The line item telecom operators consistently underestimate: systems integration maintenance. Not the platform license. The ongoing cost of keeping systems connected that were never designed to interoperate. Operators routinely spend $200K to $2M per year just keeping legacy integrations functional. Not building new ones. Keeping old ones alive. And it compounds: A vendor upgrade hits → every integration touching that platform needs regression testing. An engineer leaves → the logic that lived in their head is now a liability. A new tool gets added → you don't get one new integration. You get up to N. The AI-native model changes the shape of this problem. Instead of O(N²) point-to-point connections, you maintain integrations between N systems and one platform. The maintenance surface stays flat. That's the structural difference between a rationalized stack and the one most operators are running today. Full model in the first comment. 👇 #telecom #OSS #systemsintegration #networkoperations #toolrationalization