How Telecoms and Streaming Services Are Shaping Our Digital Lives with Hemant Soni, AI Architect

Tim Rowe, Host:
Have you ever wondered why your cell phone provider also wants to sell you the internet? And why does your television company want to give you a Nintendo Switch just for signing up? Today we are going to explore all of those questions and more in a conversation about the basics of bundling. Welcome back to the State of Streaming Podcast. That's what we're talking about here today with my guest, Hemant Soni. Amant is an AI and systems architect who works with some of the world's leading telcos in pursuit of understanding and navigating the rapidly evolving aspect of not just technology, but the way we consume content and ultimately the way our world communicates. We're going to talk about that. history of the bundle, how it's evolved, where it's going, and what it means for you both as an advertiser and as a consumer. And Hemant and I, we talk about the impact AI is having on all of this. We even take a stop along the way to visit a very real scenario that could bring the metaverse to your living room. My name is Tim Rowe, and if you're curious about understanding bundling or how the technology and connectivity powering the world of streaming will evolve, then this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Enjoy. Aman, you have been around AI platforms, telecom for the better part of going on three decades. I don't want to expose your age because you you had a past life as a model and a fighter pilot. And I don't know if we'll have enough time to get to all of it. But welcome to the state of streaming podcast. We're going to talk about bundling, the evolution of bundling, and where you think it's headed in 2026. Some interesting implications for AI, the metaverse. What does 6G mean for streaming? But first, Hemant, welcome to the show.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Thanks, Tim. It's always, I would say, great to talk to someone as learned as you, who knows industry pretty well. And yes, I had a pretty active life till now, and I believe I definitely, this platform is a great opportunity for me to contribute to your listeners and share what, where my expertise and knowledge about this industry looks like and wherever, wherever this can be used for.

Tim Rowe, Host: Yes, and you've already added a ton of value for us. You are the official, very first, you're the founding contributor 001 of State of Streaming. So you've been an early contributor to the platform and a lot of our conversations have centered around bundling. And specifically how and why that's a valuable strategy for telecom, what it means for streaming apps and platforms and content. Can you kind of maybe paint the picture of how did bundling become bundling? And then we'll use that to jump off into the evolution where it is today and where you think it's going to go.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Sure, absolutely. So for any of the listeners, the origin of bundling, just to give a very layman concept, I know people may be not from a media background, but think from the concept of bundling dates back, I would say centuries, where I would say farmers were selling baskets of produce or merchants offering bulks of goods. But those were practical ways of kind of transactions, which were of perceived value. That's when originally the bundling concept started. But when we come to cut down to 20th century, I think bundling gained a lot of widespread commercial traction in 20th century, where especially when we had the rise of cable TV where companies kind of, I would say, packaged multiple channels into subscription tiers. However, I would say somewhere the model became a blueprint for bundling in another industries, I would say, whether it is telecom, software, or entertainment. When I talk about the concept perspective and when we talk about where bundling goes into, so on a very high level, I would say there are basic concept is there are two type of bundles. One is a soft bundle and a hard bundle. Soft bundling, I would say is referring to multiple services which are offered together. but without requiring the users to subscribe to all of them. So for an example, a telecom provider is discounting you Netflix or Disney, but users can choose either of the one to activate, like they can choose either to activate Disney or they can activate Spotify or they can activate Netflix. Now, the key characteristics of soft bundling is that it's user choice central. It's often discounted. I would say there are certain incentives out there. Additionally, I would say it promotes cross-platform engagement. There are no locking users out here and we can talk more about it later. The next is hard bundling concept. When I talk about hard bundling, I'm talking about multiple services are packaged together in a single subscription user. And this user is taking the entire bundle. Like for an example, Amazon prime. Now Amazon prime will give you prime video. It will give you music. You have that standard services that it offers. And cable providers, when I talk about from a telecom industry perspective, offer these fixed packages of streaming channels. It could have ESPN, Hulu, Disney, all factored in one bundle. Now, The key strategies that organizations look at it is in terms of, I would say, bundling strategies. That's how I can put it up. Like where bundling and how bundling helps. So first key aspect is customer retention and royalty. Bundling or I would say bundling streaming services with mobile or broadband kind of increases the stickiness. Customers, I would say, are less likely to switch to providers if they are getting value-added services like Netflix, or as I mentioned, Spotify included from their mobile provider.

Tim Rowe, Host: Like I have Apple and Netflix and AAA from T-Mobile. There was a bunch of bunch of things that kind of got bundled in with signing up.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: That's correct. That's correct. And the second one is revenue diversions. Telco traditionally have rely on voice and data. But funding allows them to tap into content modernization also, so they can affiliate revenue, reseller margins, or even add revenue bundled with OTT platforms. This also provides them a competitive differentiation. I would say in saturated markets, bundling help telcos to stand out or it helps them to distinguish among their peers. We're from a KPI perspective upselling ARPU is key area. Bundles, I would say encourage upgrading to higher tier plans. Telcos always use bundles in terms of ARPU by offering premium content at certain premium or expensive packages. Bundling also helps in terms of data usage growth for telcos, like streaming services uses high data consumption, which will lead to eventually more user options for like users going for unlimited plans or higher data plans. Another interesting aspect when we look into from a bundling perspective is partnership ecosystem. Bundling fosters strategic alliances with OTT players or cloud providers or device manufacturers, something which you talked about is interesting, which we'll talk about in case we talk about is metaverse, how it will grow in the future. And again, these partnerships can lead to co-marketing or shared analytics or joint innovations as well. Bundling another lever that organization uses in terms of churn reduction as something which you talked about earlier, like bundling services, I would say create a perceived loss if customers switch providers. So think from this perspective that it's a psychological barrier which helps reduce churn, especially in prepaid or postpaid segments.

Tim Rowe, Host: So okay, so that kind of lock in. I've got a few hooks into the consumer. They're not just paying me for mobile. They're also getting their Netflix. They're getting their Apple. They're getting AAA. They get these other benefits. It's not just, hey, I'm a cell phone provider. Okay.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Yeah, so that's in summary, where did bundling originated from and what are different strategies organizations or telcos use for bundling? I'm speaking more from a telecom perspective, but again, similar strategies are used by other industry and technology players as well.

Tim Rowe, Host: few things that stood out to me in that. One, can you help us understand ARPU, average revenue per unit, but what does that mean? How does the math, math, because some of these bundles are really like, they're presenting a ton of value. But how's everyone making money? Because making money means we can keep doing this. So how does the math all work?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: I think you're getting into more strategies, how organization use into it. But what I can tell you is like ARPU can be simply understood from a mathematical perspective is that it's what is the total revenue an organization is looking forward to from a user and total number of subscribers that they are having. Okay, now why ARPU matters is important because again, it shows kind of effectively how company is monetizing its user base. So again, with the smaller share of subscribers, higher the revenue, that means your ARPU is better. So if those are different levers that they need to look into. The way bundling impacts ARPU is that it often increases ARPU because we are adding the value by upselling premium services. Now, the important point on ARPU is that how bundling influences it. So think from this perspective that adding streaming, cloud storage, or gaming can raise the average revenue that we generate from per user. Tiered pricing is another option where like offering premium plans or add-ons which boost revenue. Something which I mentioned, which organization uses from a churn management perspective is how we can retain high value users kind of to stabilize our pool. That's another way bundling concepts are used. Another concept that you would have heard is AVOD or FAST models where organizations are using certain media channels where advertisement can be given and consumer are taking it. Those are also packaged for free. Now these ad monetization or I would say ad monetization concepts are also used because I think from this perspective that more the engagement, higher the ad revenue, higher the Does that provide you an outline?

Tim Rowe, Host: I think that's really, really helpful to understand. Okay, here is the strategy to make money and it's the bundling, it's the packaging, it's the leverage. There's a lot of components that go into that. That's really helpful. And as we start to evolve the bundle and we're seeing so much rapid change, especially centered around streaming, but especially enabled by the technology around us. How is bundling starting to evolve? And we're going to talk about AI. We're going to talk about the metaverse. I think 6G is probably kind of one of those key catalyst moments. What's going to happen next? What do you see coming on the horizon?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: When we talk about the trends in bundling, so a couple of trends that I think I've seen and something which we have written on the platform as well as, I think the first one, which is more recent is the super bundling or content hubs. There are telcos like Verizon or Noctis, which are kind of creating, I would say centralized hubs. There are other players also where customers can go in and they can aggregate streaming or gaming or music or sports together. Now, the important aspect of this out here, Tim, is that these hubs kind of simplify subscription management and offers. It's kind of a one-stop access, I would say, to kind of diverse services and reducing the subscription fatigue that gets into the consumer. So consumers would not want to shop for, like, hey, I'm buying a couple of subscriptions separately, and then I need to go on platform because this platform gives me these specific subscriptions only. The other important aspect is the cross vertical bundling, like non-media services as well. Non-media services would be like smart security or banking or retail perks that have been given, fitness apps, smart home tech. So these are, these are kind of non, I would say non-media bundles that are also being used by telcos specifically in this, this era. Another aspect I think a lot of players are using something which we talked about is like streaming platforms like Max or Netflix. They are building up that telco and OTT partnerships are coming into picture where they are looking forward to how we can leverage these partnerships. And because eventually there are different segments in the market where some believe that, okay, hey, telcos are more of pipes to transfer data. But again, telcos play a very major role in terms of how to distribute that content. And again, they have a large masses of consumers who would utilize those contents. So, so that's where Telco OTT partnerships comes into picture. Something which we talked about earlier, bundling as a churn management tools, but now bundles are increasingly used to retain users, not only to acquire them. Earlier, a couple of years back, I would say bundles were used to kind of excite consumers.

Tim Rowe, Host: It was a very front end offer. Yeah. It was, Hey, sign up and you get this stuff. But then a year into the contract, it's like. All the stuff goes away and you hate dealing with it and the customer service things and the price keeps going up. So that's a shift too that you're seeing.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Yeah, because now bundles kind of create the stickiness in offering, which is more perceived, I would say, in reducing likely out of cancellation. Probably a rhetorical item, but we talked about earlier. Another trend that I'm seeing is a lot of consumers post-pandemic, they want more of like a one-stop solution that, hey, I just want a single bill out there, okay? And can you kind of integrate all these different platforms and give me one single platform? resonating with our first point where I was talking about initially like we are looking forward to more of centralized platforms. Now, I don't remember which research it was, somewhere on I think world screen or something. They said that 56 close to percent of users prefer centralized subscription platforms. I would say close to about 40% maybe tackling with like multiple services out there. There is another trend now picking up lately. I would say this year I've seen is there is a kind of rise of no contract bundles. So they are, I would say, gaining popularity due to, I would say, flexibility, cost savings, and customized solutions. Comcast Xfinity, I think offered a no contract bundle. Verizon provides no contract bundles. T-Mobile delivers kind of no contract bundles with like unlimited talk, text, data, along with streaming services like Netflix. Now, these bundles are appealing to customers who look forward to like kind of comprehensive solution within I would say long-term commitments, enhancing both convenience and satisfaction, both for users. And it's a win-win for both.

Tim Rowe, Host: Two more trends that I see is… Come on, if I can, just to add to that, something that you really kind of made me think about that I jotted down here is that a lot of these telecoms and, you know, kind of traditional pipe key holders, if you will, there's probably a much better way to phrase that, but thinking about them as a lifestyle enablement platform. as they're bringing in these other verticals like you described, content being such a big part of what we all do and consume, they're brands, they're building brands that enable the things we love the most, the places we spend money, the places we spend time, whether it's in front of our TV or if it's at the gym, I think that that's significant, thinking about the relationship we have with maybe some of these traditional companies.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Absolutely. And that's a valid point that you brought up is that something which we were talking earlier during our session was that how telcos have evolved over a period of time, so has media evolved. And now we are post-pandemic, we are in that intersection out there that, okay, it becomes more of a lifestyle change. So taking a very simple example is that A couple of years back, when operators started selling mobile services, it was like any other service that used to provide. But today, mobile services, it's a necessity. Let's say if your cell phone is not in your hand for a couple of hours, your service is not working, you will feel a little panicky and you will start thinking that, okay, hey, let me reach out to the operator. So it's all those needs that are coming in and a lot of operators are sensing it. especially post pandemic. And if you see, there is a lot of digital transformation that has happened. Operators have gone customer savvy that, Hey, like we are trying to be getting closer to the consumer or closer to the user, whether it's giving them more opportunities to learn about us as Teleco on their phone, through an app or more customizing solutions for their persona. Something which we'll talk about, something which you asked about is how AI and everything is coming into picture.

Tim Rowe, Host: I do want to make sure that we spend some time on the metaverse hardware hypothesis, because that's really interesting. I think there's been a lot of metaverse naysayers, but you've got an interesting theory on how that's going to play out. What are the other trends that you're seeing?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: I'm like, again, because North America being a vast market, I'm seeing regional expansion where bundling as well. So if you are heard.

Tim Rowe, Host: You're saying wired bundling.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: I'm saying regional expansion via bundling. Okay. like local platforms, you have heard of Viaplay, Teatrix, Crave, Vue. Again, these are very local. They are using bundling to expand their reach. I'm saying not only in North America, but Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and these help to kind of penetrate the market to direct to consumer model, which are kind of less viable. We did talk about strategic ecosystem. Again, companies are collaborating in terms of UX, billing systems, how we can talk about content delivery. I think the newest one that I'm seeing gaining a lot of trend is fast, which is free ad supported streaming bundles. Now, these are emerging as, I would say, a key component of telco media bundling strategies, especially, I would say, where consumers are having a subscription fatigue and they need more kind of scalable, monetized platform. Now, think from a fast bundle perspective that fast bundles are nothing but they are combining free streaming channels into a single access point. Now, either telcos can do that or aggregators can do that. These are, I think three components. One is live linear channels like news or sports or entertainment. There are a couple of on-demand content libraries as well. Then there are some curated thematic channels focusing on crime or comedy lifestyle. But, but the differentiation is that unlike traditional S words for our listeners, subscription video on demand.

Tim Rowe, Host: Thank you.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Yes.

Tim Rowe, Host: Thank you.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Yeah, fast bundles do not require a monthly fee from users. And that's why at times they make it more attractive. And again, I would say fast bundler bundles are growing. They are cost effective to users, no subscription fee. With scalable for telcos, minimum infrastructure, high engagement, churn reduction is there, global reach, ad inventories is expansion is important. And again, it's a win-win for telco and the ad aggregator also, so they can split the revenues out there. I would say telcos are evolving into something which we which you are looking forward to from a lifestyle perspective are evolving into content hubs not just connectivity providers and I would say fast bundles are part of like super bundling trends where telcos offer S-Ward, A-Ward, fast or utility services in one package. And then last but not the least, I would say they support kind of behavioral targeting, cross-platform analytics, or enhancing ad performances, customer insights. So that's what the trend I'm seeing.

Tim Rowe, Host: Excellent. Teased us with the metaverse. How does the hardware get rolled out? How do we end up wearing headsets in the metaverse? How do you see that playing out?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Oh, that's very close to my heart.

Tim Rowe, Host: I'm excited for it. I think it's going to be fun. And I'll be honest, because I think that the market is fatigued a little bit on the idea of the metaverse. Like, is this just a thing? But then when you outlined how it becomes a thing, it got me excited because all of a sudden it made sense. I could see myself doing that on a Friday night with my son in the model that you outlined.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Absolutely. So I think from this perspective that you would have heard the term cut the cord. And again, especially in the telecom industry, like people are looking forward to going into more streaming, traditional video, they say is dying. But let's do a fast forward and let's say telcos start selling. Let's say there is a platform created. It's a metaverse platform and telcos start creating a subscription as a service. So let's say Tim, you buy a service for X dollars, you subscribe to that platform and what that platform provides you. So that platform provides you more of an immersive interactive experience. You can go to virtual concerts, events. And again, the way this is like, it will help in more of interactive storytelling. You will have a lot of social viewing out there. Like you can have watch parties out there. Think about digital goods, monetization, NFT, avatars, virtual real estate. That's what my visualization of Metaverse platform, which can be sold by telcos instead of traditional video or with traditional video subscription as a service, they can be sold. Now, the way the economics work out here is that this platform can be a third-party creator, you can partner with them, and this metaverse as a platform can be plug-and-play. Players like Fortnite, Roblox, who have kind of massive events, they can plug-in into this. So I think from this perspective that there is an operator who may have like let's say 40 million customers and they subscribe to this metaverse as a platform and this metaverse platform is plugged in with other players like fortinet and roblox so fortinet and roblox get an advantage of these additional 30 million customers these 30 million customers get advantage of purchasing the subscription-based services at a cheaper price What telcos get is they are they are providing next gen services to their consumers. People like as you said, your you and your son may want to play a live game on Fortnite or you may want to 100% if you had a metaverse headset, you'd be playing Fortnite with your kids in the metaverse 100%. Absolutely. And then, and then just to adding on to that, you have your own digital avatar. You cannot meet your friend in Europe.

Tim Rowe, Host: So I'm also my skin. I can create my own skin in the metaverse for Fortnite and play with my friend in Europe. And we can do, we can do all this together.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's, that's, that's what, how I see metaverse eventually growing over a period of time, if consumers look forward to adopt. And I think there, there is a, there is a section of consumers who definitely would want to get into it. and start using Metaverse services. Again, there is a large following for Roblox and Fortnite as a game. My daughter plays it. And again, many times I run those ideas with today's generation in terms of, hey, how would it look like if you have a platform set? It would be amazing that if one of our telcos can provide it, I can just subscribe to it and we can use it. So yeah, absolutely. And then teeing up with the other aspect, something that you asked about was how AI is coming into media. How is it?

Tim Rowe, Host: Yes.

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: Yeah, so in fact now already a lot of telcos are using AI in terms of understanding how they would want to kind of personalize recommendations, AI tailored content based upon user behavior, preferences and context. In fact, there is also content creation and editing part I would also say out there like Generative AI, automated video editing, dubbing is there, even recap generation. If I'm correct, Amazon X-ray recaps does that. And then there is video compressions also being done where AI is using in terms of encoding, reduced bandwidth out there. The important aspect I would want to share is like something which I am very proud of, like building up a platform, which I have done is called DICE, which is called Data Integrated Campaign Enablement. So the current challenge that a lot of operators or I would say industry faces is that we launch campaigns or we build up products and we launch them with a certain amount of model and everything. But eventually when it goes to market, even we do a POC in a certain market, when we launch into a larger market, we need to do an automated run that, Hey, how many sales we have done today? How many, how is the campaigns doing on day one, day two, day 30? But what I am looking forward to is that, and with this framework is that I have added two layers of it. One, I would be adding AI component where AI will kind of automate that process for you and will tell you that, Hey Tim, you have launched this particular campaign and your campaign has, let's say a 90% probability of reaching that target by X day that you have set in. Or it may say that, Hey Tim, you would have like, let's say a 50% probability of reaching that particular campaign target. What you as a person will do is you will start taking the requisite action so that you can improve that probability. Now, that would be, again, a certain amount of manual action or automation that we do. Assuming that we have data which is democratized out there and you can have generative AI running on it. So the next layer, what it will do is that AI dice model will also provide you an answer that, hey, this campaign has a 50% probability of reaching its target. What I would recommend is that option one, focus on a customer type who just have, let's say data plus video, let's say in the Phoenix market or target these customers who are in the particularly in the Vegas market and the probability of where it was 50%, now your probability of your campaign hitting the target within the timeframe that you have set is gone up to 90%. it also will help you in terms of what channels to use, so do you want to go through the standard channel where you would be doing a digital marketing or you can do like a quick campaign update to those specific customers, it can pull out that customer that okay this is your particular out of those 30 million customers, these are specific customers that you should be sending this marketing campaign to, which have not adopted and there is a higher propensity to buy from these customers. So all of these personas will be run and that's where this TAIS model will help in terms of building up new revenue streams, because this is where I'm talking from an operational perspective. But if I go in a planning stage where you need to build up a campaign, then you can put up all those metrics to this model, and then it will help you generate that. Okay. This is what your campaign, this is what your target market is. These are the channels that what you should be using. This is an optimum time that you should launch these campaigns. And there are other factors that from a marketing perspective that you can think of, and then again, engage with the tool. How do you want to sell it? So that's a very novel idea in terms of using AI and within that adding agentic AI and generative AI help you build up new revenue streams and at the same time reducing your, I will say, your marketing costs and when you build up your promotional costs as well.

Tim Rowe, Host: It's a framework. It's not a technology per se. It's a methodology. Is that the right way to think about Dice?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: That's correct. It's a method. It's a framework that I've created. It's, it's, it's a, it has an architecture that I've built in. It's available. I've, I've already published it free to license. People can use it, read about it.

Tim Rowe, Host: Amazing. We'll make sure to link close by to that so that folks can, can access that. Thank you for doing that. And thank you for making it free for folks to, to go out and explore for themselves. If they want to connect with you, if the audience would like to learn more about what you're working on, we'll link to your work with the state of streaming. Where else should we go on socials? Where should we go to get in touch and stay in touch with all the great work that you're doing?

Hemant Soni, AI Architect: I think LinkedIn would be definitely the platform. And I think I've been pretty active writing about my thought leadership pieces on Forbes. Then I've been active on AIFN, which is AI Frontier Network as well. I've been writing, I've been attending conferences also. There are a couple of papers that I've published. So most of my articles should be available in the public domain. Again, my intent is that how I can utilize my two decades of experience in terms of helping up Shipping up the economy out, out here in terms of especially helping telcos and something which you mentioned earlier with 60 coming in, things will be, I think I would say 60 will redefine how we engage because it will be ultra fast, low latency, and it will be kind of intelligent. It was something I was talking about a couple of weeks back and I've written a paper on, on intelligent economy. Like we talk about industry 4.0, we are talking with 60, we will be talking about industry 5.0 as well. And I think the key impacts of 6G will be, I think the speed will be 100x faster. Again, I'm saying it will enable instant ultra-high definition in VR streaming, again, which we want from a metaverse perspective. I would say from a media perspective, we would have ultra-immersive media experiences. 6G enables real-time AR VR holographic streaming. So if you recall the world of Star Wars where Jedi Knights used to have that holographic streaming, so that's what I'm just talking about. And then think of transforming passive video into which is more interactive, immersive experience. That's what I'm looking forward to with 6G. The future is bright and I would say broadcasters can deliver virtual concerts, 3D sports, mixed reality classrooms with I would say zero latency. And again, these are all different transitions and opportunities that Telco will have within the media domain itself. And I would say AI will be centered to service innovation out here, considering like AI is ultra low latency with massive bandwidth to support distributed AI ML. Again, the real impact will be kind of real time content personalization. So Tim, let's say if it's a Friday night and you want to watch a specific genre movie. So those content will be much more personalized that, hey, Tim, welcome. So in fact, when you log in, yeah, it's when you log in into Netflix. So let's say you log in into Netflix every night, let's say at 12 in the night, that's what the time that you get. So it may send the, hey, Tim, hi, how are you? And as a night owl, like every night you're watching it. So it knows that you log in at a particular, particular time. But then smart targeting will be another thing that will come into picture that, okay, Hey, I need to spend this specific advertisement. And again, I would say dynamic content assembly, those things will be, again, I can keep on talking about how 6C will impact from a streaming perspective, but that'll be part two.

Tim Rowe, Host: We'll have to do a part two to this and talk about 6G as it gets closer. I'm excited to do that with you, Hammad. Thank you for being here. We'll make sure to link to all of the great resources that you have. You are very easy to find on the internet. You have a huge budget of published and public work, so it won't be hard to find. We'll make sure it's easy to find close to this episode. And if you found this episode to be helpful, please share it. Please share it with a colleague or client and start a conversation today. Wherever you're listening, make sure to smash that subscribe button, follow the podcast, leave a review. That's how you help us grow. And we'll see you all next time.