The business communications market is at a turning point. Unified communications is growing, but value is being squeezed. Commoditisation is eroding margins. Big global players are raising customer expectations while making differentiation harder than ever. At the same time, AI, mobility, and cloud technologies are fundamentally reshaping how businesses communicate.
How is Artificial Intelligence moving from a "cool concept" to an operational game-changer in telecommunications? Live from IT Partners 2026, Bertrand Pourcelot (Managing Director at Enreach for Service Providers) and Pierre Garcia (Founder of Be One) discuss the "breaking point" in telecom history.
In the cloud economy, there are two ways to be a Service Provider: The Reseller (SaaS Model): You buy a license from a big vendor (like Microsoft or Zoom), add a small margin, and sell it. You are essentially a sales agent. The Creator (PaaS Model): You use a technology platform to build your own unique product. You set the price, you own the brand, and you control the features
If you ask a telecom engineer from the 1990s what a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is, they will point to a large, noisy metal cabinet in a server room full of wires. If you ask a modern Service Provider, the answer is very different. Today, the PBX has shed its physical skin. It is no longer a piece of hardware; it is a sophisticated piece of Software hosted in the cloud. But its core purpose remains the same: it is the "Brain" that decides where every call goes.
The global shift to hybrid work has made "Tele-conferencing" (or Video Collaboration) as essential as the dial tone. A business that cannot host a professional video meeting is a business that looks disconnected. For Service Providers, this is a critical battleground. If your Cloud PBX offer is "Voice Only," your customer will go elsewhere for Video (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet). And once they buy video elsewhere, their voice traffic often follows.
Imagine you are pitching to a large logistics company. They like your price, but they have one specific requirement: "When a delivery driver calls a customer, we want our dispatch software to automatically log the GPS location." If you are reselling a closed, rigid phone system, you have to say: "Sorry, the system doesn't do that." And you lose the deal.
For decades, the telecom business model was simple: buy minutes wholesale, sell them retail, and pocket the difference. Those days are gone. In the era of WhatsApp and unlimited mobile plans, the margin on pure voice traffic is racing towards zero. For Service Providers, this poses an existential question: How do we remain profitable?
For a long time, the "Contact Center" market was reserved for large enterprises with big budgets and dedicated IT teams. Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) were left with basic "Hunt Groups" on their PBX—phones that just rang in a circle until someone answered.
The VoIP market is crowded. A quick Google search for "Business VoIP Provider" yields millions of results, from global giants to local resellers operating out of a garage. For a Service Provider looking for a technology partner to build their business on, this noise is dangerous. Choosing the wrong upstream provider can lead to poor call quality, outages, and angry customers.