By: Anand Palkhiwala

The journey to 5G is entering a new stage as communication service providers (CSPs) move from building networks and expanding their reach to monetizing their investment. As part of that work, leading CSPs are eyeing automation, AI, and intelligent orchestration to unlock efficiency, scale and new sources of revenue.

It’s not just an ambition either, with clear commitments being made globally to these key areas. For instance Telstra recently announced that it is stepping up plans to accelerate the shift toward autonomous networks. It said that it wants to explore key challenges such as “fragmented and siloed data, gaps between business intent and execution, the complexity created by multi-vendor and multi-domain environments and the trustworthiness of AI models”.

As Telstra’s Chief Architect, Mark Sanders, puts it: “Developing and validating ideas and technical possibilities in real environments is essential to closing the gap between aspiration and execution. Addressing the foundations will be critical to shaping the industry and influencing standards.”

In other words, while modern networks are capable of self-optimization and predictive performance, many of the systems that manage them still depend on manual processes, legacy IT, and disconnected data. 

This gap – between network capability and operational control – is acting as a brake on those CSPs looking to push on and maximise their return on the investment. 

Smart Monetization is Key to 5G Success

Which is why the journey to 5G isn’t – and never was – simply about building faster networks. If CSPs want to monetize their investment, then they need the systems, intelligence, and agility to match so they can sell, deliver, and get paid. That means modernizing the operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS) that keep networks running, assuring performance and managing how services are delivered and billed. 

Together, these provide the operational backbone that makes new business models possible, enabling operators to monetize new forms of connectivity, such as network slices, usage-based pricing, and performance-driven service level agreements (SLAs). 

For a sector not afraid to innovate, this is where technology makes the switch from hardware and software into revenue, by translating the network capability into a commercial opportunity. 

This is also where automation and differentiated connectivity converge. Intelligent OSS/BSS gives operators the ability to sell, deliver, and get paid for the premium network experiences made possible by automation, closing the loop between technical performance and commercial value.

In the past, each of these areas – data, AI, Cloud and IT, and service orchestration along with core commerce and monetization – have seen major innovation in their own right. The real challenge today, though, lies in connecting them effectively for better business outcomes. 

That’s because for decades, networks, IT systems, and business platforms have evolved in silos, built by different teams, using different technologies, and often for different eras of connectivity. 

As such, the result has been a patchwork of legacy systems that struggle to share data or scale automation beyond narrow use cases. Yes, that requires a solution rooted in technology. But addressing this continuous innovation for continuous evolution is as