Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:00:10):
Session one is all about innovation. It's about where DSP should best direct their innovation efforts and how we can accelerate this work. And furthermore, how can telcos ensure they focus on the evolving digital services requirements rather than just chasing the latest technology advances? There's an awful lot to discuss, so to enable us to swiftly get our guests onto stage and do some set adjustment, we're going to be showing you of these two days, some brief video highlights from our online DSP summit series. As we get our guests on stage, we don't just cover the important topics once a year. We cover them all year round with our schedule of debates and interview. So here's our first video on the green network as we invite our guests onto stage. We're back in just a sec.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:01:03):
In the same way that we talk about bandwidth expansion and growing usage and things like that, we have to also talk about and keep energy efficiency productivity. The green network has to stay in that same dialogue and just become part of the table stakes of telecom

Terje Jensen, Telenor (00:01:23):
And we also see innovations on understanding the traffic for example, so you can process the traffic, whether that's meta data or use the data or that we can also argue to have a better understanding and avoid that unnecessary traffic is actually carried too far.

Komal Aggarwal, Vodafone (00:01:44):
I think one very important point by moving functions onto cloud is, and especially in the context of energy, is defining an intelligent database. I think one cannot overemphasize the importance of having an intelligent data lake towards defining more empirically based informed decisions on how, how we reduce our energy consumption.

Dr Joan Triay, Docomo Euro-Labs (00:02:14):
We've run POCs at Doomo where we've seen a drastic improvement and savings in power consumption just by changing the kind of CPUs that we use for delivering the factory core. It's

Sarwar Khan, BT (00:02:31):
If we are able to establish a circular economy, we are able to deliver products for our customers with a lower carbon impact circular design, then ultimately that will also have a positive impact for our customers From an ROI perspective as well,

Terje Jensen, Telenor (00:02:45):
I fully agree on this strive towards zero bit zero watts. I think it's quite fundamental and in my mind to do that. It's also good to close the loop between what a network can enable and what is the real true need of the customers of the order applications.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:03:12):
Well you catch up with all of our videos, interviews and discussions from the Green Network Summit over on telecom tv. Now, before we start our session, we are going to introduce our poll because a popular feature of the summit is the audience poll. So we have created a series of very simple polls for you each one question with three choices and the choice is up to you. I'm going to look at the first question for this session and this session is we are asking the question, what is the best source of innovation for service providers? So we're giving you three choices there. Is it internal? Is it vendor partners or is it industry association? So please go ahead and vote on the telecom TV website. You'll find all the polls in the DSP leaders section on the agenda page and we are going to take a look at the current state of voting at the end of this session, right, that's not done. Once again, we have invited co-hosts and I'm delighted to say that our first co-host is Yago Tenorio, who is fellow and director of network architecture at Vodafone Group and also the chairman of Tip Telecom Info Project. Yago, thanks so much for coming back. It's been two years since you were last with us on stage. It's good to have you back.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:04:24):
Correct and thank you for having me. So I think I need to sort out my title. It's too long, so sorry

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:04:29):
About that. Oh, there were longer titles in this business. Don't you worry. Just talk to Phil behind the scenes there. He poses hair out. Some of these job titles, they never fit on the screen, right? Thank you very much. Now let us go and introduce our guests first of all and then Yago is going to give our first DSP leaders address. But first let's meet all our panelists who are joining us for this session. I'm going to ask them all to briefly introduce themselves starting on the far left of the stage with Mark. Mark.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:04:54):
Hi, Mark Gilmour, CTO at Connectivity. Yeah, really glad to be here and looking forward to the discussions.

Susan James, American Tower (00:05:03):
Okay, so Susan James. I'm VP of innovation on wireless connectivity with American Tower and my first time, so I'm very pleased to be here.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:05:13):
Hi everybody, my name's Dennis Hoffman and I run the telecommunications systems business at Dell Technologies, also a newbie to this forum. Nice to see you all.

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:05:22):
Hi everyone, I'm Chivas Nambiar. I run the telco business at AWS also first time and a newbie and excited to be part of this forum.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:05:31):
My name is Gabriela Mann, I'm the managing director of research and network strategy at BT Group where I've been there now a year. I'm very excited to be here.

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 Business (00:05:40):
Great. Hi everyone, it's Sandy BHA from VA Media two business leading on strategy innovation 5G it and it's great to be back from last year.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05:49):
Thanks. It is great to see all of you, some returners and some new faces and it's always a pleasure to mix it up and get some new faces and opinions on our session. So thank you very much indeed. Right in that case Yago, I'm going to ask you if you'd like to make your way to lectern to deliver our first DSP leaders address.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:06:05):
Very good, thank you very much

(00:06:12):
And well thank you for having me. My pleasure to be opening this panel. I think the topic is spot on because we have to talk about innovating on the network. The truth is we are almost halfway through the 5G decade and the question on what is the killer app for 5G or in other words, how are we going to make money or 5G is still mostly outstanding or at least I don't have an answer. Maybe I'll find the answer today I would really appreciate, but there are I think some hints. So maybe I have parts of the answer so at least I'll give you my view and then maybe as an input for topics that we can discuss today, I would love to hear your viewpoint on this. I can think of five things and let me just put them in order from starting with the most distant kind of future to the most current.

(00:07:11):
Of course AI and we'll talk about this in these days, but not necessarily only AI for network but more the network for ai. There are many different perspectives on this, but of course there is one that says that the computing that AI will need may actually require the DSPs to play a role and that's very interesting. Now that's probably going to happen in the next two, three years. So this is still probably at some point in the second half of the decade. Another thing that may happen in the next two, three years, I would say two things that are relevant. One is satellite, particularly direct to sell satellite. So broadband is clear and it's happening when it comes to service that you can provide directly to unmodified phones that may be very disruptive and a breakthrough innovation and it may actually open new ways to monetize strategy. Think of applications that you may want to deliver that counts on the service and the connectivity being ubiquitous like 24 7, wherever you go you never be unconnected. Opens a new world of possibilities and I think it's going to be possible also within the next two years. Now with APIs we're going to talk about them as well. Very important way to monetize and open new ways to make money out of the 5G network and also happening probably closer than two years from now, maybe in the next one or two.

(00:08:48):
Now you expect me to talk about open brand, who you? Yeah. Okay, so I will. My thing number four is of course open ran. When is it going to happen? In our case, going to happen in the next year. Why? Because we're running an RFQ, which is also the reason why I can't really talk about it. So all I can say is going well. So we said that we would launch an RFQ and I think we've been very vocal about our ambition to end this decade with 30% of Europe in open run. So we'll see if that happens as an outcome of a spinning six. And I can't really comment or give you more details, but we May 1st consider if we're talking about monetizing 5G, why do we talk about open run? Well, open run creates optionality. Optionality creates competition. Competition creates innovation and innovation, reduce cost and with a reduced cost then you can roll out 5G to more places more quickly and that is important.

(00:09:54):
Now I know the debate is still going on in the industry as to whether or how open run is actually reducing the cost and there are many different viewpoints and that is good and is a great debate. So let me give you maybe one study taken from the RFQ and I'll omi some details. But one of the things we are procuring is of course radio units. Radio units are like the PAs that are at the end of the base station that transmit the signal that gets on your phone. But they are also the devices that take up the most energy. They are really hungry so they take a significant part of the CapEx of the radio, but they take a disproportionate majority of the opex in the form of energy consumption. In our case with this R fq no secret, we are procuring 32 different radios.

(00:10:49):
Why 32? Why that many? Well, because we have different markets, markets with slightly different spectrums. In some of them we have ranch sharing and some of them we don't have ranch sharing. So at the end we ended up with 32 different models and we have a specification for the 32. We send it to all the vendors. We see the responses. It's very interesting when you look at all the radios that are compliant to our specification and you figure out the power consumption, right? So you take the 32 rows, you build one column per vendor and you see what this kind of equates to in terms of opex for energy. Who would you say is the winner? Who has the best radios from that perspective? If you add up all the energy that you're going to be consuming no one because for the 32 rows there is always a vendor that has a few first and a few not so good radios.

(00:11:54):
So there is always the first position and the second position is always in a different column. Does that matter? Well in theory with open run you can just go for all first and combine them and just build the best stack. Okay, in theory, do you know you want to guess in terms of opex for energy, so energy consumption, what's the difference? So if you build the ideal stack, like the champion of all the stacks with the best radios ever, the energy consumption for the life of the equipment. So let's say 10 years in the entirety of our footprint in Europe. So a lot of base stations is 1 billion euros better than the next best one you followed. So open run versus the old world is 1 billion euro better in energy consumption throughout the life of the equipment. Now you may say yeah, but that's unrealistic because you're not going to be able to just mix and match like the ideal set.

(00:13:07):
Yeah, true. But if you go for something feasible that is maybe two or three suppliers max and then four or five models max, which is why I can integrate myself, then instead of 1 billion, you end up with 800 million. Okay, so next time you think of why open run is reducing the cost, remember this now open run, yeah, within the next year, but I said in order of most current. So my last topic for today is something that is happening today this morning and it has to do with mobile private networks, which has been already I think a very current thing and a very, I think current way of monetizing 5G so far. But there is a need for democratizing that and there is a need for reducing the cost and make it universally available. And I was here when I was here last time two years ago. I missed last year because I was getting married, which is a nice way to remember my anniversary by the way.

(00:14:11):
I remember I was waving a two G network on a raspberry bay, you remember that? And I said, well the challenge is how long it'll take us to build a 5G network in a raspberry Pi. So today I'm waving this one. So this is a 5G network in a raspberry Pi and is launching commercially today, this morning. Now how is that? So after we presented this kind of experiment with the two G network, we took a prototype of a 5G network on a raspberry buy to mobile world Congress. It was super successful, super successful. So we've had demand from all the enterprise customers for Vodafone contacted us. They wanted to set up trials and proof of concepts, et cetera, but it was a prototype. So the company doing this Lyme could not satisfy that demand.

(00:15:06):
We took it again to this mobile or congress and the difference is today this is becoming commercially available. So Lime is launching it commercially. You can go to their website and check and you'll find the link and then the link will take you to crowd supply. So it's a crowdsourcing campaign and this model is a developer edition, which means that you buy, you can change the components, you can maybe opt for a bigger memory or configure it differently if you remember the spec. This is a software defined radio base station, which means that it can transmit any network, any PMN id. You can use it in any network with any spectrum and you can actually make it a 5G based station or if you don't like that, you can make it a 4G or a 3G or a two G one. It's all software and it can transmit in any band. So very excited to be launching that today for Lyme and I think it is part of the future. Our ambition is to have this eventually at the cost of a wifi router. So you'll have a 5G core and a 5G pay station, your own mobile private network for what the wifi router may cost you. This is not exactly at that price because it's the developer edition, but hey, you can order from today. So go online and please your orders. Thank you very much.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:16:34):
Thank you very much. Hug As expected you bring out the big surprises, very nice of you to organize the release day to coincide with day one of Ds P lead as well. Absolutely fabulous. No money change hands there whatsoever. Amazing. Thanks very much. Lots of food for thought there ya. Lots of food for thought in what you were saying. I'd like to bring in our panelists now because we all listening to you there for five minutes or so. Are there any comments, anybody want to quiz yago on some of the issues that he's just raised now? Any takers for a question to yago? Anyone at all? Anyone at

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 Business (00:17:13):
All? I'll just add, no, I think it's great to see the developments you've done on the private networks, something we've been actively pursuing as well. So definitely think that's a key use case to drive that monetization on 5G and 5G standalone and making it compact and plug and play. So we developed a suitcase size private network, launched it commercially and as you said, seeing the demand for customers, they can deploy it quickly in a matter of minutes and start to drive that adoption. So definitely agree that's a key initiative to continue to pursue.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:17:40):
Thank you. I think that's very kind of you. And there is one point that we may want to discuss later on today, which is innovation from the DSP independently to compete and differentiate against other DSPs or innovation as an industry and is not an obvious question and the answer is not obvious. In our case, we developed this and we took it to Mobile World Congress as a Vodafone branded, as a Vodafone kind of development today this is launched as a DSP agnostic network. So you can go online, you can buy as many as you want and it will work on your network or on yours. On yours. That's a deliberate move, but it is also a very interesting topic as to whether it makes sense to innovate and differentiate or when it makes sense to do it to compete with other operators and when it makes sense to do it as an industry for the better of this industry and to make it more profitable for everybody. In our case this time around we chose the second. So

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:19:00):
It's a question we've been asking forums like this for quite some time, isn't it about where we innovate, how we innovate, and hopefully we'll bring out some of these issues as we go through our discussion now, unless there's any more direct questions, should we move along? Because we got a lot to cover. I'd like to bring in this point about we do see a lot of innovation within turco. We've seen it, that video at the start, we were talking about innovation for years and years and years. A lot of it has been incremental and a lot of it recently has been focused more I guess on cost reduction for the core business. What I'd like to ask is how do we now innovate for growth? We've been talking about services, this is what DSP leaders is all about. How do we innovate to drive and deliver these new services and why has this been so difficult? Why has it been such a challenge for so long? Let's bring in someone guests straight away. And Gabriela, I'd like to start with you if I can, because we talked earlier about this and you talked about this sort of innovation gap. Would you like to maybe articulate that? Yeah,

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:20:04):
So first of all, I would like to start by saying that I believe that from a technology point of view, I think we don't necessarily have an innovation gap. I think the gap is shown by the fact that we're the only sector in the last 10 years with a negative TSR minus 10%, the only sector of all sectors globally with a negative total shareholder return. So it shows that really the issue is not necessarily in the technology of how we build the networks. The issue is in growth. And I think for me it starts, I push a lot in my organization to help understand that the role of the network has changed. We go from a world where the technology that we innovated, that we standardized actually delivered the outcome. So video messaging voice, but it's no longer there. The technologies that we're innovating today do not deliver the outcome.

(00:21:06):
They deliver the art of a possible of an outcome. And this is why we failed with 5G and we will fail miserably with six G. Not because of lack of innovation around openness or technology, but because the business models have changed, the network is delivering an outcome, is part of the piece of a puzzle to deliver for an outcome. It's B2B B two, B two x where connectivity is just one piece of that. And I think it is the innovation of the ecosystem, monetization of the ecosystem that is going to enable us to grow. But we don't have that culture. Telcos also don't have a culture product development. We think we do. I challenge my own organization, say no, what we call product managers are not really product managers, they're tariff managers, bundle managers. We don't really develop products in the sense of really developing a true product.

(00:21:57):
So I think that the innovation gap has to do with how do we as an industry get together and engage. We need to make sure that for six G, we're doing research and development with the enterprises, with the ecosystem, not sit in our own chamber and talk about this phenomenal technologies that we're building, putting in our networks that we love but nobody else understands. So this is for me that big gap that we have as an industry and that we really need to call out and take action. How do we involve? And it's all about B2B, B two, B two x and they need to understand what we're doing. I

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:22:34):
Think it is the reality though, right? There is a ton of innovation. If you think about us as an industry that's kept everybody connected and dealt with the growth of data for so many years, there is tremendous innovation that's gone. But to your point, we haven't been able to sell the value of what we're creating and translating that to consumer and enterprise experiences. And that gap is challenging for us as a business, as a telco business. We're always thinking about how do we get you that next amount of larger trends of data, next amount of better plans for your ecosystems. So the innovation that we need, business case, yes, but also a little bit of experimentation. Our model needs to shift from saying, yeah, we are very good at deploying billions of dollars of capital and we do really well at it to saying where are the smaller and smaller experiments you run to find the right things that your consumers say, I will go buy this from A DSP from a telco and I am happy with the experiences I get out of it and then scale. And we haven't been very good at that experiment and then scale model. So that's a big part of innovation we need to spend time on.

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 Business (00:23:41):
I would probably add as well coming from this perspective where I said in the BB area thinking, yeah, the focus over the last two decades has been a lot on core network innovation moving from two G, 3G, 4G or the fixed networks. And obviously we talked about the diversification of the supply chain as well. And that's all really thinking about some of the standards, developing the patents. But then when I'm thinking from the business perspective really a step change and a different mindset as well. So you've got to get a lot closer to the customer. So in the B2B world, thinking about what are some of the customer pain points and problems and then developing a plan or a strategy around how you might solve those, is that improving health and safety? Is that driving better sustainability? Is that improving product product efficiency and managing better control of assets and then working back from that is often the key thing to do, which is what I found works. And then it's really as you said, how do you start to trial and test capabilities, products and solutions in the market fail fast and then scale. And often the challenge I've seen is it's the balance because you're going to be creating new products and solutions and of course you've got to trade and scale your existing core connectivity business as well. So it's managing that balance of investments as well. New versus existing.

Susan James, American Tower (00:24:53):
More comments. Yeah, I was going to add there, I did some quick research a number of months ago. If you look at the percentage of revenues that most of the MNOs are getting from enterprise today, it's gone down significantly over the last 10 years or longer. And I think that is the area that has really been starved for funding. When you look at how the network's evolved, they really have been built for consumers to get the cost down for consumers and the innovation of the organizations around business have sort of been starved the network, how they would build them for businesses as being starved. So I think that absolutely it is the area that there is the untapped revenues, but when you look at it from a business perspective, connectivity doesn't deliver them anything. It is not a solution to a business problem. And that's where I think you start to see things changing in the industry where you start to see more MNOs working with systems integrators, working with a bigger ecosystem of companies where it will be an IBM or an Accenture or someone that is building an end-to-end solution for a problem that will require 5G connectivity for moving robots around factories or whatever.

(00:26:12):
And that will require more than just outside in connectivity. It will require a private 5G network, it could be a managed wifi network. So I think that there is a large opportunity there and I think businesses so confused about what they don't understand how to articulate that in a way that a lot of MNOs and companies understand. So I think there's almost a communication issue between the two right now. So I do see that there's a big opportunity for innovation in that area and I think we're just starting to come to that now because of course your 5G rollout is going to go across your macro network before it starts to focus on densification. And I think we're just starting to get to that point now. So I do think that there is a lot of hope right now on how we will get there, but I think it's going to be more of an industry collaboration across broader industries than maybe we've had in the past.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:27:07):
Interesting. We've heard so far there seems to be a broad consensus of identifying issues or the issue here.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:27:15):
I think the original question about the innovation for cost reduction, innovation for growth, I think we need both. We've been more focused on reducing cost and with obvious reasons I think you mentioned, but it cannot be only that. So I fully agree. We also need to innovate for services and then there is the point that we briefly touched on before as to in which cases we do that together and in which ones we're competing. And we do that to differentiate against each other. Part of I think the slowdown is that as an industry we've been learning how to do that and I think nowadays I think we are not bad at it. So I think we know and we can collaborate and then we can compete. And that's not common in every industry and it's not common and it's something specific to DSP. So I think we should leverage that.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:28:17):
It strikes me that as somewhat of an industry outsider, don't beat yourselves up too much as an industry or let's not beat ourselves up too much about difficulty innovating by and large, as industry is populated with large companies, mostly very large companies, some of which are national assets and it's well chronicled that almost all large companies struggle with innovation and rarely because of technology or the understanding of technology or even sometimes the understanding of needs, it's often because of the structure of the company. The companies get built as ecosystems around what they've made their money doing. And those ecosystems are incredibly difficult internal ecosystems, they're incredibly difficult to break when you try to do something new. In the end, there are really two models that most companies use. One is to acquire innovation and yet this industry, to the point you made about TSR and total shareholder returns, this industry is not flowing with money to go do a bunch of innovation, a bunch of acquisitions for the express purpose of innovation.

(00:29:26):
It's been more consolidation and geographic territory and things, but it's a very difficult problem. And I think most of the panelists have touched on the ways that you solve it, focus on end users that you're targeting focus on outcome. But it's not at all unique certainly to this industry that a group of large companies that have been wildly successful doing something incredibly important, then trying to do something a bit different, find barriers to doing so and it it's just a very heavy lift. It's hard work, but it's eminently doable. And I think you've got a great agenda of topics to cover that are along the lines of both cost innovation and revenue growth, innovation. And I'm glad Yago, you're the first person to say ai, so I'm not the first person to say it today. It certainly won't be the last, but the frenzy around that is an inflection point that this industry cannot let themselves be over the top on ai.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:30:29):
One question because you mentioned a really good point. So maybe from a different perspective and also as an outsider coming into the industry acknowledging that the whole industry globally is not healthy. To what extent is this a regional problem? Because most of us here, we represent Europe and we live on this reality. So when you look at the innovation on the network, is it the European kind of problem? Is there a gap between Europe and the us you think? And Asia, you have a good perspective on that. So why do you think

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:31:04):
Yeah, it's a matter of degree, the whole industry, if the entire industry is minus 10 TSR, and I wouldn't doubt that. I think if you just do a five year stock price chart of most operators and most of the suppliers who depend entirely on the operators, they look very similar. And it doesn't matter if you're in the United States or Australia or here in Europe, Europe is uniquely challenged, right? Europe, it's well chronicled, I've learned it, some of it from you, but just this environment is particularly tough. It's like eight gas stations at a corner trying to sell a data plan to a family and all of that at the same time as

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:31:44):
Very acuity.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:31:47):
It's like all at the same time is being forced to invest with every geopolitical forces. I mean it's a tough setup. If we don't find revenue growth, I think it's going to be tough to out to cost out our way out of this. That's going to be key.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:32:04):
You can never save your way to success.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:32:07):
It's a great, great adage. But yeah, I don't think, I mean there are a couple of outliers. T-Mobile US is an outlier, but a very unique situation at the moment. Not necessarily on innovation but on stock price and TSR, but really unique situation number three, carrier highest ARPU market. And they have a whole bunch of sprint spectrum. So it's just a different situation. But by and large I think it's global. Thanks guys.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:32:35):
Gabriel. And while I do think it's global, of course there are small variance to I would say that you have a couple of, if you look in Asia, Southeast Asia particular, they're not doing great, but a little bit better. You would see the Nordics and Scandinavia. Some markets are doing slightly better when it comes to innovation, not necessarily TSR, but innovation, sorry. I think something to learn, sorry, from those markets is the government's role in facilitating innovation that coherent policies as enabling innovation. Industrial strategies are going to be critical. So how do you incentivize the enterprises upskilling of people, digitalization of the public sector, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that is something that we also should talk more about and that's why I say we need to tap on the ecosystem, the enabler of the connectivity. This fantastic connectivity that we're building goes beyond a valley beyond and governments need to be involved in that critical understanding connectivity is that critical enable for societal growth, but that requires policies, coherent policies.

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:33:49):
Well maybe

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:33:50):
Just come

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:33:51):
In. Yeah, I was also going to say, so it feels like as an industry we have this sense of desperation that leads us to do things like glom on to the next big hype cycle and then get not very good at it for two years and then drop it for the next big hype hype cycle. So I haven't heard the term industry 4.0 in about a year, right? 5G when it started up, that was a big part of the conversation. And if you go back and look at how many industries we've actually gone out and really touched to build something unique, something custom as operators, as partners for operators, it's very little. And so it is not that the opportunity doesn't exist, but we just have lost patience with the model of product development, product management and building better things over time. And that takes a lot of time. We just want the quick results. So we're like, okay, industry 4.0 is done, now we're going to go over to the gen AI hype cycle and in two years what's going to change? We have to get into the model of building things small, building things for specific unique customers and then try to scale it up. And I don't see the patience for it sometimes in the

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:34:57):
Industry. Well, as you said, they're all cycles, they're all cyclical eventually even ai, it's going to be cyclical. Mark, do you want to come in just one of your, okay, yeah, this has been an interesting discussion and dialogue so far. And I've been listening in my career, I started off building fiber networks, spent a long time building mobile networks and now I've kind of come back to building fiber networks. And it is interesting to see mentioning about the consumer versus enterprise mix. These last five years I've spent more time working with enterprise in the B2B space. And the thing that is particularly noticeable is that it is a much more varied market. So when it comes to the consumer play, if we're talking cellular and things like that, it's essentially one product, isn't it? Varying degrees within it, but it's essentially one product minutes used to be minutes, then text, then data now.

(00:36:13):
Whereas in the enterprise space, you've got umpteen different verticals and then sub-verticals within that. And you've got to get close to the customer in order to understand their pain point because with the greatest will in the world. And Yago, you started off talking about the fantastic innovation that's going on with open RAN for example, but open RAN is innovating in the network, isn't it? To reduce costs. It has an outward benefit, but it's what we are good at. But when it comes to then how do we innovate on the network, which has been a bit of a precursor for the discussions here, that's much more challenging because you have to look individually, well almost it feels like individually into the verticals and you have to take a bet on which verticals to get go after. And if you want to do that in any sort of scale. And this I think then leads on, you made another point about the lime raspberry pi, the 5G thing, that's not a Vodafone r and d piece is it? It's a collaboration effort that's come about and that really is where innovation is going to come within our traditionally telco r and d, longer R and D cycles, those sorts of things.

(00:37:47):
Even that has been taken out of our domain to a greater or lesser extent. Am I going to jump onto another question here?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:37:56):
You are. Are Marc

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:37:57):
I

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:37:57):
I'm getting excited. I'm getting excited because you're leading very nicely onto another area. I'd. I'll pause to Coban. Yeah, we'll develop it. It's a nice segue because I was going to ask what are the factors that are driving innovation? To what extent also is innovation now seen as business requirements? And I also wanted to try and find out how this is separate from r and d work and what impact does innovation going forward have on more traditional r and d activities of telcos, especially the big telcos, they've got their telco labs and facilities. How is this all changing? I wonder, and you are mentioning the RD there, mark just spurred that on. Any thoughts about how the need for innovation and the different factors that are driving it are changing what we do?

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:38:46):
Yeah, I think just building on what you were saying, maybe there is a transition that innovation in the network is actually just not only an enabler but is starting there and then it's becoming a platform for innovate on the network. So to your point, it's true open brand is not going to per se bring monetization or application or make a difference for the customer so that the customer doesn't care necessarily care if it's being served by open brand or single brand. It'll be the same. However, without optionality and without competition and a he ecosystem, there'll be no network to innovate on. So it is an enabler from that perspective. Now, the point you made online, and I fully agree, there is this point of innovation as an industry and taking us and moving us forward as an industry together. There is also the point on starting the innovation from within. And in this case you innovate because you make the network accessible, affordable, but also programmable and then you pass it on to developers for them they can develop applications on top of this box and in the smartphone.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:40:06):
Well

(00:40:07):
This is interesting. Yeah. Oh that well I

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:40:11):
Promise

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:40:12):
Consult the notes. Sure. There's no test. How do we do it? Did I really hear an alarm there? I'm not sure if I heard either. I tell you what we're going to see if that pops up again just in case because it wasn't consistent alarm because it was only a brief one. We are going to assume that wasn't a fire alarm I think is a fair assumption. Unless someone from the telecom TV team can walk outside and go and find stuff and get clarification just in case. And if you don't return in about two minutes, then we'll know we have a problem. I think it was an endorsement of Ya's point.

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:40:44):
Is there special effects? Yes. It reminds me when you're watching Formula one and there is a yellow flag and then there is no yellow flag. Yes,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:40:51):
Yes. So what was it? What was it? Yes, what happens? So we will continue unless we're here otherwise, but we are checking, don't worry, your safety is paramount to us. How does this affect r and d? Because we historically been doing a lot of r and d work in order to develop new technologies to claim ownership of them, get the patents, take 'em into the standardization process, make sure they become standards, make sure that we are a player in the next generation of technology and so on and so forth and on it goes. And it's been going that way for ages, but now we're talking about we're innovating and not just technology but services. Are these two separate components of a telco? Is this two separate missions or are they one And that's someone who's not a, I'm really interested to find out any thoughts. Yeah,

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 Business (00:41:37):
I have to share my view. Well, virgin media too, they are separate but aligned. So of course it is really important to drive that network innovation aligned to those standards and obviously the best practice of doing that, right? Working with the network partners, driving those industry forums, but then also is really critical. Now we're at that juncture. How do you realize that investment on that network innovation? And so to do that effectively the business innovation is a different approach. Often it's a different mindset. And so what we've been thinking about is how do you develop those new products and services? And to Gabrielle's point, is that just in the same way of continuing to develop products yourself or do you need to partner? Do you need to find different approaches? Because telcos will have skills and experiences, but it may not be always best placed.

(00:42:23):
So one example of that is the work that Virgin Media two has been doing and we just announced the last month with Accenture where we've combined our skills providing 5G private network capability, so our core connectivity as the enabler and then working, collaborating with Accenture who will engage with our industry customers, working on a range of industry verticals to create industry solutions using computer vision AI and help our customers with a range of products. And then bringing that together to offer an end-to-end service and solution. And I think that's really unique in terms of how do we help our customers on a wide range of industries and acknowledging that it's not something that we're always going to create ourselves. So really leveraging partnerships and partners that are operating globally as well.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:43:05):
Thanks Steve. And Gabrielle, you want to come in as well?

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:43:07):
Yeah. So my view on research is this, it depends on the objective and we often talk about r and d as one, but you can do research without the D, which leads to not much. You need the R, the D, you need the commercialization and you need the scale. And I would like to challenge some of the things that we talk about when it comes to network innovation. I'm all for innovation, for keeping reducing cost, we have to do that. But I also think that we get so stuck into diversifying the supply chain, especially from a national perspective. Many of us are involved with government how important it's, and I always tell them we wouldn't have to incentivize diversity in the supply chain. If this was a healthy sector, we would have lots of vendors. So I think and just look at the vendors that we have, they're struggling big time.

(00:44:07):
So I'm actually concerned that even if we try to innovate more, well this is so research intense, they quit the technology that it requires massive scale. Now I would like to move over to the telco though. As BT group, we do a lot of research. We have over 5,000 patents, but we don't do a lot with those to be candid. So also a shift that's also culture. We're most comfortable even as telcos on the things we know, which is infrastructure. And one of the things that I keep saying in my organization is we have to shift and we are in the middle of that transformation to shift slightly away from doing what everybody else is doing comfortably researching infrastructure to actually research platforms, orchestration software, building the ecosystem and co-innovate with our customers to Susan's point. And I think that is the type of then the research can be valuable for telco that can lead to a deep, but to have patents in RAN doesn't help me to group. I don't think it helps just about any telco, but to have patents when it comes to certain services that probably can lead to the D and the commercialization.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:45:21):
Thanks so much come to, but just before we come to Susan, I'd just like to inform everyone and reassure everyone that we have had the official confirmation that was a false fire alarm. So false fire alarm. So everyone get back in the room, get sat down please. We will continue, Susan.

Susan James, American Tower (00:45:35):
Okay, so I agree with co-creation. I think it's really great, but I think we often over assume that our customers are technology companies and the vast majority of them, and I think when I looked at both we're members of both WBA and we're members of the ongoing alliance for private networks. When you look at the surveys that come out from those companies, they say they're closer to taking a decision, but they're more confused than they were last year. And that's like, should I be choosing wifi six E or seven? Should I be choosing private networks? At the end of the day, they don't really care. They want someone to tell them this is the right thing for your network and they may need both. And then they need both of those things to work together. So I think often in companies you tend to work in silos.

(00:46:30):
This is the part that's working with wifi, this is the part that's working with private 5G and even within the systems integrators, they're trying to sell private 5G instead of trying to solve a particular business issue. So I think there's lots of challenges there. Yes, it would be great to work with industries, but that's not their job to create for us. So I think that's one of the things that we need to do better. And I really like the point you touched on before, maybe that's part of the role that we need government to support with in helping industries navigate the number of technologies and companies that they need to be able to get to a decision point so that we can automate the logistics industry and actually reduce the challenges that we have with getting goods around the country, automate the justice departments, the national health, all of these sorts of things. There are so many industries that are dying for help get transformed and improve efficiency, deliver better services. But we seem to get stuck ironically in the communication of the technology from where we are today to what they need.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:47:44):
Mark, I would summarize that it's that outcome based, isn't it? They're interested in the outcome, they're not interested in really the journey. I mean actually I do it myself when I'm working with vendors or suppliers or things and I'm immersed in the technology, but actually I want an outcome on, and back to the question about the r and d versus innovation. For me the innovation is just much broader. It's a much broader topic. You touched on it in terms of it's not just that research and development piece, which is kind of the discovery phase of incubation, sorry, of innovation. You've then got the incubation and then you've got the acceleration, the scale piece of that that comes along. And for me that comes out of the lab and into those conversations with ecosystem partners across. And I even think that as an industry, we're actually losing the ground on that infrastructure r and d as well. That's been taken out of the operators hands for sure. It's been in the vendor community for a while and it's now and in universities I think I live down on the south coast and the University of Southampton has a very strong fiber optical division. They spun out a company a few years ago that was snapped up by Microsoft for hollow core fiber.

(00:49:26):
Even that side of things I think we don't play in so much. So I think it does come back to that wider topic of innovation being much broader than just the technology. But actually you start moving into business models, you start moving into ways of working, you start moving into commercial models and different approaches

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (00:49:51):
And you have to be able to accept, I think you guys have all touched on this in various ways, starting out small and sticking with it. And big companies are not good at starting small and sticking with it, right? They seek scale quickly because they are scaled enterprises and for a long time you'll say this isn't moving the needle, when are we going to get there? But there needs to be a tolerance for that at organizationally, start small, stick to it, engage a different set of people, focus on the outcome. And at our company we set up this entire division that focuses on industry as what is for us a relatively small effort relative to everything else. Organized it as a business unit reporting to the vice chairman under the belief that if we didn't do that, the company would inadvertently try to kill it because it's different. And I think that is some of the things that have to be done in order to bifurcate innovation in the network versus on. But for innovation on the network, that's the thing that's going to take I think some different org structures and a tolerance for starting small, picking a spot, sticking to it, and then delivering the outcome.

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:51:03):
It is fascinating though as a industry, we have had a set of these companies who are very good at this. If you think about it from the lens of the unique customer we've always served, which is a consumer, all of the r and d, all of the innovation has been driven around getting that consumer experience to have more data at less cost. That's where all of our time and effort have gone. And so getting that shift from that set of customers to the enterprise customer, I saw that graph that we put up there that said that's where everybody wants to focus. I think it is a fool's errand if we don't make sure that that is where the r and d and the innovation is going. So you asked the question, is it a different thing? It is a different thing and our orgs are not really set up to chase that set of opportunities at this point.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:51:50):
Let's just pause for a second because I do want to bring in some feedback we've received and we have some online feedback here and we have, I think it's a question, a question or a statement in from the audience. Lemme just read this out for you. It's just come in, is the problem enterprise engagement that business users don't understand how service providers work and interact rather than not understanding the technology, which they maybe don't need to. Maybe the innovation needs to be in customer engagement. So there's an observation there. What do we think of that comment?

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:52:26):
I think it goes in line with what Mark was saying before that, and I don't think, we do not have that mindset. So we genuinely think that the technology insights is not something that the customer need to necessarily understand. It's more what it means for them. Now, of course, customer engagement can always get better and yes, when we need innovation on the network is touching all aspects. So I would not exclude that one particularly, but I do think that DSPs understand that we are here to make the life of our customers easier and to help them make the right choices for them. I don't think that is necessarily the problem. Maybe you have a different view, but I think I heard you saying that before.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (00:53:12):
Yeah, no, I agree with agree that that ultimately we do want that. But I find the question interesting because I've worked in some big telcos and in some smaller ones as well, and I must admit at times I've struggled to understand how to navigate through some of the big players that I've been involved with. So how our customers can navigate that would be an interesting, when you first read the question, I was about to take umbridge with it because I was about to say that's a typical question from a telco about they're not understanding us. But actually when you got to the remainder of the question, I thought actually no, that's not what they're saying because yeah, it's not going to work if we take the approach that the customer has to understand how we work. Sorry, because that has not been my experience when I've spoken to these different, and I've started going to in different sort of events and conferences to try and hear what's coming out of those that are not telco related and you get a very different message.

Susan James, American Tower (00:54:30):
Good. It's interesting when you go to a telco's website and it actually is organized exactly how a telco is organized and then you say, do you want an SD one? If you're an enterprise, do you know whether you want an SD one or not? So I think that is one thing that we certainly could do a much better job of is saying, am I a small, medium or large enterprise? What do I care? I have a connectivity problem, I want my customers to be able to connect. Start with that. Let's start with the problem that our customers are trying to solve.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (00:55:07):
I just want to say about this customer, I think that is spot on and I can tell say from own experience and I mean Susan lives in Sweden. I also, the previous telco was with, I remember we built these 5G reference networks already, 20 17, 20 17 in every market. I put a reference network not to learn about 5G because I felt I had lots of people already doing it was to create a partnership programs. We invited device manufacturers, a few of the ones that were there, but we worked with Qualcomm, but above all, in every market we looked at the industry. So in Norway it was oil and fish farming. So we engaged with that ecosystem to try to bring them, make them understand the art of the possible. In Sweden it was mining, automotive and gaming. That's where the industries and family was, forestry, et cetera, et cetera.

(00:56:03):
And we created, it didn't take more than six months. We had over a hundred partners in every country. And if you look today those markets, we invited government as well to address a net neutrality discussion driven by the enterprises. And I mean if you look today, I think that while it's not necessarily material that Telco has in that region, the best enterprise growth, almost double digit coming from these use cases, but it was years of building up. It was from that engagement explaining the art of the possible and make them understand the outcomes. Nobody wakes up wanting to buy a 5G slice when we announced we're launching 5G standalone. Like okay, it's really that outcome. So I think that is spot on and that's the type of innovation that we need to do much more.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:56:57):
Great. Thanks very much. I had like to move on if you can, because time is pressing as well as DSP. We also are well aware of the TechCo strategy and this requirement to come on more software technology focused telcos. For those telcos who want to go the TechCo route or decided that's for them, how does that impact their innovation efforts? Do they need to own the technology to become a TechCo? Do they have to create more of their ownership? Basically, how will it change? Will it be a different innovation route to those telcos who do not want to go the TECO route? Yako, maybe I can start with you because we have heard from Vodafone on TECO for a while now. Does it make any difference to innovation?

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (00:57:52):
I think well it does. It's an enabler. I think you can't afford not just acquiring new skills, understanding the way software works and developing your own software for all the right kind of places and functions, but it is not necessarily related to a move

(00:58:14):
Related to ownership, to your point, so that you produce technology that you own and you try to differentiate because at the end, I don't think particularly when we look at the landscape in Europe, I don't think any of us is big enough to be able to afford that and just go and develop a technology and then compete with it in isolation. We're not that big. So I think the point that we mentioned before about collaboration, cooperation and moving everybody as an industry still applies, but nevertheless, in today's world, and if we talk about innovation on the network and we talk about applications and if we talk about customer, I don't think you can afford not developing some software skills and coding and et cetera.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:59:01):
Okay,

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (00:59:01):
Okay. But also the question is what do you want to be a tech co at as a TechCo? Do you want to be in the core network technologies? Because in a lot of our cases, the operators, we participate in standards conversations, we participate in a little bit of the research, but then the ISVs, the NEPs, they typically drive a lot of the actual r and d and innovation that's happening. So what is the undifferentiated heavy lifting you hand off to those folks? And then what is the thing to Yao's point, which use cases, which specific customers, what tech do you want to go invest in? And then build technology organizations around that because the depth of knowledge is what gives you differentiation in the marketplace. I've seen maybe a couple of operators tell us in Canada as an example where they say, this is a particular domain we want to go spend time in. We want to build products around it differentiated. That's more of what I think we need to see in this industry where we are focused on that part of the TechCo, not the infrastructure part of the TechCo.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:00:04):
I agree. I think it's about creating intellectual property and I think that helps differentiate in that and having a stake in the game. I think that's what kind of moves you along. I agree with yago though though it's particularly difficult to have the sort of scale to be to do full on introduce a new technology that's purely coming out of one operator or one source. I don't think that is achievable for

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (01:00:38):
Us.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:00:39):
It would be great if you could, but I just don't think it's achievable in that. But I do think the creation of intellectual property is a key component

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:00:47):
And also how much of the innovation direction is parallels culture and cultural change within our organizations. As we look to rethink where innovation needs to be directed, do we simultaneously have to look at our culture and organization to map the two together or are they separate?

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (01:01:08):
Isn't it shorthand technical for a change in where the opportunity is or the source of competitive advantage? If so, it would be all of these things. Yeah, I mean because I think it's just, you guys can correct me, but I've always taken it to be just really a shorthand for instead of everything being about communications, infrastructure, technology, we're going to try to elevate and be more of a platform for digital services. And if that's the objective, I would say the answer to your question is it must involve the entire business. This isn't in all of these things. In my experience, all massive change efforts are people process and technology problems and as technologists, we over anchor on the technology and as vendors myself specifically, I've seen us as product vendors try to sell our technology as the silver bullet, which is completely not the right thing to do because all you end up with is very disenfranchised customers because it is a people and process problem every bit as much as a tech

Susan James, American Tower (01:02:20):
Problem. It's not usually the tech that we fail on. It's either the people or the process.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:02:25):
Yeah,

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (01:02:25):
Always right. Groups of humans.

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:02:28):
A simple example is the r and d process. If we look at the release cycle for cellular, we're used to much longer in the RD process. We're used to much longer innovation cycles, if we call it that, what we've been talking about today, short, sharp, the examples there in Scandinavia, very good examples and I can see, I would imagine that there was some overlap in the technology and in the approach, but actually for each of those industries there was a bespoke nature and so that's a much shorter cycle. Now if you've got people and a culture that is used to, I've got three years to think about this and then I've got three years to put it into some sort of thing and then I've got three years to go and argue it out until it becomes a standard and in that meantime actually bring it forward two years, then that's a different mindset,

Susan James, American Tower (01:03:33):
But it's not just different mindset. The ability to adopt and take on that innovation is a different pace. I mean you can't roll out and change to a network. I mean when you look at the networks, they're changing every single day, but you can't be changing all of the network all of the time. So by inherently infrastructure innovation cycles are much longer. On top of that, you can have much fast innovation cycles and I think that's where the challenge is had you decouple the two parts of the organization that have different innovation clock speeds. That is the

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (01:04:11):
Challenge. I think that's a really good point and I think a significant part of maybe the problem statement that we have in front of us today come from the lack of understanding of these cycles that you mentioned. And as the telco industry gets mixed with others because of this aggregation and other reasons, there is a fundamental lack of understanding of the length of the cycle in a telco. So when you invest in a telco, either you're the DSP or you're a vendor, it doesn't matter. The return is far from mediate, so it takes years until you see a return of your investment. While the applications that go on top the same as consumer electronics and the same as in general, maybe the IT business and other stuff, it has a completely different cycle. Now those two walls are colliding and in that class there is a fundamental friction and lack of understanding

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:05:16):
And it's a case of currently if they're colliding, how do you kind of turn them so that they're working towards the same objective even at different paces? It is not necessarily that the infrastructure piece has to match on that, but sure. But in terms of the culture question, if your mindset is purely on this is the iteration piece and you haven't adopted or you haven't got the capability to bring in that alternative or that comparative mindset, then it falls apart and then it really is a clash

Susan James, American Tower (01:05:53):
And that's why that part of the organization ends up being disbanded and moved on because someone lost the culture war or the internal war power struggle and like, well, you're too small, we can't afford to have this conflict. You're out of here.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (01:06:10):
A simple example of this is, I mean just a very simple quick example conversation that I find we have a lot because of who we are and what we do is just the implication of Moore's law. We get these V ran and open ran rollout schedules that are, we're going to put in our lab for about a year, we need about a hundred units, then we're going to field trial it for another year. We need like 1500 units and then in year three to eight, we're going to roll out, pick your number, tens of thousands of sites. Well, in that time we're likely going to go through three generations of silicon. And yet everything from the finance depreciations schedules and the mentality around that fight, that idea of you're not going to depreciate this in three years and rip it out. Well, if you're not, then in two generations you're going to be operating a network that's twice as power hungry with the same amount of cost and half the performance as somebody that just built the network with the latest technology. So just those, as Yago said, as they collide, these things have to get rationalized and they force changes on both sides, right? Changes certainly on the vendor side of what we understand and how we have to deliver and how long we have to support, but also on the operator side, good comment. Thanks Dennis. Gabriela.

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, BT (01:07:34):
Yeah, just on the point where there was touched by TechCo in what, and I think that one of the challenges that we have, which is also an advantage of course, is that on from an infrastructure point of view, it's all about standardization and it's all about scale and cost. It's all about CapEx, but not necessarily there. Do we differentiate? Because let's also be honest, whenever we innovate and we put something in a standard, everybody, all the telcos will have it eventually. And today we differentiate a lot through this best network, which is not necessarily what the customers value any longer because it doesn't show in customer experience. So I think yes, we to evolve in what we call probably maybe more of a circle layer, but there as well, it's all about scale there as well. So I think it's not as easy to say it's a cultural as a skillset, but it's also where do you have the right to play and to identify that as telcos, where will we really differentiate for those outcomes that Susan talked about?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:08:36):
Thanks Gabriela. We're almost out of time. We've got about five minutes or so left of this discussion. So I'd like to wrap it up by leading into that poll question we asked at the beginning. I'd like to ask you what your thoughts on the best sources of innovation for service providers for DSPs? Is it internal? Is it external? Is it industry associations, alliances? What are the pros and cons and are we seeing any emerging trends? Now we did pick up on some of this throughout the discussion at various points, but I'd just like to see if there's any other thoughts about having talked for about an hour now where we see the best route and the best strategy for innovation. Sandeep, can I start with you?

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 Business (01:09:19):
Yeah, yeah, no, happy to provide my view as well. So I think definitely it's a bit of a portfolio place. There's always going to be four or five routes to innovation and I mentioned the SI partnership. Often you've got to think about the route of choosing the right route depending on your commercial or go-to market model. So if you want to develop a capability that's going to serve range of customers globally, an operator alliance might work best. If you want to expose your APIs and prevent APIs, sprawl, as I mentioned, if you want to target particular industry verticals and need specialist skills, then an SI will work well there as well. And then the other angle which we think has been more fruitful as well is leveraging corporate venture capital as well. So telephonic and using wra, the investment arm, where can you make strategic investments in early stage startups? And one example is higher, which is a fraud prevention platform. We plugged into the network and that will prevent spam calls, but not only does that help virgin leader O2, of course it can be deployed globally and as that equity and that organization grows, you can benefit both commercially and see that scale as well. So it's really picking the right channel depending on the approach you want to take as well,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:10:22):
Right? So it depends on the approach you want to take. There's different options. Any other thoughts from anybody? And before we look at what the audience thinks,

Mark Gilmour, Connectivitree (01:10:29):
I would like to say something that I don't think that it's not or that isn't the best choice and that is to adopt the mindset of not developed here or not born here. I think if we take that approach then forget it. I think that's just taking your idea, taking the idea into the ground or there's a complete the antithesis of what the innovation suit come from. I agree. I think it is a portfolio piece. I think it is secret option number four, which is you pick as they come and you keep your eyes open for

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (01:11:12):
All of where ideas come from. Those ideations come from. Thanks Mark. I mean the reality is we're working on more complex things and connectivity is just a big part of it. So that innovation comes from rooms like this where a bunch of us with different experiences come together and we start to talk about what is the art of the possible, what does an automotive company really need in the next five years and who here are the five people who can sit down and think about it, have the depth and the background to say I think we have to go place bets in these particular areas. Part of it is investment and venture capital. Part of it is just having the engineering resources because you've decided that that is an area of focus for you. And I find that the ability to make those bets is sometimes precluded because people come back and say, I don't have a culture internally, I don't have the engineering teams.

(01:12:01):
It's not true. If you look at most product companies that have built over time, we talk about this at a WSA lot, right? A lot of our engineering resources, our talent actually came from the telcos and you do have the talent in all these operators. The question is how do you stop getting in their way when they want to work on innovative things and try to bring them back always to the cycle of three years and five years of financial engineering that you're doing In most opcos, we've got to think a little bit differently and not just kind of hamper the teams that we have.

Susan James, American Tower (01:12:31):
Maybe that's the key really. I think innovation can come from anywhere, but it needs to have a place to be nurtured and that is something that you need to industrialize and accept the fact that 90% of what you put through that innovation pipe is going to be crap and it's never going to make it to market. But you need to understand the process of innovation. You need to understand how you can industrialize that and you need to have an external view of the market that you're operating in. I think one of the big challenges for a lot of the OEM community is that we're all heads down. You're focused on the next r and d cycle of getting this stuff out of the pipe and you have very few people that actually have the luxury of looking at the broader market and saying what is actually going on in the world? Where do we see the next thing happening and how do you get that knowledge more broadly into the company where someone all of a sudden has a light bulb, maybe I can solve that problem by doing this, this and this and putting the three things together that we have in different parts into, we pull those people together and send them to do some brainstorming. Those are the sorts of things you have to work actively on innovation. It's not something that just mysteriously happens.

Dennis Hoffman, Dell Technologies (01:13:47):
Yeah. Second that and place a vote for the secret number four, the mix in the end. If you could tell us three things, what does the customer want or need, how is that problem solved or not solved particularly well today and what does technology make possible? You can come up with an answer relatively quickly and you can't get all of that from internal and you can't get all of that from external. It's a mix.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:14:11):
We have one minute to go before we end the show. We are going to unfortunately save our in-room. Questions for the networking break? We've got a very long networking break, so any questions you've got for our guests, including Argo's launch, obviously I'm sure we are to address them during the break, but we want to kind of wrap this up by taking a look at the audience poll. We set at the beginning of this show and we were very cruel because we said you can only choose one and there was no option four, so there is no option four on this. So we asked our audience members what they thought and that's the results so far. So 16% say internal is the best source, 25% say industry associations and the vast majority, 59% say vendor partners. Now it was a bit cruel because they couldn't choose more than one and we didn't have an option to say all of the above, but if they had to pick one vendor partners, so hooray for our vendor partners. Hey, what a relief. It

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (01:15:04):
Probably reflects the audience. So maybe

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:15:06):
We

Yago Tenorio, Vodafone (01:15:06):
Have 59% of vendor partners in

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:15:10):
There you go. Absolutely right. Well, the polls will still be open. We're going to keep 'em open for the duration of this event. That though is the end of session one. We will be back at 1115 for session two with Ray, which is all about enabling the autonomous network with ai. In the meantime, we have a networking break, refreshments outside quality coffee over there on the side there, absolute top quality. Don't forget the pinball and the tournament and for our online audience, don't go away because we are about to start our extra shot program. It's a really good one. Charlotte's over there. She's going to be talking all things innovation with her guests, so stay with us. Don't miss that For now though, please round of applause for our guests. Thank you.