Telco in 20

By Danielle Rios, TelcoDRBusiness Technology Management

Telco in 20 episodes

June 09Ep 142 - AT&T bets on the last mile (Shawn Hakl)
Every major telco is racing to claim a piece of the AI infrastructure stack. Operators like Telefónica, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank, and TELUS are betting on sovereign clouds, AI factories, and GPU-as-a-service to deliver local data, national compute, and a seat at the AI table.
Then there's AT&T. In March, it announced AWS Interconnect - last mile: fiber and fixed wireless plugged directly into AWS and engineered for AI workloads. AT&T’s view is that enterprises using AI don't just need more compute—they need flatter networks and faster connections. So it’s betting on the layer it owns outright—the last mile.
In this episode, I'm joined by Shawn Hakl, SVP of product at AT&T Business. We dig into why the operator is partnering with hyperscalers instead of competing with them, the use case where AT&T deployed AI at the edge to cut latency from 110ms to 40ms, and what an "agent-consumable" network actually looks like.
Listen now to hear:
Why AT&T sees hyperscalers as partners, not rivals [05:18];

What it takes to put AI into production at telco scale—and lessons learned from AT&T's internal deployment [07:14];

The edge AI deployment that cut latency from 110ms to 40ms for a live customer [08:45]; and

What it really means to make a network "agent-consumable" [10:55].
Links and Resources:
Read the AT&T and AWS announcement on AWS Interconnect - last mile, which brings AT&T's fiber and fixed wireless connectivity directly into AWS environments.

Learn more about AT&T's edge AI collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA, which pushes real-time AI inference directly to the network edge.

AT&T doesn't just sell AI solutions; it runs on them. Learn how Ask AT&T has evolved into a full agentic platform, with more than 100,000 users consuming 27 billion tokens a day and teams building custom AI agents with a drag-and-drop tool.

Want to scale AI agents without the semantic chaos? Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI the business context it needs to discover, act, and execute—so agents stop flying blind.

Shawn was on the Canadian national luge team, which means he knows a thing or two about commitment once you're flying down the track. Elana Meyers Taylor knows that feeling too! At age 41, in her 5th Olympic appearance, she finally won the Olympic gold medal in women's monobob at Milano Cortina. So, Shawn might be right—stick to the plan!

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
As the senior vice president of product at AT&T Business, Shawn Hakl is responsible for the portfolio servicing enterprise, public sector, partner, and small business segments, which generates over $30 billion in annual revenue. A seasoned leader in cloud, AI, and communications, Shawn’s unique knowledge of software, security, and infrastructure is helping enterprises, government, and small businesses harness the power of technology to successfully execute on their digital transformation. In his current role, Shawn is responsible for wireline, 5G/wireless, voice/UC, security/SASE, data center, AIOps, and Network-as-a-Service product lines.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
19 min
May 26Ep 141 - Tele2 goes back to the future (Ove Wik)
Every operator made the same bet—go digital, close stores, turn over distribution to the resellers. Somewhere along the way, they gave away the customer relationship. In the first half of 2025, data usage grew in 92% of markets while ARPU grew in only 50%. Operators are delivering more yet earning less.
Tele2 is fighting back. It’s opening physical stores while everyone else is closing them, consolidating six IT stacks down to two, and using AI to rebuild subscriber relationships at scale. For this episode, I talk with Ove Wik, EVP and CTIO at Tele2, about what it takes to reclaim customer relationships, why most BSS transformations never get finished, and what real change actually takes.
Listen now to hear:
The question that got Tele2 from six IT stacks to two [03:58];

The 80/20 trade-off most operators refuse to make [05:45];

Why Tele2 is opening physical stores while most operators are closing them [09:41]; and

What real BSS transformation actually requires [12:13].
Links and Resources:
Check out Tele2's latest annual report. CEO Jean-Marc Harion declares that the company is going "back to the future."

Learn more about Tele2 and Telenor's Net4Mobility joint venture, which just hit 99.9% 5G population coverage in Sweden.

Since we recorded this episode, Tele2 has named a new CEO. Nicholas Högberg will take over for Jean-Marc Harion as president and CEO on July 1, 2026.

Are you planning a transformation and don’t know what trade offs to make? Use the Totogi Ontology. It maps your business processes and customer interactions so you can see exactly what matters and make trade-offs with confidence.

Tele2 is using AI and hyperpersonalization to rebuild subscriber relationships. Watch my MWC23 talk, SUPERCHARGE your MVNO with personalization to see how operators of any size can use subscriber data to deliver tailored, individual offers that grow ARPU and stop churn—exactly the kind of direct customer engagement Tele2 is now chasing.

Ove renovates homes in his spare time and knows how to finish projects. If only all telco transformations made it over the finish line! This clip from the movie The Money Pit shows how quickly things can go wrong.

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Ove is CTIO at Tele2. He has spent his entire life in telecom operators, starting in Sweden at a time when one incumbent provided fixed telephony. He has navigated more than 40 years of telco evolution that has included intense competition, extensive product portfolios, and international operations.
With a background in engineering, Ove has worked in technology, product management, sales, operations, and strategy. Some of his international assignments have included COO at Yoigo Spain, Head of Transformation at Salt Switzerland, and Head of Digital Enablement at Veon Group. For more than 25 years, he has worked to drive change through a combination of technology, organization, and culture.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
19 min
May 12Ep 140 - Will telco let AI write its code? (Roy Chua)
Anthropic's latest model, Mythos, recently scored 94% on a benchmark for solving real software engineering problems—up from single digits just two and a half years ago. It also found a 27-year-old security flaw in OpenBSD that decades of human testing missed. AI's capabilities are exploding, and many operators are struggling to keep up.
For this episode, I'm talking with Roy Chua, founder and principal of AvidThink, an independent analyst firm that advises everyone from Silicon Valley startups to the world's largest telcos. We dive into the growing gap between how startups and telcos are adopting AI, what happens to the $50 billion professional services industry when AI can write telco software, and why agents need an ontology layer to actually deliver.
Listen now to hear:
How AI is collapsing the timeline on software engineering [02:21];

What telcos can learn from the evolution of Silicon Valley’s hiring practices [05:49];

The bombshell headed for the GSI revenue model [08:14]; and

What AI agents need to work in a live telco environment [11:15].
Links and Resources:
Learn more about Roy Chua and AvidThink, the independent analyst firm advising Silicon Valley startups and the world's largest telcos on technology strategy.

Learn about the Totogi Ontology and how it gives AI agents the business context they need to act on live telco systems, the missing layer Roy describes as essential for agents to work in production.

Read about Anthropic's Mythos model and the SWE-verified benchmark, the new standard for measuring AI coding capability.

Check out Project Glasswing, Anthropic's initiative to find security vulnerabilities across global software infrastructure using AI.

Look at Nifty IT’s stock performance, the market signal Roy points to when explaining why the GSI revenue model is under pressure even as earnings stay strong.

Check out Gauntlet AI, the intensive agentic AI training program for engineers who want to stand out in today’s market.

Read Stanford Digital Economy Lab's findings on software engineering employment, which shows jobs for 22- to 25-year-olds are down 20%. But there’s good news too—Austen Allred, Gauntlet AI’s founder, says hiring partners are actively seeking junior engineers who know AI, with starting salaries of $200K! The jobs are there, but you gotta learn AI.

Roy uses the term "Move 37" (made famous by the legendary 2016 AlphaGo–Lee Sedol Go match) to talk about an unexpected play nobody sees coming in telco. Allbirds pivoting to AI data centers is a favorite real-world example. We didn't see that coming!

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Roy Chua, an entrepreneurial executive with 20+ years of IT experience, is the founder of AvidThink, an independent analyst firm covering infrastructure technologies at both carriers and enterprises. AvidThink's clients include Fortune 500 technology firms, early-stage startups, and upstart unicorns. Roy has been quoted by, and featured in, major publications including the Wall Street Journal, FierceTelecom/Wireless, The New Stack and Light Reading. He is a graduate of MIT Sloan (MBA) and UC Berkeley (BS, MS EECS).
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
19 min
April 28Ep 139 - Can telco build an AI grid? (NVIDIA’s Kanika Atri)
AI is reshaping telco. At NVIDIA’s GTC conference, AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast, and Spectrum announced they’re building AI grids, turning millions of existing cell sites and central offices into distributed AI compute infrastructure. NVIDIA's survey of 1,000 telco professionals found more than 90% reporting that AI is already delivering cost savings or revenue growth, with the biggest ROI coming from agentic AI for autonomous networks.
For this episode, I’m joined by Kanika Atri, Senior Director of Telecoms at NVIDIA. We dig into where real AI ROI lives in telco, why the network may be the world’s most underutilized compute asset, and the big unanswered question: who’s going to build the software that makes all of this work?
Listen now to hear:
How NVIDIA’s survey reveals where AI is already paying off [03:06];

Why telcos’ existing infrastructure could become the backbone of distributed AI [05:06];

The critical software gap nobody in the industry owns [11:19]; and

Why countries are turning to operators, not hyperscalers, to build their national AI [12:27].
Links and Resources:
Read NVIDIA’s State of AI in Telecommunications report, a survey of 1,000+ telecom professionals that covers where AI is delivering value, what’s driving investment, and how operators are planning for distributed AI computing and 6G.

Check out these blogs by Kanika Atri:
NVIDIA, Telecom Leaders Build AI Grids to Optimize Inference on Distributed Networks

Telcos Across Five Continents Are Building NVIDIA-Powered Sovereign AI Infrastructure

Read more about SoftBank’s AI-RAN breakthrough in Japan and Indosat’s full sovereign AI stack in Indonesia, including locally developed LLMs and 20+ AI applications.

NVIDIA made a $1 billion equity investment in Nokia to build CUDA-accelerated 5G software that runs on any platform. Watch NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Nokia CEO Justin Hotard explain the partnership in this interview.

Learn more about the Totogi Ontology and how it’s helping Tier-1 operators turn AI into actual profit.

Read the Appledore Research report on Totogi, Telecom-specific Ontology, the key to AI-native telco. It explains why context, not data, is the foundation AI agents need to work at scale (paywalled).

Kanika climbed cell towers early in her career. Maybe her amygdala doesn’t fire like most people’s—just like legendary free-solo climber Alex Honnold’s brain scans show little fear response to heights. He’s famous for scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan without a rope (documented in the Oscar-winning film Free Solo), and most recently the 101-story Taipei 101 in Taiwan. Watch the news coverage here.

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Kanika Atri is senior director of telecom products and marketing at NVIDIA, driving AI adoption across the telecom ecosystem. She works closely with hundreds of customers, developers, and partners to embed AI into networks, operations, and services—accelerating the shift to AI‑native wireless networks, autonomous agentic-AI-powered operations, sovereign AI factories, and 6G‑ready infrastructure. Through these engagements, she shapes product roadmaps, go‑to‑market strategies, and commercial partnerships that translate advanced AI capabilities into measurable business impact for the telecom industry.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
20 min
April 14Ep 138 - From programmable networks to agentic AI (Chris Wade)
Telcos have spent years automating their networks, but most of that automation is rigid. It makes the same decision every time—whether the device is offline, whether it's a maintenance window, whether there's a weather event. Adding AI agents sounds like progress, but if those agents aren't built on a deterministic foundation, you're not removing risk, you're accelerating it. The real challenge isn't getting AI to answer questions about your network. It's getting it to act safely.
For this episode, I'm joined by Chris Wade, Co-Founder and CTO of Itential, a network automation platform that's been making infrastructure programmable since 2014. We dig into how Itential is using agentic AI on live production networks, why it layers AI reasoning on top of deterministic guardrails, and how Lumen scaled from 16 to 350 automated workflows by putting field engineers in the driver's seat.
Listen now to hear:
Why deterministic guardrails are essential when AI agents touch live networks [04:14];

The "secret sauce" for giving AI agents real business context [06:24];

How Lumen grew from 16 to 350+ automated workflows [11:24]; and

What telcos need to demand from vendors [13:05].
Links and Resources:
Learn more about Itential and its agentic network automation platform, FlowAI.

Check out Itential's MCP server, launched in May 2024—one of the earliest in the telco space.

Watch Greg Freeman from Lumen present at AutoCon on how his team scaled from 16 to 350+ automated workflows on Itential's platform.

Take a look at Aaron Levie's blog, Building for Trillions of Agents. The Box CEO argues that agents will become the primary users of all software, and if your systems can't be accessed through an open API or CLI, they're invisible to AI. It's the exact problem we unpack in this episode.

Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI agents the business context they need to act on live systems and lets operators see exactly why every decision was made and make changes on the spot.

Read my blog, The Promise of AI is No UI, written back in 2024. It predicted exactly where this conversation was headed: a world where AI agents are the primary users of software.

Watch this scene from Silicon Valley—one of the best shows ever made about startups—where Dinesh interacts with an AI version of Gilfoyle. It aired back in 2019, before any of us knew this would be real. If you think agentic AI is a new idea, think again!

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Chris Wade co-founded Itential in 2014 to simplify and accelerate the adoption of network automation and to transform network operations practices. Using a model-based approach, Chris led the innovation and development of the company’s flagship portfolio of dynamic, multi-tiered network automation applications. Prior to establishing Itential, Chris gained a wealth of experience in the SDN, NFV and OSS/BSS markets having led initiatives in this space for global organizations including Alcatel-Lucent, ReachView Technologies and Micromuse.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
19 min
March 31Ep 137 - Hyperscalers' $2T bet (Charles Fitzgerald)
Hyperscaler CAPEX investments are staggering: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta spent more than $400 billion on infrastructure in 2025 and are expected to reach over $600 billion in 2026. They’re on pace to surpass $2 trillion in cumulative CAPEX spend before the year is over. Meanwhile, U.S. telco CAPEX sits at $50 billion for 2025—and it's shrinking.
For this episode, Charles Fitzgerald, Managing Director at Platformonomics, returns for his fourth (!) appearance on Telco in 20 to break down his tenth annual Follow the CAPEX report. We dive into the hyperscaler spending surge, the two big telco AI plays coming out of MWC 2026—sovereign cloud and AI-RAN, and why the gap between infrastructure spenders and operators is impossible to close.
Listen now to hear:
How AI supercharged hyperscaler CAPEX—and changed the math for telcos [02:59];

Why sovereign cloud may already belong to the hyperscalers [05:57];

How AI-RAN looks more like an NVIDIA play than a telco strategy [09:54]; and

Why Oracle's catch-up bid is a cautionary tale [13:25].
Links and Resources:
Read Charles Fitzgerald's annual 2025 Follow the CAPEX report.

Check out Charles Fitzgerald’s 2024 retrospective on public cloud CAPEX spending and check out his Cloud Reactor Tracker.

This was Charles's fourth appearance on our podcast. Check out his previous episodes:
Ep 110 – Hyperscaler CAPEX is going nuclear

Ep 88 - Cloud CAPEX: Not for the faint of wallet

Ep 63 – Ante up to be a public cloud contender

Is Oracle's CAPEX bet genius or madness? Fortune breaks down the numbers.

Learn more about the Totogi Ontology and how it's helping Tier-1 operators turn AI into actual profit.

Read the Appledore Research report on Totogi: Telecom-specific Ontology, the key to AI-native telco (paywalled).

Charles has been on the podcast four times—one more and we may have to get him a Five-Timers Club jacket, SNL-style.

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Charles Fitzgerald is a Seattle-based angel investor, with a focus on developer platforms and infrastructure. Previously, he spent 20+ years working on platform businesses at Microsoft and VMware. He can see the cloud from his house.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
20 min
March 17Ep 136 - MWC26 Wrap Up (Mobile World Live)
MWC 26 is a wrap, and one thing is clear: the telco industry has moved past asking whether AI will transform the business. The new question is who's moving fast enough to capture value, and who's still playing catch up.
Before I left Barcelona, I stopped by the Mobile World Live Podcast to debrief with host Justin Springham, Managing News Editor Kavit Majithia, and analyst Carolina Milanesi from Creative Strategies. We broke down the real story behind the agentic AI buzz at MWC, what the direct-to-device satellite announcements mean for operators, and why the way teams work in 12 months will look nothing like it does today.
Listen now to hear:
The word of the week at MWC26—and why most of the industry is still missing it [04:43]

The satellite land grab every telco exec should be paying attention to [10:10];

How agentic AI is already changing the way people work and live [14:15]; and

Why the best engineers aren't writing code anymore—they're commanding fleets of agents [17:26]
Links and Resources:
Watch my MWC26 talk for the Agentic AI Summit, Show me the money.

Check out Mobile World Live’s version of this episode!

I also appeared in Mobile World Live’s MWC26 Preview episode last month. GIve it a listen to see if my predictions were right.

The panel covered the biggest news coming out of MWC26. Read more about these stories:
SpaceX announced the mid-2027 launch of Starlink Mobile, its direct-to-device satellite network.

The founder of OpenClaw joined OpenAI so the project could continue as an open-source initiative under OpenAI's support.

Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile announced a joint venture, later joined by Orange and Telefónica, to expand satellite-to-mobile connectivity.

Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle warned of a "wild west in the skies" in her MWC26 keynote, and urged the industry to establish ground rules for satellites.

Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Wear Elite Platform, which aims to transform everyday wearables into personal AI devices.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr was at MWC26—catch Kavit's interview with him on the Mobile World Live website.

Learn more about the Totogi Ontology and how it's helping Tier-1 operators turn AI into actual profit.

Read Appledore Research’s report on Totogi: Telecom-specific Ontology, the key to AI-native telco (paywalled).

Did you miss my padel tournament that kicked off MWC26? Watch the highlights here—and mark your calendar for next year!

I handed out Totogi scarves to the Mobile World Live team—arguably the best swag at MWC26. Check out this photo.

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Telco execs, wanna talk AI and public cloud? Set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
This episode is a special double-drop with the Mobile World Live podcast, featuring:
Justin Springham, Publisher, Mobile World Live

Kavit Majithia, Managing News Editor, Mobile World Live

Carolina Milanesi, President and Principal Analyst, Creative Strategies

And yours truly, Danielle Rios, Founder and CEO of TelcoDR and Totogi
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
23 min
March 03Ep 135 - Telco has a context problem (John Abraham)
Every telco exec is talking about AI agents. Almost nobody is talking about what those agents actually need to work: context.
Not just data — the logic, rules, and decision-making processes that define how your business actually operates. That knowledge currently lives in two places: buried in vendor code nobody fully understands, and inside people's heads. No agentic system, no matter how shiny, can make decisions without it.
In this episode, I sit down with John Abraham, Partner and Principal Analyst at Appledore Research, to dig into why a lack of context is the real blocker for AI at scale, why most approaches only solve half the problem, and how an ontology gives AI the business logic it needs to not just analyze, but decide and act.
Listen now to hear:
The three Cs holding telcos back from using AI at scale [04:42];

Why AI agents risk creating a new generation of silos [08:59];

How a small use case can unlock compounding AI value [14:13]; and

Why a data lake is a costly side quest [15:09].
Links and Resources:
Read the Appledore Research report: Telecom-specific Ontology, the key to AI-native telco (paywalled).

Watch my MWC26 talk for the Agentic AI Summit, Show me the money.

Learn more about the Totogi Ontology and how it's helping Tier-1 operators turn AI into actual profit.

Want to see the Totogi Ontology in action and hear more customer success stories? Find Team Totogi in Hall 2 at MWC26 in Barcelona through March 5. We’ll be showing off our telco ontology that manages enterprise context at scale. Set up a meeting.

Check out these additional Appledore Research reports: GenAI in BSS and Predictive Analytics and GenAI: Choosing the right tool for the job (paywalled).

Listen to my conversation with Rick Lievano from Microsoft, who talked about AT&T's AI agent deployment and why they pumped the brakes before going to production.

Curious how a Tier-1 operator turned a $1–2M dormant cell problem into tens of millions in CXO-level impact—all on the same ontology foundation? Listen to What's up with Totogi: The biggest AI use case for telco.

I once gave John a Yeti that he still raves about. Since then, he’s grown a beard and likes using Vikings Revolution products to take care of it. I guess our next gift to him will be a Mustache Guard mug.

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know

Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
With over 16 years of experience in the telecom industry, John leads Appledore’s Digital Enablement & Monetization program. Previously, he was at Analysys Mason for 11 years, where he led the digital experience research segment as principal analyst. He has experience working with a varied client base on topics ranging from digitization benchmarking and procurement for CSPs; strategy and go-to market for vendors; and commercial and technical due diligence for financial institutions. Earlier, as a consultant at a BSS vendor, he led requirements gathering, solution definition, and implementation at multiple Tier-1 telcos in Asia and Europe. John holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Anna University (India) and an MBA from Bradford University School of Management (UK).
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson
20 min
February 18Ep 134 - Show me the money (MWC)
At MWC, vendors will flood the floor with AI demos that look impressive but can’t prove their actual value. Telcos have spent billions connecting systems, but connection isn’t comprehension. Most AI initiatives are blind—unable to see across the fragmented landscape of BSS, OSS, and network systems that speak different languages and live in isolated realities.
The Totogi Ontology is a semantic layer that gives AI the ability to understand your business. Once it does, the army of consultants you’ve been paying to manually stitch together data across systems becomes redundant—and the economics of everything changes. So when the same vendor selling you AI is also billing you for the consultants that AI should replace, ask them to show you the money.
Listen now to hear:
Why AI demos fail when they touch your architecture [03:11];
How the Totogi Ontology solved Zain’s dormant cell problem and turned 48-hours of troubleshooting into 30-minute fixes [04:34];
Why the ability to comprehend across systems and domains is so impactful [6:06] and
The one question that separates real AI value from empty promises [08:00].
Links and Resources:
Watch the video version of this talk, Show me the money, on YouTube.
Learn more about the Totogi Ontology and how it's helping Tier-1 operators turn AI into actual profit.
Want to see the Totogi Ontology in action and hear more customer success stories? Find Team Totogi in Hall 2 at MWC26 in Barcelona, running March 2-5. We’ll be showing off our telco ontology that manages enterprise context at scale. Set up a meeting.
Catch me taking part in MWC’s Agentic AI Summit, Monday, March 2, 9:00am - 1:00 pm, in Hall 6.
What telco execs need from every AI vendor is the same thing Cuba Gooding Jr. demanded from Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire: Show me the money!
Connect with me on LinkedIn or X @TelcoDR to set up a time to meet.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know
Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Danielle Rios (DR) is the founder and CEO of TelcoDR and Totogi, and host of the Telco in 20 podcast.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson
9 min
February 03Ep 133 - What’s up with Totogi: The biggest AI use case for telco
The telecom industry is full of AI projects that fail. Most operators think it’s a data problem—connect the systems, feed AI the information. But data doesn't tell AI how to decide. Your processes do. Your rules do.
In this special “What's Up with Totogi” episode, I flip the script and have my friend David Haselwood interview me about BSS Magic. We dig into what a breakthrough biology project from the 1990s can teach telcos about making AI work, why BSS Magic isn’t actually a BSS, and why vendor consolidation won’t fix your real problem. I also share stories from Tier-1 operators who tried horizontal AI vendors, failed—and then came to Totogi for AI that works.
Listen now to hear:
What BSS Magic is … and isn’t [03:23];
How we proved it’s the real deal at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Summit [06:39];
Why AI projects keep failing [08:59]; and
How Tier-1 operators are using BSS Magic to get real results [10:55].
Links and Resources:
Want to see BSS Magic in action and hear more customer success stories? Find Team Totogi in Hall 2 at MWC26 in Barcelona, running March 2-5. We’ll be showing off our telco ontology that manages context at scale. Connect with DR on LinkedIn or X @TelcoDR to set up a time to meet.
Check out Lulu Cheng Meservey's post on why bragging about AI in 2026 is like bragging about cloud storage—customers want to see real value, not buzzwords.
Read how a Southeast Asian operator cut CPQ order creation time by over 80%—from 5 minutes and 50+ clicks to under 50 seconds with a single prompt using BSS Magic.
Learn how Totogi generated over 500,000 lines of BSS Code in one day—LIVE!—at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum, proving that BSS Magic is the real deal. Check out our results.
Listen to another Telco in 20 “What’s Up With Totogi” episode to learn more about how BSS Magic functions as a telco-specific ontological layer and transforms BSS migrations from multi-year projects to just a few months.
Learn more about the Gene Ontology project and how biologists solved their semantic inconsistency problem in the 1990s.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know
Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2024 and 2025 MarCom Awards, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Danielle Rios (DR) is the founder and CEO of TelcoDR and Totogi, and host of the Telco in 20 podcast.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson
20 min

About Telco in 20

From the publisher's feed

Over the next 20 years, the telco industry will radically change as we move the entire IT estate to the public cloud to use AI. Are you ready? Telco in 20 helps telecom execs drive transformative…