Incoming Dotlines UK CEO Jaki Chowdhury aims to replicate the market impact of this Asian-based ICT powerhouse in the UK, combining proven technology with a flourishing sustainability ethos.
Why did you take the role of Dotlines UK CEO?
The technology heritage of Dotlines, which was established in 2004, its move into the telecom services sector in 2016 and collective impact in the Southeast Asian market is inspiring. Furthermore, the UK telecom market has stagnated and a step change is needed to break the deadlock. I believe the technology, customer focus and societal and environmental values of Dotlines can catalyse that change.
How do you define telco market stagnation?
The stagnation is deep rooted across every organisation. There is a relentless push from these companies looking to move from a classic telco positioning role to more of a technology-telecoms position. This is failing due to complex and legacy operating models and systems leading to an unrealistic cost of change. Being tech-driven, Dotlines is well positioned to bridge this gap in the telcos space. The heritage of Dotlines incorporates home grown systems, both sound ecological and societal values and an optimised customer centric approach distils down the true nature of ‘digital transformation’ that customers are seeking.
How will your prior experience come into play?
My career spans 18 years in the telecommunications industry working across BT, Vodafone and TalkTalk, covering product, commercial and transformation roles in senior positions. During this time I launched various milestone products such as BT’s first Wi-Fi router, a full fibre product, SD-WAN and a mobile private network with 5G at Vodafone. I also played a pivotal role in shutting down legacy exchanges at TalkTalk to accelerate Britain’s gigabit economy.
In what ways will Dotlines UK make its mark as a purposeful organisation?
Dotlines is a new brand in the UK and we want to be known as a company that champions customer experience by giving back to the planet and society. We want people to get to know the real us: We’re a team, a company, a family with a bigger purpose – a purpose that’s not purely about making profit for shareholders but uses profit to fuel our mission to champion customers, planet and society and ultimately lead change. We would love to become B Corp certified at some point in the near future to further prove our commitments to these areas.
What is your strategy from a technology perspective?
We will address the UK market with three propositions: Carnival Internet, a new retail ISP for home and business; Audra WAN, security and firewall for SoHo and SMB; and Purplecube360 (an end-to-end modular software ecosystem) for SMB, retail and reseller markets to manage customer lifecycles in a single place. While Carnival Internet will target both B2C and B2B, Audra and Purplecube will be purely B2B.
Audra Security is a simpler way for small and medium sized businesses to manage their Internet use and security. For SMEs, security is an expensive and technologically complex field that they often cut corners on due to a lack of skills or funds. Our aspiration is to make it more accessible than ever from an affordability and ease of use perspective. While these product families deliver different capabilities we will use them all to fuel our brand aspiration of ‘simplifying business, simplifying life’, while championing our positive impact initiatives.
Which industry trends interest you most?
Small and medium sized businesses are becoming more aware of the need for effective security such as firewalls, and the subsequent demand for affordable products is rising. Broadband and mobile customers are fed-up with terrible customer service and constant yearly price rises. This, in particular, is a trend forced onto retail ISPs driven by major network and infrastructure providers and needs to be stopped. Ofcom will have to play a big role in forcing this change. Current Ofcom proposals give customers more price certainty and clarity by moving from a variable percentage metric to a fixed monetary value, but this needs to go much further with more pressure on the largest players to stop the practice altogether.
Which new technology areas are on your radar screen?
The Generative AI movement and its applications. The Purplecube360 platform with its contact centre capability (known as Pulse) can significantly leverage Generative AI in terms of proactive customer communications, accurate diagnostics and ticketing. While Pulse is fully equipped with Machine Learning capabilities and its Visual IVR is interactive enough, the Generative AI feature set can make things much simpler with the proprietary Right First Time matrix.
If you could transform any area of the ICT industry, what would it be?
I want to make CRM systems more affordable for the IT and comms industry so that more end customers benefit from frictionless services across sell, build and run processes
Where do you see Dotlines UK in three years time?
We would love to see Carnival Internet having a community of around 100,000 broadband subscribers and using that customer base to help fuel our aspiration of planting trees, donating to charity and more.