Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we are at DTW Ignite 2025 back in Copenhagen again in the heat of the June sun in the lovely greenhouse experience we have here at the show. I'm here with Howard Watson, Chief Security and Networks officer at BT Group. Howard, great to see you again. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here, Ray, at this event over the years, it's evolved from a show about focused on OSS and BSS and shifted more towards AI, automation, et cetera, and autonomous networks. It's going to be a massive theme here over the next three days. Where's BT on? Its, I don't want to use the word journey, but with its strategy to deliver autonomous network operations. And what does that mean? Because people think, oh, sometimes I think people think, oh, an autonomous network, the whole thing is going to run itself, but there's various stages and it doesn't really work like that. It's done bit by bit, isn't it?

Howard Watson, BT (01:05):
Yeah. And I think you were talking to Nektaria from our strategy team a few weeks ago about this actually, and she's really working through exactly what you described there as the various stages of, and I guess that ultimate goal of true autonomy. Are we ever going to completely take a human out of the loop? I think probably not for a long time, but the way we look at it is first of all, understanding the intent of a customer and through slicing. Now that could be an individual customer or a typical cohort of customers. What is the intent of what their need is? Applying some intelligence with AI to that, and then using the result of that to orchestrate the network. So we see it very much in those three phases, intent, intelligence, orchestration, and that will then provision the capability without human need of intervention or manual hiring or even keyboard work to provide that capability. So that's one side of it. I would say the other area that we are pursuing is what we're calling a dark knock. We've talked about that I think many times before. I think that's getting ever closer.

(02:23):
So the ability to apply generative AI into seeing network effects as they happen, and this relies on the ability to get streaming out of the network, not the 15 minute polls, and most of the infrastructure providers are getting there with that. But being able to recognize patterns, use many of the years of experience we've got with pattern recognition across networks and finding them true cause, learning from that and then being able to recommend corrective action.

(02:54):
Maybe in the future self heal, I think. So those are sort of two immediate areas where we see big opportunities around autonomy. And I quite like the way the TM form have defined their zero to four levels of maturity in this, and all of us signed up to aim towards autonomy being level four.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:14):
Okay. And of course, and this has been talked about many times, but it is probably worth just reiterating time and time again that this all boils down at the foundations to a very clear data management strategy, doesn't it? I mean, how do you look at the data that you have that's generated by the networks, the devices, the customers, and how do you manage that and decide what's useful for whatever function?

Howard Watson, BT (03:46):
I mean, the first thing we realized probably four years ago was it's so much easier if you can put it all in one place. So across bt, we had a number of enterprise data warehouses with customer information and also separately network information. So we took the bold decision to put it all into a Google Cloud platform. We've pretty much done that now. I would say we've probably pushed a little bit too much into quickly. Now we're looking at that and saying, how do we really catalog it and curate it and make sure that it's up to date data? We're going through that process now, but you're right. Having that in one place properly cataloged and curated is fundamental to being able to then use that data on your network on the intent of customers to create that autonomy we just talked about.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:42):
And having that data in one place, is that sort of exposing new ideas and opportunities that maybe wouldn't have been realized before?

Howard Watson, BT (04:51):
Yeah, I mean, once you start to apply some analytics and some of the analytical tools to that data, you do start to see new things and new opportunities. And it sort of feeds into the overall AI journey, particularly around how we using it for encouraging growth. So next best action, when you as a customer contact me, we're using that data to feed into, oh, if you've got that package and you're thinking about maybe needing a little bit more bandwidth, then here's the best thing for you. And so we're seeing it used in that much more now.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:25):
And then just in terms of AI in general is sort of hearing from a lot of operators that they're thinking about how they use it internally for their own operations and how that can then inform the way that they reach out to customers, especially in the enterprise sector and say, look, we can help you with this because we've already done that ourselves. Where are you in terms of using different AI tools internally just for day-to-day stuff and learning from that?

Howard Watson, BT (05:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think as you know, bet's got this long history of patenting AI solutions in the uk we're the largest. We hold the largest number of AI patents for a UK listed company. Most of it, in fairness, our algorithmic ai since then, generative AI is all around us, and actually we've allowed our organization to, in a sort of federated way, develop solutions. So at the last count, we had 50 applications built by our own people now applying generative ai, some of it on open source like LAMA and mytral, some of it on commercial large language models. We have, I think 90 of our third party applications that are now have AI embedded. So the large ones like Salesforce, ServiceNow, but also many of the smaller packages. So it's internally, it's sort of almost everywhere now. 48,000 people in bt, 48,000 BT colleagues are using AI as knowledge workers to use that well used phrase to improve their efficiency. And much of that with copilot. But we're just seeing tools emerge everywhere. So it's here to stay. It's creating internal efficiency. We've deliberately done it almost in a let's let the organization self innovate, but we've guardrails around confidentiality of information, and now we're sort of pulling that together and saying, well, how can we now take that experience to customers of our business organization who look like us?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:36):
So John James is looking going, right, we are doing that now. How can I take that out?

Howard Watson, BT (07:41):
And particularly in the public sector in the UK as well, who we're starting to fill the pull there of, show us how we can use this. And that's actually where the sort of CIO to CIO conversation becomes really powerful.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:55):
Now, of course, the other part of your job is the security part of the chief security officer, and it's never not been high on the agenda of network operators, but it is getting more intense, it seems. And the recent experience of SK telecom with the cybersecurity incident it's had and the impact on its business, that's really heightened awareness in the industry. What kind of impact is that having internally? Has that raised the topic of network security, even higher people talking about, and what does that mean for how you deal with those kind of conversations and maybe requests from customers?

Howard Watson, BT (08:37):
And I would say before that incident, salt typhoon,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:41):
Right,

Howard Watson, BT (08:43):
Would be, I mean, that was a game changer for us that was focused on the telco industry. And again, if you look in the UK recently with Marks and Spencer's

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:54):
Yeah, absolutely. The big retailers. Yeah,

Howard Watson, BT (08:56):
Absolutely. So some of the criminal gangs have been focusing on UK retail. I mean, what's important, I think now what we've learned really is you have to assume that no matter how good that Citadel is, and we used to use that phrase for the funding, the Citadel build that big wall. No matter how good that is, you have to assume that somehow somebody will get in. And then it's about detection quickly. Ejection looking at data leakage and really learning from that. And what we do to try and get ahold of defense in depth there is we've been a real big use of CrowdStrike, for example, and that's paid dividends for us in our ability to detect any unusual activity and to be able to isolate it really quickly and prevent it from sort of expanding into the broader business. And on things like salt typhoon, we're seeing that's very much where the attacks are against edge devices, whether that is customer routers or firewalls, the security tools

(10:02):
Being attacked. And if you can stop it there and isolate it, then that's a great way of defense. I think also if you mentioned SK Telecom, whenever these incidents happen, what we do, whether it's SK telecom, whether it's m and s in the uk, whether it's salt, typhoon in the us, we've got to try and learn as much as we can work with our colleagues in the National Cybersecurity Center who often know what happened because these organizations talk together. Whereas commercial organizations do collaborate quite well, but not always in the detail and take on board those learnings. So in the aftermath of SK Telecom, we look long and hard at our HSS, we are fully hardware encrypted, so that couldn't happen. If that file got somehow exfiltrated from bt, it would be massively encrypted, almost impossible to UNH and get the data. So that gives us a level of reassurance, but never complacency. And if there's one thing that it remains, and you and I have talked about before, the one thing that keeps me awake at night is am I going to wake up in the morning to a message that says Howard? Oh dear. Right. And you've got to just be alert to that all the

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:24):
Time. Yeah. Okay. Then just finally as well, I guess this brings up the importance and maybe the urgency of a focus and investment of resource into quantum safe networking and quantum security, because this is something that needs to happen now. You don't have to wait for quantum computers to become commercially available for the cyber criminals, do you?

Howard Watson, BT (11:49):
Yeah, and I think there's two emerging parallel paths there. This sort of post quantum cryptography, which is how do we encrypt that data now in a way that can't be easily broken by a quantum computer as when it arrives? And that's great for data at rest, but then there's, when transmitting keys to do that, how do we keep those keys? At least have the ability to know for certain if they've been exfiltrated or captured. And that's what quantum key distribution achieves, and we've been working on that with our partners Toba for some time. We've had the Quantum Secure Metro Network, three customers on that now in London. I note that Orange have just talked about this in Paris, and it's good to see it has been for the last two or three years, I guess, a bit of a solution looking for a problem when you talk to business customers,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:46):
Right?

Howard Watson, BT (12:47):
Apart from some that are really advanced in the thinking, I would call it HSBC has been pioneers in

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:51):
This space. Yeah. The finance sectors really have focused on this,

Howard Watson, BT (12:54):
And they can really see the future there. And I think the more momentum we get around this now, I do think it's an important next step in preventing people who want to get in and steal data, making it so much more difficult.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (13:12):
Okay. Excellent. Right. Well, Howard, enjoy the show. Good luck with your stage presentation during the event and look forward to speaking to you again in the future.

Howard Watson, BT (13:23):
Thank you, Ray. Look forward to it.