Guest post by Hitesh Morar, Chief Product & Delivery Officer, Tecnotree
We’ve spent billions on 5G infrastructure, from towers to fibre and spectrum. On paper, it looks extraordinary – by 2030, 5G is expected to add $1.5 trillion to the global economy. Yet ask operators today whether they’re really seeing returns, and you’ll often get a pause. Only about one in ten believe they’ve unlocked 5G’s revenue potential. Why? Because 5G isn’t just about faster speeds, and infrastructure is a foundation, not a business model.
The real opportunity lies in creating ecosystems where operators stop being “connectivity providers” and start being orchestrators of value. This is the essence of the B2B2X model: business-to-business-to-anything. It means enabling a hospital to perform remote surgery, a car manufacturer to build safer vehicles, or a factory to run predictive analytics that cut downtime. Connectivity is just the spark, while the ecosystem is where the fire burns.
B2B2X Economy
But ecosystems don’t thrive without partnerships, and partnerships change the economics. Suddenly, you’re not just billing a single customer for data, you’re managing milestone payments, commissions, wholesale billing, and multi-party settlements across a web of partners.
It doesn’t stop there; to make ecosystems profitable, operators must focus on cost optimisation and margin improvement. If every new service erodes margins instead of strengthening them, the ecosystem model collapses. The winners will be those who use smarter platforms to make these flows not just possible, but efficient, profitable, and scalable.
This is why I always say that billing is not a “back office’’, it is a strategy.
When you unify services through convergent billing, you’re not just sending invoices; you’re creating a single, coherent experience for the customer while gaining the agility to bundle, package, and personalise services in new ways. Moreover, when you reward longer commitments with better value, you strengthen loyalty and create predictable revenue, critical factors when boardrooms are looking for stability in an uncertain market.
Layer on intelligence, and the story gets even stronger. AI-driven Customer Value Management allows operators to understand, not just count, their customers. AI can predict churn before it happens, uncover new opportunities, and generate the “next best value offer” at the right moment.
Far from being simply a marketing hype, it allows operators to transform transactional relationships into meaningful, lasting ones. It’s also how you stay relevant in a world where the competition is always one click away.
The numbers back this up. With real-time analytics, automation, and intelligent monetisation, operators can increase digital revenues by up to 30%.
But beyond the numbers, this is about positioning telcos at the heart of the digital economy. The age of selling connectivity as a commodity is over. The telcos that will lead are those who master partnerships, deploy intelligent billing, protect margins through optimisation, and put AI at the centre of customer engagement.
5G isn’t the destination, it’s the runway. What operators do next, with ecosystems, partnerships, and intelligent monetisation, will decide whether they remain carriers of data or become architects of the digital economy. The winners won’t be the ones who built the biggest networks, but the ones who built the smartest value chains.
