An entrant on Capacity’s top telco vendors' power list in 2023, Odine started its life as a systems integrator and OSS/BSS provider for voice networks.
As of 2017, however, it has transitioned into mobile network virtualisation, scoring a massive contract with Turkish MNO Turkcell, which has over 35 million subscribers.
Now, with its $44 million IPO application approved last week and orders starting to come through, CEO Alper Tunga Burak says the company is poised to expand internationally and offer its services to telecom operators around the world.
“Approximately, 60% of the capital raised from the IPO will be used for international expansion,” he tells Capacity in an exclusive interview.
Specifically, Odine has set its sights on enabling core network virtualisation in the Middle East.
Burak revealed discussions are already ongoing with at least one company, as the telecom operators in the Gulf region grapple with shrinking margins and are looking at network virtualisation to reduce their costs.
Proceeds from the IPO will also be used to expand its operations in Turkey and fund an overseas research and development facility.
Burak told Capacity that the company opted for an IPO despite interest from venture capital firms to fund the expansion of the business, due to the large amount of floating cash an IPO would unlock.
Odine has salespeople in markets like the UK, Dubai and New Zealand, where it has sold its OSS/BSS solution to Symbio, but it will now invest in building engineering offices in these countries to get closer to tier 1 operators, Burak said.
In Europe, Odine will invest in its UK office, expanding its headcount to serve the European market.
Burak said the IPO will also help Odine in terms of reputation and standing against the household name brands it seeks to compete against in the network virtualisation space.
“Telecom operators have noticed that outsourcing the deployment of core networks to hyperscalers like Amazon, Google or Microsoft is risky for them, because they lose control and costs tend to increase over time,” Burak said.
“It took a while for telecom operators to realise that the only logical approach is to have a private telco cloud under their control, so they can access the capex and opex savings from cloudification, softwarification and virtualisation.”
Likewise, Burak believes outsourcing telco cloud to industry vendors is a mistake.
“Not only do you end up with vendor lock-in, you cannot expect a vendor running your telco cloud to manage the business of another vendor in that same telco cloud,” he says.
“The only approach which makes sense for the telcos is having their own dedicated private telco cloud. But the missing part is that who's going to do that? Telcos do not have the engineering know-how - they aren’t designed for this.”
Having deployed what he describes as the largest telco cloud ever at the time for Turkcell, Burak thinks Odine is in a prime position to offer its solutions to other tier-1 operators.
“We’re already six to seven years ahead of the rest of the industry here. Now with the IPO we can be more aggressive with our expansion and sell these solutions to tier 1 operators who want to follow the Turkcell approach,” he says.
In terms of the roadmap for rolling these services out, Burak says Odine can start by offering virtualised voice edge networks, including its OSS/BSS solutions on top and then move into the core network and then radio network virtualisation once the initial benefits have been seen.
