Senza Fili Sparring Partners

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 efficien...

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, fina...

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 redu...

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...

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 t...

[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, moderate...

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, deter...

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 s...

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...

Money alone does not drive innovation. You need people with passion, creativity, and talent to work together. You need collaboration. And to foster it. In this Sparring Partners, I talked with Dimitra Simeonidou , Director of the Smart Internet Lab at the University of Bristol, and Chief Scientific Advisor at the European Commission, about her work, most recently with JOINER  (Joint Open Infrastru...

My plan was to have a podcast on a 5G private network at the Rosslare Europort in Ireland. But this is not what this podcast is about. What our guest, Carl Coates , ICT Business Relationship Manager, at Irish Rail (the owner of the port), is doing at Rosslare is much broader, more ambitious and inspiring. It is more than a 5G mobile private network: it is a connectivity and sustainability project...

We are ready to move beyond the traditional approach that treats antennas as passive, set-and-forget transducers. Until now, this lack of visibility has left operators unable to fine-tune or optimize the radiation layer, especially in real time. Digital antennas provide the visibility and control necessary to make the antenna an integral part of a closed-loop, AI-driven RAN. In this Sparring Partn...

What should we keep in the cloud and in the edge? Computationally intensive functionality will remain in the cloud, but more is shifting to the edge, driven by the higher efficiency of edge solutions and the need to keep more data and processing locally. In this Sparring Partners, I talked to Manish Singh , Telecom Systems Business at Dell, about his perspective and vision for the edge, as the rol...

We have done it again! At the end of MWC, Sean Kinney Editor-in-Chief at RCR Wireless and I sat down to compare notes on what we had heard and seen at MWC, skipping announcements and keynotes, and reflecting on what we had seen and heard out of the limelight. AI moving from demos into ops, the promise and pain of AI‑RAN, the evolution of open RAN, 6G, sensing, drones, and the industry's more reali...

Thousands of protesters were killed in Iran, and the world's attention moved on within days. It is a massive ethical failure, but hardly an isolated example of how social media is driving a culture of polarization, outrage, and misinformation. AI and pervasive connectivity amplify these trends, challenging the very survival of democracy, cohesion, and tolerance. Siavash Alamouti , Cofounder at mim...

In this second Sparring Partners with Philippe Ensarguet , VP Software Engineering and Orange Fellow at Orange, we talked about how human can remain relevant when AI is much better than us at crunching data, finding answers and running networks. Networks will change, but we have to change too. By 2030, human experts will no longer be knowledge providers and sense makers. They will have to learn to...

India is one of the most fascinating wireless markets and not only because of its size and enthusiastic uptake of wireless connectivity to run most daily activities. India defies most of our deepest ingrained assumptions about how wireless technology should be deployed and marketed, and how to profit from it. It turns out that despite extremely low ARPUs, initially fueled by aggressive competition...

The latest Sparring Partners delves into the meanders of EU regulation and its ambitious goal to unify telecommunications across the 27 member states with the recent the European Commission’s Digital Networks Act (DNA). Richard Haas , Spectrum Policy Consultant at LS Telcom UK, graciously and patiently explains the complexity of the DNA so that even I could understand it. Not a small feat. Our dis...

Canada faces massive geographical challenges. As the second-largest country on Earth, with 80% of the population living along the southern border, operators must navigate a unique mix of dense urban centers and vast, rugged rural areas. How can Canadian telcos provide top-tier service without breaking the bank? Ibrahim Gedeon , CTO Emeritus at TELUS and Executive Director at Guardian Safety Net ta...

Is Agentic AI the latest hype or a fundamental shift in how we run telco networks? Philippe Ensarguet , VP Software Engineering, Orange Fellow, Orange is a visionary believer of a rare lineage: he spent decades running large-scale mobile networks and knows what needs to be done and what can be done, but also has the technological insight into what AI and agentic AI can (and cannot) deliver. In thi...

Backhaul and fronthaul (or xhaul) don’t get the attention they deserve. It is the RAN that gets most of the limelight, even though insufficient xhaul capacity is a deadly bottleneck. As we move to 5GSA, DU/CU splits and virtual RAN, we have more xhaul choices, but also we need to manage the xhaul more effectively to give the RAN the capacity and latency it now needs. It was a pleasure to dissect t...

The evolution of wireless networks from MIMO to M-MIMO and, finally, to GIGA MIMO is a fascinating story that tracks how a concept that initially few people believed could become a commercial reality has become a crucial technology for increasing the efficiency, performance, and availability of connectivity in cellular and Wi-Fi networks. In this Sparring Partners with Zhang Jiong, RAN Marketing D...

What do we need 6G for? In this conversation with Colby Harper , Founder and CEO at Pathfinder Wireless, we skip the argument over whether we need 6G to fix or improve on 5G, which is so boringly pervasive these days. Instead, we talk about how 6G can be a horizontal enabler for sharing connectivity across air interfaces and modalities, and for expanding connectivity options across verticals. It h...

Technology moves fast, but marketing moves fast too, and possibly at a faster pace. AI, social media, and nonstop work demands have created an audience that is overwhelmed, distracted, and quick to tune out. How can we get our message across without compromising credibility? How do we keep our content relevant and engaging while avoiding flooding our channels with easy-to-generate content? Not eas...

In the second Sparring Partners on what we can learn from a country, I spoke with Philip Marnick, General Director at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority , about Bahrain. It is a small country, but with much to learn from. It is at the forefront of innovation, but without price hikes. In Bahrain, you get top connectivity at affordable prices. What is the secret sauce to doing that? More on...