Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:07):
Thank you for joining us from MWC, where we are going to discuss cloud native with two telco leaders joining us here. We have Gordon Milliken, Director, Product Line Management, Packet Core at Nokia. Hello, Gordon.

Gordon Milliken, Nokia (00:22):
Thank you.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:23):
And Padma Sudarsan, Chief Architect at Broadcom. Thank you for joining us. So first of all, Gordon, today's mobile cores are either modernising or being deployed as cloud native. So what are today's challenges for cloud native and how are you addressing that?

Gordon Milliken, Nokia (00:41):
First, maybe it would be good to talk a little bit about what the advantage of cloud nativeness is. That's delivering on flexibility, natural resiliency, and automation in operation. The challenge for the network operator is the complexity that's introduced with all the flexibility and the immature automation today.

Padma Sudarsan, Broadcom (01:18):
Padma, give us your perspective.

(01:20):
So cloud native is no longer a technology. It's becoming essential for agility, scalability, and the next generation of networks. However, this transformation which operators desperately want and vendors are providing is not going to happen overnight. So there's going to be an evolution and we have to support both the VM-based solution and CNF, the cloud native solution, for a while. And that's where the telco cloud platform that we are offering provides that unified operations, unified lifecycle management, and Nokia and Broadcom are working closely together to validate our application. So we give them the ability to be able to manage it in a way that reduces complexity.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (02:09):
And you have been collaborating together for more than a decade on this, developing joint network and operational experience. So tell us more about how you work together and also what do telecom providers find particularly compelling in your joint offering and proposition?

Gordon Milliken, Nokia (02:26):
So first of all, our collaboration starts way before we get the first software from Broadcom. It starts with technical collaboration, discussion about what's coming up. So we can be prepared for how we have to either adapt our application or take advantage of the new functionality that comes with that software load. Then we receive the software load. We work with the Broadcom technical people to address issues as they come up. And finally, I think a really strong aspect is the comprehensive validation done first by Nokia in Nokia's lab, followed by the same comprehensive validation done in Broadcom's lab so that we give a guaranteed product infrastructure combination to our customer.

Padma Sudarsan, Broadcom (03:16):
One thing to add to what Gordon said is validation is no longer a checkbox. It's a strategic accelerator and carrier-grade software deployment requires some stringent performance and guaranteed performance. So that's where the collaboration comes into play. We put our software together and we do stress testing, full validation, automation of the lifecycle management, as well as ensuring that when the operator gets this as a package, they can rest assured that it will work together.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (03:50):
So not a conversation here at MWC without mentioning AI, of course, and its impact on the sector. So what do you expect it to be actually on future integrations?

Gordon Milliken, Nokia (04:00):
Well, that's interesting that you bring up, and certainly we've seen AI everywhere, but frankly, AI is everywhere in our stack as well. It's in the hardware. Our hardware and chipset manufacturers are putting AI into their chipsets. It's in the server manufacturer and their OEM. We've deployed AI service pods in our application, solving local problems for the local entity, optimising performance of the network. And then there's a network-wide or EMS-level AI that's looking for the interaction between nodes. And then finally, agentic AI is actually transforming the way networks operate based on the information that it gets.

Padma Sudarsan, Broadcom (04:48):
Yeah. AI, Broadcom is a big player in AI, and now we are offering a platform that has AI built into it. So we are having ... And all the AI enablers are part of it.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (05:01):
And finally, what architecture changes do you foresee as we switch from 5G to the next big thing, 6G?

Padma Sudarsan, Broadcom (05:10):
6G, the way we see it, the way the direction is going, we don't see a dramatic change in the core architecture, but what is going to become very critical is AI is going to become essential, AI native. 6G AI native was talked about a lot, and security. So one of the things is building that virtualisation layer that enables you to virtualise the storage, the premium accelerators like GPUs and providing GPU as a service. And with our platform, we also provide the AI models. That becomes a big enabler and a boost for as we move into the 6G. So we think our platform is already future proof and we'll continue to validate together to make sure we evolve that into the next generation.

Gordon Milliken, Nokia (06:08):
For me, there are lots of aspects of 6G that offer new, interesting opportunities. But one of the things that I want to key in on is something Padma said about security. We're evolving from the days when security meant, well, I'll encrypt the interface, to confidential computing where every bit of data that you're using, the way you're using that data and calculating data, the code is security safe. Every aspect of what we do is now impacted by that.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (06:40):
Well, Gordon, Padma, thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your thoughts here this afternoon at the very busy MWC 2026. Thank you.