Wireless sensing is an emerging technology with great potential, but it is still in its early stages of development. Fiber sensing is a more mature technology that, surprisingly, has been used mostly outside of telecoms for a long time, and only recently has made its way into protecting telecom assets. Network operators may also use it to offer new revenue-generating services.

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Adrian Scrase, independent consultant at EA Consult Services, has been deeply involved in the evolution of wireless standards throughout many Gs at ETSI and, as you may expect, is now working on the evolution to 6G. What can we learn from 3G, 4G and 5G, to avoid the mistakes of the past? How can we find a sustainable innovation trajectory that is grounded in realistic expectations for what new technology can deliver, how much operators can invest, and how much subscribers are willing to pay? Will we be able to avoid the inflated expectations that plagued 5G?

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This is a podcast I recorded with Claudia Bacco Editor-in-Chief at Global Airspace Radar on what I learned about drones during a recent trip to China for the Huawei analyst event.

This is the description of the podcast, “Telecommunications supporting drones, with a twist”:

Monica Paolini, Principal, Senza Fili, joined our editor-in-chief Claudia Bacco to discuss telecommunications supporting drones. A twist is mentioned in the title and the twist is the view from China. Having just returned from a trip to China, Monica shares insights from visiting China Telecom including their drone program. The twist goes further in that the telecommunications company is leading the effort to test drone flights as opposed to the regional air traffic control organisation being in the lead. Certainly different than what we’re seeing in Europe and the US.

We also dug deeper into the use of spectrum and the mobile infrastructure in this endeavour, what can be re-used, what needs to be changed/enhanced. Join us in the discussion which leans more toward the telecommunication part of the equation.

More on Global Airspace Radar at https://globalairspaceradar.com/

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Wireless security is becoming increasingly challenging to manage due to growing geopolitical tensions, the rise of sophisticated tools and profitable targets, and the potential for AI to make attacks easier and more effective.

In this conversation with Silke Holtmanns, Telecommunication Security Expert at Blue Hour Consulting Oy, we delve beyond the stats to discuss how operators manage wireless security and how they can enhance their effectiveness in preventing or dealing with attacks. Silke has hands-on experience from her work with operators and gives us the insider perspective. We covered the fake small cells from South Korea’s KT network, the SIM farm attack in New York (possibly overhyped for political reasons by the FBI), censorship and security tradeoffs, the non-technological security risks, the impact of APIs and AI on security, spear phishing, and the role of regulation.  

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AI will have a transformative impact across all elements in telecom networks, and that includes transport. Yet, most of the attention these days is on the RAN, the core and data center infrastructure.

In this conversation with Kristian Toivo, Executive Director at TIP, we tried to remedy this and focused on how AI is changing the transport requirements and how the ecosystem and infrastructure will have to evolve to meet them. As AI gets integrated into our networks, data center distribution and data transfer requirements will have a major impact on the transport infrastructure, as well as monetization strategies of service providers.

You can find out more about TIP’s activities on transport here or, even better, attend FYUZ 2025 in Dublin on November 3-5.

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AI is everywhere, RAN included. But many questions remain. What role does it take within the RAN? Where can it help and how? How do we transition from an initial, limited use of AI, to reach L4 automation with a native-AI RAN?

Nirlay Kundu, Head of Technology Standards, IMDEA Networks Institute, explores all these topics and more, combining the experience from his work at Verizon in the US and the research he is currently doing at IMDEA in Spain. Plus, we discussed the implications of AI in accountability, the evolving role of humans and agents in refining the job of the underlying models.

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CBRS is gaining traction in industrial and, a bit more slowly, in enterprise networks and some of the complexity and limitations of the initial CBRS have been addressed. Yet, recently, we have seen attempts to turn CBRS into another full-power licensed band. This would give mobile operators exclusive access to the spectrum, as they do with other cellular licensed bands, and enterprises would no longer be able to use the spectrum without arrangements with mobile operators.

Dave Wright has been working on CBRS from the very beginning and was at the helm of the OnGo Alliance for a long time, and he continues to work on it at Salt Point Strategies and Spectrum for the Future. He gave an in-depth overview of how we got to today’s CBRS and what to expect in the future. We also talked about dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) and how to strike a balance among licensed, license-exempt and dynamic shared spectrum.

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Not everybody working in telecom is an engineer. For one, I am not (my college degree is in Philosophy, and my PhD is in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience), and I believe that this was an advantage as it allowed me initially to look at the technology from the outside.

In this discussion with Linda Ligios, Principal Innovation Solutions Consultant at Digital Catapult (spoiler: she is also not an engineer), we talked about how a non-telecom background may be an asset, especially in the age of AI and especially for women (who are more likely to come from a non-engineering background). What are the challenges and benefits for those with a non-telecom background and for the organization hiring them? How should you plan for a telecom career if you don't have a technical background? Any differences between the US and Europe? (Spoiler two: You can learn about technology even without a college degree or formal education in technology)

Linda works at Digital Catapult, which, as we discussed, is an organization that is powerful in nurturing the UK's telecom community. However, Digital Catapult’s primary role is to accelerate the practical application of deep tech in the UK, and its work is outstanding.

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Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz band is rapidly expanding through increased adoption (where allowed) and availability (in countries that have now opened or are opening the band to unlicensed use). Yet, there has been speculation that the US may roll back Wi-Fi availability and allocate part of the band to cellular.

Who else could be better to guide us through all this than Kevin Robinson, the CEO at the Wi-Fi Alliance? We discuss what could possibly happen and what we are fairly certain will not happen in the 6 GHz band in the US, while also providing an update on the 6 GHz progress in the rest of the world and why it is so valuable for indoor connectivity.

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AI is here to stay and will become more pervasive with time. But how will it penetrate telecom networks and organizations?

Azita Arvani and I explored this question along multiple dimensions. Is it going to be centralized or at the edge? Do we need GPUs at the edge? How quick should the transition from AI as a tool to AI-native networks be? How will sovereignty shape the adoption of AI? How aggressively should we push AI adoption? Should we wait until it gets to a more mature stage? Are we over-investing in it?

We don’t have final answers (and nobody does), but we shared our perspectives.

Azita just finished a paper, “Beyond Connectivity: Telecom's AI-Driven Future in 5G-Advanced” in collaboration with Mick Etoh at the University of Osaka, that covers in more detail what we discussed in the Sparring Partners.

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