Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:06):
It is Monday the 3rd of March, and this is the slice on the program today. MWC 25 opens in Barcelona with a call for the industry to finish the job. AWS announces new outposts compute stacks for telcos operator led association, NGMN appoints a new chair, and BT reveals why it is so optimistic about 5G sa. Hello, you are watching telecom tv. I'm Guy Daniels and welcome to Monday's edition of the slice. Once again, we bring you daily coverage of the major 5G related news and analysis from MWC Barcelona. For the next four days, I'll be reporting from the telecom TV studio while my colleague Rayla Matra and the editorial team will be providing coverage from the show floor. So let's now hear from Ray with the first of his daily series of reports.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:18):
It's that Barcelona time of year again and Mobile World Congress 2025 is well and truly underway where ai, the evolution of 5G and its related use cases, six G strategies, geopolitics, telco, cloud developments, network APIs, and the quality of this year's sloppy tortilla des and espresso doble are all shaping up to be key talking points for the 100,000 or so people set to tread the floor at the FIRO showgrounds. Now, some companies have used the weekend and of course the weeks running up to the show to share their latest developments. Nokia is a prime example. Unveiling its latest AI ran developments with the likes of SoftBank T-Mobile, US, KDDI and Nvidia during a press conference and analyst briefing in Barcelona Town Center on Sunday. The Finnish vendor is really trying to position itself as the leading mobile network infrastructure vendor pushing this particular development. But at this stage, it's unclear exactly how the AI ran concept might manifest itself in a production telco network.

(02:30):
And there are still a lot of questions to be answered about costs and power consumption. Now in the world of network APIs, orange has launched its API business units called Orange Live net. The new business unit will focus on creating offers for developers and businesses to gain secure access to advanced network functionalities using network APIs and the resulting network APIs will be made available via an orange online portal and via partner channels, including the Adona joint venture that was founded last year by Ericsson and a dozen major telcos, including Orange. Vodafone is also busy on the first morning of the show in partnership with Low Earth Orbit satellite Constellation operator, A ST Space Mobile in which Vodafone is a stakeholder. It is setting up a jointly owned European satellite service business to serve mobile network operators across Europe with wholesale space-based cellular broadband connectivity, which will be supported by network management and network operations center based in Europe. And Vodafone has also unveiled a collaboration with IBM that aims to protect customers and their data from what the operator describes as future risks related to quantum computers when browsing the internet on their smartphones. The partners have developed a proof of concept using the IBM Quantum Safe Technology to enhance Vodafone secure net, which is vodafone's Mobile Digital Security Service that has already been used by millions of the Telco's customers. And this is aimed to protect against anticipated quantum security risks. I spoke with Vodafone and IBM about this at M WC 25 today. So we've

Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone (04:27):
Been working on an industry basis. We sat up A-G-S-M-A industry level task force called the Post Quantum Telco Network Task Force in 2022, together with IBM to try and understand what it takes for the telco industry to undertake this migration towards forms of new forms of cryptography that safe against quantum attack.

Lory Thorpe, IBM (04:48):
This is a starting point for many activities in terms of preparing the industry for post quantum cryptography migration, and that a lot of that work is the work that the post Quantum Telco network task force has been doing to collect and gather the ecosystem to prepare the standards, prepare the products, prepare the migration strategies that will be adopted in order to perform this evolution of cryptography.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:17):
You can watch the full discussion with Vodafone and IBM as part of our spotlight on 5G coverage, and we will hear more from telecom TV's editorial director La Mara on tomorrow's program. The GSMA opened the MWC event with a live streamed keynote, the first of several planned for this year in his last month. As GSMA director General Matt Grod emphasized the often brutal nature of telecoms and why telcos must remain in the fight.

Mats Granryd, GSMA (05:51):
Yes, this is a unique and beautiful industry, but it's also a brutal one, and today's brutal question is what's next? How will we grow? Let's start with 5G. Last year we hit 2 billion connections. Now this makes 5G the fastest pickup of all the gs. Today there are over 300 5G networks, but only 61 of them have implemented 5G standalone. So we have to finish the job. Now, if we do this, we can enable enterprises to add 4.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Now, that's a lot of money. We have to finish

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:36):
The job if and if we are able to enable that colossal $4.7 trillion projection. Well, the GSMA are live streaming a number of their keynotes this year, so do keep an eye on them and we will of course report on all relevant news. Hyperscaler Amazon Web Services has unveiled new AWS outposts compute stacks, specifically designed for telcos and their cloud ran workloads and which effectively extend AWS infrastructure and services to telco network domains Telecom tv. Spoke with Shivas Nambia, general manager of Telco business for AWS and asked him about the company's latest solutions for telcos.

Chivas Nambiar, AWS (07:26):
We have three announcements that we're doing. The first is a preview of a product that allows telcos to take our outpost infrastructure and use that for high throughput use cases like UPF functions in the 5G network. The second is actually a partnership with Nokia where we're building a ARM-based outpost ran server that considered the base of cell towers with an integrated L one card and a fully managed experience. Then finally, we're working with our IOT teams to build a managed integrations program where you can take devices from many manufacturers, bring them on boredom, and then manage the entire lifecycle of it in a smart home.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:05):
And you can watch more from AWS right here on telecom TV as part of our spotlight on 5G series. The NGMN Association has a new chairman after four years at the Helm Dossier, telecoms rash assu has stepped down and Lauren Lab Boucher of Orange Innovation Networks has been announced as his successor. Well, we spoke to both the outgoing and incoming chairs of the operator led group and asked about the main challenges. Now faced by mobile operators,

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (08:41):
We need to collaborate more than ever. I always say let us operators compete when it comes to customer experience, product innovation, and of course commercials. But let's collaborate where collaboration makes sense, which is let's go through this learning curve together.

Laurent Leboucher, NGMN (08:59):
We are also at a specific time because of geopolitics, there is a risk of fragmentation in the tech ecosystem that could impact the mobile networks. So standards are more important than ever. And this year, you know that preliminary studies related to six G start in three gpp. And I strongly believe NGMN will have a crucial role to play in providing the requirements to as industry

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:30):
And telecom TV will premiere a special new series on defining six G networks starting next week. You won't want to miss that, and you can now watch the full length interviews with both Lauren and Rash. Just head to the spotlight of 5G section of our website. Well, we heard earlier in the show about the need to accelerate the rollout of 5G standalone UK operator. BT has already deployed 5G SA to about a third of the country's population. So we asked its Chief Networks officer Greg McCall about its view on 5G standalone,

Greg McCall, BT Group (10:10):
The kind of promise of 5G SA. We honestly believe that it is the bedrock of future connectivity, but our focus has really been on how do we deliver a differentiated experience for our customers and that really focus on three things. One is our cloud core that we spoke about last year is really coming to fruition because it gives us the flexibility you need for a 5G SA network, a diversified spectrum portfolio and carrier aggregation has really meant that we can deliver that service that is better than the non-ST standalone service. And then finally, it really is about ensuring that you've got some benchmarks around performance.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:52):
And you can watch the full interview with Greg right here on telecom tv. He also covers APIs and the AI ran, so don't miss that. We'll be adding videos to the website throughout the week for you to watch when you want on demand. As always, MWC generates a huge volume of news over a short space of time. So here's today's pick of some of the highlights. So far, SoftBank has announced enhancements to its IRAs AI run solution. It's used 5G SA local breakout technology to split out latency sensitive LLM traffic and have those workloads processed on edge servers while the remaining traffic continues along the regular path. And in partnership with Nokia. It's also demonstrated that AI applications can run alongside vRAN software on a single GPU server. And Scandinavian operator. Telenor has announced the establishment of a new 5G solutions lab in Gothenburg. This initiative aims to help its Swedish customers and partners who are looking to target industrial operations. It will focus on 5G drones, autonomous vehicles, and AI edge deployments for real time industrial insights.

(12:23):
And for the latest analysis from MWC, make sure you visit telecom TV where you'll find all of our spotlight on 5G programs. New videos will be added throughout the week. Next week it's time for the after show, the return of our q and a program. I'll be analyzing the major developments from MWC with our special studio guests. But that's all for today's edition of the slice. Do join us again on Tuesday for another report from Barcelona on day two of MWC Len from all of the team here at TelecomTV. Thank you for watching and goodbye.