Telco in 20

In the first half of 2026, telcos spent $65 billion on mergers: Charter and Cox, Vodafone and Three, Fastweb and Vodafone Italy. Every one of those deals leaves somebody with two of everything and years of work to untangle it all. So what do you do with hundreds of systems?
I sat down with Max Gasparroni, chief technology and security officer at Fastweb + Vodafone. He inherited up to 450 systems to rationalize and tens of thousands of nodes in the mobile core, and he’s rolling out AI at the same time. He’s more than halfway through and ahead of plan.
Listen now to hear:
How Max is approaching hundreds of overlapping systems [04:30];
Why AI is an “existential journey” for the team [06:18];
How Max is targeting level-four automation while the integration is still underway [08:05]; and
Why Max wants less data, not more [10:36].
Links and Resources:

Read the full announcement of the Fastweb + Vodafone deal, which includes 20M+ mobile lines, 5.6M fixed lines, and ~€600 million in annual synergies.
Explore how Charter closed its $34.5 billion merger with Cox, creating a cable giant that serves 37 million customers across 45 states.
Check out the details of the Vodafone and Three £15 billion deal, which formed the UK’s largest mobile operator at around 27 million users.
Get TelecomTV’s take on why AI is in Fastweb + Vodafone’s “DNA”—a closer look at the Digital Network and AI team Max stood up to drive his 20+ use cases.
Learn what has to happen to reduce hands-on network intervention in this TelecomTV panel on fully autonomous networks. Max makes the same case he brings to this episode about incremental automation and clean data foundations.
Go deeper on the threat Max raises in his TelecomTV interview on AI, legacy tech, and telco security—cyberattacks powered by frontier AI models.
Staring down two of everything after a merger? The Totogi Ontology maps both stacks into one model you own—so the knowledge of how your telco actually works lives inside your company, not with third-party SIs.
Picture a Formula One car on a sail. That’s how Max describes the boats of Luna Rossa, Italy’s America’s Cup team. The team used to collect training telemetry over Wi-Fi from a support boat, with a crew member strapped in and holding the access point as it bounced over the waves. Fastweb replaced it with a private 5G network run from shore, and then Luna Rossa won the regatta in Sardinia!
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
Guest bio:
Max Gasparroni is chief technology and security officer of Fastweb + Vodafone and a member of the Executive Committee. He has over 25 years of experience in the Telco and IT sector. He has served as vice president at Liberty Global UK, where he led the development of 5G mobile services and cloud solutions. Prior to that, he built his career at Vodafone UK and Ireland, holding increasingly senior roles over two decades, eventually becoming chief technology officer. In this role, he was responsible for defining strategies for infrastructure deployment, 4G standard development, and business technology solutions across eight European markets. He began his career at Cefriel in Milan before moving to the UK in 1999 to work at Motorola on mobile network development.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson

I’ve been a guest on the Telecoms​.com podcast three times, and the dynamic never changes: hosts Scott Bicheno and Iain Morris see doom, I see upside. This year, Scott admitted he’s bored of his own dystopia and wanted someone to argue the other side. So he brought me in to talk AI.
We get into why one number can mean two completely different things inside the same telco, why the SaaSpocalypse is real and Salesforce should be nervous, and why I think the Totogi Ontology is the fix for telco’s AI problem. Three rounds in, we still don’t agree on everything, and that’s what makes it so fun!
Listen now to hear:
Why telcos shouldn’t wait to clean their data before starting with AI [16:08];
How Scott could vibe-code his way off Salesforce [26:03];
What changes with 6G—the first G with AI in the room [43:53]; and
How the Totogi Ontology keeps AI from running amok [1:02:24].
Links and Resources:
Listen to the full two-hour-plus version of our conversation on the Telecoms​.com podcast. The complete version has every tangent, from 6G to rogue AI to bourbon.
Watch my keynote from the AI-Native Telco Summit on why 6G is the first G you can decide with revenue in view, and how one Bolivian operator already sees the profit on every tower.
Read my latest blogs on the data layer and the 6G decision:“The first G with AI in the room” on why “build vs. buy” is the wrong question.
“I wrote this with AI” on why “AI-ready” means nothing until you know where your data lives and whether your agents can actually consume it.
“The Big O of AI” on why the real bottleneck to AI-native telco is your org model, not your tech stack.

Explore TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Accelerator (ANTA), the community built to push operators from AI pilots to deployments that scale, and the AI-Native Telco Index, the first evidence-based read on how 56 operator groups are actually doing AI.
Dig into the OpenAI statement Scott kept quoting—its account of “the Hugging Face incident,” where internal models slipped their controls during a July 2026 safety test.
Brush up on Huang’s Law, the idea that AI chips leap ahead faster than the old Moore’s Law clock—the reason I keep warning operators that GPUs have roughly 18-month shelf lives, not the five years they’re used to.
Ever been handed an annual list of which towers are profitable, on a consultant’s stale slide? Learn more about how the Totogi Ontology builds a P&L for every cell.
The Totogi Ontology is already live at VIVA Bolivia, the operator I couldn’t yet name during this interview. Read how it’s deciding network investment by revenue, not capacity.
Meet the women behind NVIDIA’s chip names—Grace Hopper, credited with popularizing the computer “bug,” and astronomer Vera Rubin—in this Business Insider piece.
See the physical-AI moment everyone’s chasing: the imploding, kickboxing stars of China’s Humanoid Robot Olympics and the Tesla Optimus that I’m ready to move into my house and name C-3PO.
Raise a glass to the Pappy Van Winkle I brought along and to the legend behind it. In 2013, someone stole more than 200 bottles from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, a caper the press dubbed “Pappygate.” Investigators estimated its black market value was worth $100,000. The ringleader received a 15-year prison sentence but walked out after only 30 days. The sensational theft became the focus of international headlines and the subject of Netflix’s true-crime docuseries, Heist.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
On the podcast:
The Telecoms​.com Podcast is a weekly show hosted by industry experts Scott Bicheno and Iain Morris. The format centers on irreverent and engaging discussions about current trends, controversies, and major news in the global telecommunications sector, often featuring special guests from telecom operators, vendors, and analysts.
As the editorial director of Telecoms​.com, Scott Bicheno has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over 20 years. Prior to Telecoms​.com, Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics.
Iain Morris is the international editor at Light Reading. Prior to boosting Light Reading’s UK-based editorial team numbers, he was a successful freelance writer and editor covering the telecom sector. He was previously the lead telecom analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson

Every ten years, telcos have to decide whether to move to the next G. The business case has always been based on usage, capacity, and a revenue forecast. That’s because the one number that should drive the decision—what each cell actually earns—has been out of reach… until now.
In this special What’s Up with Totogi episode, I share the keynote I delivered at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf. In it, I cover how AI finally makes that number visible, how one operator in Bolivia is using the Totogi Ontology to rank every site by the profit it earns, and how AI is changing the way telcos can make the 6G call.
Listen now to hear:
Why 6G will be decided differently than every G before it [02:53];
The two numbers every tower has—and why your systems show you only ONE [03:23];
Where telco’s most sophisticated capital decision is being made right now [04:18]; and
Why Telstra, Swisscom, and Verizon are each building the same thing—separately [08:23].
Links and Resources:
Watch the video version of my talk.
Read my blog, The first G with AI in the room, which reinforces the case I make here.
Listen to my conversation with Mark Düsener, Swisscom’s chief technology and information officer, who I mentioned on stage. Savvy operators are already building telco-wide semantic consistency to replace their legacy estate.
Hear my conversation with Mark Sanders, Telstra’s chief architect and head of autonomous networks and AI enablement, who argues that operators need a shared language: an ontology of how a telco actually works.
Tune into my episode with Stefan Pongratz, vice president of RAN and telecom CapEx research at Dell’Oro Group, for the hard numbers under the biggest capital decision this industry makes.
Dig into three Dell’Oro Group reports (paywalled) about on where telco CapEx goes from here:Telecom Capex Report (March 2026)
6G Advanced Research Report (October 2025)
Telecom Capex Report (September 2025)

Explore TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks framework and its "road toward Level 4," the standards the Totogi Ontology is built on. The map can rebuild itself every night against a moving target instead of dying like every data-dictionary project before it.
Study the Verizon playbook on building an AI context platform at enterprise scale, How to Build an AI Context Platform at Enterprise Scale (Verizon), published through Gartner. Gartner forecasts up to 80% more accurate agents at up to 60% lower cost.
Wondering which of your sites actually earn their next-G upgrade? See how the Totogi Ontology builds a live P&L for every cell and ranks them by the profit each one makes, so you invest by revenue instead of raw traffic.
Catch me with VIVA Bolivia CEO Ryan Alvarez at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6, where we get concrete about the next-G upgrade calls that VIVA is weighing right now.
Salar de Uyuni. You’ve seen it before. It’s the blinding white salt flat where Kylo Ren squares off against Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Red dust kicks up under Kylo’s boots, but never under Luke’s, because Luke isn’t really there. That salt flat is in Bolivia: the largest on Earth, and home to the operator in this talk. Don’t be Kylo Ren, swinging at a ghost. Use AI to see what’s actually there: the profit on every tower.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews
This week’s guest:
Danielle Rios (DR) is the founder and CEO of TelcoDR and Totogi, and host of the Telco in 20 podcast.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson

Every telco has hundreds of AI use cases, dozens of pilots, thousands of agents. So why can’t they get to production at scale?
I sat down with Kevin Shatzkamer, corporate vice president of the Telco and Media Engineering Studio at Microsoft Frontier Company, the hyperscaler’s new operating unit. His team embeds forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) at enterprise customers to build and run AI at scale.
Listen now to hear:
Where AI actually breaks inside a telco [05:13];
What happens when Frontier engineers embed at an operator [08:38];
The real bottleneck for running AI at scale [09:30]; and
What telcos bring to the table that Microsoft can’t manufacture [14:09].
Links and Resources:
Read the announcement of Microsoft Frontier Company—the hyperscaler’s $2.5B, 6,000-engineer bet on embedding teams inside enterprise customers.
Learn about Frontier’s outcomes-first model, where success is measured by the customer’s business result rather than the product shipped.
Check out Kevin’s LinkedIn post about taking the Telco and Media lead position for Frontier Company.
Want to go from idea to production in days instead of months? This is how Totogi builds: FDEs and twice-weekly capability sprints, feedback to shipped code by Thursday.
Kevin mentions John Chambers, the former Cisco CEO who said, “the Internet will change the way we work, live, learn, and play.” Read his thoughts on AI’s impact, including moving five times faster than the internet, with bumpy jobs transitions along the way.
Catch me with VIVA Bolivia CEO Ryan Alvarez at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6, where we make the fast-cadence thesis concrete. Ryan runs every cell site as its own P&L on the Totogi Ontology. We’ll walk through the next-G upgrade calls VIVA is weighing right now.
My advice to kids going to college in the Age of AI? Become an expert! Just like Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel-san karate. Wax on, wax off.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
Kevin Shatzkamer is a corporate vice president of engineering at Microsoft Frontier Company, leading the Telco and Media industry verticals and customer experience transformation across industries. With more than 20 years of experience driving AI, digital transformation, and technology innovation, he partners with customers to design and scale enterprise AI solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes. Prior to Microsoft Frontier Company, he led Strategy and Operations for Microsoft’s Customer Experience & Success organization. Kevin is the author of two technology books, holds more than 50 patents, and earned degrees from the University of Florida, MIT, and Indiana University.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson

To G, or not to G. That is the question every telco faces, and the 6G noise is getting louder. So how does that decision actually get made?

Stefan Pongratz, vice president of RAN and telecom CapEx research at Dell’Oro Group, has watched operators wrestle with it through 16 years and three G cycles. He knows what it really costs, what’s on the boardroom chart, and why waiting has a price of its own. He also knows what makes this cycle different, and why the operators dimensioning their networks for humans might be planning for the wrong customer.

Listen now to hear:

Why launching a new G is expensive—and not launching is, too [04:40];

What’s on the boardroom chart when operators greenlight a new G [07:31];

Why being second is safe—until it suddenly isn’t [10:47]; and

What happens when the network’s biggest users don’t sleep [13:11].

Links and Resources:

Learn more about the report that’s behind the numbers Stefan shares—Global Telecom Capex to Normalize, Not Disappear, According to Dell’Oro Group. CapEx is past its peak but not falling off a cliff, with capital intensity easing toward 15% by 2029.

Explore TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks framework, the “road toward Level 4.” Stefan name-checks it when he describes operators’ long quest to do more with less.

Curious which of your sites actually earn their next-G upgrade? See how the Totogi Ontology builds a live P&L for every cell site and ranks them by the profit each one brings, so you can decide where to invest by revenue instead of raw traffic.

Book your spot at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum, September 8 and 9 in Düsseldorf, where I’m giving a talk and throwing another legendary Totogi party. Want an invite? Stop by our demo pod, or DM me on LinkedIn or X at @TelcoDR for more information.

Catch me with VIVA Bolivia CEO Ryan Alvarez at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6, where we’ll have a fireside chat about the exact question Stefan keeps circling: which sites should you NOT upgrade? Alvarez brings the real next-G decision that VIVA is weighing right now.

Watch two pickleball obsessives in their natural habitat. Stefan took gold in the men’s open at the NVZ NorCal Summer Cup and I scored with the Austin Ballers, taking top prize at the MiLP DUPR16 50+ Nationals. I hope to bump into Stefan on the pickleball court someday soon!

Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.

You can find the episode transcript here.

Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.

Follow DR:

Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!

Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.

Follow DR on X @TelcoDR

The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!

This week’s guest:

Stefan Pongratz joined Dell’Oro Group in 2010 and leads the firm’s Mobile RAN market research programs. At the firm, Mr. Pongratz has expanded RAN research and authored multiple Advanced Research Reports to ensure the program evolves to address new RAN technologies and opportunities, including 5G, 6G, AI RAN, Open RAN, private wireless, Massive MIMO, mmWave, small cells, and CBRS. Before joining Dell’Oro Group, Mr. Pongratz spent 10 years at Anritsu Company.

Podcast Credits:

Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR

Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media

Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing

Audio Editor: Andrew Condell

Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery

Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio

Music: Dyami Wilson