekly basis.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Of course, some exciting partnerships already with the likes of T-Mobile and DT in terms of API marketplace and getting them set up. What are some considerations that CSPs need to have when getting set up, and how easy is it to go through that process?
Terry Guo:
Yeah, API is a interesting kind of new opportunity that have shown up over the last few years. We have been in that space since the very, very beginning. A lot of people think, "Hey, API is easy to monetize. I just need to get an API gateway in front of it, and I'm good." In fact, that's not true. There's a lot more you need in order to monetize APIs properly.
We have designed a reference architecture, and then we used DNO as the foundation to deliver that architecture. There's a few key pieces. One, we call it a translation layer, and then above that, you have your exposure layer. You have things like monetization module. You have consent. You have API gateway. So we have put that whole package together as a easy button to press if someone wants to launch API business.
The other thing I would say about API business is that we have been working quite a bit with T-Mobile and DT. In fact, we power a lot of their API business on the backend. There's obviously things that are confidential. I can't say too much about the work we do with T-Mobile. But one thing I would say, the learning is that it's a very much evolving space. There's a lot of changes.
So one of the things that T-Mobile really appreciates about us is our ability to be agile and to be able to deal with these changes. When new opportunities come in that space, we're able to help them capture it very, very quickly.
Alejandro Piñero:
Great. Of course, the DNO is multi-tenant. It can address several parts of the network. So maybe can you talk to us a little bit about what are those network elements that can be monetized, and thinking about eSIM, how can those CSPs leverage that to wholesale their network and bring in some extra revenue?
Terry Guo:
Right. So DNO is multi-tenant, and the way to think about DNO is that it is a... We talked about this earlier. It's a monetization engine. We can sit on top of any CSP assets, so that could be wireless, could be fixed broadband, could be third-party services that they bring in as part of partnerships. It could also be APIs or data that they're trying to monetize.
Once we integrate on top of those assets, we allow them to launch different lines of business, and this could be a single instance of DNO, and then you create tenants on top of. That allows you to launch these different lines of business.
Specifically about eSIM, I'll talk about, that's a more recent phenomenon that has happened. There's a few things that's happening in space. You know, eSIM is not new technology. It's been around for 10 years, but what really has caught consumer interest was when Apple began to support eSIM. That's when consumers became more aware. That's when they started to adopt eSIM.
Over the last three years, there's a whole bunch of eSIM kind of consumer players that have come to the space to address the eSIM travel opportunity, and they are all looking to buy data from CSPs so that they can resell to the consumer. It turns out that a lot of the existing wholesale platforms are not sufficient to be able to support these eSIM resellers. That's when we came in, and we saw that opportunity. We spoke to some of the CSPs who had this need. Very quickly, we were able to adopt DNO to support that use case. So that's on the eSIM.
The other thing that I want to mention is that this is in the MVNO space. There's also kind of this new breed of MVNOs coming to the market. This is, again, in the last three years. These MVNOs are essentially celebrities and influencers, or they're looking to leverage their brand to make money, and they don't actually want to operate a MVNO, or they don't have the knowledge to operate MVNO. So they need a really easy button to press to be able to launch and operate.
Again, that's when kind of T-Mobile recognized this opportunity. So they launched a program called YNOW. That's their program to serve this new breed of MVNOs, and we are the technology provider. Again, I think DNO is the foundation that we built this YNOW project on.
Alejandro Piñero:
Well, thank you so much, Terry, and have a great show.