Epik Mellon - the QA Cafe Podcast

“My next guest needs to introduction”... James Crawshaw has been a prolific writer, researcher, and consultant for the Telco industry as long as the modern Telco has existed. In this episode, we talk about the history of technology, what changes and what doesn’t, and what the future holds for investors, consumers, and tech entrepreneurs alike.

In this in-person episode at the Broadband Forum Summer 2026 Member Meeting and BASe Tech Summit in Milan, I finally got Madhura Paduvalli on the show to talk about her life as a CPE engineer and volunteering in the standards world. With some special shout-outs to CDRouter and the team at QA Cafe!

In this episode I got to talk with one of our longest and most favorite CDRouter customers, Carl Wuyts of Telenet, who has been working with broadband gateways and Wi-Fi as both a vendor and a service provider for a long time. We talk about struggles with deploying broadband, customer experience, and more! 

In this episode, Ann Olivo from Silicon Labs, who is also the VP of Marketing for Thread Group and Vice Chair of Marketing for Matter at the Connectivity Standards Alliance, have a great conversation about marketing people involved in networking standardization, how important it is for translating technology into value, and why it’s a labor of love.

In this episode, I chat with Jason Thompson of TELUS, one of the major Canadian ISPs, about the customer Internet experience, what ISPs are doing with new tech, and why connecting real people and making their lives better is what broadband networking is all about.

Another person I love to work with that is as passionate about standardization as I am, Cristina Radelscu-Banu and I sit down and talk about the reality of deployed networks vs. bleeding edge, and taking a high-level view of technology. 

I have known so many great people who have not just made a difference in the industry, but a difference in my life, and Gavin Young from Vodafone is no exception. In this episode, we discuss a holistic view of technology, the era of smart CPE and smart networks, and how operators face an exhausting goal of ensuring things “just work” for everyone, all the time.

Listeners know that I love diving into the real stories behind who makes your Wi-Fi and Internet work. I can think of few more interesting stories than Aleksandar Radivojša from Serbia Broadband (now Yettel). In this episode we fly all over the map talking about language, being “in between the hammer and the horseshoe” of CPE quality and customer satisfaction, and how even bees have their own netw...

Fritz! Box, the router with the great name deployed in Europe, always had a great story for me when it came to really owning a product line and the impact it has on end-users. In this episode, I chat with my friend Eric Van Uden of Fritz! (formerly AVM) about how customers view their Internet service, the retail router market, and what we love about being bridges between the worlds of technology a...

While at the Fall 2025 Broadband Forum meeting in Tuscon, I sit down with Jeevithan Muttu, where we dive into the implications of LLMs for coders, for broadband, and for culture. Special thanks to @Viodi for recording!

It’s always rewarding to find someone with as much passion and energy for networking standards as I do. In this episode I chat with Pedro Mouta of the Wireless Broadband Alliance about the human side of standards, how we make the business case, and how Wi-Fi and broadband are really about one thing: the end users’ experience that is in the hands of operators.

A fantastic episode with one of the founding minds behind Broadband, Jason Livingood and I chat about luck, experience, the shifting landscape of broadband speed and content, and the good work of people like the late Dave Taht that has changed the way we treat the “old ideas” of how Internet services should be delivered.

In this episode I sit down with Tim Winters (QA Cafe CTO) and Steve Scapicchio (VP of Global Sales) ahead of our trip in 2 weeks to Paris. We talk about the things we’re excited to see, people we can’t wait to meet, and how QA Cafe loves standards and technology! Heading to Network X or prpl Summit? Come and find us. 

In this episode, I got to chat with Ronan Bracken of Condor Technologies, who is as much if not more passionate about technology marketing as I am. We talk about the world of BSP operational support services (OSS) and how it affects the end-user, plus our beards and the booming tech scene in Ireland.

I’ve wanted to get Craig back on the show since so much has been happening at the Broadband Forum in the last year, and so much more to come. Now is the time to get involved! We talk about the latest challenges facing service providers, the new OMDIA report coming soon, and what the BBF needs to hear from the industry at large. 

Is it possible that Anthony James is the “Most Interesting Person in Networking?” In this episode I got to hear some of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard about troubleshooting network issues: from the jungles of the Philippines to mine shafts deep below the earth and everything in between. And what does it all boil down to? Packets are truth, and if you’re trying to solve problems without them,...

In this episode, I got to sit down with one of the mavericks of consumer network technology, Wouter Cloetens, and talk about his work at the prpl Foundation, the inevitability of open-source and standardized technologies, and how an excitement for nerdiness is what pushes us all to drive further. 

Fresh on the heels of Angacom, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tiffany “Tiff” Groves of the Broadband Forum team to discuss rewarding work, impostor syndrome, and how, perhaps someday, we may no longer need to say the phrase “women in tech.” 

In this episode, I get to sit down with one of my heroes, Gerald Combs, who created and has maintained Wireshark for decades - one of the most critical projects to everything we do today in a connected world. We talk about a passion for problem solving, the magic of open-source, the old days of pre-standardized networking, and how so much of what society relies on is held together by a few very de...

In this episode, I talk with long time friend and colleague Alexandre Martins of Automa Networks in São Paulo, Brazil, about the broadband knowledge gap, the complexity of this little box we call “Wi-Fi Router” and what operators can do to get out of their own way as bandwidth alone isn’t a place to grow.

In this episode, Randy Krull brings me up to speed on the state of television in a world of streaming and cable-cutting. We chat about local channels, licensing, fragmented user experiences, and the future of content distribution. 

In this episode, I sit down with Peter Mackenzie, a Wi-Fi training guru with MQ Training Services, about the excitement of wireless technology, the necessity of community, protocol analysis and magic. 

In our 50th episode, I chat with John Barlow from Consult. Red, who, like many of us, came into the industry because of where their passions took them. He’s started his own podcast called “Simply Connected” and we discuss our work on the smart home, smart CPE, and why our industry is so fun. 

Direct from the 2025 Hong Kong Broadband Forum meeting, Peter and I chat about the global impact of standards, how it relates to the open-source community and prpl Foundation, and how what makes networks go is the people and relationships behind them.

In this episode, I chat with Donovan Smith of Open Network Technical Solutions, who has 20 years of experience helping ISPs deliver successful service, especially Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators in the Caribbean. We talk about what users want, the power of the “quality of experience” view, and what operators can do to be successful.