Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:10):
Hello and welcome to this special edition of Extra Shot, a slightly shorter program than usual the cortado edition if you like. This is Telecom TV's wrapup of the Great Telco debate event, which was held in London during the first week of December. If you have yet to view all the sessions, then hopefully we can persuade you to dig deeper into our on-demand content with some handpicked highlights. And with five topics and 29 speakers, there is a lot to unpack. So let's dive straight into the maelstrom of GTD with this. The first debate of the day when our first debate looked at delivering a telco as a platform model, very topical. We held an online summit on this earlier in the year, and we wanted to know how such a business model could lead to new service opportunities. And as always at GTD, we had a fantastic mix of speakers, each offering their own three minute expert witness statements before joining a lively q and a session with our audience. And here's a taste of what was said.

Nik Willetts, TM Forum (01:34):
This notion of being a platform business I think is ultimately misguided. We as an industry will struggle if we go into this thinking about us owning or controlling a platform being ours because the platform economy already exists, it's existed for over a decade and we are trying to find our relevance and way in that world.

Fahim Sabir, Colt (01:56):
How are we going to put together a platform which encourages participants to join when there are going to be so many platforms out there? Every telco wants to own the platform.

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (02:06):
Customers want to be able to get what they want, where they want, when they want as a self-service. And I don't believe that we'll probably build this one giant platform that solves all the problems.

Geoff Hollingworth, Rakuten Symphony (02:19):
I think we all sit in this room and we talk about a platform, but I don't think we really understand what we mean by platform.

Amit Liebstein, HPE (02:31):
We it be a platform or something else. So for us, the world is hybrid. That's a fact. You will have everything. The platform memory is just an enabler. It'll make sure that you provide the services to your end customer as they expect.

Erez Sverdlov, Nokia (02:44):
So the idea behind the telecom is the platform if to expose what current is the network to the outside world, so APIs, so camera API, and so on. But the idea behind it is there'll be many platforms you can consume different application and make an ecosystem around it

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:04):
With each debate. At GTD, we also have a related motion and arguing for and against our resident analysts and standup veterans, Chris Lewis and Graham Wild, having heard their impassion please, the in-room audience gets to vote, but so too does our online audience and the results are not always the same. And for our first motion of the day, we said aligning APIs with a digital platform play we'll put CSPs at the heart of the digital economy. And our audience voted and they said motion defeated. Well, it was very, very close. However, our online audience disagreed and we had well over 250 votes from our online audience and they voted for the motion and by a landslide. And so to our second debate, the practical applications for telco ai. And this debate came off the back of our telcos and AI event the day before. So we came into this session armed with a lot of ideas and insights. Everyone wanted in on this topic. There were plenty of expert comments and thought provoking remarks.

Aaron Partouche, Colt (04:31):
The critical question for our industry is how can Telco deliver true value to a VA ecosystem? And maybe more importantly, can the AI revolution succeed without telcos?

Vishal Singh, Nokia (04:47):
Artificial intelligence is one area, especially generative AI is where the entire ecosystem of all different industries are at the same starting point. So it's our opportunity actually to step up the game because we have the access to data, but we just don't have the way to consume the data.

Colin Bannon, BT (05:04):
There's been very, very little modeling and understanding of the implications of what AI is going to do on the network, and I think that's a really big opportunity for us as trusted in partners to deliver the value and experience of AI as well.

Manish Singh, Dell Technologies (05:17):
This industry has talked about autonomous networks for a long, long time, and I think with the rise of agents that autonomous network is now within reach,

Rahul Atri, Rakuten Symphony (05:30):
We should also keep it measurable. It is not cheap. The models are not cheap, infrastructure is not cheap. Somebody else is making tons of money out of it. If we're not making things measurable, there's no ROI.

Warren Bayek, Wind River (05:41):
It's really a game of inches, which means we have to find critical business problems and critical business pain points that the telcos are having and solve them through ai.

Mabel Pous-Fenollar, Vodafone (05:51):
It is super important that we as an industry use the technology and our partnerships that we are building to move towards those new technologies in automation and ai. But not only that, it is super essential that we do strategic shifts on the operating model the way that we do things.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:11):
The associated motion to this debate stated that telcos will only benefit financially from AI when they deploy their own customer focused models. But was our audience swayed by Chris's robust arguments for the motion? Absolutely not. It was resoundingly defeated. However, our online audience voted in favor, but by just three votes, I think a recount is in order. Debate three looked to bring together the themes covered so far and to try and understand the optimal business model for a telco. We talked about whether or not a TechCo is best placed for API and AI success. And is the vision of a single distributed centrally orchestrated network the key to unlocking long-term business growth? Well, here's a sample of what was discussed

Ranjan, Band, Tech Mahindra (07:18):
From where we sit as an si, we see that there is no benefit at tech core at telco will get when it comes to adopting the APIs or ai. Everybody's starts at the same. It's about the leadership, it's about the culture, it's about the ization mindset, which has to be there.

Francesca Serravalle, Vodafone (07:37):
For me, being a TechCo company is an enabler of new business positioning basically. So becoming a solution player or becoming or having our network to be a platform play. And we know that tech is not just one word, it's a program of transformation, right?

Andrew Coward, IBM (07:59):
So I would argue the whole techno conversation is a compulsory thing that we have to go through as an industry, as indeed every other industry has to go through to be competitive in the modern world.

Darrell Jordan-Smith, Wind River (08:11):
I think the telecommunications companies need to get some of that capability back. The cultural aspects I think we spoke about earlier, taking risks, failing fast, those are the sorts of things that are going to sort of revitalize the industry and actually help us take go to the next level.

Chris Simcoe, BT (08:28):
From our customer's point of view, they probably see the telco as being more delivering them technology, but the tecos, they probably just, what are you getting? Your streaming movies, you're searching for things. It's probably the opposite. The way that our customers actually perceive us.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:46):
There were plenty of conflicting thoughts about the very idea of a TechCo. And so our emotion stated that a telco doesn't have to be a TechCo to be a true digital service provider. And having heard all the evidence, our audience voted motion carried and Graham won the day. And in a surprising development, our online audience also voted in support of the motion. And so to debate for and time to revisit an old favorite of the great telco debate, the internet of things, we wanted to know whether 5G will fuel the Renaissance of Telco. Iot much has been promised in this area yet results have been varied. Experiences around developing and delivering basic iot connectivity have been mixed. But will it improve with 5G? Well, here's what our experts thought.

Itsuma Tanaka, Docomo Labs Europe (09:58):
Connectivity is just the enabler and not the end game. However, the reality is in the iot ecosystem we learned telecom providers are often perceived as just a tiny piece of a larger value chain in their business. So the challenge that we are facing is to reposition ourselves not as enablers, but as key orchestrator of value. So

Phil Skipper, Vodafone (10:21):
Once you get to 5G, you are into a completely new set of use classifications. And I think that's where you have to say, does that new set of use cases revitalize and restimulate the IOT market? I don't think it needs much stimulation, but the question is, will the telco be able to capture that value?

Sam Bao, China Mobile International (10:46):
IOT business didn't fly as we all expected. I think one of the probably reasons there's too many standards there. It just, so if you look at the iot platform, there's hundreds of thousands of different platforms out there.

Sandeep Raithatha, VMO2 (11:02):
In reality, lots of devices that are being deployed now will be on 4G and a whole range of technologies. They're going to be in the ground in many cases for 10 or 15 years. So when you think about having to go out and going to change those devices at scale, at cost, there really needs to be a really compelling moment or business case to make the evolution of 5G iot work.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:21):
Our corresponding motion stated that 5G IOT is about finding the ecosystem partners to deliver the value not in the connectivity itself. And after hearing the expert witness statements and the pleas of Chris and Graham, our audience voted motion carried once again. And what's more our online audience agreed with a landslide vote in support of the motion. It's all about the ecosystem. Well, for our final debate, we turn to possibly the most contentious topic in telecoms today. Should six G be part of telco investment plans? The mere mention of six G has been known to elicit groans and size from the audience, but this year we decided to tackle the issue head on. Telcos are understandably keen to focus on 5G, but long-term investment planning means issues with six G need to be addressed sooner rather than later. It was a lively session.

Geoff Hollingworth, Rakuten Symphony (12:37):
Operators absolutely need to invest in the future. That future needs to get into an 18 month cadence and listen to what customers need and it needs to be driven less from the vendor side and less from the academic clever side.

David Boswarthick, ETSI (12:55):
We need to think what needs to be achieved in 2030 and then make sure we design it. So invest in the intellectual research, collaborate as always, and again, definitely get the operators back and driving standardization.

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (13:09):
We need to invest and we need to analyze further what the users really need, whether we can deploy this and meet the needs with 5G. What actually the gap is to 5G and what is really needed going forward for six G?

Neil McRae, UKTIN (13:26):
So we have no choice. We have to build six G, but we also have to learn from what went wrong in previous Gs. The customer is why we're here and why we need to focus for what they need in six G.

Mark Gilmour, ConnectiviTree (13:42):
Operators do need to get involved in the investment in six G, but it needs to be an investment in resource and in mindset and in knowledge share and knowledge transfer because operators do have access to the customer.

Itsuma Tanaka, Docomo Labs Europe (14:00):
So let me be blunt. If you are investing only in 5G, now you're already behind. The leading edge of innovation has moved on and that will be six G. Therefore I'm calling or urging or even begging, especially the telecom operators here or on the tv. On the online to stand up once again. So that 3G BP is not just a department store of random IPRs. Let's get back the unified global telecom system in our hands

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:30):
For our final motion. We stated that the industry shouldn't be planning for six G when it is still struggling to monetize 5G. And we were pretty sure this motion would divide the room and when it came time to vote, here's what happened. Well, motion defeated and by an absolute landslide. And I have to admit, my initial views were changed after hearing the evidence from our expert witnesses. For our online audience, though the results were much closer and the motion was narrowly carried. But that wasn't the end of the great telco debate. We also featured a fireside chat with our special guest, Colin Lee from Jaguar Land Rover JLR. We heard what the automotive sector really wants from telcos, not what the telcos think they want. And despite all the technology advances of 5G and beyond, what it really wants is complete network coverage.

Colin Lee, Jaguar Land Rover (15:43):
As you start going through the Gs, you end up having the extra capability with the V two X type. For example, like the battery saving capability, the detecting pedestrians, and having the capability talking pedestrians, adding non-terrestrial networks. And that's where I think the longer term mindset is in terms of going through the gs. If you took it today on the stuff we have in the cars today, we don't necessarily need 5G, but as you start moving through the capabilities of what you're going to do in the future, that's where we get excited.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:18):
And that was the great Telco debate for 2024. Of course, these highlights represent only a very small percentage of the debates and presentations. So if you want to see and hear more, and I hope you do, then they're all available to watch on demand at the telecom TV website. And next year, why not attend in person? Until then, we have our next online summit in February. It's the return of the green network. For now though, thank you for watching and goodbye.