Senza Fili Sparring Partners

This time I am the guest, not the host. Lorenzo Paletti invited me to Tutto Connesso, the Politecnico di Milano podcast, to talk about technological sovereignty and 6G with Antonio Capone at Politecnico di Milano.
Everybody talks about sovereignty, but everybody means something different. In the US, the word hardly comes up. In Europe, it often becomes a call to manufacture everything locally, which won't work. We cannot replicate the supply chain, or OpenAI and Anthropic, and we would fall behind if we tried.
In this conversation with Lorenzo Paletti host of Tutto Connesso and Antonio Capone, Professor of Telecommunications at Politecnico di Milano, I argue that sovereignty means choice, flexibility and visibility into our networks. We covered:
Why sovereignty is not autarky
Why excluding vendors gives a false sense of security
What Europe can learn from ASML, and why its companies sell out when they need to scale
How open interfaces, open source and 6G give operators visibility and control
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners' Substack
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Physical AI has been a demo thing for the last few years. It is no longer. Robots that work in teams, drones that need to be told apart from birds, ports and mines that run on sensors: none of them can wait for a round trip to a data center in the middle of nowhere. AI is not leaving the data center, but it is taking an apartment closer to the edge.
In this Sparring Partners podcast, I speak with Sameh Yamany, Chief Technology and AI Officer at VIAVI Solutions, about what edge AI needs to support physical AI, and what that means for operators.
Here is what we covered:
 
Why physical AI needs network, compute and AI at the edge
Edge AI is like a CDN, but you cannot buffer your way out of latency
Where physical AI is already real: mining, ports, critical infrastructure
Why standalone 5G matters, and why Asia is moving faster
From minutes to data to edge AI: a new way for operators to monetize the network
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack
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Nobody wants data centers near where they live: they use too much power, they bring few jobs, and they are tied to an AI that many people do not understand and fear. Yet we will use AI, and we need data centers to run it. The question is not whether we build them, but where and who gets to decide.
In this Sparring Partners podcast, I speak with Mike O’Rielly, Principal at MPORielly Consulting and FCC Commissioner from 2013 to 2020, after 20 years working on tech and telecom policy on Capitol Hill.  
Mike argues that hyperscalers are losing the PR war to political pressure. As usual, our conversation ranged widely:
Why a moratorium on data centers only delays the problem
Empty factories as data center sites
Should operators build their own data centers?
Why AI regulation in Washington is stuck
Satellite as the fourth mobile network: Dish all over again?
Renewables: the US fight is over subsidies
Latency: most data centers can go almost anywhere
AI may not push traffic or uplink up as much as feared
Open versus closed AI models: we need both
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack
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For years, the assumption in the US – and not just in the US – was that broadband means fiber, and anything else is second class. In rural areas, that assumption is running into two hard limits: the cost per passing keeps rising as density falls, and Starlink and Amazon Leo now set the price and speed baseline in the hardest-to-reach locations.
In Sparring Partners, I speak with Claude Aiken, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Legal Officer at Nextlink Internet, a rural operator that runs fiber, fixed wireless and mobile across 12 states. Claude was previously President and CEO of WISPA and spent a decade at the FCC, so he has seen rural broadband from the operator, industry and regulator sides.
We don't agree on everything, but we agree that headline speed is the wrong thing to chase. Here is what we covered:
Why the US chose facilities-based competition, and what it costs
How LEO turned a geography problem into a capacity and economics problem
Where fiber, fixed wireless and satellite make sense and where subsidizing fiber is no longer a financially sensible option
Why reliability, price and service matter more to subscribers than gigabit speeds
Whether mobile can replace fixed broadband in rural areas
Whether connectivity should be treated as a right
You can follow Claude on his new Substack, Deployment Capital. Highly recommended.
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack
More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com
 

Does Open RAN need further opening? Can open-source facilitate and accelerate the adoption of Open RAN? Yes and yes. The OCUDU project was established on these premises to address common challenges that Open RAN deployments face.
In Sparring Partners, I speak with Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking, Edge, and IoT at The Linux Foundation, about how we need to move beyond open interfaces (which remain an essential starting point) to open-source RAN platforms that OCUDU builds with open-source software.
You may already know this, but Arpit went further and explained what specifically OCUDU does that was missing:
Help open the CU and DU
Deepen vendor disaggregation
Create a more efficient and accessible testing platform
Smooth the path to 6G
Facilitate the adoption of agentic AI and transition to autonomous networks

Private networks sound such a good idea. There is a clear need for venues and enterprises to have better on-premises connectivity to support their operations and services. They can augment much-needed indoor connectivity, which today is mostly provided by Wi-Fi.
Yet, deployments are only slowly taking off, and that’s the case across geographies.
Do we have the technology? Yes. Are they too expensive to deploy? No.
So what’s holding us back? Mostly the business models, the (real or perceived) complexity for enterprises to deploy them, and regulatory frameworks geared toward cellular networks owned and run by mobile operators.
In this Sparring Partners, I spoke with Maria Lema, Founder and CEO of Weaver Labs, who addresses these issues from the assumption that a private network should be viewed as a strategic investment for the venue or enterprise. Once you accept that, many other pieces fall into place.
Listen to the conversation, as I do not want to spoil it, but these are some topics we covered:
Sharing the infrastructure, without a neutral-host model
Business models, stadiums and beyond
Digital real estate
Cloud orchestration
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack
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I don’t think I am the only one annoyed by the homogenization of content, driven by a combination of social media, reduced attention spans, AI and human slop, and strict PR and corporate messaging policies. The side effect of this is that in-person human interaction is becoming more valuable and worth cultivating.
This is why I invited Keith Dyer at The Mobile Network to talk about this on Sparring Partners. He has launched a new in-person conference with a format that puts attendee interaction at the forefront. In our conversation, we discussed how industry events have evolved as we become submerged in (and want to avoid) repetitive, shallow content increasingly generated or over-edited by AI.
How to preserve independent and diverse views at events and more generally in the published content
How to make events more interactive and more valuable to those attending them
How should we think of genuine connections beyond traditional metrics
Mentions: Check out Keith’s next event on NTN and Sparring Partners in-person meetings
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack

Physical AI can impress us with an outstanding performance that rivals or surpasses human capabilities in a few tasks. Over time, AI-driven robots, drones and other devices will expand the range of tasks they can perform with accuracy, reliability and cost- and energy-efficiency. But to achieve this, they need levels of latency, reliability and security that today’s public networks do not support. For many use cases, physical AI will need a private network infrastructure that may or may not be managed by mobile operators. In most countries, mobile operators will not be the main infrastructure players.
I sat down with Gianluca Verin, CEO and Co-Founder of Apeiroon, to examine how we should plan and operate mobile networks to successfully and safely operate physical AI in the real world at scale. Gianluca has accumulated in-depth, practical experience on private networks for a long time since he started Athonet, and explains why many physical AI use cases require dedicated, deterministic, edge connectivity, and why centralized cloud architectures are not sufficient:
How to think about network requirements as physical AI gets deployed
Edge AI, mobile AI, mobile AI bubbles as the foundation for scalable physical AI deployments
Physical AI innovation in Europe versus USA: An opportunity that Europe cannot afford to lose
To sum it all up, Gianluca said: "A stationary robot is an IT problem. A moving robot is a network problem."
To go deeper, check the white paper that Gianluca mentions. And if you want to find out where Apeiroon comes from, see Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander and the nature of science, it is a beautiful and beautifully written short book.
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners on Substack or listen to it on your podcast platform.
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Innovation in Europe (including the UK) is routinely presented as suffering from all sorts of limitations, with funding and excessive regulation as the top culprits. Yes, things could be much better, but there is, and continues to be, a strong record of innovation in Europe.
In this Sparring Partners, Rupert Baines, serial entrepreneur, now working with RANsemi, Forefront RF, Luffy AI, Semiconductor Catapult, UKESF and more, argues (and I agree with him) that Europe lacks the ambition to leverage its talent and resources to the extent that they deserve:
What is Europe doing right in deep tech?
Injecting serendipity to promote technology clusters
Encouraging late-stage venture funding to encourage organic growth instead of early sales
Balancing the requirements and tradeoffs of sovereignty, openness, and international collaboration
You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners on Substack or listen to it on your podcast platform.
In our conversation, we mention a previous podcast with David Cleevely and one with Mike Short, previous guests of Sparring Partners. You can listen to the podcasts on Sparring Partners too.
Other links: Rupert's interview, Arthur Mensch, Mistral CEO, interview in The Economist, and Cambridge Tech Week
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6G has to be affordable and resilient, not just for the most advanced, high-GDP markets, but globally. This requires meeting a wide range of requirements, supporting the coexistence of multiple technologies, reducing the cost of providing connectivity, and making it affordable for all.
In this Sparring Partners, I talked with Mike Short, Chairman at UK Telecom Labs and AWTG, about what it will take to achieve these goals through:
Multi-technology approaches, including Wi-Fi and satellite
Network sharing, neutral hosts and private networks
New approaches to regulation and cooperation
Designing networks for resiliency and redundancy
Mike Short is also chairing the upcoming Cambridge Tech Week.
 
You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack
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The mobile market is maturing as a vertical, limiting new revenue opportunities, but technological innovation also creates opportunities to improve network efficiency and capabilities (while increasing complexity, however).
In this Sparring Partners, I talked with Itsuma Tanaka, CEO of Docomo Euro-Labs, about how MNOs in Japan and elsewhere are changing in response to user expectations, new competition and new technology.
Among the topics we discussed:
The role of basic connectivity and new services that expand it
AI optimization, satellite, ISAC
Different impact of geopolitical environment in Japan, Europe and the US
Reducing network complexity to facilitate adoption of new technologies
You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack
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We all know that most traffic (80% or even more) comes from indoors and most of it goes through Wi-Fi (another 80%). This means that cellular is not doing very well indoors, which is something we experience all the time. Yet, reliable data on how bad indoor coverage is has been hard to get.
Luke Kehoe, Lead Analyst at Ookla, has embarked on a project to measure indoor connectivity accurately and has done so in London, Berlin and New York. In this Sparring Partners, we discuss the methodology, the results and the implications of the research. Not surprisingly, the results confirm that, yes, indoor coverage is poor, but possibly even poorer than we (or at least I) would have guessed. It is not a name-and-shame exercise though (spoiler: London does not come out too well), because the reasons and the distribution of bad indoor coverage vary across locations and reveal a diverse set of challenges and ways to deal with them.
But I won’t say more. This is a discussion packed with new information and food for thought, so watch or listen to it.
You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack
Read Luke’s article on his preliminary results here.

AI is power hungry. The token economy is both a necessity to allocate limited resources and monetize AI, but also imposes constraints on its adoption. What’s the solution to this?
In this Sparring Partners, Julio Gonzalez-Saenz, AI Champion at Vodafone UK, makes the case for quantum as a technology that allows us to scale the adoption of AI by reducing its computational and power requirements and limiting token-economy bottlenecks.
The contribution of quantum in telecom networks:
Optimize use of data center resources
Overcome AI token anxiety
Reduce GPU requirements
Create new real-world use cases for AI
Reduce energy consumption
You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack
More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com
 

We know that AI models need high-quality, reliable data to produce good outcomes. But do operators have access to the data and can share it across vendors? Do we have the standards in place to facilitate this, and are they sufficient to share data reliably?
In this episode of Sparring Partners, Paul Patras, CEO and Co-founder of NetAI and Professor of Mobile Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, works on these issues on a daily basis and takes us through how shared and synthetic data and standards are essential to effective AI deployment in the telco networks, and what to do when the necessary is not accessible.
What we talked about:
Why is it difficult and yet necessary to share data
Standards are crucial, but not sufficient
Collaboration within the ecosystem is crucial to success
Digital twins and synthetic data are a valuable complement to network data
 
You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack
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I have to admit: I got stumped while looking for a title. Gemini was also stumped and offered no helpful suggestions. I think this is because Chris Lewis at Lewis Insight and I took a very broad look at the current telco environment and tried to extrapolate where it is going, leveraging seven decades of combined life in telecoms, and openly talking about our hopes and our fears.
It felt like a cathartic experience, as Chris put it after we recorded it, and we left nothing untouched. And we went on a tangent about why mobile operators may want to be like FIFA, but they are unlikely to succeed. And that's a good thing.
We talked about Wi-Fi, enterprise, private networks, NTN, utilities, data centers, hyperscalers, 5G, 6G, AI, AI-generated traffic, monetization, IT, China, and the need for better storytelling and efficiency in telecom. And I certainly left out some other topics we covered.
You can watch the video of this podcast on Substack’s Sparring Partners. All content and subscriptions are free.
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Small cells have come of age. They are no longer the rebellious teenager on the fringe. They have reached a more mature stage, offering multiple complementary solutions to address insufficient coverage, capacity and reliability in indoor venues and dense outdoor environments. These are the locations where the macro infrastructure is not well-suited to provide both the performance and cost efficiency we need.
In this Sparring Partners, Simon Fletcher, CSO at the Small Cell Forum and CEO at Real Wireless, and I reflect on what we heard and talked about at the Small Cell Forum Summit, and how that fits into the evolution of small cells.
We covered a lot of ground:
Reliability, not just capacity, crucial for indoor coverage
Neutral hosts and shared infrastructure
Small cells and macro cells
Small cells and DAS
Small cells and Wi-Fi
The need for a new regulatory approach
You can watch the video of this podcast on Substack’s Sparring Partners. Subscriptions and content are free to all.
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Clearly, we have not nailed down monetization in telecoms. After decades of double-digit CAGR, revenues have flattened or declined. 4G did not reverse the trend. 5G did not either. AI and 6G will likely be more of the same. Why is it so? And can we change it?
Faiq Khan offered an intriguing view on monetization, drawing from his work across different countries, with vendors and operators and, finally, at Rakuten, an operator with a distinctive approach to monetization. We talked about how in telecom, we focus more on technology than on its users, and what we can learn from other verticals and services:
Prioritizing business strategies over technology innovation
Learning from coffee shops: Monetizing experiences, not connectivity.
Capturing wallet share with airline-style loyalty plans.
Developing skills to unlock non-telecom revenue streams.
More on the topic in this report from Rakuten Symphony
You can watch the video of this podcast on Substack’s Sparring Partners. All content and subscriptions are free.
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AI promises higher efficiency, more automation and greater user experience. Yet it may also fail to scale or to deliver, or require more resources than it saves. How to get the good sides of AI and protect network operations from its challenges?
In this Sparring Partners, I talked with Rick Fulwiler, Senior Director Product Management at NETSCOUT, about how to make AI efficient through token reduction and how this is done primarily by curating the data to make sure the AI models and agents don’t get sidetracked or tempted to hallucinate.
Data curation is not just about selecting accurate data. It is about figuring out which data sources, and at what granularity, are relevant to the user's intent. In a way, this is an art steeped in human expertise, but it has to recognize that the data is used by AI rather than humans.
These are some of the highlights of our conversation:
Why AI struggles with traditional network KPIs
Packet data versus alarms and dashboards
Data curation reduces cost and improves accuracy
AI agents need governance and transparency
More from NETSCOUT
 
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AI and quantum can strengthen network security and resilience, but can also amplify vulnerabilities and expand the scope for security attacks. We need a new approach to cybersecurity in an era of geopolitical tensions, AI and quantum, and increased reliance on telecom networks to protect us.
In this Sparring Partners, I spoke with Caroline Chappell, a fellow independent analyst and founder of CC Squared, about how a holistic approach to derisking network infrastructure can improve security and resilience and create new services and revenue streams for operators.
Resiliency coming to the forefront
Security and resiliency as a unified strategy that works across network elements and services
Sovereign cloud and infrastructure tradeoffs
Premium resiliency and security as revenue-generating enterprise services
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In Sparring Partners, I try to track down hot topics. This episode does the opposite by exploring an issue that has quietly faded from industry awareness: CALEA and lawfulintercept. Nick Johnson, an independent telecom consultant and friend since his days at ip.access, and I discuss how attention has shifted toward encryption and privacy, perhaps too much so.
What is happening with wiretaps now that most traffic bypasses traditional carriers and goes through end-to-end encrypted apps?
Does law enforcement have sufficient access to track down and prevent criminal activity?
Is data extraction from end-user devices replacing traditional network-based intercepts?
Will AI and quantum change how lawful intercept works and its effectiveness?
 
If you want to know how the US government uses CALEA, check out the US Courts 2024 Wiretap Report.
Note: Nick mentioned the Mavenir acquisition of ip.access as happening in 2000, but he meant 2020.
 
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[This is a bonus episode sponsored by VIAVI Solutions]
As telco networks grow more complex, CSPs are under increasing pressure to turn AI from experimentation into measurable business value. AIOps has emerged as a critical foundation for autonomous networks, enabling operators to improve customer experience, reduce operational risk, and scale automation safely. 
In this executive webinar, moderated by Monica Paolini, Senza Fili, Claro Colombia shares how it has operationalized AIOps with VIAVI and Iquall to align network operations with real customer impact across live environments.
The speakers share their market perspective on why AIOps is a strategic priority for telcos and present a production deployment showing how AI-driven, closed-loop operations deliver tangible customer experience and efficiency gains today. 
Questions addressed:
Why is AIOps becoming the foundation for autonomous networks? 
How did Claro Colombia turned AI into safe, deterministic, and cost-efficient operations?
How can we use network events to drive measurable customer and business impact, moving from reactive service operations center (SOC) models to AI-driven, closed-loop operations?
How can CSPs pragmatically scale AI operations without operational risk?
What lessons did Claro Colombia learn from a live AIOps deployment as they moved from reactive operations to scalable, AI-enabled autonomy?
 
Speakers:
Fabian Aranda, AIOps Solution Architect at VIAVI Solutions
Carolina Garcés Zapata, Service Operations Center Manager at Claro Colombia
German Perez Trozzi, VP of Products & Marketing at Iquall Networks
Monica Paolini, Principal, Senza Fili
 
The transcript is available here
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I have devoted many Sparring Partners episodes to the AI models that live in data centers. In this one, Yue Wang, Chief Technologist at China Telecom, and I venture into the world of embodied intelligence and the shift it will create in our network infrastructure.
Drawing on Yue’s technical insights into physical AI, we explored how the need for high-capacity, low-latency, high-reliability, deterministic connectivity will shape the networks of the future, specifically with edge computing and network slicing in industrial environments.
We cannot afford to wait until 6G to meet the network and business requirements of physical AI. If 2026 is the year of agentic AI, 2027 is likely to be the year AI gets physical.
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Most Sparring Partners are about using AI to improve the network infrastructure. This one is about how networks enable new AI-driven applications that need connectivity to work.
I talked with Nigel Wallbridge, Director and Founder at Vivent Biosignals, on how biosensors on plants allow AI models to listen to plants to predict disease and stress, and help farmers to increase crop production and sustainability. It is a valuable application for farmers, but they need reliable connectivity to use it. This is an example of how AI is changing network requirements and may create new revenue sources for network operators.
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Being Italian, I thought I should have one of the country-focused podcasts on Italy. But what is something that sets Italy apart? Having spent more time there recently, I quickly came up with the answer: SPID (Sistema Pubblico di Identità Digitale), the Digital ID platform that not only works well and supports many services, but that also most Italians use. Other European countries have digital ID systems too, but except for Estonia, they are somewhat lagging behind. The US and UK don’t have anything quite like this.
I got another Italian, more knowledgeable than me on the topic and a previous guest on Sparring Partners, Dario Betti at MEF, to unpack SPID for the non-Italians out there. We talked about how SPID picked up speed, how it is evolving, what you can do with it, and compared SPID to digital ID systems in other countries. And we took the chance to boast a bit about our country, which does not happen too often.
Unfortunately, we had a few recording glitches, so there are a few brief silences while Dario speaks, but they do not disrupt the flow of the conversation. Sorry!
 
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