Equipping customers with the tools to digitally transform
On the application platforms enterprises actually need to run a digital-transformation programme, recorded at GITEX Global.
Ali Sabbagh · Telecom · CPaaS · Agentic AI — Beirut & Dubai
The next decade of customer communication won't happen on websites. It will happen in conversations.
Twelve years building and running carrier-grade communication platforms — and writing about how businesses and their customers will actually talk to each other by 2030: messaging, voice, identity, and the AI agents in between.
I started in the network layer, routing SMS traffic for mobile operators, and worked my way up through operations, product and the executive floor. Everything I believe about the future of communication comes from those twelve years.
I have configured the routing, escalated the outages at 3 a.m., built a 24/7 support function, owned a platform roadmap, run operations across emerging markets and signed the P&L. That is not a career-ladder story — it is the reason I think about artificial intelligence as a new layer of infrastructure rather than a feature to bolt on. When you have watched platforms fail because something was added instead of designed for, you stop being impressed by demos.
What I work on
- Carrier-grade messaging & voice
- A2P routing, operator interconnects, delivery quality and the economics underneath them.
- Platform operations at scale
- Running always-on infrastructure for operators and enterprises across multiple markets.
- Product & API-first architecture
- Turning operator and enterprise needs into event-driven, programmable platforms.
- AI agents in customer communication
- Where agentic AI is real, where it is a demo, and what infrastructure it actually needs.
What I believe
Five positions I will defend in public.
“Not because AI will change everything — that is too vague to be useful. The real shift is structural.”
Commerce
Conversational commerce will be bigger than e-commerce.
For thirty years online shopping has followed the same pattern: visit, browse, add to cart, check out. We optimised it; we never reinvented it. The…
StrategyAI is infrastructure, not a feature.
Most enterprises ask “what AI features should we add?” and build smarter versions of what they already have. The companies that will define their…
Agentic AIA chatbot answers questions. An agent completes tasks.
An agent queries the CRM, triggers the API, updates the record, sends the follow-up and escalates on a condition — across many steps, with no human…
TelecomTelcos had a choice in the 2010s. Most chose defence.
When WhatsApp and iMessage displaced SMS, operators held assets nobody could copy: trusted identity, billing relationships, regulatory standing,…
2036Ten years from now, business-to-customer communication will be unrecognisable.
Apps and websites matter less; conversations through messaging, voice and assistants matter more. Identity gets simpler and more trusted, with fewer…
Media
On camera.
Interviews and television appearances on messaging, digital transformation, and where customer communication is heading.
GB Talks: Interview with Ali Sabbagh
A conversation with Gulf Business on messaging operations, operator relationships, and the Gulf's communication market.
Featured on Dubai One
Television feature on messaging operations and the Gulf's communication market, broadcast on Dubai One.
Writing
Essays and notes on where communication goes next.
Long-form pieces appear here and on LinkedIn. Short takes go out several times a week — follow to get them as they land.
Essays & notesEssays
- The Impact of Technology – Living in an AI WorldThe printing press put scribes out of work. The camera threatened painters. AI is not the first technology to make people feel replaceable — it is just the fastest. The question was never whether to resist it.Read →
- Process Automation: How AI speeds up data flows, reduces errors and saves moneyThree worked examples — card replacement, billing, and customer data — showing where AI-driven process automation beats scripts and people on accuracy, speed and cost.Read →
- How an Iron Mindset Can Transform Your PerformanceWhatever you are doing and wherever you seek success — from athletic achievement to leading a team — performance is a mindset before it is a method.Read →
Speaking & press
On stage and on record.
I speak to operators, enterprises and industry audiences about the practical future of customer communication — no slideware about “AI transforming everything”, just what is actually being built, what it costs, and what it will replace.
- Conversational commerce in the Gulf and emerging markets
- Agentic AI: capability vs. the pitch deck
- What operators still own that OTT players cannot copy
- Running a carrier-grade platform business
- RCS, WhatsApp, SMS: where the money goes next
- From network engineer to the boardroom
Contact
Disagree with me. That is where the useful conversations happen.
If you are an operator, an enterprise, a builder or a journalist thinking about where customer communication goes next, I would like to hear from you.