Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:16):
Hi there. Tony Poulos here at DSP Leaders World Forum, and it's been a busy couple of days so far. Great sessions, great conversations, and lots of networking. We have a free session now, so I thought I'd drag in some old heads say that very kindly. Of course. Firstly, Martyn Warwick, who is the editor in chief for telecom tv, who's been around longer than, well, I can't go there. And Andrew Coward is the general manager of Software network at IBM. Andrew, welcome.

Andrew Coward, IBM (00:49):
It's great to be here.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:50):
I'm going to start with you, Martyn, because I know if I don't, I'll be in trouble. Firstly, this week there's been a lot of things happening, but what has stood out for you so far at the DSP leaders?

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (01:01):
We come to that in a minute. I just wanted to say good to see you again, Tony. Now they've let you out. I'm taking it. You're on parole and it's been so long since I've seen you. Several years. You've actually grown to my commanding height. We are actually equally high now or no? Have you looked at it? Right? So that's, I'm not sure. That's a compliment, mark. Good. It's a compliment. Of course. It's a compliment. So I think two things that we saw yesterday, and I'm hoping this afternoon we've got a session, a speculative session on six G, which I'm looking forward to because who knows where that's going to go, but I think the FinTech pieces piece and some of the AI as well were absolutely fascinating as were connected vehicles, some fascinating technology and an amazing market. Yep. Yeah. Andrew, what about you?

Andrew Coward, IBM (01:52):
Yeah, I was kind of fascinated by the cloud stories as well. The move to cloud and how that's going. I think we have that subject every year and it's always a little bit tentative around what people are doing, what people are claiming, kind of getting ahead on themselves a little bit. And this year I kind of really felt like, yeah, actually the workloads have moved and continue to move. And they're not just science experiment anymore, they're really being used for your workloads. So when you then take that and pile that into the AI conversation, now you've got the data one place, things become really interesting.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:25):
Yeah, I know the AI is dominating conversations worldwide at the moment, but I have to say, I agree with Martyn about the automotive and the FinTech guys that spoke yesterday. They were raising the point that they critically rely on the network to do their work. They can't do anything without the network. And even to the point where the automotive guy from a rover, Jager Rover was fabulous if you demonstrations of the danger of losing connectivity in cars. But the other one on FinTech was now about security, about two-factor authentication. We are using the mobile network and our devices for so many issues of security. Is it going to grow? Can we make money out of it? As telco operators, what do you think?

Andrew Coward, IBM (03:05):
Well, I think interesting. There's no plan B either. I mean, the point was made earlier about credit cards and in fact, back in the day, right, there was a paper thing you could swipe and now that's all gone. So we are entirely reliant on the resiliency of the network of the internet and the telcos to provide this. So it is kind of one of those things where the value that telcos are providing and connecting more things, providing more bandwidth, it just keeps accelerating as we've witnessed. And when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to say, is it really growing that fast? It's kind of slow and boring. But if you were to go back one year and two years and just see how many devices have come on board, how many cars are now connected, how many of the new chip and pin beyond that right now, the touch credit car machines are out there everywhere. It's just the ubiquitously of it. It seems

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:55):
Like even Martyn uses his phone now to do banking.

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (03:59):
I do. Do I sometimes turn it on. But what was interesting, especially what Jeff Hollingworth was talking about in the session before last, is the fact that people are so afraid of fraud in just about every interaction they have on a mobile phone. Nevermind the laptop, that a lot of people are simply refusing to answer any call that they don't know who's calling the number they don't know left. The prevalence of fraud is appalling and how it's going to be met. I dunno, Andrew, have you heard anything about any emergent technology that might help or

Andrew Coward, IBM (04:36):
To get people talking voice? I mean my kids don't talk to me, they just text me. Right? I think that's inherent. I think the scam calling though has driven a lot of that. I don't answer phone calls from members,

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:49):
Anybody does.

Andrew Coward, IBM (04:51):
But then I think if you think about the shift that we've now made to video conferencing systems with WebEx or Teams or Zoom, that's another shift that we saw through that's just so natural to us. So our kids are perfectly happy to get on a video call as part of a team meeting with their group and that's what they do. But yeah, the idea of an old fashioned phone call, not so much.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (05:12):
I'm even worried about that in case somebody tries to impersonate my wife using AI and giving me a video call.

Andrew Coward, IBM (05:19):
It's ing. That's a horrible thought actually on that point. It's just fascinating. And we as IBM are using tools from all over the place to kind of quickly develop content replicating why voice is trivial for any of us, right?

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (05:33):
Absolutely. Yeah. The other thing that happened today, which worried me a little bit was Peter Arbiter from Adona was saying, making the point that we're continuously as telcos and network operators investing in our own business, our network network, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to be interested in us. Our share prices are not changing, our capital value is staying stable, yet we're so critical for everybody else to survive. Why is this mentality, why have we created that stigma in the industry?

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (06:04):
I honestly dunno. I really don't know why. I mean still Telco is seen as closed big but difficult to penetrate that kind of stuff. So I'm not saying, Andrew, what do you,

Andrew Coward, IBM (06:20):
So we constantly, this event have this conversation around value add for telcos. I think we've had it a couple tests today. Now I think interestingly, the telcos that have been rewarded most by the stock market have been the ones that have stuck their knitting and double down on fiber deployment, double down on mobile. So if you look at companies like at t T-Mobile and look at their stock prices over the last five years, I'd argue they have been rewarded. So I think it's a very mixed bag,

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (06:47):
But they're also showing very good profits, which probably has a lot to do with people investing in them, I presume.

Andrew Coward, IBM (06:52):
That's right. And return, specifically return on capital.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (06:55):
But there is a fear that we do invest so much of our money back into the network, back into systems, et cetera. Every time there's a new G, we have a whole new system of networks, of network components, of radio network. I think it's a worry if I was an in investor, I'm saying these guys never going to stop. Can we stop?

Andrew Coward, IBM (07:17):
Well, I think it is an interesting question as it relates to six G, right? Because

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (07:22):
Be careful now.

Andrew Coward, IBM (07:24):
So there was a slide of, earlier, I think it said something about six G will be expected to be in a network for 25 years. I think 5G is likely to be in the network for 25 years too. And that migration from five to six will be mostly the software components and a step up. So I don't know that we will return to the 10 billion, 20 billion a year per telco investment that we see in North America, that three, four billions that we see in Europe, those days may be over forever.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (07:52):
Well, it's an interesting point because I've often wondered that we've never reached the potential of 5G and how long have we had that going now? So maybe the point is correct.

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (08:00):
Well the other thing of course, we were talking about this earlier was the fact that two G two and a half g, 3G still going strong in many parts of the world. It penetrates indoors pretty well. You don't have to worry behind a pillar or anything like that. And it's being torn out in parts of Western Europe and other parts of the world, but it's not everywhere. And that's been there a long time already about 30 years, two G. So they've got a long life ahead of them.

Andrew Coward, IBM (08:27):
I think it's interesting, I think a lot of telcos have been trying to figure out how to shut down 3G networks but not two G. Because interestingly to the beginning when we started with iot devices and cars, the original ones are on two G networks and because they're metering applications and low bandwidth, they can last forever.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (08:47):
We've apparently reached our time limit, guys. They didn't give us very much. 10 minutes has gone like that. I'd like to thank Martyn and Andrew very much for being and in the free session, I think that was a free session and for those of you at home and viewing from wherever you are in the world, keep viewing because we've got another session coming up now and I'm going to revert back to Guy and Ray who'll be introducing the session. So thank you very much. See you on the next extra shot.