Did you miss my sold-out talk at MWC25’s Gen AI Summit? Over 2,000 people signed up for a room that holds only 200 people. Lucky for you, I recorded my talk for YouTube. In it I talk about building an AI-first telco, and how telcos need to tackle the legacy tech debt in their BSS estate to do it. Thankfully, AI can totally help with this. At
Totogi, where I’m acting CEO, we don't replace systems. We just use AI to solve your interoperability nightmares. If you missed my live talk, check it out on our
YouTube channel. It’s great!
Telefónica is paving the way to the public cloud. Two announcements at MWC made that clear. First,
Telefónica, AWS, and Nokia successfully completed Europe’s first 5G standalone call using a hybrid on-premises and public cloud architecture. By distributing Cloud RAN workloads across Telefónica’s Madrid headquarters and AWS’s Region in Spain, the partners validated performance, scalability, and operational efficiency for next-generation 5G RAN. Get ready for a cloud-based, software-centric network model that will deliver more agile and resilient 5G!
Next, O2 Telefónica Germany is making big moves in the public cloud, doubling down on its AWS partnership following last year's successful 5G SA Core deployment. It’s expanding to run 5G core data plane workloads on AWS Outposts racks in its data centers and shifting voice services to AWS Graviton chips. This cloud-native approach delivers a single view across the entire 5G network. These are EXACTLY the kinds of bold moves telcos need to make to stay in the game. Who's going to be next? The public cloud wave in telco is officially here! 🚀
Speaking of Outposts, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced new Outposts rack and server offerings at MWC25, enabling telcos to run high-throughput 5G Core and Cloud RAN workloads on AWS infrastructure. The racks are optimized for network-intensive traffic and scaling. The servers are designed for Cloud RAN deployments at the far edge, offering pre-integrated hardware, L1 acceleration, and Graviton3-based compute for high performance. Both will be generally available later this year. Remember when I blogged about this idea THREE years ago in “Bet on the future: telco and technology”? Looks like I was onto a great idea.
Analyst Scott Raynovich spotted operators buzzing about monetizing enterprise AI workloads at the edge at MWC25, as he outlined in this Fierce Network Op-Ed. Platformonomic’s Charles Fitzgerald and I took a deep dive into this idea in a recent Telco in 20 podcast episode. I understand the appeal—telcos have the edge data centers and are outfitted for power and cooling—but this is A LOT harder than it looks. Operators will need access to NVIDIA AI chips, a lot more electricity to run the workloads, and top software talent to write code. This goes beyond, “well, we have the real estate” and “because we’re a trusted player, we’re the obvious choice.” Beware.
Be sure to check out GenAI for BSS systems: Telcos on the cusp of a new era, a new white paper from Appledore Research principal analyst John Abraham, sponsored by Totogi. The free-to-download paper examines GenAI’s evolution in BSS, exploring its impact on legacy telco systems and highlighting the significant opportunity for telcos to reimagine software development and system transformation processes. The key? Building a telco-specific, domain-trained ontology that understands telco. This is more than just AI or low-code/no-code tools to help you accelerate the capabilities of your BSS. Read what Appledore Research has to say about it.
TM Forum just celebrated 1 million downloads of its Open APIs—across almost 3,000 companies and 53,000 developers! Remember my talk about open APIs from a couple of years ago, when telco industry dinosaurs whined and cried to TM Forum to pull it off of the DTWS website? Seems like they didn’t like being called out for giving the Open APIs a bunch of lip service. People really want this to work, but there are still problems with it. Is Totogi’s BSS Magic the solution?
Vodafone has partnered with AST SpaceMobile to create a new satellite mobile joint venture to compete with Starlink. (See my blog this week for more on this topic!) The resulting service will work with regular 4G and 5G smartphones, providing consumers with connectivity in areas without mobile coverage. Vodafone says its tech will be superior to Starlink’s, but it’s hard to compare. Starlink has over 7,000 satellites in orbit, while AST SpaceMobile has 5, with 45–60 planned in the next couple years. AST SpaceMobile’s satellites are bigger, covering 2,400 square feet, versus Starlink’s 269 square feet. AST SpaceMobile’s speeds should go up to 20 Mbps, compared to Starlink’s 25–220 Mbps. Is Vodafone making the right call? Only time will tell…
Doing things in space is hard. Just ask Nokia, which tried to put a 4G network on the moon in time for MWC. Too bad they missed the mark (literally, they landed in the wrong spot) so the dang thing couldn’t recharge with the sun. And also: it fell over. Like, on its side. Meanwhile, over at SpaceX, Elon can catch booster rockets falling from the sky (though to be fair, his rocket DID blow up last week, so he has set backs, too). Here’s hoping Nokia doesn’t give up and gives it another go. If they need inspiration, I recommend watching Elon’s rocket-blowing-up compilation video.
It’s the end of an era: Microsoft is retiring Skype. The pioneering over-the-top (OTT) app brought video and voice-over-IP calling to the mainstream, allowing users to avoid those high international calling rates. Suddenly, we could call and chat with friends and family all over the world—as long as the network held up. Microsoft shelled out $8.5 billion for it in 2011, but then launched Teams, a dedicated platform for video calls and business collaboration, in 2017. When Skype goes dark in May 2025, users can switch to Teams for free. Just for fun, here’s the Skype ringtone for old time’s sake. C'est la vie, Skype!
