Last week, I sat in a room with some of

the biggest telecoms providers,

infrastructure providers, carriers, and

product builders in Europe. It was a

one-day conference in central London.

Every major player was there and five

things came out of that day that I think

every founder and every business owner

needs to hear. Here's what I learned at

the Cavell Summit Europe this year. The

Cavel Summit is a conference that brings

together the telecoms industry across

the UK and Europe. Founders, CEOs, and

market analysts all sat in a room for a

full day of talks, panels, and

discussions. I founded CircleCloud,

which is a telecoms company that

installs and maintains phone systems to

small and medium-sized businesses in the

UK. And now I'm working on Wii U, which

is a modern business phone system, which

we deliver through Circle Cloud for

those customers looking for more of a

managed service offering. and through

the Wii U website for those customers

looking for a more self-service

solution. So, these are my people. These

are the people that I've been working

alongside for over a decade. But what

made this conference different is that

the conversation wasn't just about

telecoms. It was about the future of how

businesses communicate. And that affects

everyone, not just people in my

industry. Let me walk you through the

five things that stuck with me.

The first one is data sovereignty. And I

know it sounds dry, but stay with me

because this one matters more than you

think. Here's the concept. When you make

a phone call, a normal business phone

call, let's say you're in London, where

does that call actually go? If the

company providing you with the phone

service is running their infrastructure

on a public cloud, let's say they are

running on AWS and they happen to have a

point of presence in the US, that call

will go from your office in London to

their data centers. It might be in AWS

in the US somewhere or it might be in

Europe in which case your data for that

phone call traverses the UK and it goes

over the to the US or to Europe or

another country. The point of this is

that your data doesn't stay in the UK.

And for phone calls, you could say this

is okay. Phone calls are pretty secure

these days. So you've got SIP, you've

got RTP, you've got most of the SIP

calls are running via TLS which is

secure, but you do have the instances

where they're not as secure or they

could be eaves drops. And the point of

this is that the calls which go to a

different country, you don't control the

data policies and regulations in those

countries. And when you're involving

phone calls, it's not that much of a big

issue. But when you're talking about AI,

then it becomes an issue. Let's say for

example, envision this. The phone call

happens, it ends, it's all secure. The

call recording then gets sent for

transcription to a service like OpenAI.

OpenAI is based in the US. The servers

are based in the US. So that call gets

transcribed. It's in the US and then it

gets sent back to you. That journey,

that call can be intercepted. The US

could have a subpoena uh sorry, open AI

could have a subpoena from the US uh um

Department of Justice and then that call

is now in the public domain. For

example, this is a widespread issue that

is becoming more regulated as time goes

by. There's a new law that's coming out

uh over the next few months that relates

or a new regulation that relates to how

data is handled in telecoms and in in

big companies and it's it's one to watch

out for over the next few months. We've

put a ton of attention to detail into

this. We've made sure from the beginning

that our infrastructure is all hosted on

our own servers. We run data centers in

London, data centers in the south coast

and we even have our own AI servers in

our data centers. So all the call

recording transcription, all the

analysis, all the summarization is

happening on our own infrastructure

which we don't need the most powerful

models in the world to do transcription

and summarization and recapping phone

calls. This is a a misnomer. You don't

need these really powerful models. So

we've managed to do this on our own

infrastructure and ma making sure that

the data stays within the UK making sure

without even realizing that we are

sovereign in our data in our data

handling policies and customers are

asking about this they're asking where

does my data go during this phone call

and for in our case we can say the data

stays within the UK but maybe your

provider can't so it's worth asking that

question the big carriers are setting up

data centers in the UK they're moving

their stuff from the public cloud back

into private cloud and setting up points

of presence in the countries that

they're in. Google, they said in the

conference, is actually doing a deal, a

partnership with Mistral. Mistral is a

French AI company that is uh doing a

great work and because they're based in

the EU, Google's doing a deal with them

where they're able to utilize the or do

a partnership model where they're going

to be using Mistral's AI infrastructure

to deliver the Google Gemini product. So

if mega corporations like Google is

doing partnerships with a French company

just to get into the European market in

terms of AI, there's something

definitely coming here. So if you're

running any kind of voice service or

you're using one, ask the question,

where does your data go? After all, it's

your business. It's your data. So you

should know.

The second thing that hit me is how AI

is being discussed. It was being

discussed at the conference like a

feature. How's AI going to disrupt

businesses? How is it going to disrupt

telecoms? And I'm sat there thinking,

are we still talking about AI like it's

coming? It's not coming. It's already

here and it's already changed how most

of us work, if not all of us already.

The way they were talking in the

conference, I mean, it reminded me of

like imagine being in the 1900s. I can

imagine there were companies having

board meetings and going to conferences

talking about how electricity is going

to impact their business. How should we

navigate electricity? What's our

strategy for electricity?

>> Gentlemen, electricity is a force we

cannot ignore. But the costs, the

infrastructure, it's madness. The risks

are too great. We need more data.

>> It sounds silly because electricity

isn't a feature. It's everything. It's

the foundation that everything else runs

on. That's where I think AI is right

now. It's not a feature that you just

turn on. It's not a module. It's the new

baseline. But the way some of these

telecoms companies were talking about AI

in the conference tells you something

about the industry. I think there's two

types of telecoms companies, telecoms or

software companies right now. The first

type is modern. They live in Kubernetes.

They've got CI/CD workflows everywhere.

They've got modern thinking, forward

thinking developers that are using AI

every day to code them, build their

applications. They're deploying it

either in the public cloud or they're

deploying it on their own uh

infrastructure. But in in modern terms

and modern infrastructure, they move

really fast. They care about design.

They care about the user experience.

They ship fast and they iterate

constantly. The second type, and I say

this respectfully, is the traditional

telco or software company. the ones who

are running older architectures, the

ones that were probably developing

innet, no harm or um you know no insult

here, but the old type of software

companies that uh are still slow to

maneuver. The ones that haven't really

adopted AI, they don't really trust it.

They're running an old infrastructure.

They don't really care about the design

of the product. They don't care about

the user experience. They just want

software that works and they believe

software to be just a a means to an end

and they haven't got any attention to

detail and care about the craft or the

design behind it. And for their telecoms

infrastructure, they're running huge

clusters with archaic technology and

they're so big and slow to maneuver that

they haven't really updated a lot of the

technology where if they did it would

make a massive impact in their

operations and efficiency. And look,

I've got respect for the people that

have built these big old companies

because they shaped the industry to

where it is today. But the world has

moved on. If you look at companies like

11 Labs or other startups like that,

they live in the new era, the new world.

They don't have technical debt. Well,

I'm sure they do have some technical

debt, but nothing like the old

corporates and they move at completely

different speeds. Traditional Telos,

they tend to operate more like the

second type. You know, they're slower.

They're big, massive corporates with

legacy infrastructure. Their appetite

and capability for rapid change is

lower. And that creates a gap. The

companies that understand that AI isn't

a feature, that it's the new

electricity, they're the ones that are

going to win, not because they're

smarter, but because they're faster, and

speed in this market is everything.

Now, the third point, and this was by

far the biggest point of conversation at

the event, and they actually put at the

beginning of the conference, they put on

the screen a question for everybody to

answer. and you had the ability to scan

a QR code and you grab your smartphone

and then you could answer the question

on your smartphone. So everybody or most

people at the conference answered the

question and the question was what do

you want to get out of this conference

today? What was the what's the topic

that you wish was discussed or you want

to be discussed at this conference and

the most without doubt the most common

answer was voice AI. How is voice AI

going to impact my business? How is how

do I adapt and produce a voice AI

solution that works for customers and

and and provides a solution? Who are the

best voice providers? Voice AI

providers. It was all about voice AI.

The organizers of the conference

actually planned the conference mostly

around sovereignty, data sovereignty and

other related pieces. AI was there, but

voice AI may be hidden by surprise or

something, but voice AI was definitely

the topic of the day. And it makes sense

because voice AI is already disrupting

how businesses communicate with their

customers. Let me give you two examples

that we shared at the conference. The

first one comes from a company called

Bamwith. It's a US carrier which has a

strong presence in Europe and they've

built a voice AI agent that is capable

of performing action similar to what we

want to do with Ringup built into Wii U.

They've built it at a higher um business

a bigger business level more of a

corporate level and they installed it.

They gave two examples one of them was

at a hotel chain big hotel chain in the

US which had a problem with their front

of house um employees. that people that

were working in front of house weren't

able to answer the phone in busy

periods. And what was happening is that

guest guests were calling down to guest

services maybe to place an order for

room service or to book a table for the

restaurant that evening or whatever it

may be and the calls were just not

getting answered and the impact on guest

experience was devastated for their

devastating for their chain. So what

they did is they implemented voice AI

before it reached the human. And that

voice AI had access to the booking

system. It had access to the system, the

guest services system. It could place

orders for room service. It could place

um change reservations and and check

reservations etc. And what it did is it

allowed the humans within the reception

to attend to other guests and it

drastically improved the guest

experience within their hotel chains.

The second example they gave was a busy

chain, a chain of busy restaurants that

at peak hours didn't have the waiters

available to answer the phone calls from

other restaurant guests calling in to

either book a table or to change a

reservation or to inquire about the

menu. And in fact, I think to myself,

who these days would call a restaurant

rather than just going onto the website

or going on to Google and then booking

the table from there? And in fact, I am

one that would do that if I'm driving or

if I'm busy doing something else. I just

grab my phone and just dial the

restaurant quickly or I tell Siri to

dial the restaurant and I try and book a

table there if I'm doing other things. A

lot of the times when I do that I don't

get an answer and that's because they're

busy attending other customers. So what

voice AI can do once you've connected it

through to the booking system is it

would allow the the caller to inquire

about the menu. It would inquire about

uh what tables are available. It would

arrange the booking all done with an

automated agent without needing to speak

to a human which means that the humans

can then attend other customers within

the restaurant improving the overall

customer experience. Now here's the

interesting tension that I detected at

the conference. They were talking about

these new startups, these new tech

companies that are creating all these

voice AI products that are competing

with the Telos because what they're

doing, they're putting the voice AI

product in front of the tele telco

solution, in front of the unified

communications platform or the phone

system and extracting margin from the

telco providers. And I think that

creates a differentiation between the

two types of companies. You've got these

telco big telco operators that are slow

to move and they provide the telecom

services but they don't really provide

those value added services on top and

then you got the brand new startups who

don't know anything about telecoms. They

provide the solution for the customer

and that solution you know might be

communicating through uh an API to

something like Twilio so they can make

and receive phone calls. They don't know

anything about telecoms but they know

about the customer and they end up

winning the the deal. And how much of a

better solution would they be able to to

run and provide if they were aware or at

least if they knew about telecoms as a

whole? If they knew about session border

controllers, if they knew about how uh

soft switch works and how to routt calls

and how to run phone calls on premise,

they would provide ultimately a much

better level of service. The the call

quality will be much better. The

troubleshooting will be much faster. the

ability to run many more phone calls

will be better and more stable overall

long term at scale. And finally, it will

probably be cheaper for them overall,

but they need the skill set for this.

And we're positioned in a unique place

because we have the software skills. We

have the quick pace of action. We move

quickly and we also have the telco

experience. We have the soft switch

experience. We are running our own

network and we're positioned within that

intersection of a modern software

company and a traditional telco right in

the middle. That middle ground that gap

is where we are positioned and that's

where we think the opportunity is.

The fourth point, and this was a clear

one delivered at the conference, is that

people believe that the voice services

as a traditional method, you know, when

you you have a 10 to 15 pounds per user

per month license that comes bundled in

with a,000 minutes or something, that

service, the price of that service is

trending towards zero. Eventually, maybe

it will even reach zero. So, how do

telecoms companies make money? How can

they make money when that traditional

service is going to be obsolete? And

it's by value added services. What are

value added services? It's the

integrations. It's the overall customer

solution because it's one thing

providing a phone system voice license

where they pay per user a month just to

be able to make and receive phone calls.

And it's something else providing that

plus on top data analytics so you can

plug in your CRM or whatever system you

use your financial system into the

platform so that you can present data in

the form of dashboards and reports not

just of your phone system but also of

your business uh applications in one

single dashboard or scheduled report.

It's something else to be able to have

additional services and tools such as,

for example, Ringup giving you the

facility to implement voice AI agents

within your phone system to root calls.

Not just agents that can answer phone

calls and take voicemails, but agents

that can actually do and perform actions

by plugging into the current CRM that

you integrate with because of the

integration that we've built through EU.

And the third is integrations

themselves. because all businesses or

most businesses use a CRM or a financial

system or some kind of platform to

record and save and manage their

business. So, integrating into these

platforms allows a productivity boost,

an efficiency boost, and allows

customers to do the best work possible

by having access to the best technology

for their business. So, why is it that

the cost of voice licenses is going to

continuously trend down to zero? I think

it's down to services like WhatsApp, for

example. WhatsApp calling, it's end to

end. It's free. People are used to just

picking up their phone, going into

WhatsApp, and calling a contact through

WhatsApp, either with audio or with

video. And there's no cost to that call.

But why is there no cost to that call?

It's because it doesn't touch the public

telephone network. You can't just pick

up and dial a number on there. And when

it comes to businesses and when it comes

to communicating with businesses,

businesses still have phone numbers. And

that's still the universal method to

communicate with businesses through

voice. So at Wu, we've realized that the

commodity is the phone line. The value

is the products you build around it and

the solutions that you solve for the

customer.

And the fifth thing, this is less about

what I learned at the conference and

more about what the conference reminded

me of. We're in the process of taking

Wii U and delivering it as a SAS as a

software as a service solution. And we

need to find a way to differentiate the

product. We need to find a way to

specialize because in a crowded market

and telecoms is a very crowded market.

If you don't differentiate, you're just

invisible. I remember reading a brochure

around 10 years ago and there was a line

from a a VOIPE company that was selling

cloud communications and they said how

to stand out from the cloud and I

thought that was quite clever but it's

even more relevant now. So how do you

stand out in a crowded market? The way I

think about it is this in order to stand

out in a crowded market you need to

understand the customer and understand

their workflow. And in order to

understand their workflow, you need to

really know how they operate day-to-day

and know what problems they have so well

that you can create a solution that

removes friction from their problems so

that they can solve them faster and

better with your solution. And the only

way you can do this is one by

verticalizing meaning that you

specialize in a particular industry and

you solve a problem that that industry

has that because you understand the

industry you're able to solve that

problem really well. or two, you

specialize in a particular solution that

might apply to multiple industries, but

you solve the problem within that

solution extremely well. And with W, you

see, we're currently evaluating both of

those options right now. But to us, the

principle is clear. In a noisy market,

the businesses that will succeed are the

ones that are able to create a solution

that is super laser focused on solving

one problem better than anybody else in

the world is. The businesses that are

known for something specific, not

something generic, not we do everything

for everyone. No, we do something really

specific for one specific type of

profile, but we're the best in the world

at it. And that's what we're going to

focus on in Wuci. Create that unique

proposition that is solving that one

problem extremely well for a particular

segment. And once we've made that

decision of what segment that's going to

be, we're going to focus all our

marketing efforts around that.

So, five things from one day at the

Cavell Summit Europe. Data sovereignty,

it's real and it's actually becoming

regulation really soon. AI isn't a

feature. It's actually the new

electricity. Voice AI is the biggest

opportunity in telecoms right now.

Traditional voice pricing is probably

going to zero. And the only way to win

in a crowded market is to specialize.

None of these exist in isolation. They

overlap. The company that builds a

communication platform that has all

these at its core. It has AI at the

core. who are able to solve really

specific problems better than anybody

else in the world can who building their

systems and infrastructure in a

sovereign way. So it handles data in a

sovereign way and who specialize in a

particular vertical or in a particular

solution. Those are the companies that

will win and that's what we're building

at WC and that's I find these

conferences super motivational and super

interesting. They remind me that we're

heading in the right direction. If you

want to follow along with what we're

building, I share the lessons of what

I'm doing and what I've learned and what

we're building. So, subscribe. And if

you want my founders operating system

framework that I've built, click the

link in the description. This was my

overview of what I learned at the Cavell

Summit Europe last week. See you in the

next one.