Telecom is no longer the magnet for talent that it was when I joined. Talented people entering the job market now often prefer to work for hyperscalers or other high-tech companies. Why is it so? And how can we make telecom more attractive to the younger generations?

I talked to one of the super-talented young people, Simona Marinova, Solution Architect at Bell Canada, who bucked the trend and joined Bell Canada while doing her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto to see what motivated her to get into telecom and to talk about what we can do as an industry to attract her peers.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/ to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

Yago Tenorio just moved to Verizon as SVP and CTO from Vodafone—and from Europe to the US. We talked about how Europe and the US compare, what he will do at Verizon, what the future holds for Open RAN and what 2025 looks like for telecom.

As always, Yago has deep and unique insights into the technology and the market, and in this conversation, we went off the beaten path to explore new perspectives on technology evolution – how we got here and where we are going.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/ to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

Quantum technology promises massive increases in computing speed and efficiency. What will this mean for telecoms? Sapphire Lally, Consultant, and Amit Nagpal, Partner at Aetha Consulting took us on a fascinating overview of what quantum technology is and the role it can play in telecoms (spoiler: security is the low-hanging fruit, network efficiency is next).

While vendors and operators have started exploring quantum, we are still in an early development phase. What are the opportunities and challenges? What will the timeline be? Who will be part of the ecosystem? How should we get ready for quantum computing? We covered all this and more.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/ to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

It has taken some time, but finally RCS is becoming ubiquitous in mobile devices. No longer confined to the Android world, it is now supported by Apple devices. In this conversation with Dario Betti, CEO at Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), we talked about what the adoption of RCS means for subscribers, operators, enterprises and everybody else in a widening ecosystem. Is RCS going to replace SMS? Can RCS expand WhatsApp services or compete with it? Will revenues shift from SMS to RCS? And will they grow?

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/ to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

More on MEF at https://mobileecosystemforum.com/

Offload can improve subscriber experience and reduce operators’ costs, but it is still limited because we do not have the right economic incentives and transparency on the quality of the offload. Can blockchain help create new business models that combine transparency and incentives and that will get offload off the ground? Mario Di Dio, GM of Network at Nova Labs/Helium, presents a new offload model that uses blockchain to share KPIs and the real-estate value of Wi-Fi offload connections and to create a market for Wi-Fi hotspot owners and operators to manage offload.

More on Helium at hellohelium.com 

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/ to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

We don’t yet know for sure what will change in January with the second Trump term, but a picture is coming together on what may happen with anticipated nominations (Brendan Carr to head the FCC, and more) and with the expected influence of Elon Musk. Monica Alleven has explored this topic and written extensively about it at Fierce Wireless and shared her insight in this episode – and as always, it was a pleasure to talk to Monica. We covered BEAD, USF, satellite, fair share, net neutrality, FCC, regulation in the US in comparison to other countries, and more.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

FYUZ is the yearly event where the TIP community congregates. This year, it was last week (November 11-13) in Dublin. I talked with Eugina Jordan, CMO at TIP, who worked hard to make it a success, about what happened at FYUZ, what we like about it, what has changed, and what the trends are for next year in OpenRAN, OpenWiFi, and Open Optical, and how AI is going to impact them.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

We are midway in our 5G journey. It may not have been as game-changing as many expected, but it did improve connectivity, and it is an impressive new technology. There is ample room for improvement, this much is clear.

What can we learn from the beginnings of 5G to continue the innovation? What should we do differently? Azita Arvani, ex-CEO at Rakuten Symphony North America, and I agree that we should not give up on 5G and wait until 6G arrives. But how aggressive should we be in pushing technological innovation in an affordable way?  

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

We usually think about wireline and wireless as alternative, complementary and at times competing ways to provide connectivity. But increasingly connectivity to any device requires the combination of wireline and wireless components. Access is mostly wireless through cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other interfaces, and, eventually, the connection is transported to fiber. What is variable is where the wireless signal moves into the wireline realm. For instance, backhaul can be wireless or wireline.

Does it still make sense to think of wireless and wireline as separate? Or are they both inherently necessary components of connectivity? I debated these questions with Mark Gilmour at ConnectiviTree. He has been the wireless guy when working with wireline companies, and the wireline guy when working for mobile operators or vendors, so he has a uniquely deep and multi-sided perspective on the wireless/wireline contraposition.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify.

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

Geoff Hollingworth, CMO at Rakuten Symphony, and I agree on many things, but we have sharply different views on the success of 5G. I think 5G did just fine; Geoff thinks it was a failure. So we set to debate this, and we had quite a revealing conversation (I don’t want to spoil it) on technology, standardization, 3GPP, monetization and, of all things, communism.

Sign up for the mailing list at https://senzafili.com/senza-fili-mailing-list/to receive invitations to the live Sparring Partners events.

Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at [email protected] 

You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com