TeleGeography Explains the Internet

Luis Fiallo has been in the telecom industry for over 25 years. For the majority of that time, he has been at China Telecom Americas, witnessing firsthand the many changes happening in the Latin American telecom market.

After years of helping to drive CTA's growth in the region, Luis, now Vice President, has many valuable insights to share with TeleGeography Explains the Internet.

Peter Wood, TeleGeography’s Senior Analyst covering Latin America, joins to cover the history of networks in the region, going back to the days when even intra-South American traffic tromboned to Miami and back.

We also discuss directly connecting developing markets worldwide, without passing through the U.S. or Western Europe, and the economic connections between East Asia and Latin America. Finally, we talk about the cloud and dig into the areas of the Latin American telecom market that Luis views as the most important to develop in the coming years.

We welcome Stan Hubbard, Principal Analyst at MEF, to the show. Stan recently authored a State of the Industry Report for MEF; we wanted to have him on to discuss his findings and see where the telecom industry is at with adopting new technologies.

Stan explains the market drivers and why telecom service providers need to automate to stay relevant and competitive. He then outlines the path carriers can take to achieve this. Next, we discuss his report and get details on the state of automation adoption in the telecom industry, why customized or proprietary APIs are inefficient, the benefits of standardization, how enterprise drives automation, and even how blockchain will be involved in network contracts.

Download the MEF State of the Industry Report https://www.mef.net/mef-state-of-the-industry-report/

Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO at Lightyear, joins us on the pod. Dennis is uniquely positioned to see how enterprises are sourcing networks. This episode covers the shift to off-premises data centers, hybrid and remote work, the drive to cut network costs through changing technologies, right-sizing networks, and more.

We also touch on Dennis’ skepticism about frequently mentioned WAN trends and technologies.

Season 4 ends on a high note with Junior Research Analyst Mei Harrison’s podcast debut.

As one-half of our enterprise team's two-man band, Mei is the perfect person to help us discuss results from our recently published WAN Manager Survey. We highlight the key trends in multinational corporate networks worldwide, covering MPLS vs. DIA use in the underlay, SD-WAN adoption, cloud connectivity, NaaS, and more.

How are submarine cables impacted by tectonic shifts beneath the seafloor?

This week's guests are well-positioned to tell us. They join us from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre: Isobel Yeo, Researcher in Geology and Volcanology, and Michael Clare, Principal Researcher of Ocean BioGeoscience and Marine Environmental Adviser to the International Cable Protection Committee. 

Mike and Izzy are geologists specializing in the seafloor, so their research has become vital for the submarine cable community.

While most cable faults are due to human activity, a fair number are caused by changes in the seafloor. This includes earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and even flooding on land. 

We discuss the myriad ways that the dynamic nature of what lies under the surface can damage cables. We even get into the history of natural disasters and communications cables going back a century or more. 

We get into a specific seismic event—the recent Tongan volcanic eruption—as well as ongoing threats to sub cables, including how climate change could increase risks and how we can start to mitigate them. 

Our guest today is Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum. 

It's always nice to have industry association folks on the show. I've found they can pull back from the perspective of a single vendor or operator to paint a broader picture of the challenges facing different corners of the telecom industry. This is exactly what Dario does in this interview on all things mobile. 

Dario first explains what the MEF does (and does not do) for its members. But, perhaps more importantly, he provides a great overview of the key issues at play in the global mobile market.

And what might those issues be?

We talk about fraud—always needing to stay one step ahead of the bad guys—and what's happening with roaming as carriers turn off 2 and 3G networks. We get into security for mobile networks, meeting ever-increasing mobile bandwidth demand, and 5 and even 6G mobile service. 

Today’s episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet is about artificial intelligence. And for that we welcome Kannan Kothandaraman, Co-Founder and CEO at Selector AI.

With a plethora of cheeky, AI-generated content out there already, we don't have to tell you that AI has been in the news a lot lately. And I know "AI" is a capacious term; this week's conversation focuses on how AI/ML will actually impact telecom networks.

In fact, we've talked a lot on TeleGeography Explains the Internet about the meaningful changes that have come to corporate networks over the past several years—although it's often in the context of impacting the underlay selection, cloud utilization, security, and other factors.

Our interview with Kannan is all about how AIOPs (don't worry, we'll define this in the show) are an important tool for meeting the many challenges that come with a reimagined WAN.

Aryaka’s Chief Product Officer Renuka Nadkarni visits the podcast. We discuss how Aryaka approaches the WAN across different services like network, WAN optimization, SD-WAN, and security. We also chat about the state of the modern WAN, the forces that have changed it, and how those changes impact how one should think about security.

With an extensive background in security, Renuka has a clear and interesting take on what a secure WAN looks like. 

Wanna look at some cool voice data? The recent expansion of the i3forum's Insights tool has quite a bit of that. I've been itching to talk about it on the podcast. So today we're chatting with the i3forum, a nonprofit industry body focused on "accelerating transformation across the carrier ecosystem."

In other words, this consortium of carriers routinely collaborates on solving some of the biggest challenges facing their industry. They also have an innovative way of sharing data among participants, which benefits all involved.

To get into carrier collaboration, I'm joined by Philippe Millet, Founder and Chairman of the i3forum, as well as Michael Lawrence, Director of Business Intelligence, Operations and Transformation at Tata Communications. Philippe walks us through why he founded the forum and how it operates. And how exactly do members develop, curate, and share recommendations with one another? 

This is the perfect segue to chat with Michael, an active member of the i3forum. He offers an inside perspective on the Insights tool and the benefits of connecting with other carriers. 

Meet Aaron Chan, Founder and Managing Partner at Recurve Capital. As an investor in the “technology media and telecom” space—or “TMT” as they say in finance circles—Aaron has something of an outside perspective.

In this episode, we discuss how investors view the telecom industry and how Aaron classifies publicly traded telecom companies.

You'll hear Aaron's view of the long-term profitability of network operators and what he looks for in making investment decisions in the telecom space. We also talked about the future of the industry, what might lead to competitive advantage for some companies, and how long that might last.

Disclaimer: This podcast expresses the views of its participants only as of the date indicated, which are subject to change without update and may not represent the views of Recurve Capital LLC [(“Recurve”)]. Recurve makes no representation that any past securities performance discussed should be an indication of future results.