The Five Nine

In this sponsored episode of The Five Nine, Fierce Networks contributor Daniel Frankel sits down with Hemanth Sampath, VP of Engineering at Qualcomm, to explore how 6G will unlock new user-experiences and operator services. Sampath outlines a shift from app-based smartphone content consumption to AI-agent driven, natural interactions – extending to AR glasses & wearables. This evolution...

Wi-Fi 8 is here—and it's not about speed, but reliability. MediaTek’s James Chen explains how AI and smarter design are reshaping connectivity. Listen now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaking live from the 3GPP plenary meeting in Prague, Juan Montojo, Vice President of Technical Standards at Qualcomm Technologies, shares where mobile networks are headed as 6G development begins. Improving coverage, energy and spectral efficiency, and user experience are at the center of these early-stage efforts - all while reducing the cost to deliver data.  A defining feature of 6G will...

This week we’re taking a look at the big bottleneck that could bring the AI revolution to a screeching halt: power. AI requires a lot of high power chips deployed in a LOT of data centers. But while hyperscalers have plans to build up new data centers to support AI demand, they’ve run into power shortages in key areas. They’re particularly feeling the crunch in the U.S. So, we sa...

This week, we sat down to unpack one of the biggest emerging concepts in the broadband space – the open access network.  Open access, like any broadband network, is no cakewalk and comes with its own share of challenges. But it also presents underrated opportunities for the industry, particularly in the United States where the model is less often used.   Utopia Fiber and Gigap...

Guest host Liz Coyne wrangled an exec from Nokia Bell Labs to talk about the company’s recent mission to the moon. The mission came as Nokia Bell Labs celebrated its 100th anniversary but the landing didn’t go quite as expected.   Nokia’s Thierry Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia, tells Liz all about why the company is aiming for the moon in the...

This week, we delve back into the intersection of AI and networking, and more specifically what enterprises need to know and prepare for as AI moves to the edge. Just how distributed will AI really be? How will enterprises decide what workloads go where? And what should they be thinking about and planning for to make the AI-driven future a reality? We sat down with GTT SVP of Product Engineering t...

The Fierce Network crew made it back safe and sound, for the most part, from Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona. But the show, which is essentially the official start to the year in telecom, gave us a lot to think about. We spent the week digesting what all the announcements from the show mean for the industry and now we're looking forward to what the rest of 2025 has in store for operat...

The hotels are booked, the bags are packed and at the end of this week, the flights will be boarded. But what will we find when we get there? That’s the question we’re going to tackle today and the answers just might surprise you. With me are Fierce Network’s editor-in-chief Liz Coyne, executive editor Monica Alleven, Senior Reporter Dan Jones and our Research guru Mitch Wagner....

This week, we delve into the nitty gritty of one of the biggest turnaround stories in telecom in recent years: that of Frontier Communications.   Frontier recently made headlines when Verizon agreed to pay $20 billion in cash to acquire the company as part of a bid to drastically expand its fiber footprint. That deal is now expected to close in Q1 of 2026. But while it’s flying hig...

This week, we explore the rise of sovereign clouds across the globe.  You’ve probably heard of GDPR by now, or at least data privacy. And while sovereignty is sort of in a similar sphere, it’s more about data direction than privacy.   We sat down with Vultr’s Kevin Cochrane to examine what sovereignty means, how it’s accomplished and the impact AI could have...

This week, we sat down to pull back the curtain on the idea factory chugging along behind the scenes at one of the largest hyperscalers: Google Cloud.  CTO Will Grannis heads up Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO, or OCTO, which is comprised of senior Google technology experts and former enterprise CTOs. Together, this team sifts through the company’s big ideas to figure out what wi...

This week, we’re taking a look at what the future holds for operators when it comes to the mobile core.   The march to the cloud has been a steady but rather slow journey for operators. And nowhere is this more true than for mobile core services. But that could soon change, thanks to a recent deal Alianza struck to acquire Metaswitch from Microsoft.   Here’s what Al...

In this episode of The Five Nine Podcast, host James Careless dives into the future of 5G technology with special guests Matthew Almand, Chief Technology Officer at Texas A&M University System, and Thierry Chau, Vice President of Market Development at CommScope. Texas A&M University System is gearing up for a full-scale 5G transformation across its flagship and regional campuses, and Matth...

This week, we’re taking a look at what the recent U.S. election means for telecom and tech policy in the years ahead.      Donald Trump just won a second term in the White House, but this go around could be very different from the first thanks in part to the entrance of new key characters - like Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy – into the equation.      To sift through the implications of another Trum...

This week, we’re venturing into the thorny territory that is cloud security.   In a newly issued security report, Google Cloud noted that new tools are lowering barriers to entry for malicious actors, and will make it easier for them to launch attacks in the year ahead. The report also noted that something as seemingly small as a compromised identity can have an outsized impact on an enterprise gi...

This week, we’re returning to the intersection of AI and network transport.   We recently spoke with Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson about how AI is impacting the network, demanding ever-larger pipes for data transport and training. That’s, of course, a boon for a company like Lumen, which has now signed partnership deals with cloud companies and AI pioneers Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Google....

This week, we're getting a behind the scenes look at the private networks that power our ports and industrial campuses and keep us connected both underground, in the subway, and inside stadiums. As consumers, we're used to being connected to sprawling cellular networks from the likes of AT& T and Verizon in the U. S., BT, and Deutsche Telekom in Europe. SK Telecom, Telstra, Vodafone, you know,...

This week, we’re turning our attention to automation, and, more specifically, why exactly it hasn’t taken over yet.   Fully autonomous networks are something of a holy grail for telcos and data center operators alike. And yet, progress has been slow at best. As AT&T CTO Jeremy Legg said in June of this year, “We’re a ways away from autonomous networks. But there are points within networks that...

This week we’re going back down the AI rabbit hole, but we’re venturing down a new tunnel to talk about something called data curation.  Though AI is still a developing technology, it’s well enough known at this point that models are only as good as the data they’re trained on. But for enterprises looking to fine tune publicly available models, it can be a challenge to make sure they’re making the...

This week, we’re diving into the wonderful world of artificial intelligence, taking an in-depth look at how to balance risks inherent in the technology with the high expectations generated by a now years-long hype cycle. And we couldn’t have a better guest to explore the topic with.   Christopher Savoie is the co-inventor of something called the adaptive agent oriented software architecture. And w...

Description: This week, we’re putting data centers under the microscope – but not from the perspective you might think. As a B2B news outlet, we normally cover data centers from an insider viewpoint. But with AI helping drive a massive data center expansion effort, we wondered: “how do communities feel about all these big buildings coming to town?” So, we reached out to two local officials to tell...

This week, we sat down with Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson to delve into how AI is changing not just the network, but the culture inside telecom companies. Just a few years ago, you’d have been forgiven for viewing Lumen as something of a company on the outs. Though company executives talked for years about transforming from a traditional telecom to a technology company, Lumen’s strategy was...

While Wi-Fi has become a common expectation of any modern building, it is interesting to see that individuals and businesses alike are increasingly relying on mobile data indoors, where an estimated 70-80% of mobile traffic originates. This is the topic of discussion in this latest episode of The Five Nine Podcast as we’re joined by CommScope experts Upendra Pingle, Senior VP of Intelligent Cellul...

This week Fierce Network’s Linda Hardesty delves into the topic of fiber optic sensing.  When we think of fiber, we often just think of those little cables that connect us to the internet. But it turns out that fiber optic cables can be used for more…much more.  Fiber optic sensing is basically the idea that fiber optic cables can sense vibrations in their vicinity and that can have several intere...