Orange’s Leboucher: Collaboration is key to drive platform play – TelcoTitans

Laurent Leboucher, Group Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice-President of Innovation Networks at Orange, has reiterated that the Group intends to transform itself into “what we call a platform” across its footprint, although he conceded that it was still at the beginning of the journey with many challenges yet to overcome.

Speaking at the recent OSS/BSS Summit jointly hosted by Ericsson and Orange, Leboucher said the French group and the wider industry must embrace a number of disruptive technologies in order to meet the increasingly diverse needs of use-cases that extend beyond connectivity.

Here, he cited cloud native at scale and the move towards one telco cloud, 5G standalone (5G SA) networks and network slicing, generative artificial intelligence, and autonomous networks.

Regarding the latter topic, Leboucher confirmed that Orange will “very soon” achieve Level 3 status, as defined under the TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks project, and said “we are moving to Level 4”. The operator has previously indicated it is on track to implement autonomous networks use-cases in 2025.

However, Leboucher noted that progress is not consistent across Orange’s footprint. While most countries are between Level 2 and Level 3, some are already at the higher level while others are lagging behind.

A horizontal view

Leboucher has long espoused a move to a horizontal platform approach, combined with the need for greater industry collaboration, in order to help improve telecoms network efficiency and accelerate go-to-market opportunities for 5G SA-based services, for example.

Arnaud Vamparys, Chief Technology & Information Officer for Europe at Orange, has also previously highlighted how the Group is moving to a cloud-native network and culture. Philippe Ensarguet, Vice-President of Software Engineering at Orange, is leading the platforming initiative and, like Leboucher, is keen to promote a horizontal and industrial platform approach to help improve telecoms network efficiency.

He echoed recent criticisms by Orange Chief Executive Christel Heydemann of mobile prices that have driven down average revenue per user in Europe compared to the USA — and citing the erosion of value through hyperscaler and over‑the‑top competition. He said that while it may be possible to force through regulatory change to improve the competitive environment, “I think we have to face this situation, and we have to embrace, at the same time, a deep transformation”.

“ This deep transformation is a technology transformation… It’s also a transformation of how… we operate networks, how we embrace artificial intelligence at scale… how we can expose all our capabilities, including our network connectivity into and through a platform… [and] a huge skills transformation. ”

Leboucher.

Looking beyond connectivity, Leboucher said operators need to “show and explain very simply” how new features of the network can serve different requirements.

“ It’s not one size fits all. There are many diverse needs that we can serve, and it’s not just about connectivity. It’s connectivity plus cloud plus cybersecurity plus AI, and how we can provide the full end-to-end digital infrastructure for the new use cases, leveraging our assets in a way which is extremely simple to consume, as simple as a cloud. So this is network as a service, digital infrastructure as a service for the different requirements. ”

Leboucher

Slicing it up

Leboucher noted that Orange benefits from an international IP backbone, with points of presence in several countries, as well as domestic networks in different markets. “And we believe that everything is connected and that everything should be revealed, exposed through that platform”, he said.

He claimed Orange has initially decided to address three “value proposals”.

First, he cited “classic” software‑defined wide area network (SD-WAN) connectivity for enterprises, which is “transforming itself into something which is much more dynamic”.

“ MPLS is still there, but in future, we believe that we need to provide [an] extremely flexible IP backbone to cope with different requirements in terms of quality, in terms of security. We will slice it. It will be a sliced network… and we will be able to expose [the slices] through APIs for our enterprise business. ”

Leboucher.

Extending this to mobile, Leboucher said the assets in the different geographies will also join the same platform to support both smartphone usage and Internet of Things (IoT).

Elsewhere, he indicated that smart industries and what he terms ‘IoT 3.0’ fall into a second category of value propositions. Although Orange is doing “a quite significant business on IoT”, he claimed, connectivity here is still provided on a volume basis and the “unitary value is pretty low, and that’s the problem”.

“ We believe that there are some use-cases where the value can be much bigger if we can guarantee that [there is no] data packet loss, if the latency is guaranteed below certain limits, if we can also provide additional security on top. So typically, for instance, [Secure Access Service Edge/SASE], which is today provided on fixed [networks] but could be extended also to mobile, SASE-on-SIM, so these are the kind of features that we want to provide also on the same platform. ”

Leboucher

Leboucher noted that Orange has now launched 5G SA in Belgium, France, and Spain.

“ We believe that now it’s really time to leverage that and, instead of building, for instance, [a] dedicated mobile private network each time for each [different] requirements, what we will do now as much as possible, is to leverage our public cores, and use it in a way where, for instance, we can slice it for certain requirements. ”

Leboucher.

On the subject of 5G SA slicing, Leboucher said Orange has started by provisioning static slices, such as through the new 5G+ Home offer in France. However, he stressed that in future this capability “needs to be dynamic, because spectrum is scarce… we need to make it extremely dynamic, extremely flexible. It needs to be automated provisioning”.

Full exposure

A third category relates to the exposure of network application programming interfaces (API). “We believe that this platform as a whole will need to be exposed to partners and customers through APIs”, he said.

Here, Leboucher said operators will need to expose the capabilities of their networks at scale if they want to benefit from what he describes as “network for AI” opportunities.

As with others, he also distinguishes between “AI for network” versus “network for AI” to explain how operators handle a dual focus on AI, whereby the technology is used to optimise networks on one hand, and support new, revenue-generating applications on the other.

“ ‘AI for network’ and ‘network for AI’ are two sides of the same coin. AI for network is really the engine. We put everything today on AI for network, and in the future, network for AI could… give us new opportunities, potentially changing the traffic. And if we really want to succeed in this transformation, we cannot do it alone. It’s an industrial momentum. ”

Leboucher.

He described network APIs as a “very important priority” that requires industry collaboration. For example, he welcomed the fledgling joint venture between Ericsson and a group of telcos that aims to add momentum to developer take-up of network APIs.

Unveiled by Ericsson in September 2024, the API JV or NewCo is a vehicle to aggregate telco APIs. Ericsson will take a 50% stake in the new API venture, if it receives regulatory clearance, with the remaining 50% set to be equally portioned out between operator partners. These currently include América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile US, Verizon, and Vodafone. Three Sweden is also in negotiations to join the JV’s shareholders.

Like many of its peers, Orange also participates in Open Gateway, formed by the GSMA and underpinned by the Linux Foundation’s CAMARA open-source API project. Through the initiative, telcos are aiming to define a federated framework for operators to port and reproduce common APIs that work in the cloud. According to the GSMA, the project is backed by 67 operators, representing a total of 278 networks and 75% of international mobile connections, and 26 channel partners.

More recently, MásOrange, Telefónica, and Vodafone Group joined forces with Barcelona‑based research centre i2CAT to establish Europe’s first multi‑operator Open Gateway laboratory. A spokesperson for the GSMA noted that other labs have been established by China Telecom and China Unicom, and also pointed to telco developer portals as well as aggregator sandboxes as separate areas of development.

Orange has also indicated it is planning to create a dedicated business unit that will focus on capturing growth from enterprise adoption of telecoms APIs.