VodafoneZiggo’s wholesale operation has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, moving well beyond the familiar lanes of voice and messaging. Asked what triggered this strategic shift, Lemmens is clear: the market itself demanded it.
“Traditional services are going down,” he says. “Voice is going down, messaging is going down. In the Netherlands you see huge parties moving towards A2P as a mass-market service. Aggregators and messaging hubs come to us asking to unlock our customers for their products, whether that’s A2P, direct carrier billing or other services. So, we’re in that transition because the ecosystem wants access to our customers.”
As demand shifts, wholesale partners are increasingly seeking new commercial models. “It’s not that the way we work with them is changing dramatically, but their needs are,” Lemmens explains. “They used to want a simple A2P message. Now they’re asking for bundles, new charging types, and solutions driven by the requirements of end customers, whether that’s an Airbnb or an after-pay service. We assess the value, the revenue potential, and adapt.”
Simplifying the core: The Subex effect
Digital transformation remains an industry buzzword, but for VodafoneZiggo it has been a deeply practical exercise, one rooted in simplifying decades of inherited complexity. “If you know the history of the company, we came from three entities: Ziggo, UPC and Vodafone. That meant triple systems everywhere: billing, interconnect, contracts,” Lemmens recalls.
The operator’s multi-year effort to consolidate these systems has centred on Subex, which provides the unified billing and partner settlement platform that underpins VodafoneZiggo’s wholesale business today. “We’ve merged everything into one billing system and one contract structure, and Subex is the party we work with for that. The big job now is revisiting every use case: do we still need it, can we simplify it? We’re rebuilding 20–25 years of legacy and moving towards a streamlined, data-driven model.”
A centralised data lake and AI-driven access to operational intelligence are accelerating this transformation. The result is clear efficiency gains. “We added more services to the billing platform but can operate with fewer people thanks to managed services and automation. Everything is streamlined into one process, one operational flow.”
What comes next?
Looking ahead, Lemmens sees growth in carrier billing, across both mobile and fixed, and strong opportunities in identity APIs, where VodafoneZiggo is preparing to expose network parameters securely to partners. He also believes RCS could finally mature, particularly with Apple’s adoption shifting the landscape for A2P. “There’s no common global chat app. For big brands, having one integrated channel is powerful. RCS could become that.”
The MVNO segment continues to expand, though the impact of 5G standalone for wholesale remains, in his words, “still unclear”, with slicing as a possible future play.
As the conversation closes, Lemmens returns to the value of collaboration, both with industry peers and with Subex. “We’re the outer ring of VodafoneZiggo, connecting to the outside world. Conferences and partnerships help us bring new ideas into the organisation. And Subex gives us strong support to enable everything we’re building.”
Elias Aravantinos , a technology expert who also attended the Subex event said: “True digital transformation and radical simplification form the backbone of AI-driven architectures. By consolidating several systems or even integration points into a unified, data-centric platform, you eliminate fragmentation, enable real-time analytics, and create the operational clarity required for scalable automation and competitive advantage, delivering tangible benefits for future operations ”
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