Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:07):
So we're in beautiful bouncy Barcelona for MWC 25. I'm here with Greg McCall, Chief Networks officer at the BT Group. Greg, thanks so much for joining us out of your busy schedule again, great to see you.

Greg McCall, BT Group (00:19):
You too, Ray.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:21):
So let's get stuck into it. What has BT learned from its initial deployments of 5G standalone?

Greg McCall, BT Group (00:29):
Yeah, so I think first and foremost, Ray, I think I should highlight how well it's going. We launched it about six months ago and we already have made it available to 21 million people, so almost a third of the UK population, which is pretty fantastic. What we've seen is the kind of promise of 5G SA. We honestly believe that it is the bedrock of future connectivity, but it's not been easy. It's been a long journey. We wanted to time it right when the ecosystem had matured, and I think we've done a good job of that. It was great to see LER calling us out as building a fantastic 5G network. So that was really, really good and one of the leading networks in Europe. But our focus has really been on how do we deliver a differentiated experience for our customers? And that really focuses on three things.

(01:24):
One is our cloud core that we spoke about last year is really coming to fruition. It gives us the flexibility you need for 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. And that's where we've really led the way in the uk because we don't declare a town or city unless you get 95% outdoor coverage. We think that's really, really important as people connect to our 5G SA network.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:04):
Okay. Have there been any surprises? Have you learned stuff that you didn't expect or in those first few months? Sure. There's obviously things that don't go to script one way or another, either good or bad.

Greg McCall, BT Group (02:18):
Yeah, I'm not sure they surprise us per se. As you say, you expect a few challenges and we've had a few challenges and I think what it really is is about constant tuning and tuning the network from the core right through to the RAN and then even into the devices to make sure that you're constantly delivering that optimal experience for our customers. As I say, the only reason why we're doing these things is deliver that differentiated experience for our customers.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:44):
And can you just give an example of that differentiation? What kind of new service has been able to be delivered as a result of this deployment?

Greg McCall, BT Group (02:52):
So I think in high capacity areas like Wimbley Stadium, having a service that you can use, so we've got an optimized slice at Wembley. So even though there's 80,000 people, you still get the kind of service that you would expect if you sat at home or in a more quiet area. One of the things that we did speak about was the Belfast Christmas market where we had a slice for point of sale applications. So even though it was a congested area, your transactions could still work seamlessly across our network.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:28):
So as we've already observed very early on here, MWC, literally AI is being touted as the main thing that companies are looking to talk about and show off here at the show. But what impact has the surge in AI engagement had on BTS network architecture plans? What needs to be done to ensure that customers get a good experience if they're using, for example, multimodal AI applications? And in a minute we'll come onto your views of AI ran, but what is the surge in AI use meant for the way you plan the network and the way you're thinking about the future network?

Greg McCall, BT Group (04:08):
So I think for some time now we've been thinking about our network and thinking about how we de delayer and desegregate the network components really based around open APIs to ensure that we can flex as and when different AI applications mature in the industry. So that gives us a great opportunity to be able to adopt things as and when they emerge. So I think that's been really, really good. But it is a challenge because what we are seeing, we think about it through networks for AI and AI for networks. So I think networks for ai, I think it's probably fair to say that it's still quite immature and we are not seeing a huge surge in data capacity on our network. And some of that could be substitutional, but equally I think the developer ecosystem or really incentivize to try and limit their bandwidth utilization so that they can get their applications out to customers wherever they might be using their services.

(05:16):
When we think about AI for networks, the big challenge there is really thinking about how we get all of our data into a single place. So you can then start layering AI on top of that and machine learning automation AI all come hand in hand, but it really only works when you've got good data. And that's been our biggest challenge. I think it's the challenge for the industry bringing all that data together and then layering AI on top of it. But in BT, we are already using it to improve our operations, to improve our network planning, to improve our spectrum efficiency. And then in our security ops centers, we started to use that to aggregate fault detection so we can get to challenges and problems quicker.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:07):
And AI ran that's sort of quite been quite a hot top in the past year and certainly already at this year's MWC, is that something as put forward by the AI ran alliance? Is that something that BTS looked at or thought about?

Greg McCall, BT Group (06:23):
Yeah, we are following it very, very closely. As with all New Tech, as you know, BT leads in innovation and we've got a fantastic research department that focuses on what is emerging. I think that the key thing for us though is we've obviously invested significantly in the current infrastructure and AR ran embeds AI into the infrastructure. So what we are working through is what are the challenges that we face and over the top AI compared to integrated ai, what benefits do you get from one versus the other? And I think it's going to be an investment core rather than anything as we've said at the

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:07):
Beginning. And an energy consumption challenge

Greg McCall, BT Group (07:09):
As well. Exactly. And as we've said, everything is tagged with AI these days, so we've got to follow it closely and I'm sure there'll be benefit, but right now our focus is over the top AI to think about how we use our data to improve the service we offer to our customers.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:27):
And then still on the topic of ai, can you talk a bit more about how the BT Networks team is using AI applications and how close you think we are to what you could really call network automation as a result of using ai?

Greg McCall, BT Group (07:46):
So I touched on it a little bit. I think that the first thing is we try to democratize the use of AI applications across our development community. So we have Code Whisperer and other applications that's helping us to write code more efficiently than we did in the past. So that's one use case. Another use case is fault detection and aggregating those faults, which is much more machine learning than AI per se. And then finally I think we've got this program that we call data-driven operations, so D os. And what's really critical there is we've got a team of people looking at all of the tooling. We've got all of the data, we've got to think about the use cases where AI is going to help us solve problems far quicker than a human. And that's really, really interesting because already we are seeing opportunities for us to do things in real time that we used to do post-processing and especially in the ran that's starting to deliver great sustainability benefits, but equally performance benefits for our customers as well.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:59):
Okay. And in terms of the dream of the automated network, are you bringing that level of or any kind of automation bit by bit and trying it out in certain parts of the network first?

Greg McCall, BT Group (09:15):
Exactly. I think the key thing is we've got to iterate and learn as we go. And as we are layering these different processes and use cases on top of our operations, we are learning things and thinking about how we aggregate it. I think it's fair to say when you run a complex network like ours, you've got to be a little bit careful of going straight to automation because you don't want the AI to hallucinate or do things that make the experience worse for our customers. So what we are doing right now is before we get to automation, we still have an operator who looks at what AR is recommending and then we will move to full automation when we get confidence that its recommendations are always accurate.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:00):
Yeah, okay. Now you've mentioned APIs a few times already. Can you talk about BTS network, API strategy and how that's progressing and what BT needed to do to enable network exposure to the application developers? Were there some concrete steps that needed to be taken to provide the foundations for API development?

Greg McCall, BT Group (10:29):
And I think once again, there's been a lot of talk about APIs more recently, but we've been working with the GSMA since 2017 I think it was. So APIs are not new to us. In fact, we've, we've been quite focused and we've got a number of APIs that follow the open gateway framework and Kamara framework. Where I see the real benefit is how do we standardize on those APIs so the developer community don't have to write their code for the BT or EE network and then something different for one of the other networks. So that standardization is really, really important. But I think for us, as I said earlier, we think about APIs being at the heart of what we are doing and as we delaer our network, APIs become even more critical both for our internal operations, but if we making those APIs available, why don't we make them available to customers as well? And what we've seen is where we focused on the kind of customer pain points, we are really generating really, really good usage of those APIs, especially in the financial sector, to try and reduce the pain points for customers and make it more seamless for them.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:43):
Okay. Now we've already touched a couple of times on power consumption and energy efficiency, and while AI might dominate, green networks is still a major consideration for pretty much everybody here, but is the industry delivering what BT needs to better manage its power consumption and its networks?

Greg McCall, BT Group (12:06):
Yeah, I think it's fair to say, and we should compliment the industry. I think it may have taken the war in Europe for us and energy prices increases for people to really focus on it. But over the last three or four years, there's been a lot of focus across the industry and we are already seeing some of the benefits of that. So we are using cell sleep in our radio network and that's saving a significant amount of energy consumption, which is great not only for the bank balance, but also for the planet.

(12:42):
And what we are trying to do now is think about what other components in our network can we put to sleep when it's not needed and get really aligned on when there's capacity in the network and when there isn't capacity in the network and therefore turn off components as we go. So I think that's super, super important. And I've said it a couple of times, Ray, I truly believe that we are the last generation of technologists that can use technology to make a difference to our planet. And it's great to see the industry wake up to it. It's great to see the collaboration that we've got and certainly within bt we've got ambitions to be net zero by 2031. And I think we make a really good progress towards that. And I feel really proud that as a team, sustainability is front and center of what we do.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (13:32):
Okay, good to hear that. It still is there because a couple of years ago MWC Green was everywhere as a messaging and then basically it seemed to get shoved aside by ai. That's a nature of marketing I

Greg McCall, BT Group (13:46):
Guess. Absolutely. I have teenage kids and I think their buying habits are much more focused on what companies are doing for the planet and I think it's going to become even more important and a sustainable green network. I do think customers will choose that over a sustainable network in the future.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (14:09):
Well, I mean, let's hope so. That would be good. Another thing that I'm expecting to hear more about this year than last year is six G because there's some pretty important meetings coming up soon to start the real planning process. Are you factoring in six G into your network plans right now and how involved is the BT Networks team in the six G planning processes that are upcoming?

Greg McCall, BT Group (14:38):
Yeah, I think as with all new technology, I think it's really important for us to embrace it, to work in collaboration around it, and that we are involved in the standards bodies to think about how we evolve from 5G to six G. I think the really important thing is we need to make that transition as seamless as possible because like us, the industry has invested significant amount of money, time, and sweat into building a 5G network. And I think we still scratching the surface of what a 5G network can deliver for our customers. So right now we are following it, but I think it's some way off. So it's not integrated into our network plans today. We believe that 5G SA is the bedrock of future connectivity and therefore we want to absolutely focus on delivering the best 5G SA network before we get to six G. So I think there's still a long road to run before we get to six G.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (15:36):
Okay. And then finally, over the years, I've very often asked people just to move away from the telecoms topic briefly what their favorite film of all time now, but that's starting to make me feel a bit old fuddy duddy and so I need to upgrade my question. So Greg, I'm going to ask you, what are you streaming right now? Is there anything you could recommend to people out there to check out in the streaming services?

Greg McCall, BT Group (16:02):
Yeah, so as you know Ray, I'm a bit of a sports nutter, so the things that I stream are usually sports related and I'm watching full swing series three at the moment, which is the golf program and it's pretty awesome to be honest. So I'll definitely push out for any of your golf enthusiasts listening to this, get in and watch that. The first two series were great. The third one's even better.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (16:28):
Okay, excellent. Alright, great recommendation. Greg, thanks so much for taking time out of your schedule to join us and have a good MWC.

Greg McCall, BT Group (16:35):
Thanks Ray. Thanks very much. Good to see you. All the best.