Introduction

Andriy is back to share WebTrit’s and PortaOne‘s work on Voice AI agents, and discuss its relevance for telcos, also known as CSPs (Communication Service Providers).

The value proposition is simple, incremental revenue from AI agents replacing human call center agents, with potentially sticky, high margin revenues, with upsell to well understood telecom services.

BUT Andriy mentions the challenges CSPs face, the latest cool toy is often poorly aligned to how CSPs operate. Also Voice AI is developing so fast, his presentation is likely out of date by the time you are listening to it. So how are telcos expected to keep up?

If you believe the BABS (Bay Area BS), 2026 is the year of AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. Voice AI will be able to sell itself! Data centers will scream, as more of the world floods from climate change. Just read today’s Guardian for a concise end of days review, Dec 1 2025.

But focusing on stuff we can do today, outside of BABS. IVR replacement is an obvious use case, enabled by an AI agent speaking the local language perfectly. Not English as a second language, which in some markets cause people to immediately hang up.

The task performed by tha AI Agent can be quite complex, for example scheduling a meeting. AI agents can handle the real world complexity, customer uncertainty, and never tire. All trained up in less than one day to work with your business.

Now, this can seem idealistic, but an experienced group can help telco’s customers harness a Voice AI agent to their specific business situation in a few hours. It’s an easy incremental purchase on a SIP trunk.

Approaches

DIY

The common approach from many of the AI companies is end user DIY. Which can have SIP REFER issues. The usual call transfer problems, such as audio delays, call failure, or incorrect handling during the transfer process.

Common solutions include checking firewall and SBC settings, ensuring proper support for the REFER method, correctly relaying SIP message components like the Refer-To and Referred-By headers, and verifying the integrity of the SIP URI for the transfer destination.

This highlights why a trusted advisor is necessary. And in this scenario the carrier sees zero of the revenues without taking a more active role.

White Label Voice AI Gateway

The telco delivers a complete solution, including all the well known telecom features, e.g. freephone, fault finding / support, see REFER discussion above, single bill, plus the new voice AI agent fee and set-up.

The AI Agent set-up is an interesting option. A telco could simply partner with one for more Voice AI Agent providers. The partners could focus on different verticals, while the telco acts as a store front.

We see similar examples of UCaaS providers partnering with Voice AI Agent providers here in the US. What is the best choice for a telco remains unclear as the market is in a phase of exploration.

Outbound Campaigns

Here the role a telco can play an important SPAM / robocalling prevention.

Flow Builder

Often a visual editor for designing complex conversation flows. This tool is generally part of a broader conversational AI platform, not a standalone “flow builder” for general AI tasks.

This feature moves beyond a single, large prompt, allowing for the decomposition of tasks and the use of the ideal large language model (LLM) for each specific step of a conversation.

Importance of Trusted Advisor

Most businesses have an out of date website, and most of the current processes are contained in multiple emails. Businesses need help to adapt a Voice AI agent to their messy real-world situation. Recognizing this truth and being able to help businesses adapt is where success can be found in the Voice AI opportunity.

Adding Voice AI Agents in Person to Person calls

Using WebTrit agents can be added as advisors for a 3-way call, or in whisper mode to advise a human agent.

The Role of CSPs

Andriy and I then discuss what role does a telco perform? Can they become the trusted advisor for their business customers. For some telco wholesale groups with integration experience, such a role is already possible, they have experienced teams that see set-up advice as part of the “sales” process.

The project size for setup for many small and medium businesses will be too small to justify a project. As mentioned above set-up can fold into the sales process. An analogy I use is with Google Advertising, the Google consultant helps you set-up your campaign to meet your specific objectives, you’re left with an active campaign. It’s a similar role to the Voice AI Sales engineer, to leave customers with an active agent with the ability to tune performance.

Andriy recommends CSPs create their own AI Agents, that is eat their own dog food. To build experience with the Voice AI Agent tools. Given voice remains a core value of telcos to their customers, building in-house voice AI expertise is a critical skill for telcos to remain relevant to customers.