It is ten in the morning in the Netherlands. A biweekly sync with one market just ended — calendar for the next two weeks, blockers, what they need from us, what we learned in another country that might help them. Thirty minutes later the next one starts, with another market. This one is bigger, more demanding, further behind. They want more testing, more documentation, more explanation for every decision. And they are right to ask: their infrastructure is more complex and the margins for error are smaller.
Meanwhile other projects with other markets run in parallel, plus the usual operational work: upgrades, configurations, patches. All with the same offshore team.
The curious part is that I know this model from the other side. For years I was part of the local team in Chile — the one that receives projects, coordinates internally, and acts as the client of the team in Europe. Today I am in Europe. And that dual perspective changes quite a lot how you understand what actually makes this model work.
1. What the local team does — and why it is not small work
When people talk about offshore models in telecom, the picture that comes to mind is Europe designing everything and the local team executing. That picture is incomplete.
The local team has its own complexity. It owns the datacenter, internal coordination with product, local cables and networks, testing in its own environment. When a project arrives from Europe, it does not only deploy it — it receives it, validates it against reality, spots what does not fit, and escalates. It knows the details that are not in any blueprint: the supplier that takes longer than expected, the legacy system nobody documented well, the regulatory constraint that appeared from nowhere.
Being a good local team means being a good client to the offshore team. Knowing how to ask with context, how to validate with judgment, when to escalate and when to solve alone.
This model does not work because the team in Europe is smarter than the markets. It works when both sides understand they are on the same team.
I remember projects that stalled for weeks not because of technical issues, but because one of the two sides did not see it that way. In the end, both always paid the price.
2. What the team in Europe does — and where the real difficulty lives
Before any instruction reaches a market, the offshore team fought the configurations in the lab, found the problems, fixed them, and built the blueprint the country will receive. It is not magic — it is intense technical work that happens before the local market sees a single line of documentation.
Then comes coordination. Each country has its own calendar, priorities, and pace. Operations are not mixed together — you serve market by market, with focus. But that happens with multiple countries in parallel, at different stages, with different levels of scrutiny.
Some countries barely complain. Some want everything in writing, full traceability, validation meetings at every stage. Both are legitimate internal clients. Learning to read that difference — and responding to each without anyone feeling last on the list — is not in any manual. You learn it with experience and mistakes.
I remember many changes where we tested everything — lab, pre-production, different environments — and still, when we hit production, something happened. Because production is always different. There is pressure, tight windows, many variables moving at once. And on the other side there are customers watching TV, online, using services in real time. It is not a test lab — that is where the money and the company’s reputation sit. Rolling back always has a cost. So the point is not to improvise when something fails, but to plan well and execute the plan. On major changes, the room for improvisation is minimal.
3. When the model crosses the Atlantic — and what gets lost along the way
I worked at VTR when it was part of Liberty Global. At that time, large technology projects arrived designed and tested from Europe. The team in Chile received the blueprint, coordinated local rollout, and benefited from solutions that had already been through more advanced labs, with more resources, with more years of accumulated experience.
There was something genuinely valuable in that model: the Americas received the best of the best, already tested. Someone else, in another market, had already paid for the mistakes.
But there was a limit the model never fully solved. The same set-top box that shipped at scale in Europe — with the costs that implied — was too expensive for the Chilean market. Infrastructure designed for European economies did not always fit local realities. And that gap was not a technical problem. It was structural.
That is probably why regional groups are regional — and not global. Technology can be standardized. Markets and costs cannot.
When I wrapped up my chapter with Liberty in Chile, I was offered to continue from Europe — coordinating the same model for operators such as Ziggo, Virgin Media, Sunrise, or UPC. The role changed; the model did not. But having been on the local team first changed how I understood what markets needed from the hub.
4. What changed with outsourcing — and the tension nobody names
The model I have described so far — internal offshore coordinating markets of the same company — has a variant that has become more common: technology outsourcing, where the team in Europe does not belong to the same group but delivers services under contract.
The difference is not only legal. It is operational and cultural.
In the internal model, measurement tends to be qualitative: service quality, operational continuity, internal client satisfaction. Costs are managed inside one organization and there is room to absorb complexity without it showing up immediately on an invoice.
In the outsourcing model, every hour of work turns into story points, estimated effort, money flowing from one company to another. That brings discipline and visibility — which is not bad. But it also changes what gets optimized. And sometimes what gets optimized is not exactly what the business needs.
The tension is real. And people who run projects in this model live with it every day, even though it rarely shows up in status reports.
5. Why this matters now
The telecom industry in Chile is in motion. Millicom has just entered with Movistar; Claro operates under América Móvil’s regional structure. Pressure toward more efficient models — with specialized teams coordinating multiple markets from one hub — is a logical trend in a sector where margins do not allow duplicating capacity in every country.
I do not know whether that same model will play out at ClaroVTR or Millicom. It will probably be a mix of outsourcing and centralization — telco capex is tight and there is little room for big structural bets. It will be interesting to see how this new trend takes shape in the region.
For my part, I will keep the biweekly meetings — same demands, different calendars, constant prioritization and optimization. It sounds simple on paper. But that is exactly where the complexity of this model in telcos really lives.
Claudio from ViaMind
Dare to imagine, create, and transform.
— Claudio
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