Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:31):
Straight into our final session this year, which looks ahead to the arrival of 6G, preparing for next generation networks, emphasis on preparing there. Now, I mentioned at the start of the day that so much of what we've been discussing this year is going to be table stakes in a way for 6G. There's a lot of non-negotiable must haves. We already mentioned cloud native ai, native green and so on. So given all this, what should DSPs and their partners be doing today to ensure a frictionless transition or as frictionless as possible for their networks and processes as we evolve from 5G and 5G advanced to early 6G deployments? So let us first of all meet our panelists who are going to be chatting to me about this and I'm going to ask them to briefly introduce themselves starting on my far left with Neil.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (01:26):
Hi, I'm Neil McRae from Juniper Networks.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:29):
Thank you, Neil. Anita,

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (01:30):
Anita Döhler, CEO of the NGMN Alliance.

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (01:34):
Goeff Hollingworth of Rakuten Symphony,

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (01:38):
Harald Haas, university of Cambridge, and I'm representing the federated telecoms hubs in the uk.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:44):
Great. Thanks so much everyone for joining us on this last session of this year's World Forum. First point, mobile operators are already heavily focused on monetizing their 5G investments. So how should they prioritize these investments and the 5G advanced investments that no doubt they're going to be making to remain upgrade ready for when 6G enters commercial service likely at some point from 2030 onwards because we're trying to make a seamless transition here. Geoff, can I start with you perhaps as to how you see the best way forward?

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (02:28):
I think our communications director is still here, James Dartnell, and he made a mistake earlier by telling me that whenever I start the conversation by saying, let me use an analogy, he completely freaks out. So I took away the fact that I'm going to use that phrase a lot more often from this point onwards rather than speaking about building mobile networks and monetizing them. Let's shift the paradigm and let's imagine that we're building a railway network instead. Similar kind of industry, similar lead times, similar complexities. And the one thing that I think is a bit strange in how we behave is if we were building a railway network with a mobile network mindset, we'd assume all transportation had to be delivered by trains we don't accept. So it'd be a bit like we wouldn't accept that you need taxes to be at the railway station and there's a seamless handover.

(03:37):
We'd just put a train at your home and everywhere else. So I think there's a research of how to actually use the different technologies in a multi-network world to the best advantage. And then from there monetization comes from delivering an experience to customers that seamlessly gets them from trains to taxi to bicycles to walking and back again in the best way. And the winners will survive that. So I'm a bit confused why we are so obsessed in believing that we've just got one network when we look at our customers. So I suggest that paradigm shift and then we can move

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:18):
Backwards. Well I think that's a good analogy. I think there's nothing wrong with an analogy like that. It's really helpful. I'm sure we were promised seamless handover for IMT 2020. I'm sure that was on the original spec sheets. Harald, your thoughts on how we should proceed?

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (04:33):
Yeah, I think it's a very good question. I mean we heard a lot about the convergence of compute and communications in 5G and this conference, but there's another element that's coming in 6G is sensing. So we will really see convergence of sensing data, compute and communications and we talked about of ai, but I think we need to think a bit deeper what AI actually means. And AI really only thrives on data sets and perhaps the question is what's the bias in that data set? Do we need to standardize data set? Do we need to make sure that the data sets that are coming out of current networks are normalized in a certain way and how do we leverage what exists now in 5G? And this is probably a way we can prepare for 6G normalized data sets and also thinking about ways we can bring in sensing into networks.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:34):
Thanks very much. As you pointed out this morning, sensing was ISAC is certainly a big early area of interest so far. Neil, I'm going to bring you in next initial ways forward here about the fact that we are looking at monetizing our 5G now and we suddenly have got to think about how we transition.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (05:55):
So I mean I would be encouraging every operator on the planet to get involved with the standards that are going on right now because there are some very bad decisions being made in my view that are prescribing the answer when we don't even know what the question is. And that happened in 5G. So in 5G we said, hey, we're going to virtualize it all with network functions virtualization. That was an awesome success. And then we pivoted to cloud native halfway through and everyone said, why is 5G taking so long? Well because we can't get the infrastructure to work. We got through that in the end, but it was painful and I'm nervous that we're focused on, there's an overfocus on things that customers won't find valuable like infrastructure, they don't care about it. I think that's been a theme throughout the whole two days and there's not enough focus on the critical capabilities that will drive what Geoff just rightly said about actually how do we produce something of value that works wherever you need for it to work, be it here in a railway, in a car park, anywhere you are, there should be a connection to the network.

(07:11):
And I personally believe, I strongly believe that 6G should be about solving the coverage conundrum. There should be nowhere in the world that you cannot get 6G coverage. And if we fail to do that, then we'll be on a stage like this in four years or five years time asking, well why didn't we monetize anything? Why is that important? Well if you know that the network's there all the time, then suddenly all of a sudden applications that weren't viable before become more interesting. We talk about developers, developers take these ideas and think, well wait a minute, I now know I've got connectivity anywhere. What can I do with that? And I genuinely think that is the way to solve a lot of our challenges and go beyond. These things are connected so well now we don't need to do anymore with these things.

(08:06):
They're done. We've done a great job, amazing job. What we need to do as the professor said, is how do we get sensors? How do we get devices that aren't carried around with us connected so that we can visualize and understand? Yago said earlier about the glasses, I'm probably a bit skeptical about that idea about other types of sensors that could be shared or leveraged, but they only work, they're only valuable if they work everywhere. So that's my challenge. But really please for the love of God, get involved in the standards now because it's a scary place in my view.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:43):
Yeah, now it's the absolute right time. Get involved if not already involved really, really should be. And Nita, we spoke this morning, I showed some highlights of that research we did of the three GP submissions and some of the key points that operators were saying and I think one of those ties in with some output you did today, just released today I think for three GPP next plenary about network simplification. Is that right?

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (09:11):
Exactly. So just today we the Nge Alliance release another operator position, which we use as input to three gpp. So our members will also present this input and it is mainly a recap of what we released already as operator positions in NGMN, but complimented with clarifications with regards to some feedback we received in the previous statements. So mainly it is, and thanks Neil for emphasizing that operators need to be engaged in standardization. I completely echoed and that's of course also the role of NGMN to consolidate their opinions. But mainly it is about how can we achieve economic viable solutions and network evolution, which is meeting user demand. And for this, we need to learn from 5G, so the vast majority of operators are absolutely not in a rush to go into 6G standardization because we still need to learn from 5G. And the main intention is also to focus where possible. So I need to emphasize where possible on software upgrades. So of course there are areas if we for instance go for new spectrum where hardware upgrades are needed, it's not possible to do it by software only, but the intention is to make a reuse of the flexible architecture we have right now to go for a modeler, open architecture and in the migration to support voice, native voice from day one and in migration to avoid different architecture options. So that's one of the main learnings also from the 5G rollouts.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:13):
Thanks Anita. And I pointed out this morning that a number of operator submissions highlighted missteps with the 5G process or with hindsight, shouldn't have done that. non-ST standalone mode was one of them over complex. There was quite a few of them and they were there front and center to which I say, well whose fault is that? It was your fault because you are part of the process or you weren't part of the process then. So get involved now if you don't want missteps moving forward. But I want to bring it back to three sessions we had this week on the markets we heard from the automotive market basically said, they said a lot of things, great things, but 5G not yet delivering for their needs. FinTech 5G quite irrelevant at this stage. Logistics today, 5G, why did we bother? So the customers are still getting their heads around the value of what we started 10 years ago. So I think we cannot lose sight of the customers, can we?

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (12:23):
On hell of a mistake, right? 10 year mistake and no one really cares to echo some of the sentiment that I think simplification rather than complexity and all of these standards predicate on a hundred percent coverage, ubiquitous coverage, but that's not what we have. So how do we solve for that? There's so much complexity in the standards that we'll never see the light of day in reality because for all of us here right now, we are not connected to a mobile network. Probably we're connected to alternative networks wifi

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (13:04):
Harald, I think it's a very interesting discussion but also has a little danger in it. It is the innovation and the innovation potential. If you look at a European context, we need to be careful not to be overtaken by the world because you see humanoid robots coming, you will see the driverless cars. If you go to the United States, you see them on the road, you see a lot of autonomous systems, drones that are coming in. You need AI at edge in order to control them in a sensible way, make sure that they are not becoming weapons. So secure networks are important. Trustworthiness is important. We need to think about the phone. Neil, you said the phone is done. I don't think a phone is done in my view. We still have a two dimensional display. People work on three dimensional holographic displays. Imagine you are immersing in a cyber world, the continuum of physical and cyber worlds.

(14:02):
There's a lot of innovation potential out there on the devices, on the services, on ai, in machines that are coming and helping us in our daily works. And we must not forget that there's a lot there that requires real innovation networks both on software side but on hardware as well. And coming back to analogy of train lines, you have a train line, you can run a certain number of carriers, but for certain things like holographic displays, you may be needing 10 of these train line, train lines in parallel. And then there comes to the question about spectrum. We need to be more forward looking. Yes, there's a pushback on millimeter wave in 5G, but millimeter wave and FR two are coming and needed because with 200 megahertz you don't deliver more than one gigabit per second. You need, however, for the things that I've just mentioned, 10 gigabit, a hundred gigabit a terabit. And we must not forget that there's that need as well in order to drive our economies in a bold context.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:59):
We'll come on to innovation topic in just a second, but I just want to go back to Neil if I can because yesterday you said to me, I think about ubiquitous connectivity and you said to get that or certainly terrestrial ubiquitous connectivity, you need ubiquitous energy, you need ubiquitous power.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (15:17):
And I think those are symbiotic. So is power going to get better without a better network to run the power? No, we see that endlessly and local power out. If you work for a national telco, you can pretty much determine how good the power distribution is of the country. And lemme tell you, I don't think there's any country doing a great job right now. So let's make sure that the power companies deliver the power we need because we pay them a hell of a lot of money for it. I would suggest the second point to that though is ensuring that it's how do we make sure that we're using the network in a sensible way, right? So we got 4K video being pushed down to an iPhone and I'm looking at it and actually I put a 10 80 p picture next to it and I can barely tell the difference where is the value in some of the things that we choose to do on these devices and how do we optimize for that?

(16:22):
Can we use a control plane that says, well actually he's one of an iPhone right now, not his max, so let's send him something more sensible. And then also I a hundred percent agree on innovation. We have to be careful that we don't stifle him for innovation, but we also need to be super clear that there's a way to kind of really make that innovation successful, be able to cash the check and be able to make a difference and generate demand for the users of that innovation. And I think that's where we've struggled with a lot of 5G. I remember when I was at bt, we partnered with Ericsson to do a remote surgeon and I remember looking at this thing at NWC thinking there's no hell's way I'm getting under a remote surge, right? I mean we just weren't listening to what was out there.

(17:10):
On the flip side, actually I was a bit disappointed by the logistics side, so I did some work with a large well-known parcel delivery company and deploying a 5G private network into some of their sites, reduced human accidents by 24%. Back to Geoff's point about insurance and safety that was made yesterday, that's massive for them and there's no other way they could do that in the panel, not the previous panel, the one before about in 2017, I was at an event where I said, unless telcos get together with industry 5G is going to be all about speed test point, right? I've got a video of me saying that and I think how we, and maybe the 6G actually getting more industry directly involved in it would be helpful as well in terms of standards. So yes, we'll need more power, but I would argue that the telecoms network has and data centers, whilst they use a lot of power, they also help save and avoid a lot of energy usage in terms of travel, in terms of computation, in terms of many other things out there that if we didn't have the network and data centers are power and energy usage would probably be 10 x what it is now.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:27):
Great, great. Thanks Neil. Harald, look, you spoke about innovation previously. We need to commercialize, we need to innovate. You and I had a discussion about patents versus patents in a way, papers versus patents,

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (18:44):
Right?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:45):
So how do we ensure that we build this flourishing ecosystem of research, startups, academia, whatever it might be that is actually working towards a goal?

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (19:00):
I think that's a very good question. So as I said earlier, I represent a federated telecoms hubs in the uk, which is four hubs on spectrum, on network of networks, on cloud, and also on an experimental platform, what's called joiner. We have about a hundred researchers and the UK is well known for its excellence in research papers, but not so much in terms of creating that innovation, turning patterns out of that innovation. So that's why we are driving what we changing our culture in a sense that says think pattern first within that consortium of about a hundred researchers, more so we really capture the value of our research engines that we have in the UK to then see how we can take that forward. We have as well, in parallel, you mentioned standardization. We are engaging as a research community in standardization. We are contributing to papers in Threet P in Prague next week for example.

(20:03):
There's innovation around various technologies we're trying to put into the standards together with industry. So not as a researcher, but we partner with industry, make sure that UK innovation feeds into standardization. And then hopefully we also have, with the test platform joiner, we have first 6G trials we run very quickly in order to demystify some hype technologies so that we learn earlier if a certain technology works or not. So if had we had that in 5G with millimeter wave, you would've learned maybe earlier what the pitfalls are and then move on faster. So really that idea of innovation, pattern creation, putting patterns into prototypes, minimum viable products, test them with end users and learn and fail fast and be bold and say, okay, it doesn't work good, fair enough. We have learned. So we need to adopt a faster innovation approach within the uk leveraging on the strong scientific base we have. And that's what we do with the federated telecoms hubs and that's some of the missions we are following through at the moment.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (21:10):
Geoff, do you want to come in at this point?

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (21:13):
I think aligned. I think it's interesting the innovation angle and the network angle. I don't disagree with that at all. Now the world is innovating faster than it ever has. I think the question we have to ask is how much, what does that require in the standards process in a network? What is it really? That's the most simple take that will generate the outcomes we have for innovation. But we are not trying to put a vertical stack kind of thinking into a layer at the bottom because from a software point of view, everyone works with networks in a certain way and it's latency, bandwidth, jitter. So the promises that's common by the way across all networks. So there's something nice from an app developer point of view because I can then work across seamlessly across all of those networks if I need to for whatever I'm doing. But I'm not, I guess the question is what should really exist in a 6G standard and what should exist around the 6G standard in the industries that are going to use it?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (22:24):
Right? And how far, I just like to just point, I know we're going to come get some more comments here, but how far ahead is it possible to say how far ahead are you doing that very early stage research? Because we might be thinking, great, you're doing this research and we expect it to be part of the thinking in the next three or four years and commercialized in 2030, whereas it probably won't be.

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (22:44):
So we have a multi-tiered approach. So for some of the innovations we are pondering now are software based, so how can we bring in innovation software short term, but we are also thinking long term. You're thinking about subter hats for example. How can we channel model into the FFR two bands and so on. So we have a medium, short and long-term view in our research. That's the beauty of academic research. We can be independent on that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (23:10):
Sure, absolutely. Thanks very much. N you wanted to come in?

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (23:13):
Yeah, it's an important topic. Harald also mentioned that I think the ecosystem needs to work together from very early stages in developing innovation in 5G. We all know that there is a vast majority of features standardized, which are never used. And this is something, and we also emphasize this in the publication with it today as input to three gpp, this is something we should avoid as an industry.

(23:41):
Back to Neil's point, so I get your point about the remote surgery use cases, but I would like to see us in 20 years from now how we speak about this because I really believe that there will be innovation and innovation develops much faster than we sometimes can imagine. And it also depends, we are a global industry, depends really on the needs of a user and of course it's about economic viable solutions. But I guess that it's a big difference if someone ASIST is from a standpoint of living in a near proximity to hospitals and so on and so forth compared to someone who is based in much more rural areas and simply has no other choice. So I personally I see, so I'm not speaking now on behalf of N Gmn, but as Anita, I personally see a lot of potential on a global scale that we can improve the lives of many people. But that's just as a side note.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (24:47):
Thanks. Yeah, I mean I don't think you get any argument from that, but I think we have to be sensible about it. I mean this robot had a laser and there was some guy in another part of MWC controlling it and it was just obvious that no one was ever going to go near it, but the focus that generated was nuts. And look, part of the reason for doing it was to make people dream. We want people to dream, we want 'em to dream big. My mother has just had a stroke, she's just at a hospital a couple of days and actually the solutions to looking after her in the home are 20 years old now. Some of them work really well, there's a button you press and help comes, but there's other things that we could do. But in the moment most of that's focused on the hospital or the care side as opposed to the patient side.

(25:37):
So anything we want to do on that space, I'm very passionate about this having tried to do it many times whilst I was at BT to improve healthcare has to be about the patient having visible signs of the improvement. On the innovation side though, I think Geoff makes a massive point. I just look at, I remember turning on the first modem at demon internet in, sorry, 1992. We had 10 of them racked like that, a 60 4K lease line out the back of it. And the innovation that made the internet where it is today, and I think some people forget this, but we were literally writing code on live devices because the bandwidth was pushing us so aggressively. The demand was pushing us so aggressively, we were in real time innovating, creating stuff. And it kind of feels like in some respects we've lost that.

(26:29):
I see it a little bit in the AI world where we're seeing almost every day there's a pivot to a new architecture or a new control system or a new way of working with ai. I've been working with AI to do unit testing. I've got an agent client a hundred lines of code that can talk to four different AI infrastructures to do the test in different ways. And actually they all come back with different results, which is great because then I can actually analyze the results and says, okay, if a human does it this way or a human does it that way, we get these sort of outcomes. But where I think we need to get back to is not, it would be nice to have this because we think this might be a need, but actually we are seeing a real gap in what the network can do to serve this market.

(27:21):
And I give a great example of what the Vodafone guys did during either the, I can't remember if it was the Queen's funeral or the King's coronation, but they put up a 5G SA network in London to be able to film it all because they struggled to be able to film and shoot live in London. And it showed a real use case with a real demand that the broadcasters and the camera crews and all the other media companies were willing to pay for. And actually it was a relatively simple service, but actually, and it goes to Anita's point, it's all about network slicing, which very few carriers have deployed. Very few carriers are thinking it's going to actually get anywhere, but actually here was a use case that was there. So how do we get back to that almost? Here's a really strong need, let's write code, make it happen, learn from it and reuse it.

(28:11):
I think that part of the internet development and what made the internet so great, we've kind of lost that in this kind of whole 10 year cycle of creating a standard that we then have to jump into. I also totally agree with Geoff's point on it shouldn't be that we have to connect to this one kind of cellular standard. There's lots of other wireless technologies that are out there that are more honed for different use cases, short distance, long distance. Yesterday we heard that the fixed wireless access business in Europe wasn't that big. It's a two and a half billion pound business. That sounds big to me. I would want to be a part of that. So how do we build radios that are focused on that rather than using a shared network that's expensive and doesn't deliver for it. So I think innovation's crucial for this, but I think unless we are able to connect where we need to connect for the purpose, we need to connect for that innovation will be much like what we have today.

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (29:17):
Thanks. I don't know what I'll be doing next year. I don't think any of us do. This agenda are six months ago we weren't speaking about agentic AI. There's apparently this Johnny Ives guy that's going to make the iPhone disappear. It feels like we're out of cycle with reality. And that's what I mean, can we accelerate and keep it simple and then take part in reality more and then more prescriptively understand what we're missing and then add it really quickly if we have to. This 10 year thing is

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (30:03):
Nuts

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (30:04):
Doesn't fit into the way we live anymore as a technology first society. It doesn't feel like, and the only people that think it's important, there's little community in here, everyone else. The only thing it's important when it isn't the

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:20):
Geoff, not so little, okay, not so little, this massive, this extensive community.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (30:25):
I don't even think this community thinks that's important either. That's the crazy thing. I don't think any of us hands up if you think a 10 year cycles the effective thing today for those on the camera, no one put their hand up. I mean I think we all know this, but what's stopping us from getting on with it? It's risk aversion, it's lack of leadership. We need to kick up the backside to say, Hey telco guys, you used to be the pivot of technology. The report that came out this year, Mary, this week Mary.

(30:55):
Look, there's an insane, I mean I couldn't believe this. There's an insane comparison of the top companies before the internet and after the internet. Number 10 BT group on the list, they're not even on the list for today. And the list of top companies, I think the only one that's still there is Oracle. How can that be true that our industry has fallen to the bottom of the technology cycle when we used to lead it and drive it. And I genuinely believe it's actually down to all of us to go out there and say, no, we're not going to put up with this. We're going to kick ass and we're going to do something that makes a difference for people again, because done a great job of making a difference for people over the last 10 years, 20 years, but it's hard. Maybe the last five years less so much. But I think we need to figure out how we get back to that and how we start to make a difference. And again, I'm going to repeat what I said, making sure people are connected all the time or things can be connected all the time is the start of that journey.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (32:03):
Great. I'll come to Harald in a moment. Nita do want to come to you.

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (32:07):
Yeah. I think mean one thing is this senior cycle, and of course we need global standardization. We probably, we all refer here with senior cycles to the three GPP releases. But what we are saying is that exactly this should be not hinder innovation and the flexible architecture. We have novice 5G and the emphasize on software upgrades. So innovations through software upgrades are not through necessarily mandatory hardware upgrades. The use of cloud native solution, HR solution, modela solution, open solution is exactly enabling the industry to innovate faster and to innovate with a different cadence. And that's what the majority of operators which are in NGMN for instance, and in the board emphasize and want to achieve. So it's not that we should wait another 10 years, but of course we need to also provide our guidance and input to the 3G PP releases.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (33:15):
Thanks very much. I want to come to Harald now because it strikes me that you've been sat here and you've been listening to us, the industry, talk about what we like, what we dislike, our moans, our groans, our hopes, our fears with you and who you represent and your focus on that innovation, those waves of innovation. Do you feel like you're part of this industry? Do you feel like you're connected to this industry and you have a two-way dialogue with this industry and its future?

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (33:51):
I spun out the company pure wifi, so I'm part of the industry. I see as an entrepreneur as well how hard it is to get new technology into this industry. And I absolutely feel part of it, but I also feel pain sometimes in terms of how it evolved in terms of monetization of the values this industry has created. I mean imagine a world without communication networks. I mean there's been talks, for example, the outage in Spain. Communications didn't work, is almost as bad as no power and we are relying on it. And yet we are talking about dire situations. While there is a big prospect in driving, really prosperity in society, innovation, enhancing productivity, enhancing a lot of things that we can better do. But I think for me what came out of the last panelist, we need to connect better with the industry. I think that the three TPP world is still in this mobile internet view speed test, mobile internet, mobile to your phone, social networking.

(35:08):
We moved on. We need to look into the verticals, agriculture, how do we make sure that we have autonomous systems that plow our fields in an intelligent way? How do we make sure that we have telemedicine and better connectivity in medical applications, in transport? How do we get our trains better connected? There's a lot of verticals. We need to talk and listen perhaps more to the needs of vertical sectors and even understand their problem sets that they even sometimes probably don't know what they don't know in terms of what connectivity can do. And I strongly believe we need to do that better.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (35:48):
Thanks Harald. Geoff, did you want to say something there?

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (35:51):
I think Harald's job is the most important one on this panel in terms of the, every single country has the potential to own the future in a completely different way. And that's going to happen because of technology, leadership and innovation. I think the question we have to ask is what's really required a teacher layer of the stack to do that? And we shouldn't be waiting. No one else waits for technology to turn up. It's amazing how much you can work with what you have and then you can make it more efficient and cleaner with standards. But let's find the, what you call it, connection with the real value and the opportunity.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (36:36):
One final point because we are almost out of time for this year, and look, we will cover verticals more next year. We had three great vertical sessions this time. Great feedback on those. So we want to bring more in next year and here for next.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (36:52):
And also academics. And I know we're out of time, but I've got to assess of an area. So I've been working with UK 10, which has been set up by DI and it's amazing the gap between what operators are doing, what industry is doing that isn't an operator and what the research network is doing. It's completely broken in most parts of the world and we're trying to fix it. So I think I would definitely encourage that we have the industry and the research folks in to work together to solve some of these conundrums.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (37:26):
Great. And we'll do our bit, whatever small bit we can do as well. One final comment though, it seems to me like changing the direction of the gs, the generational approach is like a super tanker. It just takes forever to make significant change. We all talk about the 10 year release cycle. It's not really, is it? It's 18 months for interim releases, but as a generational shift, it's like a 10 year cycle and everything goes backwards from there into these generations.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (37:54):
Tell that to the people that still haven't got 4G.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (37:56):
Well yes. Will it, can we shift it? Can we break that accepted cadence if you like and be more agile and more responsive to what the market and our customers want from us? Geoff, do you want to kick things off?

Geoff Hollingway, Rakuten Symphony (38:15):
I think the real fear we have is not changing it. It's the arrival of irrelevance from it. I think increasingly already today, I dunno how 6G, whatever 6G is, I dunno how it turns up if we're not rolling out even what we have today and the 5G and we're not cleaning up our act if you like. So normally it's not. I think it'll carry on because I think it's very hard. That's what people do. But I don't think we should focus on believing the answer is going to come out of a G unicorn in this world.

Neil McRae, Juniper Networks (38:57):
I would say if we don't fix this in this cycle, we're in real trouble. I look at starlink and the difference that that one innovation has had over the last five years is probably one of the biggest changes in connectivity. I was on holiday last week to Cyprus, took my little mini dish which fits under the seat in front of you, plugged it in. And instead of the 20 meg DSL that's there, I've got 250 meg broadband access. And I first tested Starling in the UK about three years ago and it was 80 meg. The same dish now does 240 and higher. They're just pushing updates out and out. And I feel that that for me looks like a signal that says, Hey, you're missing out parts of this opportunity. Someone else has come in to grab a hold of it. Not an easy thing to do is build a satellite network, but it's been done. And I can't help but feel that if we don't pick up the pace and drive more, there's folks out there looking to say, actually we'll have some of that because customers want a better service, want better connectivity, and actually want it at a better price too.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (40:17):
Thanks, Neil. Harald,

Prof. Harald Haas, University of Cambridge (40:19):
I think that Gs are, I guess over at some point. I think in the reason is, again, the verticals. In some areas we need faster innovations on a yearly basis. In some cases we need longer non-terrestrial networks in others. And we just need to make sure that we innovate regularly and for people rather than for technology. And it's one of the comments I have as well. Everybody's also about ai, a little bit of a buzzword, but what? What do you mean by ai? I mean, we all know chat GPT, but that's not what we talk about. We talk about, okay, we use AI to beg networks, autonomous. That's for the operators saving money, it's good, but how do people benefit? We need to have that people view more ingrained into our thinking rather than talking about technology. And I've seen that in 3G with CDMA. Everybody talked about CDMA and millimeter wave in 5G. Now ai, but it's a technology. We don't really know how we best use that for citizens. And that's the homework,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (41:28):
Right? We will reconvene next year and just see how far we've got. We'll take all these points on board and we'll try and get a little bit more integration and see what we can achieve next year. But for this year, we are out of time. It's a great way to end this year's DSP Leaders World Forum. I'm going to ask our guests to remain seated for a moment. I've got some announcements, but before I do, let's give a round of applause. Please thank our guests.