Most indoor connectivity already goes through Wi-Fi. Why do we need Passpoint to improve access to Wi-Fi networks? How can a Wi-DAS deployment help? Howard Buzick, Co-Founder at American Bandwidth, told us how Passpoint makes our Wi-Fi connections more seamless and secure and how American Bandwidth helps retail, healthcare, education and government organizations use Passpoint and a Wi-DAS architecture to make it easier to connect to their networks and to improve coverage.

Check out American Bandwith at https://ameriband.com

If you use public transportation across countries, you probably noticed how much easier it is to pay with your phone in Europe or Asia than in the US. In part, this may be due to the more limited public transportation infrastructure and use and lower use of contactless payments for non-cash payments (half that of Europe).

But what I learned from talking to Jim Allison, Manager of Planning, Capitol Corridor Joint Power Authority (CCJPA), is that setting up wireless ticketing in the US is extremely complex – more so that, say, in the UK. Jim managed to pull it off and tells us how he did it. It is a fascinating story about how regulation and ecosystem structure exert a power that no amount of technology can match.

I have worked with Jim for a very long time to get Wi-Fi on CCJPA and Amtrak, and we talked about that too. We now take free Wi-Fi on trains almost for granted, but it took some time and effort to get there.

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Commercial adoption of APIs is still in the early days in most markets, but there are a few exceptions. Brazil is one of them, with operators offering them to app developers and getting revenues from them, supported by market demand and a facilitating regulatory environment. I talked with Leonardo Siqueira, Data Monetization and Mobile Ads Director at TIM Brazil, about the API rollout from 2023, the use cases, business models and what lies ahead.

If you want to read the transcript or watch us on video go here.

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It is hard to overstate the need for more indoor capacity and better coverage when you think that over 80% of traffic comes from indoor locations. And to address this need, we need more indoor infrastructure. But what’s the best way to get there? DAS or small cells? Or is Wi-Fi enough?

I talked to Upendra Pingle, General Manager, Indoor Cellular Networks at ANDREW, an Ampehnol company, one of the most passionate advocates of indoor coverage, and we talked about what could be a third way: Open DAS. It is different from the expensive and complex traditional DAS, and closer to a small-cell open-RAN architecture. How should we think about the Open DAS? How can DAS benefit from disaggregation? And are we at a point where DAS and small cells converge into a hybrid model?

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Dean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis and I had a broad and deep discussion on the future of private networks as we move to 6G. We talked about indoor coverage, Wi-Fi networks, standardization, 3GPP and future adoption. But I do not want to spoil your experience, so you have to listen to know what our answers are.

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What do DeepSeek and agentic AI have in common? They show how AI and GenAI are evolving. They are not just getting better. They are spreading out in multiple directions to better meet our needs, to be more efficient, and, ultimately, to make the adoption of AI easier and more compelling.

Siavash Alamouti, Co-Founder and Chairman at mimik, presents a fascinating and compelling vision of how AI is evolving, and a precise and insightful assessment of DeepSeek. No panic, no hype, but a realistic and positive outlook of what the future may bring us. 

Highly recommended: Siavash’s DeepSeek's $6M LLM: Efficiency Masterclass or Propaganda? and Quantifying Energy and Cost Benefits of Hybrid Edge Cloud: Analysis of Traditional and Agentic Workloads (mentioned in the podcast)

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Everybody talks about AI-RAN, but it is often unclear what they mean by it, how it relates to Open RAN, how AI will change the RAN evolution, and what AI in the RAN will help operators support new services or improve current ones.

Alex Jinsung Choi, Principal Fellow at SoftBank Corp. and Chair at the AI-RAN Alliance, explains it all with great clarity and a clear vision for what RAN evolution is about, drawing from his previous work at Deutsche Telekom, O-RAN ALLIANCE and TIP.

If you want to dig deeper, check out these excellent papers:

AI-RAN Alliance Vision and Mission White Paper (AI-RAN Alliance)

AI-RAN: Telecom Infrastructure for the Age of AI (SoftBank Corp.)

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.

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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.

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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.

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