CRLIVE36: MWC 2025 Day 1 with Ahmad Latif Ali, Analyst at IDC and Tobias Larsson, B2B Head of Telia

We are live from #MWC25 (Mobile World Congress 2025), direct from the Expo floor, with a limited series of episodes talking to leaders from across the industry on themes of the conference, as well as filling in on all of the news and gossip.

Dave, Esmee and Rob set out the main themes of the Conference and have an exciting conversation with:

• Ahmad Latif Ali, Associate VP EMEA Telecommunication at Insights, Analyst at IDC
• Tobias Larsson, B2B Head of Telia

TLDR
00:35 Welcome back at MWC in Barcelona!
08:35 Conversation with Ahmad Latif Ali about the 5 trends
49:00 Conversation with Tobias Larssson
1:10:12 Conclusion Day 1

Guest
Ahmad Latif Ali: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmadlali/
Tobias Larsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-larsson-82b39a4/

Hosts
Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/
Esmee van de Giessen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/
Rob Kernahan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/

Production
Marcel van der Burg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/
Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/

Sound
Ben Corbett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/
Louis Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/

'Cloud Realities' is an original podcast from Capgemini

Creators and Guests

Host

Dave Chapman

Chief Cloud Evangelist with nearly 30 years of global experience in strategic development, transformation, program delivery, and operations, I bring a wealth of expertise to the world of cloud innovation. In addition to my professional expertise, I’m the creator and main host of the Cloud Realities podcast, where we explore the transformative power of cloud technology.

Host

Esmee van de Giessen

Principal Consultant Enterprise Transformation and Cloud Realities podcast host, bridges gaps to drive impactful change. With expertise in agile, value delivery, culture, and user adoption, she empowers teams and leaders to ensure technology enhances agility, resilience, and sustainable growth across ecosystems.

Host

Rob Kernahan

VP Chief Architect for Cloud and Cloud Realities podcast host, drives digital transformation by combining deep technical expertise with exceptional client engagement. Passionate about high-performance cultures, he leverages cloud and modern operating models to create low-friction, high-velocity environments that fuel business growth and empower people to thrive.

Producer

Marcel van der Burg

VP Global Marketing and producer of the Cloud Realities podcast, is a strategic marketing leader with 33+ years of experience. He drives global cloud marketing strategies, leveraging creativity, multi-channel expertise, and problem-solving to deliver impactful business growth in complex environments.

What is Cloud Realities?

Exploring the practical and exciting alternate realities that can be unleashed through cloud driven transformation and cloud native living and working.

Each episode, our hosts Dave, Esmee & Rob talk to Cloud leaders and practitioners to understand how previously untapped business value can be released, how to deal with the challenges and risks that come with bold ventures and how does human experience factor into all of this?

They cover Intelligent Industry, Customer Experience, Sustainability, AI, Data and Insight, Cyber, Cost, Leadership, Talent and, of course, Tech.

Together, Dave, Esmee & Rob have over 80 years of cloud and transformation experience and act as our guides though a new reality each week.

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CRLIVE36: MWC 2025 Day 1 with Ahmad Latif Ali, Analyst at IDC and Tobias Larsson, B2B Head of Telia
[00:00:00] Or mobile reality. Mobile soon. Whatever you want. Soon. Soon, soon.
Welcome to Cloud Realities Live, an original podcast from Capgemini. I'm Dave Chapman. I'm Esmee van de Giessen and I'm Rob Kernahan. And we are back in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress 2025. Does it feel like a year since we were last year? You know why it doesn't? It doesn't, and it's all very familiar. You know, when you've done a conference for a few times, and you get the familiarity in, that's, uh, that's there as well.
Weird muscle memory, because like, when I was thinking about it, I could only remember, like, the fact that it goes across a few different halls, but I couldn't remember the specifics, like, where the facilities are, where the good sandwich shop was, but actually it all just comes, like, rushing back. Funny, innit?
It is funny [00:01:00] as your first time here and the first time you've recorded live with us on the show It's quite an experience. Really? Yeah, it is. Well You've been preparing me all the way through is Rob taller or shorter than you think he was gonna be. No, he was actually equal I was actually Yes, I often get the you're taller than I thought so I'm a slouch on camera.
I don't know Well, I think I think just for the listener Rob is I think somewhere around 5 foot 4? 5 foot 3 and a half, Dave. Am I different in real life? I would say you were a bit taller than I was expecting. I mean, that in a good way.
Be honest. You were about where, yeah, height wise, it's a funny thing, isn't it?
But yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. So, how was your first impressions? It's very crowded. It is crowded, isn't it? It is a huge, huge event. Yeah, it is.
I find the flow of this one is, let's just say, a little messy. It's hard to get in, [00:02:00] because there's cabs everywhere, unless you want to find one, then there's cabs nowhere, or there is absolutely enormous queues, and there's like, sort of a, uh, a sort of a tricky traffic flow outside the main thing.
And then when you get in No, no, Dave, the wrong word there is, the traffic is not flowing. It's just traffic stationary. Stationary traffic, yeah.
And then you get into the main event, and there's like human traffic everywhere, and it's like, it's packed, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's packed. Yeah, and in some events, it feels like the entire city is built around the event, like for example at Dreamforce, it feels like it's been taking over the entire city, and here it doesn't feel like that. No, it definitely doesn't. So there is no flow, or that's the center of the universe. Yeah.
It's a bit different. I think that's right. I think that's right. And Rob, how long did it take you to get here yesterday? We usually try to follow your travel trials and tribulations, so how did yesterday go for you?
Um, It was a long one yesterday. Let's say eight hours. I mean, I got here quite straight forward. You did. How about you, [00:03:00] Es? Yeah, me too, but let's not forget that it was actually his birthday. Was his birthday. And he celebrated by having a pint of Long Island Iced Tea. And he is still recovering rom. I always like to think I make good decisions.
I mean, that was an impressive one. That was an impressive one. Anyway, so, what are we expecting of the week? I think, um, what's interesting at this show, sort of beyond some of the other shows that we cover, is the consumer side of things. So we just went for a bit of a walk around in the consumer section.
Um, I mean, it's impressive. There's a few things I think you can observe about it. I'll, I'll start off with a straightforward one. Uh, the Samsung booth has got some of the best screens I've seen. Like, absolutely spectacular looking booth. Yeah, amongst the biggest booth, one of the biggest booths I've seen.
But amazing sort of wraparound screen on three, three separate sides. And [00:04:00] Rob, you, you were noticing a particular. a particular trend?
It's uh, it's the rise of China. Now they're dominating in the uh, the floor on Urzaimi, China Mobiles here. You look at the tech they've got, they're turning up with cars, all sorts of consumer home devices.
Very clear that in a couple of years I think they'll be taking the lead from the traditional players potentially. It is getting quite impressive what they're turning out.
And they use, they use different visuals. You feel a complete China vibe. It's beautiful storytelling. So it also adds something, I think, to the level of communications in general.
And now also utilizing all that power and technology in those huge screens that look beautiful. Like, we were trying to detect the different tiles in a complete wall of technology. And we couldn't even identify the tiles. Like, back in the days we could actually count the pixels. Based on some shonky screen, you could count the pixels, yeah. And then we were like, it's in [00:05:00] color.
Yeah. You're right, though. There is a, there is a thing about where the sort of Representing a lot of the sort of, you know, natural, uh, national vibe.
Culture, nature, uh, pandas. Yeah, they use different images. Marcel's here. You alright, Marcel?
Yeah, I'm okay. The speed, the speed of the Chinese stuff is really amazing.
It's really the pace of development. It's, it's amazing. So, I mentioned it before. Cars in Europe and in the rest of the world took a hundred years. And now in a couple of years, beautiful cars. technology is in, so the speed is amazing.
Big standout for me was, um, what was the company that were partnering with Leica? Xiaomi. Xiaomi. I mean, that was really interesting. One, that that partnership exists, not Leica partnering with anybody else. And two, the way that they've fully adopted the look and feel of a camera. So it's, it's more of a, a handle grit that attached [00:06:00] Full handle, yeah. A camera actually it's the vintage feel camera. And also the sort of, you could, you could screw a lens on the front of it. Mm-hmm. So you could screw like a proper full size camera lens
onto it. Would you do that though? It's actually, if you take the question all the, all the things in a phone, what, what's the differentiator these days? What's the thing that goes, I'll buy that one over that one.ell, that's what they're
all looking for, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's a great one. The camera. Obviously, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, then you've only got one choice, but if you're in a better, more vibrant ecosystem, then you've got, you know, consumer choice that's, uh, superior. It's weird that we're actually going back to adding lenses.
Is that the next best thing? So we're actually now adding the stuff that we, uh, we made disappear because it just fit in one phone and we were so happy that we got the cameras and now we're adding lenses again. Is that, you know?
I, I suggested that innovation has got a somewhat of a circular nature to it.
Yeah.
But the, if you, it's one of the things though, right? You take a [00:07:00] good photo on a decent smartphone camera now. Yeah. I mean, the difference to say when the original iPhone came out, it's massively dramatic. Well, the, the iPhone for the last few years, it's main innovation has been lens, lens based, hasn't it? Mm-hmm. It's been camera based for a while. You know what it reminds me of? Is it a skinny gene or is it a flared gene? You know, some, you know, there's a cycle between everything
comes back into. Yeah, there you go. There you go. That's what it probably is. Right. So I think we'll crack that. That's the innovation cycle.That's it. Yeah. Job done. Uh, all right. So, um, on today's show, we have got, um, IDC who are going to talk to us about five major trends going on in the industry today. Um, I won't steal the thunder of that conversation, but I think it's, it is a useful framework. For us to have a look at what's going on, uh, at the, at the Congress this week.
So joining us for that, we've got Ahmad Latif Ali, who's an associate VP. And then joining us after that is Tobias Larsson, who's B2B head of Telia in Sweden. If you don't [00:08:00] know them Telia is a Swedish monthly national telecoms company. They operate in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, that space of the world.
They also own TV4 Media. So Tobias is going to give us a perspective on growth in the industry. And how a couple of the, uh, the IDC trends kind of really resonate with him. So with that, let's go first to our conversation with Ahmed. I am delighted to say that joining us right now is Ahmed Latif Ali, who's an associate VP in MIA Telecoms Insights Analyst at IDC.
Ahmad how are you doing? Very well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the, uh, on the, on the show. Our pleasure. How are you, how's Barcelona so far for you? Uh, so far so good. A lot of meetings, a lot of interesting conversations, broad topic areas, and, uh, yeah, the ecosystem is growing. Definitely. There's, [00:09:00] um, I think I heard that about 60 percent of the attendees this year are actually not from the telco space at all.
So it's interesting to see how that, that ecosystem is growing across board.
It's very consumer as much as it is, you know, B2B, I think as well. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Before we get on to that, though, uh, where do you stand on tapas? Uh, yeah, sure. Different strokes for different folks. But yeah, it's good.Would you prefer just like a normal start or a main course? Are you into the whole sharing thing? No, I think when in Rome. When in Rome, yeah, yeah. So I'm definitely into the whole sharing thing and yeah, no issues. That's all there. Yeah, as what do you think about sharing on my left hand? Somebody's getting really anxious.Don't worry. I'm I'm going there. Are you going? Exactly what he's doing?
I'm like Joey from Fred. No. No one got my grubby fingers. I love to share. We actually shared dinner with tapas last night and I loved it. It was very armonious, wasn't it? It was. Yeah, it [00:10:00] was a very cozy, local, lovely, lovely little spot.
Just just me and as and our producer Marcel is over there. Uh, and thankfully there was nobody there destroying the Sharon vibe. Hey, Robert. Well, David, you know my thoughts on tapas, and I don't like sharing. It's just a stressful meal. It's just the whole politics of who's had what, where, and when, and can you take it. We can go for rules, like you always get the first bite, and we can
help you with that. You've got a meal, we have standards, and then you've introduced a completely different dynamic, loads of stress involved in it. Why? Why? Why? You look anxious. Yeah, he's already started sweating hands. Sweating palms. It's too much.It's a good job I wasn't there. Well, don't worry, we're going to try another tapas place tonight, so you get a chance.
Can I just order my own on my own table? Solo tapas! I bet you there's a market in that, right? For people like me, who like the food, just don't like the sharing. So come for tapas and don't need to share.
[00:11:00] Like the food, but they don't like the convivial atmosphere. Yeah, yeah. Copyright cloud realities. I've just created a new restaurant experience right there. I do sympathize a little bit because you never know how someone, how hungry someone is, right? I once had a tapas meal with somebody who was like a vacuum cleaner. And everyone else just sat there and watched them eat everyone else's food. Is that what's put you off? Yeah, basically. Bad experience. Very good. Anyway, so, enjoy the rest of the week. I am looking forward to talking to you about, um, what's going on in the industry. So let's start with, what are your expectations coming in?
Yeah, yeah. So We have kind of five key trends that we look at as a market coming in and expectations that we really wanted to kind of draw out and insights for our own research and analysis. And I'll go through them. So Um, what we looked at is kind of Cap Ex investment is tapering off for, for the telcos, um, for the telco industry.Uh, that's leading to kind of more structural transformation that's more intensifying as well. So it's, it's tapering off [00:12:00] because the
financial
framework is shifting or because the investment is reducing? No. So I think this is the kind of convergence of two major trends that we're seeing more broadly.
I'm talking about worldwide level as well. Sure. Yeah. So, um, uh, those two key mega trends is the fiber rollout reaching kind of the peak. peak, peak investment area, peak investment, uh, uh, age. And also the second one being is five years since the five, uh, first rollout of 5g. So certainly within Europe, especially, you know, with Swisscom back in 20 5g.
And we don't expect that the Um, replacement rate for 5G standalone will be sufficient to cover off the non standalone rollout in the beginning five year stage of 5G. Can you just go
a level deeper on that, just so I understand what exactly you mean. So, is it, is 5G still deploying? Or is it a different phase of 5G that's about
deploy different.
So it, it, um, right now there's um, 325 live 5G networks globally and only 60 of them, roughly, or 62 to be exact, are non-ST standalone, non-ST standalone, meaning the full scope of [00:13:00] 5G, the main difference.
I mean, that explains a lot. And we finally got to the bottom why 5G doesn't work yet.
As we stood outside the conference center, me and Dave had to access our digital pass and the phone network had to work.
And we stood there for about 30 seconds going, the irony of being outside Mobile World Congress and there's no signal. That was the deep irony of it.
Yeah, so look, obviously 5G came in with three key main use cases, right? Enhanced mobile broadband, high speed, which everyone's experiencing now. You have MMTC, mass machine time communication, that's all about connection density.
Uh, and then the final thing being ultra reliable, low latency connectivity. That's reducing latency and reducing the speed, basically, in terms of, um, the, the response of the networks, right? So, so far, uh, what's, what's happened in terms of 5G rollout is kind of a, um, Uh, a rollout of the, the 5G new radio, right?
So 5G new radios that have been rolled out and, and able to harden that em EMBB side, right? The enhance mobile, mobile broadband faster. That's why you see, you know, you can get, uh, significant [00:14:00] high rates of download speeds and upload speeds. But the second phase is more about, but that's backing onto the second part of the network, which is the, the core.
Right? Now that core is still a 4G core, right? So 5G standalone is basically leveraging 5G core. So rolling out that aspect of it. Okay. So what I'm saying is that the investment in that area is not going to replace the initial investment for the 5G new radio. So that's where we see that tapering off. I want to caveat that though.
So I'll cover these two key kind of conversions of two major trends, fiber rollout, which is. By rollouts. Basically you roll it out, um, into the, um, into the, the network and it's bulletproof. It's supposed to lay, lay, lay there and work for decades and it's bulletproof. Um, that's a one-off investment almost.
Right? And then you've got the cyclical, latest generation of mobile, which is now hitting that peak rate as well. As I explained, there's caveats to that. In the us for example, actually the largest three operators at t, Verizon, and T-Mobile have actually came out and suggested that. They're going to be increasing CapEx and that's [00:15:00] primarily driven by the BEAT program, the Broadband Equity Access Development program.
That's 40 billion dollars, over 40 billion dollars worth of investment happening there. That's allowing to drive the CapEx in the short run. The second part of that is kind of the digital industrialization within China as well. So they've also come out saying that the CapEx is also going to be looking to increase as well.
But, you know, speaking more at home, um, you know, my home place is, uh, is in the United Kingdom. And obviously within Europe, Western Europe specifically, uh, you're looking at more modest rate of, uh, investment and in some countries also declining rates, uh, overall. Okay. So I think it's also just staying on that one.
What's more important to also concentrate on is revenue. So revenue is actually for the telcos. Um, projected according to our own forecast to increase towards 2028 in line, broadly speaking, with an inflation. But we need to also consider that CapEx intensity, which is the percentage of that revenue, is dropping from about 22 percent down to 18%.
There is multiple ways we can slice [00:16:00] and dice that in terms of what does that mean for the telcos, perhaps means better cash flow. What do they do with that cash flow? What are the strategies to, to, um, uh, to kind of make them more profitable and have more of a, uh, more of a stronger financial positioning?
Um, that still remains to be seen. So that's kind of the broad, but that leads to, that's trend number one. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, that's a good overview
of investment. I think you're going to come on to structural transformation? Absolutely. So that leads to more structural transformation. That's more intensifying.
So this relates now to Um, something that was mentioned by Mark Mutra during the, um, opening keynote that he introduced himself in as a new Telefonica chairman and CEO, um, and he broadly has just mentioned that the, the industry within Europe is comp is, is heavily fragmented and heavily regulated for multiple reasons, which we can go into.
Um, so that leads to more structural transformation, whether that's spinning off, that's consolidation or [00:17:00] deconsolidation, spinning off certain areas of the business, exiting certain markets, mergers and acquisitions, loads of those things and of these activities happened in 2024. We can look to Vodafone 3 in the UK, uh, having the approval, um, going from 4 operators to 3 operators.
You can Orange Massimoble in Spain as well going from 4 to 3 with some structural remedies as well that could potentially open up the door to a new 4th mobile operator to come in and establish themselves there. Right. But, um, what I want to say is that, uh, um, the, uh, these kind of mergers and acquisitions, the consolidation is all linked to competitiveness.
And this links to many reports, uh, commissioned last year by the European Commission by Mario Drahi about the European competitiveness.
In the sense of, we're heading towards only a handful of very major players in this space.
Potentially, potentially. So, um, the focus here is that fragmentation has really [00:18:00] stunted the growth for the telcos.
Numbers don't lie. Right. There are, uh, if you look at the average number of subscriber in Europe, , uh, for a population of 450 million people, or let's say the EU for now, 450 million people, the average number subscriber is 5 million people. The average number subscriber in the US of a population of 335 million people is 107.
Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. So you look at the OG of magnitude, right? ,
mm-hmm .
Um, many vendors. So, uh, the leaders of the ven in the vendor communities. Also on the operator side. They essentially came out and said, look, for the telco industry to really strive, um, to really thrive moving forward, they need scale. Right now, the competition, competitive landscape within Europe is subcritical.
It's achieving subcritical scale. And what does that mean for the consumer? So like, is
that,
is that impacting my experience? Your ARPU is a lot better. So if you look at the ARPU, um, compared to, there's multiple numbers around, but I'm going to use our own IDC [00:19:00] numbers, right? Yeah, sure. So the ARPU that we have for, uh, for the, uh, for consumers within, uh, within Western Europe compared to the U.
S. is less than half. Right. And what does that mean? Average revenue per user. Right. Average revenue per user is less than half. And that's, again, you're going from three operators. in one large country with 335 million people to an area where, um, it's, uh, admittedly a bit, bit higher in terms of population, but a, a, a significant increase in operators.
Right. And is that,
did I get a lower price as an end user? Yeah.
It's a
great, it's, uh, it's, yeah, that's basically what it means. Yeah. Yeah. Price and performance is what I'm sort of thinking like the. Fragmentation would mean that each of the individual organizations can't invest as much in their infrastructure and also you're traversing multiple different infrastructures presumably.
Correct, yeah. But if that then consolidates one, the larger, the larger organizations at that point can invest in, you know, the sorts of [00:20:00] technologies you were talking about in, in trend one.
Uh, yes. So, um, so obviously the stronger financial health, the more inclined they're going to be shifting to new technologies and new capabilities, new innovation.
Uh, in the U. S. Ericsson had signed a large deal with AT& T, 14 billion dollars at the end of 2023 for Open RAN, which is all about, um, opening up the, so far, obviously, networks have been virtually integrated. The idea of Open RAN is to, um, you know, have more of a cloud, cloudified, uh, RAN infrastructure, and that opens up the, the ecosystem there.
Um, so that's. That's uh, that's kind of the competitive landscape that's leading into that structural transformation. Um, also I need to say that, um, last year, so I've been coming to NWC, I think this is my six or seventh time. Last year we had the four CEOs of the telcos come out on stage and say, look, if we, um, don't [00:21:00] find, if we don't thrive in certain countries, we just exit it.
And they they're right. Um, uh, BT quite recently exited the Irish market for partial operations. That's in the wholesale and some other areas, some partial operations exiting in Ireland. Telefonica have very, very recently come out and said they're going to exit the Argentine market in Latin America.
Right. Bear in mind also. You've had a lot of sea level executive changes in the last 12 to 18 months or 24 months, I should say. New CEO at, uh, at Vodafone, new CEO at BT. with, uh, Allison, uh, new CEO at Telephonic with Mark and obviously Margarita with Vodafone as well. And also on the vendor landscape, we're seeing some changes there.
I think it's super interesting, uh, to see the new CEO coming in, the incoming CEO for Nokia, who's coming from a data center and AI background. Right, interesting. Which is, uh, super interesting. Yeah, yeah. Um, and if you [00:22:00] If you put that all together, it kind of gives you an idea about the direction of travel in the industry.
And that, that brutality you talk about, that's in other sectors as well. We've seen it in automotive, where they're basically saying if the brand can't wash its face as a going concern, we're gonna end it. So I think you find that in big business, they're more willing to kill something when it's not where it should be.
And I think that's a, that's a rising trend and I think it'll get more dramatic, not less.
So, let's talk about, um, Trend 3, which I think brings in Satellites. Satellites. And, and, and, what does that So, let's just take a step back from the trend. Obviously, satellites have been a major part in telecommunications for a while.
Why is it specifically interesting now, and
what's changing? Because satellite's been a, a, an industry, uh, that's been going on for, I think, over 50 to 60 years. Uh, so far, the main focus of, um, satellites has been on geostationary earth, or, uh, uh, geostationary, uh, satellite, uh, structure. Basically have three operate, three sat, uh, three satellites that cover the earth, enough.
Is it further [00:23:00] away? Geostationary satellites are 36 36, 000 km away from the from the earth that gives them enough range to cover three for the whole earth, right? Low Earth Satellite operators are between 200 km to about 1600 km. And that means they're much more close to the earth. Is
Starlink fit into this?
Correct. So yeah,
I'm getting into that. So Starlink, Elon Musk, um, The your question to answer directly is who why now? Yeah so And this is true for any technology, right if the market is not ready it will not take off so the market is ready now because of the economics and the economics of that is the cost to Put the satellite through a rocket propulsion, uh, engine has gone down significantly.
Right. Through reusable rockets. Right. So I think that is, was a real key, one of the key drivers there. But also, [00:24:00] um, deep pockets goes, goes far in this industry. And satellite is expensive and it's hard. Right. Um, we see Kuiper, Bosch Kuiper by Amazon. Um, we see, of course, the OneWebs of the world with Yuta Salat.
You've got to remember, there's been a lot of consolidation as well on the satellite front. What's your
read of, from an analyst's perspective, why Amazon have got involved in this?
So Amazon, so bear in mind, you say Amazon, not Amazon Web Services. So it's Amazon, uh, um, the mother ship who is looking at Project Kuiper.
Um, the focus there is that they wanted to build, um, infrastructure in orbit for enterprises. I think that's the main read that we're getting out of it.
I, I thought we might be getting there at some point. That's been kind of, no pun intended, but in the ether for a while, that conversation hasn't it? How do you, how do you see that evolving and, and how fast do you see that
evolving?
Um, I think it's, um, so this is public information. So they're mandated by the FCC to get out about half of their constellations [00:25:00] before. Um, I think before 2026, 2027, one of those years. Okay. So next year, the year after that, the constellation allocation is 3, 236. So half of that, um, needs to be in, uh, in orbit, uh, in a, in a fairly short time.
So, uh, that is coming to a head quite quickly. Um, and they, um, uh, that that's basically progressing quite well, in my opinion, I think they, um, it's important to point out that they are, um, Basically, uh, building out that infrastructure and offering an off ramp to other, um, just take a step back here. Amazon works backwards.
Amazon is one of those organizations that you have to admire because they always work backwards from the customer. Yeah,
that's right.
They always work, I think some, a lot of vendors and all of hyperscalers say that, but very rarely do they do that. So Amazon, I think the, the genesis of the organization.
is basically customer first and always adjusting to what the customer needs. [00:26:00] So this is why you see this Kuiper program, not an AWS initiative, although it's built, probably leveraging some of the key frameworks and practices.
No doubt.
But there is a off ramp, there is a gateway there to offer different interconnectivity with different, uh, different players in the market.
Um, what's also important to point out is, um, from a sovereign perspective, You see the Irish squared program, which was recently approved by the Europeans, the EU in conjunction with the European space agency, which we spend a bit of time with as well, um, basically to guarantee the sovereignty of certain, um, uh, of certain businesses, the citizens of Europe, governments, public sector, et cetera, the
GPS network, isn't it?
The, uh, the talk about the European version of GPS and starting to put that up as well to protect us from, um, as you go into the geopolitical situation. Yeah, two things are coming,
two things are coming ahead. And I'm going to relay, uh, and, and say, uh, a statement or relay a statement that Mark [00:27:00] Mutcher also said quite recently.
Um, the way we think about connectivity now is probably the same way we thought about defense five years ago. So how we think about defense now could be how we think about defense in five years time. The way thing by defense now could be where we think about connectivity in five years time, in terms of the importance, in terms of sovereignty, in terms of the self reliance of it.
Yes. Well, we see that
two things could come to a head. You've got the technological things that are happening, but also you've got the geopolitical defense conversation that are happening that took two things that could come ahead. That could play well on well, but well for as a business opportunity for some of the service provider or some of the regional telcos that are Um, mandated from a regulatory perspective to have local presence, local capabilities and be that kind of sovereign player within the Ecos, within the European region.
The, you know, kind
of the ever, the ever evolving discussion around sovereign cloud as well, I think we'll see. Absolutely. Expecting to see European players pop up in that space and then more recently sovereign AI. [00:28:00] Yeah, so
let's unpack that. That has exploded in the last six months. Yeah. Super micro NVIDIA have come up and really, uh, come out the gates with a lot of white paper and thought leadership to really drive the demand, um, and the, uh, the art of the possible and, um, having those discussions, the telcos and having a partner program for the telcos, right?
So, um, there are three ways to look at AI, um, for the telcos, AI in telco, AI for telco. an AI by Telco. So the AI in Telco is basically within the infrastructure of the RAN, the radio access to make it more efficient. The AI RAN alliance is a key example there. To drive up network efficiency and drive down the cost per, um, per bit eventually.
The, uh, the AI for Telco is all about the internal kind of IT operations, OSS, BSS, improving efficiency, improving the optimization, uh, [00:29:00] chatbots, uh, bidding inquiries, so on and so forth. Which is happening. Similar, similar transformational themes that you see in like many verticals. Correct. Correct. But now we're getting to a stage whereby, and I'm coming to my third book, the AI by Telco, sovereign AI, AI factories for inferencing, for training models.
Um, you know, I live in the UK. There are you, probably you guys see it as well in terms of derelict buildings that lay around that, uh, that data centers, all data centers, um, uh, that could be repurposed, for example, for co location services for data centers. Uh, they could, you know, co locations like kind of data center hotel, almost right in that sense, that can be repurposed, um, to, to host data centers for AI inferencing, AI training models.
That could be an opportunity to transform and pivot a cost center to a revenue generator for Wrap that around connectivity, wrap that around, uh, with sovereign, um, uh, sovereign trends. Wrap that around with, um, self reliance. That could be an opportunity for the telcos.
That's an interesting point, though, about what [00:30:00] services they offer, because one of the One of the positions is that the hyperscalers have had so much time in a world where there's no other competition other than maybe China, arguably, what is the level of investment required to get parity with their service?
They can't do this without their partners. So that's why you see the partners really kind of activate this market, um, as I mentioned, you know, in videos of the world and also Supermicro, etc, really coming out with plenty of white papers presentations. You see a couple here today. You see it in the lead up to MWC.
I think this time next year, I'm expecting to see, uh, you know, AI factory everywhere. AI sovereign AI everywhere in terms of this year, it feels especially on the vendor side, agentic AI agent, uh, things that really, but that's quite relatively new term technologically. You've got the RPA side and AI side, which has been in the, in, in, in Rob's been struggling to decouple that for a while.
You're just going to add to his confusion here. Should we, uh, should we demystify that? [00:31:00] Dave does jest, but, um No, I mean, RPA, it's, um, I mean, I used to work for an RPA vendor many years ago, and, um, the term virtual worker and digital worker was there in 2018. The
concept's the same, it's just it's dramatically more advanced, basically, and has a better interface.
No, honestly, that's exactly it. It's RPA wrapped around with the generative AI capabilities. There is obviously, um, the complications of the large language models, etc. Um, but I, so, uh, the concept of a genetic AI, let's see where that takes. Would that move the needle for the telcos specifically? Um, that remains to be seen.
I think it might move
the needle in the middle one, the AI for telcos. I think it will move the needle in that because it's going to drive hyperautomation. even further than it's gone before in the way it will in other
verticals. So for internal transformation, for internal, but the telcos right now, they're like, okay, how can I help?
How can I use this to make money? How can I use this to make more money? How can I use the revenue generated? This is [00:32:00] all internal to save my OPEX. Um, what I, what I want to say is that, um, uh, the kind of the, um, the, the, the, the aspect of AI factories, it's. They don't have a birthright for this, the telcos, right?
Yeah, for sure. It's something that, uh It's a pivot. It's a pivot, isn't it? It's a pivot they need to make. They actually need to step up to the plate, uh, is what I'm But
they've chosen such a difficult market to enter. I mean, if you think about the complexity, I know, I get the diversification of a telco, we've seen it before into media and all sorts of stuff.
But that's a, that's a tough gig to crack into. Considering your competition and things like DeepSeek and the pace of the market, you're moving into a market that A is racing along and B is incredibly complicated.
So I think their role in that is not to challenge, of course, the DeepSeeks of the world.
What DeepSeek did is completely democratize the industry, the AI industry, right? So instead of what we expected to see, maybe a few dozen, uh, or [00:33:00] dozens of LLM models, we're going to probably see hundreds of LLM models because that cost has significantly reduced. So the prolification of the LLM models will really take off.
But on the flip side, when that happens, you're leaving behind security and privacy. When a prolification goes up, you're leaving that out. It's outside. It goes out. Where there's a positioning there, whether they face up to that is not
the question. Well, the whole, um, LLM thing, the efficacy of the model, understanding why it's done it, the security and the privacy associated with it, it's all been left out.
It's, it's like they're gonna have to retrofit it like they did the internet. You know what I say,
Dave?
You know what I, I know what you want to
say, Rob, about, about internet security. That's what they said about TCP IP.
Yeah.
So TCP IP was the same concept, right? And then the end to end encryption, end to end port, the port, security port calls came later.
Yeah, yeah. So, um, it will get there in, in, in the end to end security. Who are the key winners there? Um
Well, so let's, let me try and swing us back a little bit to the theme. So we, [00:34:00] we talked about investment in networks. We talked about the structural transformation going on in the industry. Uh, we touched a little bit on satellite partnerships.
Um, why don't we just return to that for a second? So let
me, let me walk, let me walk through the, the partnership models and how they look like. Right now there are two different types of models. There is the MS model and the MSS model. The MS model is basically leveraging mobile spectrum that the telcos already have, uh, procured.
That's the T Mobile in the U. S. and Starlink. What that means is, so, in the U. S. there's a 30%. We talk about coverage, right? But in the U. S., have anyone ever driven from New York to New Hampshire? I have not, but I would like to. I have up to
Boston, up to Boston to New York. I've done that. You're doing that on hold, aren't you?
I'm taking the kids, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Me and my wife, we're visiting our, her, her family, not, not mine, but her family, um, uh, up in, uh, in New Hampshire, more, uh, more acutely, Hampton from New York. Uh, and our signal dropped out. On the G on Google, Google Maps. And I'm like, where are we [00:35:00] going,
Because it was so, there is a problem at that point. There is a problem. At that point you're like, okay, we're in a foreign country, we're in the
us. Um, this would cause me travel anxiety. Download your maps before you go. Download your maps. Download your maps. Think you've got a tip for, uh, what you're gonna need to do later this year, do you?
So, um, and I was surprised, like what here, I mean, um, the cell coverage is pretty, pretty bad. So we would focus on coverage, mostly on population coverage, but. What gets left out is land coverage. So land coverage, or land coverage gap in the US is 30%. So 30 percent of the country is not covered by cell. No, but
this is a thing. In drama in the US, they can legitimately claim, I've got no phone service. You know, when they're stuck in the desert and they're broken down and they're, you know, It's true, and we actually think like, huh? Yeah, we go, uh, uh, uh, uh. And in Canada it's worse, it's 75%. But that's, I mean, that's 90 percent of Canadians.You've got like none of it up the top, where nobody lives type thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, in Europe, we have a, we have a different, different issues, but just talking about coverage gap, um, so going back to my point, [00:36:00] Starlink basically got the approval to use T Mobile Spectrum, uh, in those areas. So now you can be the middle, I've seen a couple of Joe Rogan videos, he's in the mountain on his back of his truck, he just puts a Starlink size of an iPad and he.
You're streaming Netflix in the middle of a mountain, basically. Yeah, yeah. Um, so, with that, you can penetrate the market quicker and you can also, uh, offer services, uh, directly to device, unmodified devices. So, key point here, unmodified devices. Right. That's one model that's happening and that partnership is taking off.
The second one is the MSS model, which is a Mobile Satellite Spectrum model. This is a spectrum that has been dedicated by the ITU for satellite services. Right now, it's very, very shallow. It's only about, I think, a few gigahertz wide in terms of the bandwidth. So there's limited availability, limited spectrum available.
And spectrum is basically the oxygen for networks to, to, to, to function. That is changing though. But just going back on that point, the app. So that [00:37:00] partnership model is Apple with Global Star. So the device and chip makers with the satellite providers directly, but having to use modified devices or latest devices like the newest iPhone 16 or 15.
All right. All the devices cannot, cannot connect that. That's the two ways. I see.
Is the Apple Global Starway without the operator using a satellite communication as dedicated and not interfering with frequency bands because interference is a big issue. Like we're getting a little bit now. Yeah,
that's right.It's ironic. And then you got MS as well. The um, so these are the two uh, functions, but the ITU function, the one that MSS that has satellite allocation that's changing more and more allocations will happen in the future.
So from a user experience point of view, you've got greater coverage and all of those sorts of things that presumably.
The partnering and the different strategies in that space must be impacting then the structural transformation element of what's going on in the industry.
Yeah, we saw a recent announcement yesterday with Vodafone and was doing a JV with [00:38:00] a satellite operator. So they see that opportunity there in terms of partnering to, to, I wouldn't As far as a bedding man, of course, satellite operators are not considered a competition to the telcos, it's more complementary.
But, so when
you say that on the competition point, it's much more convenient to receive a signal from above your head than a mast that has a hill in the way or you're in a gully. Is there not a world where it all comes overhead and you get rid of the base stations on ground? No. No? No. And is that capacity or is it complexity? No, it's
physics. It is? It's physics. Yeah, it's physics. Um, you, it's, it's just, I don't see that, uh, That app ever happening, to be honest with you, um, you and it's just not viable, just put us out. It's much cheaper to build it on earth than to put us out. It's a cost thing. It is a cost thing and it's also, um, physics wise, it's just not possible.
It's just not possible. Um, and right now there's so much macro networks already built out that does a good job anyways. Um, it's just there to offer a complimentary on the direct [00:39:00] device. I don't forget satellite offers so many different, uh, um, use cases. I see four main ones and then we can move on to the other topics as well.
Um, D2D, which is directed device. So direct to Cypher, a disaster recovery, uh, backhaul and also satellite IOT. IOT is coming, coming back, um, with, with satellite connectivity.
Yeah. You can track your asset anywhere on the world.
Exactly. Like agriculture, um, you know, uh, energy mining. wind farms, you know, all difficult to build out, all difficult to build our network in the middle of the sea.
Um, so even a satellite with connectivity, um, to, uh, to devices will, um, I think we'll come back for sure. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah. Very good. Um, so we've done, I think four of the five, an investment in what's going on in investing in the networks themselves and how. That's tailing off a little bit in certain parts of the world structural transformation of the industry Yeah, how the role and importance of satellite and the different strategies around the partnerships We [00:40:00] talked I think to AI and the impact that AI is having in the three different types of how it's crystallizing in the industry Crystallizing in the industry and then and then programmable networking maybe to bring us to a bit of a conclusion.
Absolutely Yes, so programmable networking. I think This is a compounding kind of trend that started in 2022. I want to say with the Kamara API Alliance, um, announced here at MWC and then was built upon in, uh, 2023 with the GSMA Open Gateway initiative. And then last year we saw a bunch of use cases being announced, quality on demand, uh, For a SIM swap, two factor authentication, etc.
And then this year, we're seeing a lot of kind of discussions and practical implementations of these network APIs so far. And what it means, if I understand it correctly, and let me Put myself out on a limb here and attempt to explain this. Here we go, drumroll audience, yeah. Is [00:41:00] Dave going to make a So I think it is, it's So, you mentioned it.
There's APIs available for, for network. Correct. So that means if I'm building a cloud native application, I can, the network becomes a programmable part of that application. 100%. That's exactly right. Everything is code, David. Everything is code. Literally everything is code. So it's basically having the network exposure, right, but so far it's a close.
Um, it's closed. No, it's not been, um, the, a lot of activities now in the last few years is all about hardening the supply side, right? So the operators working with the vendors and building aggregated platforms. So you've got a do now, which is kind of the new, um, they've got to stand, uh, here in terms of the, um.
The partnership between Ericsson and the leading operators globally. And then you've got, for example, Nokia acquiring Rapid, which is a huge kind of developer hub for building APIs. So as I mentioned, just going back to my point, um, [00:42:00] A lot of effort now has, so far, has been about hardening the supply side.
Now it's about activating the demand side. Right. So, for example, I went to a very cool conference, I must say, last year in Croatia called InfoBipShift. Um, that's and this is a developer conference. I also go to AWS reinvent every year. Um, and that's a developer conference, right? A lot of guys with hoodies and walking around with van trainers and, uh, um, a lot of swag and a lot of, you know, a different crowd.
You know, they are talking now more and more about network APIs. I don't think it's fully, fully there yet. I think we still need to do a lot of work in terms of community engagement, hackathons, Defcon, which they've got here by the way, so the GSM may have that Defcon happening across the road. What's the most interesting case study you've seen so far?
So, um, so far the, the most interesting use case is going to be quality and demand, but that's not there yet. So let me back that up. So far, um, the most commercialized, um, one is all [00:43:00] about, um, uh, fraud detection, fraud identification, etc. Vodafone have come out with their scam signal capability. And that's basically allowing you to use the network to identify if a fraud is happening, you know, you know, some perhaps like parents, grandparents get a phone call trying to make a transaction over the phone trying to defraud someone, right?
So they, the network can be used to identify, okay, is this an incoming call? Uh, how long has the call been going on for? Statistically, if the call is going on for more than 25 minutes. That's a high likelihood that it's a scam happening if coming from a certain area. Uh, are they on the, are they trying to access their banking app at the same time?
So all of these signals are then presented to the banks who have hundreds of signals that's bolted on to help them with the efficacy rate to reduce fraud. Because guess what? In the UK, of course, with, uh, with regulation, if you're, uh, if you're frauded, you get your, you're protected. That's right. So there's huge fines and huge payouts that are made.
So to reduce the liability of the banks for [00:44:00] that really helps them and they find that valuable.
And Google are doing a lot on this as well, where that signal detection, they're putting it into the handset. Your handset starts to tell you what you're about to undertake looks like fraud. So it's a great thing about, uh, that whole shift to educate the user, to help them out.
Which is the, um, the threats that are coming at the individual are getting more sophisticated, uh, there's more of them every day, etc. And I think we're starting to see the rise of the defense. That's a cool use case though, to say the bank detects it on your behalf and then shuts you. The bank already has,
uh, Tons of signals, but having this signal on top of it just helps the efficacy rate.
What
I do hope is that we do not get loads and loads of notifications of all these different, you know, telcos with other applications and the bank and it feels like you're being attacked every second.
And then people will start to ignore them because they'll get bored of them and then they'll get scammed again.
Yeah, you can see human behavior starting
to get like. Scamming through the notifications, it seems like an attack vector
to me. Maybe that's a thing you should do, new business model. Pretend to be [00:45:00] an anti scammer, and then actually through that become a scammer.
Look at that, always thinking Rob. Um, thank you for taking us through the big five trends you've got in your head coming in.
Um, just to wrap up, before we wrap up, what did you make of the keynote? Uh, and did, and did it touch
on the things you expected to see? Absolutely. So, um, , mark Ra said that calamity is acceptable, but de uh, decadence is not. Oh. So that was a strong statement. I mean, that's, that's something I, I wouldn't have expected that.
What did he mean? That that was his closing remark right before he handed over to um, right. Uh, handed it over. And can you explain
to a non-English person what it means? 'cause it's quite dec
decade basically means like luxury living in and self-indulgent.
Okay.
Right. Hear that, Robert?
What are you
inferring, Chapman over there?
So I think the initial point is that would be the Europeans or regulators or whatever, it's kind of resting on our laurels. We had a [00:46:00] successful period during 3G age, during the era of 3G. The telcos were flying high, the vendor ecosystem was flying high. If you just look at, you know, the market cap over that period.
Uh, for the telcos and for the vendor ecosystem in general, I should say. And 4G. Um, what happened was that it's was a much better network, much, much better capability on the network. But what hap is two things happened in the same time. Ultrafast Broadband and the iPhone came out in 2007. iPhone came out in 2007, and then 4G Networks were officially released in 2010.
And that, and that ification of applications, uh, but they didn't make the money. The ones who made the money were the OTT players. The ones who made the money with the CPaaS providers, the Twilio's, the Infopips of the world, the Vonage's of the world, they're the ones who made the, the, the, the big money because, um, you know, you ever wonder when you, uh, you're in the U.
S. Oh, sorry, in the U. K. or in Spain and you go to the U. S., you go to any other country and your Uber just works?
Mm hmm.
There's, there's a, there's a platform there [00:47:00] that makes it work. There's aggregated platforms, there's CPaaS providers who've done the integration with all those networks globally and build a framework, build a business model for that.
The telcos could have done that easily, um, and it's an easy way to enter a market and build, uh, build their muscle there. So I think that's what it meant. Uh, and I feel like his key point here is the regulators, there are 27 market regulators in Europe. Uh, with one overarching market regulator, that's stifling growth, that's stunting growth, and that needs to be addressed, that they, they're basically pleading once more to help.
And that's the only way you're going to be able to compete. So people often compare the EU to the, um, American markets, but we're not structured in the same way. Like say 27 regulators, 27 nations, but it was years ago.
So 1996, the Telecommunication Act was signed by Bill Clinton. That significantly consolidated the whole US market, the whole telecommunications market that went from a few thousand players to just three players that we have [00:48:00] today.
So this is the power of the telecom. We've so unofficial plug here, , , uh, we have a report coming out, um, um, uh, in a, uh, in a few days, um, is an auditory right now that looks at the state of the European telco market consolidation, uh, set, set, set, uh, changing the scene. for the next decade for Europe. So regulators have a key role to play here.
And you've seen that example in the US in 1996. And then look, you know, almost 30 years later, what the situation's like, uh, in terms of the players. Look, it's, I'm not saying the US market, every market is different. There's different policies. There's different cultures. There's different everything. We're, we're a continent of different languages, cultures, identities, you know, there's different, there's different things here.
So. Um, but can we learn lessons from elsewhere? Yes, we can.

[00:49:00] And with us now, I'm delighted to say we have Tobias Larsson, who's B2B head of Telia Sweden. Tobias, good to see you. How are you? Yes, same. Really nice to be here. Thank you. A pleasure. Thank you so much for spending a bit of time with us at MWC. Yeah. What's your first impressions?
I think it's massive. It's actually the first time since I'm here that I'm here on the buyer's side.
I was here more on the selling side before. Right, right. It's a completely different game, uh, but super relevant. I think, uh, many good dialogues, uh, topics and easy when you do a lot of those dialogues, it's really interesting to craft out kind of what's important for you in a couple of days. So really valuable.
So what does it mean to be a seller here? And what kind of different buyer rather? And what kind of different perspectives do you get of conversations?
So, as As the seller, you, you want to book the meetings. You want to understand more. Oh, you're being courted this time, is it? And everybody's coming, oh, I like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:00] Everybody wants to talk to you. And it's also what do you want to talk about? You can set the scene and actually kind of get really, really high quality content, uh, presented and kind of really select partners that really work in that space. So it's an amazing event to meet kind of CXOs from large companies start initiating or setting large deals and it's really, it's very relevant.
Cool.
So you don't feel like hiding your badge. No, no, no, no. Sometimes participants do that. They change badges or they, you know, hide it. To not advertise that they're buying. Change with who? Just to make sure that they're not being hunted all the time. Oh, I see. No, no. No, it's not that bad. That's good.
I have this scene now of somebody running down the middle of the thing with a load of people with paperwork saying, Sign here, behind them!So, um, in Barcelona, generally, how do you find Barcelona? Oh, it's an amazing town. Came Sunday, Sunday lunch. I had the opportunity to spend some time downtown as well, and I think [00:51:00] it's beautiful town I like the life in the town that it kind of lives up again at 10 o'clock in the evening And then it's crowded and it's fantastic a Sunday night to Monday night Love it.
I could definitely spend some more time in Barcelona now. We're doing a this Session given that we're here. We're kind of examining the notion of tapas And whether you won your pro or con, the sharing plate situation. So, on our panel here, we have got one sociable person. And one. That's me. Antisocial person.
200 percent pro. 200 percent pro. Yes. Oh no. And they had tapas four times, yesterday I had it three times. Did you? So I'm, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd be, I'd, I'd, I'd be an emotional wreck in the corner, I couldn't, I just,
I couldn't cope. Think of all of that sharing and social life thing, Rob. What's your favourite dish?
Ooh, of the tapas, overall, I can't say, I think the seafood versions are excellent. [00:52:00] If I need to kind of select a part of the plate, perhaps. We had the
squid. What was the little fish? I can't remember the name of it now. Anchovies. The anchovies. Have you had the anchovies? No. That's not part of my So you would think it wouldn't be normal, but you would normally fancy it absolutely delicious.Anchovies and sherry vinegar. That was my highlight yesterday. It was good. Yeah.
Yeah good. You're not Anyway, you don't have problems with that, you know, you can do take it
So coming into from a from a business perspective then coming into MWC this year What is what's big what's what's in top of mind and what are you focused on initially?
I mean being the Being the B2B head, I think it's important for me to get the next trends, get, uh, so, so both kind of the long term growth, uh, but also getting inspiration on kind of here and now growth because we [00:53:00] constantly need to think about growth, the traditional kind of low single digit growth in telcos, uh, we need to kind of leave that behind us.
Um, so it's a lot about kind of growth, uh, and, uh, and radical improvement, seeing what's behind the corner. I see. And that's basically it.
And the pursuit of growth here, what does that look like? So what is your, what is your day to day like and what sort of conversations are you, are you hoping for?
No, but I think meeting with kind of a consultancy houses like Gemini and also with, with, with different vendors and understanding, uh, what they can offer both in terms of kind of, um, How to utilize our 5G investment even more.
It's a lot about talks about the kind of how you run the 5G essay, how you publish APIs and open up for new use cases and new uses. And kind of undress that and try to see what is the actual revenue streams for us. Customer benefits, great, that's one thing. Kind of how we [00:54:00] build it, one thing. How we talk about it, one thing.
But then taking it down to the actual revenues. I think it's been great dialogues.
Right. Now we had, um, IDC on, um, earlier in the day today, um, and they talked about five specific trends, and I wonder, with a growth perspective, what you think about a couple of them. Um, let's start with one that's maybe slightly more difficult to conceptualize at the moment, which is this notion of programmable networks.
Which, if I understand it correctly, and, uh, Robert Field. Field. I'm looking at you now and waiting to see what you come up with. It is, it's like an APIs are available to, you know, people who are making, who, who are making programs you've, that is out explanation. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you have described, oh, you've, you've excelled yourself.
I have now just broken my badge as
well. This going very well, isn't it so far? Basically, you use our networks when they make applications.
That's, that's it. Tobias, I can see why you're in B2B. [00:55:00] Thank God you're here. So, when you then, when you apply your growth lens, what does that mean to you as a telco?
No, but I mean, so far, you need to look a bit about the history as well.
That we had, you know, you remember back in the days, your charge per minute. Oh, yes. It was very kind of, we had great days in the 90s in the telco. And it's all kind of a best effort network. You can use it for data, you can use it for voice. And when you have good coverage, then it's pretty good. And when you have bad coverage, it's pretty bad.
Right, right. So what you can do is to kind of set up specific parameters. You can have, you know, You can identify a person via the cell phone and have a kind of then you know that that person is that person that it kind of helps any application when you can identify the person behind the cell phone.
You can have positioning through the 5G network for an example 3D positioning very, very easily. Uh, positioning that you can also kind of use in any application. You can have a [00:56:00] guaranteed kind of response time. That meaning that you can go from a best effort network, uh, into where you can actually steer, uh, surgery and ambulance business, critical life, critical, you know, defense, what we see.
So you can trust the network in a way that you haven't been able to do before when it has been best effort. You can have a, that you have coverage that always covered, you always have connectivity for different reasons. Like, so the youth don't kind of download films while you need to have a kind of an emergency somehow, or the factory goes down because it was a new season released in the area.
So, so that type of kind of Uh, stuff you can, you can, uh, then add to the programmer community and they can develop them the kind of business specific applications and having new, we can say new, um, uh, things added to their application. They can trust in another way and they can do new stuff. And that's the kind of common value that we [00:57:00] see.
One of the great, what I love about that type of ecosystem is when you open up the APIs. To the, what, the community. It's what they come up with. The use cases that you never perceived. The thousand flowers blooming. Yeah, yeah, and you just go, I never thought you'd do that with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody somewhere just going, And so much value in it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The crowdsourcing, the solutions is always much more powerful. When we
released 4G, what is it now, 10, 15 years ago, iPhone and App Store came almost at the same time. And I think App Store did a bit with this. They used the iPhone Hardware with kind of, you know, you could drink the beer with the iPhone and use it as a lightsaber.
Oh, we all love that. Yeah, because it had the gyrometer or whatever it is in an iPhone. So it also used kind of new components, uh, to do new applications. It wasn't Apple developing those as it was before. So there's the
story about the guy who wrote the game Trism. I don't know if you remember, it's a little triangle slidey puzzle.
It was one of the first big hits on the App Store for Apple. [00:58:00] And he just did it in his basement type thing. Uh, forgot about it, sent it to the app store, opened up his bank account, like, a month later, and they deposited, like Like over a million pounds into his bank account because basically it was a 79p app remember back in the day and loads It just it just went viral the app and everybody just went 79p easy peasy have it there And
I remember like I'd forgotten about the fact you used to have those like sub one pound apps.
Yeah. Yeah, you still have those They're just it's all advertising push adverts in now. Don't they it's a it's changed the Economic market for apps have changed quite a bit. I do remember that, uh, the, the, the, uh, looks like you're drinking a pint out of your phone. Oh, the beer, yeah.
Or the red button, the really expensive app that just sent your screen red just to show you had money.
I mean, those were the days, weren't they? In more innocent times, more innocent times. Not like where we are now, eh?
Well, it was simpler, wasn't it? No. So life was back in the day, analog.
Analog to what we do with the APIs right now at the, yeah. . So easy. Easier to understand perhaps. Yeah, no, I, I mean, yeah, I think it's a better [00:59:00] definition than mine.
Was even better than yours? Yeah. You
did well there. I liked yours. So how do you think it's gonna show, how, how are you guys thinking of presenting your API APIs? Like, are they gonna be in like a marketplace? Do I just like, so say I'm creating an app and let's say it's right across the Nordic.
Yeah, you're going to need a marketplace for the apps to make them easy accessible.
You need to market, uh, kind of also the capabilities in those APIs, of course, to make them kind of, to make them the standard for identification or for positioning or so on. Because then, but also, I mean, already now we have a very close collaboration with Ericsson due to our, um, kind of Stockholm footprint, where we have, So we set up a common program where we have called Northstar, where we use their R& D, so kind of a 5G network with capabilities, not even on the commercial market anywhere yet, where we go into our customers, the large enterprises in Sweden, and co innovate use cases to really try out, is it any use of this?
Because [01:00:00] that is a part of the kind of million dollar question for the telcos now. Yes, we believe in the kind of idea of the APIs. We do believe in kind of. The future as we, as we explained it, if you give it to the community, things will happen, but it's very hard because we haven't seen it. Uh, right. Yeah.
You just don't need to know about the app store, but they believed in the idea as you need to release it. But seeing is believing. So what we're doing there is to kind of co innovate to get the temperature check on the, on the industry to understand what, what are the kind of the benefits, how big are the benefits?
Is it a 70 cents as you said, or is it? Maybe even more.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You never know. Well, the other area in, within those trends that occur to me as being a, a growth driver for your, for, for, I mean, many industries, but certainly your industry too, is this notion of how AI is crystallizing and becoming clearer as to how to use.
Now IDC set it out as in three groups. This may or may not resonate. So tell us what you think. Um, the first one is [01:01:00] AI to telco. So, you know, kind of where AI is impacting on the services that you're creating. So you've got to think about that as a one dimension. The second dimension is AI for telco, which is almost like what you would do internally.
Much like any of the other vertical industries, you know, there's going to be. Aspects of Gen AI, aspects of Agentic, aspects of all of the other flavors that are going to impact and transform organizations. And then finally, and perhaps most interestingly, AI by Telco. Which is what is the opportunity as a result of being a telco?
Maybe it's footprint, maybe it's network, maybe it's something else that allows you to be like a viable provider of AI and where we went with that with IDC was into the realm of uh, of the emergent space of sovereign AI and what that might mean. I wonder what your take on that is? Does that resonate with you or?
Uh, clearly, like we call it AI for operations, you have AI for customers have some affronting things than they have for our own products. And if, [01:02:00] if we start with the operations, it's a kind of a clear benefits. We have all telcos have tons of data, partly unstructured and so on, and very expensive processes.
And it's very kind of a delicate smorgasbord for an AI to dig into and improve efficiency, kind of record and structure customer information in a better way. And also then kind of improve processes without having those full massive transformation. Um, When it comes to the customer facing, it's both kind of in the customer dialogues.
You can look at it. We have like all the chatbots and all of that, that can actually stepwise improve how you do the customer, but also so kind of understanding complex RFPs, helping us respond to that, it's a bit more with that type of kind of sales back office. But I think, as you said, yeah, I think you were into that.
So. The most interesting is perhaps the kind of the, the, the, the, the product, what we actually said. Yeah,
what you, how you convert it [01:03:00] all. And I mean, the basic stuff
will be the contact centers and unified communication. Yeah, you can clearly improve that with AI helping our customers with having AI as agents.
But then also I think with the shift we're seeing in the market now with. From globalization to de globalization. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you try to keep your data local, uh, and try to protect the data and keep, keep it in much closer server end loop. Yeah. I think the telcos, uh, from being commoditized when, when, uh, when we went to kind of flat rate, I mentioned that before we came from kind of pay by minute and by, by local area access, whatever it might be into kind of flat fee, best effort kind of all you can eat data.
Uh, the, over the top players kind of took over. So you have video calls, not really impacting. So if, uh, if it's a video call, the telcos network is used, but it's no revenue for the day. Yeah. So, uh, uh, We were commoditized, you can say, in that, in for 18 20 years. Like push down the stack, [01:04:00] not part of the upper stack execution.
No, exactly, where the huge revenue development has happened. Yeah. When that happened in the beginning, uh, they were telcos reacting so they forbid, uh, apps like Skype and so on on the network. I remember that. wrong guy. I remember that. Wrong dialogue, but still, uh, kind of a natural reaction to defend in one way.
Well, of course, because
it directly impacted core revenue streams at that point.
If you think about it All the utility services you use, power, water, whatever, they're all metered. Well for some reason networks went through that stage where they become unmetered and the business model just flipped and it must have been quite a lot of chaos at the time about how we're going to make money next.
Yeah and I think we read the market too short in a way. I think we need to get back to um Consumption based pricing, because what you consume is what you should pay for, because then you get a direct link to the benefit. So if I steer kind of, that's how they do in cloud, the more compute power you use by any cloud provider, the [01:05:00] more you pay.
So you can do, and transport is very cheap, so you can try out, it's fine. But once you scale up, you also pay for the scale. Well, you can certainly,
you can certainly see how that model directly applies to that API driven and programmable networks. I mean, you can see that straight away, right? Yeah. You're looking at me very blankly, Robert.
Have I said something wrong again? No!
I'm just, I'm just looking at you, Dave, for this question. I don't know how I answered that question. It's
an audio medium,
that's all I'm saying. Did I have one of those looks on my face that I didn't realise I had on my face?
You did. Then I have to correct it. Have you heard of that thing, Tobias, where cowboys You know, out on the range, they, they, uh, learn how to go to sleep with their eyes open.
Now that is a skill. So they can keep an eye on the cows and have a nap. Yeah, I can recognize that. But to come back to the AI topic and kind of the de globalization we see with the data. That is kind [01:06:00] of again, uh, the being a local player because for some time it's been tough for us to be kind of a local footprint on a global market.
The applications are always global, but we have our footprint and that has been kind of a prison in a way in, in, in, in a global company. Now once again, it becomes a benefit to be local. We are the only ones who can actually take the data from any location, take it through a slice or our own fixed network.
All the way to our own data center where we can have a kind of a local version of an AI and having a complete closed loop with any, not any leakages of the data anywhere for a customer and having complete sovereign AI and sovereign cloud and sovereignty. And I think that's a huge benefit and also being able to set up.
So that's, of course, cost a bit more per use, but then also being able to steer it to the cloud if needed.
And it's funny, the world exploded out, everything globalized, and now we're collapsing in. It's [01:07:00] like a big cycle, isn't it? But you're right, you're well placed. It's going to be mixed. I think we're going to have both
the public cloud and sovereignty.
And I think the key will be to let The customers decide what, where do you want your data?
Well, it's that placement strategy. If I, if it can be global, send it out, get the best. If it has to be sovereign, great. Just as long as they're integrated and in a secure way. Yeah. That's what you want, isn't it?
Even kind of a kind of. Really secret industry could actually benefit from having stuff in the public cloud, but you need to know your data. Yeah, well, and I think for most organizations, that's you've just nailed the problem, which is, have you got proper control and understanding of your data? Usually the answer is not quite in varying degrees. And then you go, well, let's just, you know, yeah, but I think once, once that maturity hits, then that type of ecosystem will thrive. So, uh, so a really interesting and actually. Broadly unpredictable period because I think if you even if you wound back a couple of years ago Sovereign Cloud was [01:08:00] a Conversation, but it wasn't being driven as hard as it probably was now and now it's not now.
It's definitely now It's mainstreaming massively. I agree entirely with your take on it, which is Uh, telcos are ideally placed. Ideally. Actually, you know what? More than ideally placed. Like, Britain is critical in the new geopolitics in terms of owning those things. Especially the incumbent telcos. Right.
So, maybe just to bring us to a bit of a conclusion today then, it's always difficult to get into the world of prediction, but when you look out maybe across the next, choose your own time period, 6, 18, 24 months, what do you see happening and what are you looking forward to? Wow. Summer. Yeah.
Oh, that's a good answer.
No, that was too easy. That was too easy. It's just
rain for a year. We all feel like that. Um, no, but I, um, I do hope that we, uh, part is that the economy turn, of course, in general. Yes. I think, um. As [01:09:00] telcos, because I think it is kind of an industry thing that we start marketing and getting that move over to the telco networks, shifting a bit about the model into kind of the consumption.
So we start seeing, I don't think the massive growth will come in the time period you mentioned because that's, we're fast moving, but that's a short time frame anyway. But I would really like to see some clear breakthroughs in that space, and I think we will.
Very good. Well, look, Tobias, thank you so much for spending a bit of time with us today and exploring this fascinating and fast moving world from your perspective.
It's great to see you. Thank you. Yeah. Enjoy the rest of your time in Barcelona or anything you're particularly excited about doing in Barcelona for the next couple of days. Robert is going to go through the mill with us because we are going to do tapas.
I was going to say kind of seafood tapas with Robert, that would have been amazing to see, just watch it.
As long as I get my own table,
I'll be alright. I'm going to [01:10:00] continue my tapas marathon now.
We'll have fun. Thanks very much again.
So, good start to the week, I think. A bit of insight there into the world of what's growing in the consumer. Lens of the conference, but also from I. D. C. What's going on in the wider industry and then to bias his views on particularly on how A. I. And things like programmable networks are going to drive growth in the industry and how actually Sovereignty itself is kind of a very interesting space for for telcos also as it was good to see Rob prepared with some facts and figures Yeah Our producer actually has helpfully given me the answer that I couldn't give you really point during your Saturn 5 Anecdotes, did you realize you didn't have an end to the anecdote?
At the point when I [01:11:00] had to stop talking because I didn't have the number I went all the way to the end and went, oh, this isn't working. I do have the number now, David. Well, let's, uh, let's talk about that on day three, Rob. Should we? Well, as a cliffhanger? I think we should leave it as a cliffhanger. It's one of the worst cliffhangers in the world because you can just google it, but, uh You could probably do that with most cliffhangers, to be fair, but like, you spoil it for yourself, don't you?
If you would like to discuss any of the issues on today's show and how they might impact you and your business, please get in touch with us at [e-mail]. We're all on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. So feel free to connect and DM if you have any questions for the show to tackle.
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