Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we are in Dublin for Fyuz 2025. I'm here with Cristina Rodriguez from Intel. Nastasi Karaiskos from Wind River. Great to see you both. Thanks very much for joining us on TelecomTV today. Can we start by having each of you tell us about your involvement in Vodafone's European Open RAN rollout? Cristina, let's start with you.

Cristina Rodriguez, Intel Coporation (00:28):
First of all, thank you for having us, Ray. Great to be here with Nastasi, our Wind River partner, great partner, Vodafone great successes story. Great is to Paco and Marco who have been in this journey leading the industry for a long time, I would say. But it's a great story. We're talking about deployment at a scale of an architecture that is open and virtualized. We're super happy to be part of this journey with them. We are providing the CPU, the SoC rather that underpins that architecture we release or launch in early this year. Our Xeon 6 SoC, also code name Granite Rapids-D, and this is an SoC now that will give them the capability of have one server deployment that can take on the entire capacity and coverage and has built in multiple capabilities have up to 72 cores. It has the V-RAN boost that we have seen in previous generations. Of course upgraded to this new chip, new SoC. It has built in ai. That's fundamental because you can run quite a bit of inference in Granite Rapids-D. Our SoC, it has ethernet integrated, so it brings a lot into that architecture.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:00):
And Nastasi, for Wind River like Intel, a long engagement and involvement with Vodafone over the years in terms of its open RAN plans. How exciting is this for you that the "Spring Six", as it was known broadly across the industry, is finally announced and deployments are happening.

Nastasi Karaiskos, Wind River (02:20):
Yeah. Well, firstly, thanks for the invitation, Ray. It's great to be back here at Fyuz in Dublin with you and the telecom TV crew and our friends and partners, Cristina at Intel. So this is a really exciting moment in the industry, possibly the largest scale open RAN deployment around Europe that we're seeing. And it goes well beyond sort of incremental upgrades. This is about differentiating the networks from edge to core at scale, introducing optimization, orchestration, observability into the network. And this is their linked to Vodafone's 10 to 15 year strategy where they are focused on urgentG efficiencies and sustainability in the network to provide improved service, flexible architectures for future technologies such as 5G advanced and 6G.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:06):
As we know, Vodafone has always been one of the champions of Open RAN has been involved in its development for many years now. So its deployment was expected. But at the same time, there's still maybe some scuffle part or some industry, maybe lack of knowledge about Open RAN and what is happening here. From your perspective, and Nastasi, we'll start with you. Is Open RAN still as relevant to all mobile network operators, these data and not just the champions of this particular architecture?

Nastasi Karaiskos, Wind River (03:45):
Yeah, absolutely. And this is what we're seeing. So WindRiver have established their leadership in core to edge across the infrastructure layer. And we're seeing an increase across VRAN, Open RAN, AI RAN, more and more, not just in Europe with this large scale deployment that Vodafone are conducting, which really started as a pilot and it's positive to now see this into going into a large scale production. But we're seeing this in a number of different regions. So yes, absolutely. We see this change driven from, I think, AI and energy efficiency are to some of two of the major use cases to help the operators scale their networks and optimize their networks.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:27):
And Cristina, from the Intel perspective, do you see as much engagement and enthuusiasm for open RAN architectures from the MNO community as you have done in the past?

Cristina Rodriguez, Intel Coporation (04:39):
Of course, absolutely. The need for the disaggregation, they need for flexibility and scalability. They need for cloud support cloud networks in the RAN. They need for reducing total cost of ownership. They need for optionality in the network that's still there and we always be there. And as we look into the future, it's even you need to have that kind of network architecture in order to be ready for it, in order to adopt AI, to bring AI, to take the best out of what is there to be offered with all the technology, including AI. There is a understanding that is a realization that the network of the future should be disaggregated and should be virtual apps.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:29):
Now, of course, the job is never done. R&D never ends. There's always more to do. So what are the main current innovations that your companies are bringing to operators in the open RAN space? And what kind of impact are AI native telco strategies having on those innovations and those plans? So Cristina, we'll start with you this time.

Cristina Rodriguez, Intel Coporation (05:55):
Yeah. I want to start with what I was referring early in the first question is the capability that we bring in the network architecture, in our SOCs, underpinning that network architecture, the capability of having built in AI. So you can have now right there in your DU or in your virtual EU or virtual CEU, you can have right there AI inference capabilities. We can run up to nine billions of parameters models in our GNRD, which is more than enough for what you want to do at a DU site. And again, inference, right? And that's a tremendous potential that we have where you wouldn't have operators who wouldn't have to have any additional accelerator, any additional component, because everything that you can do for the network or for the RAN to optimize the RAN is right there. You have the capability right there.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:00):
Okay, excellent. And Nastasi, from the Wind River perspective, what are the main focus areas in terms of technology innovation right now and how is AI influencing that?

Nastasi Karaiskos, Wind River (07:14):
So this project is emblematic of the change that we're going through in the telecoms industry. The networks are no longer just about hardware. They're about software, they're about cloud, they're about edge, they're about partner ecosystems, they're about agility, they're about AI and automation. And these are the trends that we're seeing that are the technology trends that are really supporting this growth in the industry as operators look to transform their networks to sustain and support the future technologies and give them that elasticity so that they can offer more dynamic services to their customers. They can be more agile, they can have more security in their networks, they can have a flexible approach to the services that they offer their customers as well.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:55):
Well, listen, it's great to be able to talk about the Vodafone deployment at last, but also about the broader capabilities and the innovations around Open RAN in the industry. So Nastasi, Cristina, thank you very much for your time. Great to talk to you again and enjoy Fyuz 2025.

Cristina Rodriguez, Intel Coporation (08:14):
Thank you, Ray.

Nastasi Karaiskos, Wind River (08:15):
Thank you, Ray.