Alianza is redefining telecom with its Telco 4.0 vision! In an exclusive Fierce Network interview, CEO Brian Beutler reveals how Alianza is helping carriers monetize their networks with AI-powered, cloud-enabled solutions. With over $3.6 trillion invested in infrastructure, service providers need more than just cost-cutting—they need real revenue growth. Enter Alianza’s game-changing approach! Following its acquisition of Metaswitch from Microsoft, Alianza is partnering with Tier 1 carriers like Lumen to modernize legacy systems, integrate AI, and drive next-gen telecom services. No more stagnation—just innovation, automation, and new monetization opportunities.
Steve Saunders:
Hey, Brian, it's good to see you again. What is the number one challenge that you as the CEO of Alianza think is faced by carriers today?
Brian Beutler:
Yeah, Steve, good to see you again as well. I think the number one challenge for carriers is really a decades-long challenge of monetizing their network infrastructure. I think it's fascinating that over the last 10 years, service providers have invested over $3.6 trillion in their network infrastructure, and the primary result of that is broadband speeds that have really increased exponentially, almost 10x over the course of that decade. But the challenge for service providers is that they have not been the beneficiaries of the monetization of those network investments. And the big enterprise value creation has taken place over the top of their networks, not from within their networks.
Steve Saunders:
They've got caught out in a way, right? I mean, they built the infrastructure. They did what they were supposed to do. They have these incredible five nines networks, but somebody else is making money from them. I mean, you've come up with this Telco 4.0 model, which I love. Tell us a little bit about that.
Brian Beutler:
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of just a historical perspective from our future. And if you look at the Telco industry over the last 20 years, it's really gone through four key evolutions, the first one being TDM and circuit switch networking. And if that was voice 1.0, then voice 2.0 is defined by soft switching and the digitization of the TDM infrastructure. And in so many ways, that was a big benefit to service providers because it decoupled them from the hardware layer when it came to service innovation. But it also was a double-edged sword because Telco 2.0 opened to the door for over the top service providers to deploy services on top of their network. And so now we're transition from Telco 2.0 to 3.0, which is all about the cloudification of legacy infrastructure and helping service providers to deploy more modern, more innovative, more customer-friendly services that can drive the next generation of revenue growth. And Telco 3.0 is really what I'll call a transitory step to Telco 4.0, which is a very fast follow, which is all about AI-infused, cloud-enabled telecommunications.
Steve Saunders:
Where is your value add into that model?
Brian Beutler:
Our value add, I mean, we've gone through some really interesting transformation ourselves over the last couple of quarters. In December, we announced the acquisition of the Metaswitch business from Microsoft. And in many ways this positions Alianza not as a vendor into the Telco ecosystem, but as an indispensable strategic partner that can help service providers wherever they are on that spectrum, from Telco 1.0 to Telco 4.0. We can meet them where they're at on their journey and help them with cutting edge infrastructure and capabilities.
Steve Saunders:
Can you give me an example of somebody that you are working with right now that you are helping through this portfolio play and Metaswitch?
Brian Beutler:
One of the customers we really like talking about is Lumen. Lumen, one of the largest Telcos on earth, and certainly has its fair share of Telco 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and even some 4.0 in their network, very complex back offices. And somebody like Lumen may have millions of TDM customers still and supporting and cash flowing from those, but at the same time, they have to meet their enterprise customers where they're at in the market and with what they want. And that is increasingly cloud-powered, infrastructure light, AI-enabled services, and there's a whole new slew of new products capabilities and monetization opportunities facing service providers that lean into this moment.
Steve Saunders:
One of the things which I'm really interested in hearing you talk, Brian, is that you are focused on making money when so many companies are focused on saving it. Businesses are supposed to make money and lots of it. Are you finding that your message is being well-received by service providers who are perhaps a little bit fed up with having built networks and then being told that they need to cut the cost of running them?
Brian Beutler:
Absolutely. I mean, it's a really interesting... I mean, I could talk about this for hours with you, but for better or for worse, service providers' success is measured as a function of earnings. And earnings for so long have been derived by one of two measurements. You either increase revenue or you decrease cost to drive earnings. You can't really create more earnings without doing one of those two things, but for so long, service providers have been stuck in Telco 1.0 and 2.0 land where they have really an inability to innovate and grow revenue. What do you do to drive earnings when you can't drive revenue growth? You focused on cost, but in some ways this has been a big disincentive to the entire ecosystem because as service providers have put pressure on the vendor ecosystem, they've been successful, but they've also cut off their own innovation stream, right? If you think about an operator's ability to innovate is only as good as their underlying partnerships and their underlying vendor's capability to innovate, but a focus on cost, if you're an underlying service provider, they're their own worst enemy in this discussion.
Steve Saunders:
I was going to say they did it to themselves. There was a boomerang effect, but now I think I really see incredible enthusiasm from tier one carriers being given the tools, and in your model at the top of the model, whether it's predictive analytics or automation or AI that can give them a way to have agency in a money making service world. And my goodness, there are so many different opportunities there, aren't there?
Brian Beutler:
In one of the kind of early customer preview calls we've done after the announcement of the Metaswitch acquisition, I had a senior executive at tier one tell me, "Brian, we've never been so excited about the future of our telecom network. You've infused us with the level of excitement we haven't felt in over a decade." And I think it is a really exciting time to be an operator with these amazing network assets now in place over the air and in the ground with fiber networks.