CAN TELCOS INNOVATE? - CHRIS LEWIS  & ROB JONES 

CRA: [00:00:00] Chris and Rob, welcome to the TechBurst Talks podcast. Chris: Charles, it's great to be back with you and especially to be with Rob as well. Rob: Fantastic. Thanks for having us, Charles. Great to see you again, Chris, and great to be here for this international episode. CRA: It's funny, we could have actually done this years ago in Chiswick because we were all living within a few blocks of each other, but now I'm sitting in Singapore. Chris is in Chiswick and where are you now? I'm in Canada right now, Western Canada. Western Canada. So yes, you're enjoying the heat there. I got the heat here. And then Chris has a little bit of sunshine in London, which is a nice change. Chris: Beautiful. CRA: So what we're going to talk about today is telco and find out what is the latest trends? How are things going? Is the industry actually moving forward? But why don't we start off, Chris, why don't you start off with this? Like what are the top trends, the most significant ones you see right now impacting the global telecoms industry? Chris: Well, as a, as an analyst looking at the global telecom market, [00:01:00] I, I'm always trying to be how the balance of demand and supply looks. I think in the past we've had a massive over supply or over emphasis on the supply and not enough focus on the demand and what people actually do with the services that we sell. So in that sense, I think we are getting closer to an equilibrium where the broadband provided both through fixed networks and mobile and with a little bit of satellite throwing in for good measure. actually addresses the vast majority of needs. And what we do, what we see is that the regulatory environment is, is shaping the way different, different country markets are in particular, in how they allow price levels to fluctuate, uh, or whether they just allow competition to, to drive down. So the key, the key trend is that demand has never been greater. We want to connect ourselves more regularly. Obviously we're individually on the go, households, office environments. We want to connect all those things that we've talked about in IOT But actually the way that we drive the economics of the industry, we haven't been able to [00:02:00] command a higher price for those things because supply is so high. So we do face an issue in industry where we fundamentally have to reduce the cost of delivering all of those connections while still maintaining, if not increasing the quality of the connection in order to just to keep the customers happy. And by the way, the customers, of course, are not just You know, us as individuals, and us, and us as businesses. But there's a whole channel structure behind it, which telecoms used to be this lovely self contained industry that dictated the rules of the game and told you how much it was going to cost you to do it. Increasingly today, and I'm sure we'll come onto this a lot more later, it's really about telco finding its position in that broader ecosystem and finding its role in there, and not dictating and dominating as it thought it would do in the past. CRA: Very good. Rob, do you have some thoughts on this as well? Rob: Yeah, I'd like to build on that a little bit. And I think Chris made some really good points about how the industry is evolving. And I think it does that, you know, supply demand curve needs to [00:03:00] shift. And I think Everyone agrees it needs to, uh, it needs to be more customer centric. It needs to be more revenue driven as well as, you know, managing the cost side. I think there's been a lot of things that are, have been happening to help manage the cost side, use of cloud virtualization. Things like that. But, uh, as we've gotten into a lot of the spend and the supply build up all around things like 5G, it's been a lot of, uh, as it has been in this industry in many cases, build it and they will come, right? So I think we, we need to have this shift that becomes more customer centric. I think it's starting to happen. I think it's also a recognition that there needs to be more focus on enterprise because consumer is not where, uh, the massive growth will potentially come from. Uh, and I think, you know, couldn't talk about trends without mentioning AI. And I know AI is overhyped over buzz. We'll dive into that a lot. I'm sure during this, uh, this session, uh, but I do think it has a lot of potential, uh, for [00:04:00] transforming the industry. Uh, maybe not in some of the more sexy use cases that everyone likes to talk about, you know, but even in smaller and really, you know, really important use cases like fraud management, um, and, uh, that sort of consumer protection things, AI is quite, quite important. Um, and Chris also mentioned that, you know, satellites coming into this. It's, there's a word in the industry we've used a lot for probably decades, which is convergence. And I think we're also now seeing that convergence on the bearer types, on the network types between IT and telecoms. Uh, everything is over a broadband connection, and we're also seeing conversions of services, uh, that, you know, there aren't telco services versus broadband services versus other services. It's also the coming together and being delivered over these conversion networks that we're having. So very interesting times, lots of things happening to grow and new opportunities. Um, but I think there's a lot of things in the industry that we need to [00:05:00] be honest about and be better at addressing, uh, to take advantage of some of those new trends. CRA: I want to go back to what Chris mentioned there about the supply and demand. And like what I've been looking at a lot is data and like the regs that it's like, it's plummeting, the prices are plummeting, no matter you look at it from the consumer rates or what you're seeing for enterprise or even IOT and even Leo set connectivity is coming down quite a bit as well. Um, I just, let's see, I just switched packages recently and I was paying 80 Singapore dollars a month to have 5 gig. I now have, I pay 15 dollars a month and I've got 150 gig. And I missed it by a week, so they increased it to 250, but like I'm never going to use more than a few anyway. But it's like, it's just suddenly like the, the rates are just plummeting on that. So that I think is an interesting trend. And yet, last week I just saw an announcement from Telstra. They're actually increasing their mobile rates. Um, but they just work at this like a very different environment down there where Australia has always been one of the most expensive ones. So what are you seeing on the pricing in Europe? I mean, is it, are they [00:06:00] still coming down? Is data pricing coming down and making it more affordable? But if they're doing that, where are the operators going to make the money to actually pay for all those investments they had in 5G? Chris: Well, that, that's part of the problem for the industry, isn't it? That, and I call it, it is over supply. No, we, we, the fact of the matter is under the, under the monopoly regime, 40 plus years ago, you know, you could charge whatever you liked. As we move into a more competitive environment and Europe is the most competitive, uh, as you know, probably India might be the most competitive, but in terms of what we pay for it, yeah, prices will keep coming down because, you know, if, if a telco puts his prices up. You know, the, the ability to move to a, to a very similar service, you know, at a, at a lower price is there because people are looking for market share. So what happened in quite a few places was that people had a, a price mechanism worked out with the regulator where it was inflation plus a certain amount. And so when inflation was high a couple of years ago, then they've whacked the prices up. And I think that that's part of, [00:07:00] part of Telstra's view as well is, you know, they need to increase prices in order to, in order to get the funding in to put all that capital investment that Rob was talking about. earlier. Now, the problem then is that people that will, it will make people move and migrate to churn as we call it in the mobile industry. Although of course, what most telcos play on is the fact that the inertia is quite significant. People don't really want to change. You know, the interaction that the telcos have with their customers are relatively infrequent and therefore we're not making a purchase by purchase choice like we are when we buy something from Amazon or one of the online services. So it's sort of a background purchase that we deal with every now and again. But, but fundamentally in Europe, because of European regulation, we have too many players chasing a pretty static market. You know, the market is not growing. And to Rob's point earlier. 70 percent roughly is consumer, 20 percent business and 10 percent other for the industry. So if that consumer bit shrinks any with it by any [00:08:00] significant proportion, to make up for that by selling business services in the enterprise market is a real challenge because margins on business services used to be much higher, but now they're, they're getting squeezed because of other players being able to offer those services, so. I often picture it as a, as a pie chart with, um, and you know, the French call it a camembert, Charles, you're, you're an educated man that they call it a camembert when they, when they have the little pie and often, often picture it with little mice around the edge, nibbling away at the pie, because all the people that Rob mentioned, the hyperscale is the device guys, the software players, they're all providing services, which nibble away because the core of the market is fundamentally broadband and the expensive services we used to have are really becoming less and less. Relevant in the, in the B, in the B2C and B2B market. They are very relevant in the B two, B2C market, that middle, that middle ground, that sort of emerging environment. But yeah, pressures are on and you know, north America very much, they've [00:09:00] managed to maintain very high apus or relatively high apus. Um, because actually despite all the competition, they're pretty much, the US has got three, three major players, you know, and they, they could, people just pay higher prices. Uh, Japan's still pretty high. Asia's generally pretty low. And obviously India, the fact that India can survive on a couple of dollar ARPU. Uh, but they're trying to push it up, by the way. So people like Jio are desperately trying to push their ARPU up and get more out of people. CRA: They're trying, but that's some of the challenges they face. I think this is a good time to segue into that. So like, in this competitive environment, where there is this mismatch between supply and demand, there's just too much supply. How are they going to get over this? Like, what are the biggest challenges facing these telecom operators today? Rob, what do you think? Rob: Yeah, so it's a very good question, and I think there's, there's a couple of approaches to it. One is the classic approach, which is a little bit of arbitrage and a little bit of Smoke and Mirrors, a bit of a shell game in your tariff package about, you know, [00:10:00] what do you get for minutes, texts and data? And as you said earlier, Charles, like, oh, yeah, let's give you a thousand gigabytes of data knowing that you're not going to use it. So it's basically, you know, the standard Smoke and Mirrors game, or it's. It's moving things around and charging you more on roaming or charging for add ons. And this is It's really interesting perspective for me because I currently have three different tariff packages, one in Asia, one in North America and one in Europe. So I can see how they, you know, they do some of these things differently. Um, I, you know, Chris mentioned the, the price is still quite high in North America, uh, my UK SIM, which has roaming included on it, it's actually cheaper to use my roaming data, my SIM per gigabyte than it is to have a local package in North America. It's ridiculous, right? Uh, and some of that's driven out of the competition that, uh, Chris mentioned on the roaming side, the regulatory environment in Europe. Um, and then, you know, there's also things like drives me [00:11:00] crazy in, in, uh, in Asia, right, where you, you have to pay for caller ID and voicemail and every, so it starts at a low base package. And then all these little add ons that they charge and charge and charge for what really aren't high value services. So that's that traditional piece and roaming look since COVID, Um, roaming has gone backwards as a market, right? It's become more expensive. There's a lot of people that have put up tariffs, um, and they're trying to claw back money. That's, that's just the industry spinning its wheels, doing its cycles. But then, you know, Chris mentioned geo and geo, I think is a good example of looking at, well, how do we actually build new revenue streams? How do we build, you know, some sticky value with customers around? Uh, and I think from a consumer point of view, It's things like loyalty is things like payments. It's e commerce it's building an ecosystem and building more value around it. And this is something that the industry has talked about for decades and it's been very bad. Um, but I think that's how, you know, on the [00:12:00] consumer side to generate a true value. And then I think on the enterprise side, again, it's going beyond connectivity. But it's slightly different piece on that, which is, you know, solving operational problems within an enterprise. So you talk about I. O. T. You talk about industry. You said it's it's 5. 0. I don't know who chooses when it goes from 4. 0 to 5. 0 or whether there is an industry 4. 1 or 2. Anyway, um, as you go through that and transforming industry, Uh, I do think there's a lot of opportunities to monetize, but again, it's, it's getting out of that traditional connectivity provider and just shuffling around what you get in your connectivity pack. Chris: But, but, but there's also an issue here, isn't there with that the, the connectivity used to be a service you brought on its own, and it was always, there was scarcity of supply and therefore prices went up. There is no scarcity of supply now, but also more importantly, connectivity is part of a whole range of other things that [00:13:00] we use as consumers. Or as businesses and if you go back to your comment rob about the the hyperscalers and the cloud guys and all those people You know at any point within an enterprise environment and arguably within the consumer environment as well You need a combination of connectivity analytics security storage compute applications devices all these things which Can be managed by the telco But can equally, since they're digital building blocks, can be managed by anyone else in the ecosystem. And the other thing which I think people are not often conscious of is, you know, Apple has built massive ecosystem of its own, which commands and controls a lot of payment, a lot of activity, a lot of service consumption. Salesforce has done the same, Cisco has done the same, right? So I think there are many other players who are building up capabilities in all areas, That it will be, it's quite difficult for Telco to, to [00:14:00] adjust its position and its culture and its mentality to be able to address all those, those issues. CRA: But are they able to really differentiate against them? Because I mean, if you're looking at those big hyperscalers, those big ICT brands, how are the Telcos really going to compete? Because where they're really good is in the connectivity, and that's a revenue stream that's not going to be growing unless you just add that much more connectivity. Um, but you're not, your rates aren't going to be going up. Chris: And that's local, Charles, right? That's, that's a local, the connectivity is a local issue, because we don't really build the global networks the way we used to. Um, but, but all of the IT stuff is from a global industry, where they get massive, much greater economies of scale. And that, that's part of the fundamental equation for the telecom industry, is how do we, how do we make enough money to keep feeding this beast, which is demanding more and more bandwidth, because we're consuming more bandwidth, because you've just been off a 250 gig, which you don't need. You know, so I think there's some real fundamental errors in the way we position the services. So, to Rob's point earlier, [00:15:00] if you're creating value for me as a customer, then that needs to be around supporting my business, supporting my lifestyle. I don't need to be given 250 gig because I, like you, I'm probably using 5 gig a month. So I, I think there's a, we probably do face a bit of an adjustment in terms of the way services are packaged and sold to us and, and personalize and customize around our requirements. And that, that's what we've not been very good at. We've, we've basically stacked them high and sold them not so cheap, but we've stacked them high and sold them in the past. CRA: But the telcos have tried to do this. They've been going on this path for the last 15 years. I mean, when I was at Vodafone, you know, we had 600 people in professional services as a mobile SI, basically adding different types of things on. Uh, I mean, then Vodafone out and acquired cable and wireless, everyone's been branching out to try and build in that business, but they've made a bit out of it, but none of them have been as successful probably as they would have liked to have been in it. Um, I mean, are you seeing anyone out there who's really doing it right today?[00:16:00] Chris: Go on Rob, you're not spoken for a while. CRA: Yeah, sure. Chris: So, so look, I think, uh, Rob: yeah, Chris, you just have the easy questions. I'll take the tough ones. Okay. Yeah. So look, I think, you know, what Chris is a really good point, right? Because when you look at what's happening in the industry, like the, the, the service used to be the connectivity and the broadband and what would, you know, the network connectivity, that's no longer the service. It's just an enabler. Right. And I, I, I don't know, do I, do I get kicked off the podcast if I use the dumb bit pipe thing that everyone tries to avoid talking about? I mean, in some ways that's kind of what's happened. So, um, but there are people doing, uh, you know, and it is possible, I think, to move up in that value chain, right? And so Chris mentioned, you know, apples, the Googles, the hyperscalers, there's lots of people that are [00:17:00] building an ecosystem that are tying it in with more value added services, software. Um, so it's not like it's an impossible feat, right? So I don't think that the industry has been particularly great at it, but what we also see Especially when you come to, you know, IOT and the industrial side of it, I know this is an area that you guys both know very, very well. Um, a lot of companies that are very successful in that, um, are people that spin out from the big operators, right? So people, you mentioned Gerhard earlier and then guys at Caliper, you know, guys at Wireless Logic or Core Wireless. Some of these guys are guys that come from the big operators. And they actually take the enabling factor, the connectivity, uh, they bundle that together with some technology enablers like multi MZ and that sort of capability. Um, and they provide connectivity, but not just connectivity. They solve problems, whether it's, you know, uh, water leak detection or it's fleet [00:18:00] management. Or it's supply chain management. I mean, so they, again, it's about going up the value chain and bundling that. So there are examples, as Chris mentioned in, in, in big tech, there's are examples in telco, but what, what I think we've seen more of is more of that innovation coming out of telco into smaller companies. Because I think we have a challenge in the big telcos moving away from the traditional models. And so it's faster to do it in smaller companies. And we're seeing some innovation, but I think there's much more to go, particularly as 5G comes in. And AI comes into that whole industrial environment. CRA: Okay, well, what I would say about that, I think the comment about telcos, like people leaving telcos and doing innovative things, is an interesting concept, because I think sometimes when you're in that telco, it can, it can be tough. I've worked for three of the biggest ones in the world, and it's bureaucratic, it's slow, so then the idea is you go somewhere that's more small, nimble, and agile, and you can actually develop and deploy and have impact quickly. [00:19:00] Um, but also what it means is when you're in a telco, you're limited to pushing your connectivity. And that means you can't always give the best solution to the customer. And this goes back to the whole debate before when we had LoRa, Sigfox, uh, you know, and NB IoT. And it was like, mine's better than yours. Well, actually, depending on the use case, each one could be appropriate. But because I'm a telco, I can only push this. Whereas I used to tell Telstra, you know, that I was doing one of their sales kickoffs. And I got asked a question about, well, what would you do if you were us? And I'm like, I would launch Laura tomorrow. You don't have to do anything. You've already got your professional services team that helps you compete against all those other players and you can do it if the customer needs it. And if they don't, it's no big deal. I mean, you can just deliver this stuff as required. But it basically gets you into more bids instead of trying to talk people out of what they really want to use. So I think, like, the telcos, like, it's, it's They've faced this pressure from, you know, the competitors like Lora when it came in, and then Sigfox for a while. I'm not sure what's going on with them anymore. But now they have Satellite coming in. [00:20:00] And Satellite's creeping into the consumer space and doing very well. I mean, I've just I was down in South America for a few months. Everywhere there is using it. Gerhard, who you just mentioned, I was on a call with him last week, and he was literally doing it off of Starlink because the Tulstra coverage where he lives is I guess that's the proper word for it. That's a scientific term. I think it's crap. Um, so that's coming in now when that actually goes into the enterprise side as well, like it's very interesting. So, I mean, I just think that the telcos are really, they're facing a lot of different challenges from a lot of different sides right now. Chris: It's also this issue, which has been around for years and years and years. We focus in telecoms about, Oh, it's got to be five nights. It's got to be the best. It's got to be the latest. Actually. Fit for purpose was always what we, when I was at Logica, that was the, was the software fit for purpose? Yes, it does the job. So I think in many ways the, the, the network, the connectivity is over spec for what most people use. So the, and obviously if you're, if you're in a remote area with no connection, you can only have satellite. [00:21:00] You're gonna have it. Satellites. It's not as good as a fixed fiber. It's not as good as 5G cellular, but it will do a job. And the fact that people, people, we've always adapted around what was available, available to us as connectivity. And I think we have this sort of strange view in telecoms that it's got to be the absolute Rolls Royce of connectivity. Well, it doesn't. You know, it can be a Trabant. I don't even know if Trabant still exists, but you know, it can be a very, a very, a very basic car because it's transport. It's getting you, it's connecting, it's getting you there. Uh, by the way, I think satellite's overblown in its importance. It's not, I'm glad, I'm glad it's come around. I'm glad it's making another appearance. Um, but it's, it's one of those things that it's filling in a niche, a niche gap in the market and don't believe it'll be mainstream. CRA: I think it'll depend on the parts of the world. This again, if you look at it globally, I agree with you, but I think what I've seen like in New Zealand, um, in Australia, in South America, people are using it because it's the best way to get connectivity to remote areas. [00:22:00] Is, and there's a lot of remote areas. Chris: Exactly. But that, you just answered the question. It's a remote area thing. It's not, CRA: yeah. But a lot of the world is remote. Chris: A lot of the world is remote. Well, 3 billion of the world population not even connected yet. So, you know, there's the, there's a hell, there's a hell of a chunk of people to get connected. Unfortunately, they can't afford the connection and the devices and so on, but, Rob: Mm-Hmm. But Chris: you know, if you look at the structure of the industry, what we, what happens, and this is another thing, you need to look on a country by country basis and certainly region. The amount of money going into fiber, building fiber into the ground, because the long term return on that is great. It's much more like utility returns to get back to your not so dumb pipes, but, you know, actually lucrative pipe return on investment. So, so we, we face the challenge that there are plenty of means of connecting. If you're in a big conurbation, you're probably going to, you probably use fiber because it gives you the best value. You might be a mobile only household. But that varies massively across the world. And if you, like I say, if you're in, if you're in the middle of nowhere, then yeah, you'll [00:23:00] use satellite because it gives you the best option as opposed to spending thousands and tens of thousands to dig a cable out to your farm in the middle of Australia. So it's matching. Once again, it comes back to supply and demand, right? So we, we, as an industry, we, we try to deliver other things, whether it be software or services or devices, which has, which has its own ecosystem. So it's an overlapping of lots of different ecosystems. Which I think is why, why we struggle, right? Because, um, to go to that point Rob made about the industrial automation side, industrialization. You go and talk to factory owners, you know, and they say, well, you know, I've invested in this factory. I've got loads of cables and yes, I want a few robots. I'm not going to rip it all out and start again because the cost justification just isn't there. So I think we've always got to be, we're always looking for the perfect solution when it comes to telecoms. And there is no perfect solution, because there's legacy, and there's legacy and there's competitive solutions, you know, and perhaps we don't need to be online all the time. So [00:24:00] I do think as an industry, we suffer from a bit of delusion that, you know, that we are the most important element in the mix. And of course, the most important element from a business point of view is making money. And from a consumer point of view, it's about, it's about being connected. So I'm going to slightly contradict myself. Rob: I think that the other thing is the most important thing for any business is a customer, right? And this industry is technology focused, not customer focused. I don't care. No one will, you know, get on an earnings call and say that, but let's face it. I mean, it is, it is. technology centric, and then let's find the application of that technology later. And it's come from that, you know, from a licensing and regulatory environment sort of drive some of that behavior. Um, but I think, you know, it's it's shouldn't be one size fits all right with like the connectivity type or anything else. It should be a mix of and in that example, you use Chris, which is in a factory environment, right? There's not one [00:25:00] bearer type, for example, that works for everything in this corner. You might have Wi Fi in that corner. You might, you know, use Laura or over here. You might use 5G or. Yeah, or 4G or whatever you want to use. Some, some places it might be wired, ethernet. It's just looking at the solution you're trying to solve and finding that best solution that comes with many different bits and pieces. Getting away from, I think there's a real religion around bar type in this industry, which is, it's, it's a little bit ridiculous, although when you pay a lot of money for a certain amount of spectrum, you wanna push stuff down it. But it's, again, it's about finding that solution for customers that involves multiple enablers and multiple veritypes. Chris: So Rob, you and Charles, you may remember the guy who was group CIO at Telefonica, a guy called Phil Jordan. And he joined me on the Great Telco Debate 18 months ago now. And he, he spent five years working at Sainsbury's, you know, the UK supermarket chain with other businesses in there. And I wanted him to talk about [00:26:00] telecoms, having been away from it for five years. And and he said a couple of things he said which is very relevant to this conversation He said first of all, he said I hate to tell you this, but we don't wake up worrying about connectivity all the time You know We worry about how much charles is going to spend when he goes into the supermarket On what he's going to buy right and we analyze it because we make one percent margin not 20 30 percent margins And he said the other thing which is really important. He said for telcos Customers are an abstract concept exactly what he just said rob You You know, we, we used to connect, not even people, because we put a phone on the, on the hallway in our parents homes, you know, and, and gradually we've extended that throughout the home. We used to connect buildings, and now we go right down to the desk, or we're connecting all the, all the items in that IOT roster that you talked about. So actually, it's, the change required, the cultural, the mentality change required for the telecom industry, is to really understand that end customer. And we don't. CRA: I'll give you a [00:27:00] great example of this. It's probably the best example I've seen about how we're still too tech focused and don't really understand customers. And it was during the 5G marketing campaign that Singtel ran. They ran a campaign about when do you use 4G, 5G or Wi Fi 6? As a campaign. Now, first of all, Rob: you just lost every customer right there, right? CRA: Who is actually going to go, Ooh, I've always wondered that it's my phone. Whatever my phone picks up is what I'm going to use. And you know, the idea that they ran this as a campaign and I was thinking, who do they think their customers actually are? Uh, so that's the best example I've seen of the tech push where we just do not understand human outcomes and what needs to be delivered to the consumer or customers. Chris: And I think it also comes back to that point about the dumb pipe, that the actual pipe delivered is relatively dumb. The complexity, the sophistication behind delivering [00:28:00] the pipe is phenomenally complex, but that's the job of the telco to do that, you know, and making it as simple as possible for you to consume it or me to consume or Rob, whatever, whatever. That should be the, in fact, that's the marketing. I mean, I guess part of the challenges you've just raised here is that we've never had to market, we've never had to really sell in the consumer world. Cause you know, we, despite the level of service, people keep buying the stuff that they're tied in for one year, two years, three years, or whatever, as we've moved away from, you know, a lot of the pay as you go type markets. So I think it's, it's a real lesson for the industry about how, how it is seen, you know, in the hierarchy of terrible service industries. Rob: Go ahead. No, go ahead. Chris made a great point about, um, you know, the value add and sometimes the lack of value add and even in your reference example, Charles, about, you know, let's tell our customers about how to use Wi [00:29:00] Fi versus 4G, 5G, part of the value add in that whole scenario is, you know what, as a service provider, we should be able to say to the customers, not saying which types of bearers do what things, but We should be able to say, guess what, Mr. Customer, come with us. Don't worry, we got your back. We'll make sure that you're on the fastest connection at the best cost, and we'll take care of all that for you, right? And that's, you know, on the grand scheme of things, of the complexity and the service offerings and the things that can be done for customers. That's pretty low down the scale, but just having that mindset of rather than explaining the complexity, taking away the complexity, right? And there's that mindset shift that just has to come into the industry. CRA: Well, I wish them luck to get there because it's taken a long time. We can keep waiting for this to happen. I kept thinking that telcos are going to learn after this, but no, it keeps going on, but I want to switch tech a bit. Cause we [00:30:00] have mentioned IOT quite a bit. And Chris, when we were chatting before we jumped on the call, you had mentioned about, um, Yeah, IOT used to have this really big hype numbers surrounding it. So I think it was Erickson had said that was going to be 30 billion connections. And I think Merrill Merrill Lynch came out and said 70 billion, 50 billion. 50, then they knocked it back to 30. And then it was 70 from Merrill, all these crazy things. I think now we're probably at like 15. Um, and that this is like five years past when they were supposed to hit these other numbers. So IOT hasn't really lived up to all the hype. nobody really asks about it anymore. What I like is I think it's just gone into more business as usual because it's gotten away from the marketing people into the people who are actually deploying the solutions. Um, but it is complex cause any IOT solution, you know, you've got a device that's going to connect over some type of a network through multiple different platforms to get to the application. You've got to store all the data. Then you've also got to manage this, you've got to make sure it's all secured, I mean, it's complex. So, telco's tried to branch out and do those different [00:31:00] components, but they haven't really been that successful. So how are they going to be able to grab that piece of a pie? Because, if I'm going to go out and deploy sensors in, for a water treatment system or in an industrial facility, I'm not going to go to a telco first. So, what are your thoughts on that? And we'll start with Chris on this one. . Chris: I, well, I, I go back to my previous point about channel that, you know, the, the, the channel expertise in, let's say in the utility sector does not reside in the telecom industry. It is in, it's in systems integrators and other retail and channel partners who specialize in it. And it's also part of the OT part of the, of the business anyway. It's the operational technology. It's not. Not even, not IT, it's certainly not connectivity. So I think partnering is the only sense. And I come up with this question time and time again, and it gets raised. Uh, I was at the TM forum event up in Copenhagen recently. And yet again, partnering came up with, how can we, how can we, how can we be better partners in [00:32:00] the, in this ecosystem? And, and the fact that we were even asking to be better because we've been terrible partners in the past. By trying to impose certain solutions on, on the customer. So by definition, it's an aggregation, it's an integration question. And it's also down to the individual countries, individual areas. So I think it's a channel play. It's as simple as that. And it's that dirty word in telecoms, which we've, we've struggled with for many years, which is, which is wholesale. Now that we should be wholesaling the services through partners, whether they're SIs or, or industrial automation specialists, but making it easy. And in fact, even your old employer, Vodafone, you know, actually moving that IOT bit out of the main Vodafone business group and looking for other investors just tells you that it just does not sit readily within the telco structure. CRA: Rob, do you have any thoughts on this one? Rob: Yeah. Look, I mean, I, I really agree with Chris on this. I mean, it's. [00:33:00] A lot of times people are looking for the really sexy silver billet solution, right? But just partnering, partnering better is a massive thing for this. Right. Um, and you know, there's a lot of lessons that I think that telco can learn from outside telco. Uh, and that's one of the things, you know, Chris, you mentioned, uh, you know, experience from Sainsbury's on, you know, groceries, online, e commerce, these are like, you know, high volume, low margin business. Right. They're great. They're great at being efficient because they have to, right? They're great at knowing the customers, mining the data, engaging with customers. There's so many lessons we can learn from that sort of industry. Um, and, you know, let's, just for a brief moment, I know I'm sort of breaking the whole thing about talking about telco. Let's not talk about telco for just one second. And if you look at how economies evolve, and you look at how, Um, you know, both companies or countries as they [00:34:00] evolve in their economic development cycle, they move up the value chain, right? And it's as simple as, you know, you look, this is textbook stuff, right? You start, you might start off mining metal out of the ground. And then you take that metal and you turn it into sheet metal. And you, you know, you've added value to that metal that you mine out of the ground. And then you might take that sheet metal and, you know, turn it into some silverware that you eat your food with, so you've added some value to that. And then you keep going and keep going, and then you might look at, you know, you turn it into an electric vehicle, for example. Now, what you're not going to do, as the person mining that metal out of the ground, you might be able to sort of get it into sheet metal or, you know, shape it into some other things. If you want to get into the electric car business, You're going to have to partner, right? Because you're not going to be doing all the software, you know, the tires, the wheels, the, you know, every component of the [00:35:00] battery and everything else. So it's about finding the things that you're good at partnering for some of the other things. And focusing on certain markets and moving up the value chain that applies, I think, to any industry. Um, and there's only so far you can go without that partnering. And I think there's a lot of great examples outside of telco doing that, but inside the industry. I don't think we can move up those, you know, more complex things in the value chain without partnering. And there's a lot of examples that prove that. Chris: But there's another point, Charles, which I think is really important to bring in here, which is that. You know, the, the key elements, if you look at the, the investment money for moving around the industry, um, I noticed today that Vodafone had just sold another chunk of their Vantage Towers, you know, another, another billion or so worth brought back into the Vodafone group, obviously, to try and fund other things they're doing. So that structural change where, you know, the tower codes become more independent, you create these host [00:36:00] neutral networks. You know, you, you create competitive fiber environments. There is a, there's a lot of underlying structural change going on. And in the, in the middle of any country market, obviously you've got the former incumbent, you know, building out there, building on top of what they had in the past, but there's, but that means there's also pressure. Change it, even at the basic connectivity level, change, changing the, the Sort of sector structure, which is going to drive more and more competition, but that's where that's where the banks have been looking That's where the investment funds have been looking, you know many many Fiber competitors being put into the ground apart from where you've got a market, you know Like singapore where it's been it's been government driven and uh, and so a more more controlled environment And I think that's really worth emphasizing across the when people are looking at this as a global level You know, you look at the chinese market and what the chinese government did 10 plus years ago when they said right You know Mobile guys, you're reorganizing. You're going to be reorganizing to three main players. You're going to, this is how, this is how we're going to drive that investment [00:37:00] from an industrial perspective. And, you know, and they've obviously pushed 5G much more aggressively than anywhere else has. Bizarrely, the other extreme, you've got the US market, the overall capitalism, which has ended up with, because of the three strong players, equally pushing the 5G market, but making a lot more, a lot more money out of it. And then the reg, then the sort of regulatory quagmire in between in Europe. We're actually, we've got too many players and not enough, not enough freedom to invest and do what they think they should be doing. So I think there's a lot of structural challenges here from a business point of view, let alone what we're consuming at the end of the day as consumers and businesses. CRA: Well, we've hit on the one big buzzword right now, so let's move on to the next one. What is the impact of artificial intelligence going to be on the telecoms industry? And I'm going to go to Rob first, because I know you're more on the bullish side. Rob: Yeah, look, I am more on the bullish side. I mean, there's part of me that has some skepticism about it because of the [00:38:00] underlying infrastructure and foundation for AI is quite complex, right? And, um, AI in some ways isn't new. It's an evolution of data science. And I think that data science piece, um, isn't as mature as it should be. Again, we talked about the example of, uh, groceries and that sort of retail business. They're awesome at the data science piece. And they are, I think better, you know, looking at AI to solve customer problems, solve business problems. So some of that needs to have a better foundation. I mean, telco industry always has this great, uh, data foundation and is, is blessed with this natural data about customers usage. Billing where people are, they've got this rich data set that they don't use to its full capability. But when I think we look at generative AI, where is that going to have an impact? Um, I look at, you know, there's a lot of things that people will look at, you know, with. What's your latest chat GPT thing you can do? And, you [00:39:00] know, cool videos and deep fakes and all that kind of stuff, but you know, I think it comes down to in our industry. I think there's a lot of things around fraud prevention, proactive maintenance, um, you know, customer service, um, network performance and the AI upside, you know, managing both network and I. T. Infrastructure. Um, so I think those are the maybe less sexy use cases that I think are already starting to see some impact from AI. And actually a lot of that's not being driven by the telcos. A lot of that's been driven by third party vendors that are providing, you know, AI ops solutions that are providing fraud prevention solutions. And then I think if the industry can get there, there's a lot that they can do around sales and marketing targeted. Uh, you know, things that you would get from industries like online e commerce groceries that are very good at targeting and driving stuff with customers. I'm not bullish on that, you know, in the telco sector, the other pieces that are more [00:40:00] operational. Um, and that are also being driven by suppliers and people in the ecosystem. I'm much more bullish on, uh, the impact and the benefits for the taco sector. CRA: And now for the bearish view, Chris. Chris: No, no, no, no, not for the realistic view. And interestingly, I did my degree in computational linguistics 42 years ago. Uh, we did AI as part of that. We're trying to teach computers to translate from French to German, German to English and so on. So I, I, I saw very early on what we might be able to do with the power of compute and the power of intelligence. I, I think we have to break it and Rob, you're right. It's, it's about data science. It's about thinking about what, what we can do through machine learning, especially in closed loop. So within the network, there's massive implications for how we take costs out of the network, how we, it's basically patent recognition. Let's be clear about it. So that by using pattern recognition, looking at what's going on, proactively maintaining it, the networks will become phenomenally [00:41:00] efficient. They have to be, because the, the, what we, what we're able to charge for the service just isn't going to keep going up. So I think there is what we used to call them expert systems. Remember that when they were called expert systems? So I think there, there is enormous potential for improving it. Um, the problem with the, and Rob, you touched upon this, is the data set. We've never had a clean data set in the telco world. It's been so fragmented and spread across so many legacy systems where even departments within the same telco won't share data with other departments because they want to try and keep, you know, keep a handle on what's going on in that particular piece. We've got to break those silos down and that is a long journey to get that data cleaned and into a place where it's accessible and manipulable and analyzable by the Gen AI systems. I'm an absolute believer that Gen AI will give us that interface. that human to technology interface, which, which we've been lacking. And there was a great quote from the CIO [00:42:00] at BT. Who said that Harmeen Mehta said, you know, for the first time, technology is talking our language, which is a lovely way of putting it because it, you know, before you had to be an engineer working down at whatever level within, within the scripts and so on. And actually the ability now to ask the network, what's going on, you know, why did that network outage happen in Australia? You know, why did, why did Microsoft everything fall apart last week? You know, the, the ability to get a sensible and quick answer out of it. Combining the human and the, and the, and the, the automation, there's enormous power in that. The bit where I'm facing the customer, which I think will have the biggest impact. So the faith, the networking inside that will drive efficiency. It will take costs out of the network. Uh, and it will give us the ability for people within those roles to do higher level things or, or remove them, right? Let's face it. We seem to be afraid of talking about getting rid of people within the industry. We have to, we're overstaffed in so many places. So [00:43:00] I think that perhaps we come back to that in a minute, but the face of the customer bit is I'm really excited about this because, um, as you both know, I'm, I'm, I'm blind and have been for many years, I, I use so much assistive technology to allow me to do my job, applying that sort of translation of technology between channels. To allow someone who can't see, to get a, get an audio feed, someone who can't hear, to get a visual feed, to get, to give the service to an elderly person who's terrified of the technology interface that we, we keep forcing upon people. This is gonna be a massive revolution in the way that we interact with the systems as a customer. And by the way, if the telcos don't do it, other people will. And the other people that do it, they, they will, they will tell you, you know, Charles, you shouldn't be spending that, that much on it, you can get it for half that amount by going somewhere else, because that ought to, that level of intelligence, that, that ability to interrogate is absolutely, is actually part of that, that gen AI, uh, delivery, delivery [00:44:00] mechanism, and you can interact on whatever level you want, whatever way you want, You know, the next chat GPT 4. 0, the Omni version, uh, I've just seen an example by an app called Be My Eyes that I use, and that the ability to have an absolute, complete, chatty conversation with your, with your AI agent is just phenomenal. So I, so I, I, I'm not, I'm not a bearish on it. I'm bullish in what the technology can do. I'm bearish in the timeframe when it will do it as a suitably efficient. and high enough quality level, because if we don't take bias out of the system as it exists today, we will just amplify the bias and that amplifies mistakes. And we know there are mistakes and there are glitches in the data all over the place. So that, that, that's my concern. That's why I'm cautious about it. And in all the Gen AI companies I deal with, They keep talking to me about, we need at least two pairs of eyes on every cycle, you know, because this is [00:45:00] facing the customer, particularly facing in towards the network. We might get away with less, but facing out towards the customer, we have to have the human element in there to go back to the previous point. CRA: It's still early days for a lot of it. I like the possibilities, but also I share a bit of, uh, pragmatism around this because I've seen us, we've had great opportunities in the past in a lot of different technologies and we've never really lived up to it. So we've had a. Has a history as an industry of not really living up to expectations. So, but anyway, it's, it's at least it's exciting things. I mean, some of the things that you can do right now that you were just giving examples, my, my favorite one is actually from Telstra because it's so bloody simple, you know, they basically have a one sentence summary, whatever you call into customer service, it goes through your account and literally just produces a one sentence summary and they've not deployed that to everybody who works in a retail store and. Find if you can do that with Telstra for customer service, but what if you could get a one sentence summary of a machine, like you said, or something's broken your network, or you could just ask a question and you get a one sentence summary, you're still going to have to go through all the same processes you would be [00:46:00] before you're just gonna be able to do it much faster because you're like minimizing the time it takes to minimizing the time it takes to do these things. So I'm, I'm really, I'm looking forward to it. I, like I said, I'm loving using it right now. So. Chris: But Charles, the challenge there is that. You know, if you ask a Gen AI system, a large language model, a question, it, it cannot reason, right? So despite all of the hype, it does not reason. It's just got a data set, and it gives you the best option out of that data set. Now, until, until it can actually hierarchy, put into a hierarchy, what the different levels of impact of the different factors in there, it may well summarize your account, but it may well miss something very important in that account. We're still way too early on it, and I think the appeal of LLMs and helping us as individuals do jobs, you know, summarising stuff, is great. But I, I still personally write my stuff from scratch because I, because I want, I want my, my, my logical flow. [00:47:00] If there's any logic left in there, you know, I want my logical flow to, to come through and make sure I bring things in as and when I want, because if you, a lot of the time you ask Chachi or Claude or whatever, to summarize things for you, it doesn't come out the way you would have done it. Oh, definitely. And that, so coming out in the language, I mean, and this actually, there's an opportunity here, of course, which is that. If you can deliver things in the tone and the brand language of Telstra or, or TELUS or whatever, you know, that's, that cuts out a load of underlying work. And I think that, that's the appeal at the moment is it takes a lot of the grunt work out as long as the, the basic data upon which the, this content is being created is kosher. I think that that's, it goes back to the data issue. If you haven't got the right data in the right place, you're going to, you know, End up shooting yourself in the foot. CRA: I'd be curious what you think about this. I got asked at an event recently. Do you think that, um, Chachi PT will wipe out the analyst industry? And my thought was like, actually [00:48:00] the mid tier stuff. Yeah, completely. But it also is going to take the people who are a little bit above the mid tier, but a really lazy, it'll pull them back down, but everyone's going to take the average of everything and produce average, average, average. And so for me, I think it's great because it makes it easier for me to stand out because I won't use it for those things and I already pitched myself as hopefully, you know, my content being above average, but this just pulls everybody else down and makes me even look better. So, Chris: but, but also you see that that happened. The internet did that already to an extent. So when, when some of us started working 40 years ago, looking at this stuff. You know, we were, we were writing letters to people, sending faxes to people. Eventually we were left to do emails to people. So you've got very different data sets from very different analyst houses. Now the, the analyst houses tend, the data tends to be much more consistent. You know, you look at, look at the, the mobile phone market, you get pretty consistent data comes out of all the big companies analyzing the mobile phone market, because the information is just so readily available via [00:49:00] the internet. And my concern is that in some ways you're right, it, it, it makes it very bland that the base data set becomes very bland. The interpretation of the data becomes absolutely key, which is exactly what you're saying. Rob: Yeah. And I think it's, it's a transformational technology and it's not necessarily going to destroy an industry or wipe out different things. It's going to, it's going to transform it, right. And it's going to shift that balance of power. And where, where I look at that, and I think of course, looking at, you know, some of the work that we do as small business owners, like if. If we're working in an ecosystem against larger consultancies, a larger analyst houses, you know, the, the thing that it's going to take out for them is basically, you know, the armies of people they have doing grunt work, you know, a bit of data here, a bit of this, there, um, that's in some ways kind of their intellectual property that is a bit, you know, protecting their I look at it as a tool that allows [00:50:00] You know, from a smaller business allows us to punch above our weights to compete against people that have armies of people doing grunt work on the bench and actually do more value add. So the real value still comes from people on the top of that value chain. But what it does is the thing is allows you to compete against people that have, you know, 50 analysts or junior analysts doing stuff. They can, you know, you can, you can be far more effective against that. And that that's where the redundancies will come from, but it will also shift and benefit smaller, uh, players in many industries. And I think that will drive innovation and benefit across the board. Chris: And there's a, there's a really important point in there, which is that the, the interpretation of the data, of course, is key. But one of the things that the analyst community has done as, as we all know from our past is we, we slice and dice it down to smaller and smaller pieces. So. You get information about the Loura market, about the NBIRT market. Whereas actually, what, what most people, what most analysts [00:51:00] would never do is step back and go, okay, that, well, that should be put in the context of this factory seven years old and that this factory is doing that, or this company is going to build a new dark factory somewhere. And because, because we're looking, we're looking at the pieces within the, a little pigeonhole of a market, you know, and the fact we, you, you use the word convergence, Rob, which I'm very pleased you did, because it, it is another form of convergence. And all those little mice around the edge of the big telecom camel bear, you know, they are nibbling away because they're doing stuff Right, they're bringing they're bringing their skills to it. They're bringing their scale to it They're bringing their work practice to it And it's breaking down a lot of the things that telcos used to do and you know You you look at the um, the fact that those hyperscalers have bigger global networks now than any telco Yeah, you know, they're the global telcos now. They're the global connectivity providers, right? and then And what, and in a big business environment, you've got telco, uh, the delivery for a multinational corporation, what used to be [00:52:00] nailed up fantastically highly priced MPLS or private networks, it's all done by SD WAN now. So actually it's, in some ways, what's happening outside of telco is even more important than what's happening inside telco, because the way solutions are going to be built for a business and for consumers as well, is, is going to be driven not just by the technology of 5G fiber or satellite, but But by where an application is going to be hosted, who, whose, whose application is, how that is actually driven from a business model point of view, who's paying for it, you know, whether Facebook is doing it free because you're, because you are the product, you know, or whether you're paying Salesforce to do something. So the sort of the overlap and convergence, I think, between different industries. Absolutely has to be brought, brought to bear on this. And I'm not sure if you tell, if you tell a chat GPT to do it, they'll do it, of course, but I suspect in many cases that we, we analyze it down very blinkered. About what's going on within, you know, one piece of the industry. So CRA: what I'd like to do is take a look at [00:53:00] the future, and I'm going to mention 6G just because I think we should go into a real deep discussion all the time is I hate when people talk about it, but let's just say whatever that next generation of network is going to be, which will be six. Because that's how we do things. We just add one every time. But what would telcos have to change so that it would be more successful than we've been with five because everybody built up all the hype around five G and it just fizzled. Nobody had actually any plan on how to actually make any money out of it. What would have to change within the telcos for them to make a success of it? Rob: Yeah. So it's interesting. You know, we're, we're in the, uh, in that mode of, Please, sir, can I have another G, please? So, um, you know, actually, if you take a step back and look at some of the evolution in the industry, right when we, when we went into 2G, 3G, I mean, you know, 2G was like, barely going, you know, GPRS was barely getting better [00:54:00] than text, right, or an SMS message. Um, you know, old WAP phones over GPRS. I mean, I'm gonna date us all here because a lot of people don't even know what a WAP phone over GPRS is. But, um, I mean, they were horrible. I wanna get real quick, CRA: if you happen to need a presentation on the future of WAP and an evolving technology, I've dated, I've actually saw it the other day. I've got it from the year 2000. I did it when I was at IXL based in London, and I was going through this and looking at my, my presentation on web. And how, what's going to happen next with GPRS and these speeds, you know, uh, crazy stuff. Sorry for interrupting. You know, Rob: the coolest thing that ever happened with like WAP was the Nokia phone that was using the matrix movies and Keanu Reeves like popping that thing out going, you know, and then, yeah, that, that was the coolest thing that WAP ever did, but I'm not sure it was entirely WAP dependent. Um, but yeah, you know, we, we really needed those. evolutionary steps for [00:55:00] things to work and even 3G. I mean, so at the time 3G came out, I was working at Cisco in the UK and we helped build out the three network, which was, you know, the first greenfield 3G piece supposed to be revolutionary. And I remember, you know, all the, the hyper on that. It's like, it's all about video calling. Right. And Hey, we're all set on this, this. over IP video, uh, you know, high tech, uh, evolution of, of, uh, you know, building a multimedia webcast, blah, blah, blah. At that time, a video call was horrendous. I remember using the NEC phones that they had as the first, you know, video enabled phones. And it was, A horrible experience. So, but it was a great vision to drive the industry forward and look at content and video and how people interact. Um, and it wasn't until 4g that things actually kind of worked and had some bandwidth and you could do more than just a [00:56:00] couple of emails and. You know, you could hotspot your phone, you could start doing things, right? And so, so we, the first, I think, up to 4G, we were just basically solving the connectivity problem, enabling some services. And again, it's more of an enablement than a real complex service development environment. Past that point of 4G, now we're getting into more and more bandwidth, which is like, okay, now what do you do with it, right? And I think that's, that's the real important thing is, and so this, going back to your original question, I know I diverged on a few things, talking about, you know, Neo and the Matrix and WAP phones, but 6G, I think, has a similar thing with 5G in that it's not necessarily about, you know, Latency connectivity. How many connections can you get? I mean, yes, there'll be some components of it. But what can you do with it? What are the use cases? And it goes back to a lot of the themes that we've discussed again. I don't want to take the cop out answer. Go. Oh, we've already given you [00:57:00] the answer, which is, you know, targeting certain segments consumers. What verticals businesses? What are the problems they have? How do you solve those problems? How do you partner to solve those problems? Because you can't do it all on your own as you move up that value chain. Um, and actually delivering solutions for customers that solve meaningful problems. That's my six g spiel. That has nothing to do with six G. Chris: So I'll give you a slightly, slightly different spin on it, which is that in the, in the six G labs that I've seen, the actual bearer connectivity from the cell site to the, to the device is not, is not the issue. The issue is about making sure we synchronize between all of the devices. That go to provide the service in a household or in a business. So synchronization, and I'll give you a case study that was, that was used in one of the labs I saw of a gp. So a regular doctor doing an, doing a an an an, an appointment on a [00:58:00] person in an, in an old people's home via a haptic glove. And you, you put your head around that and go, actually, there's so many data points, there's so many different feeds which we need to synchronize in order to get the value of that. Into, into the health care sector or the social care sector. So I think with, with the lesson to be learned from that is that it's not about that out the push out from the mobile network. It's about making sure it works with all the other things around us. And if you take a social care issue as a, as an example, that, you know, the, all the, all the sensors around a person in a, in a social care environment are actually synchronized. They feed back in the right information goes to the right people, whether it's back to family or to. Errors or to, or to the individual. And I think that, for me, it's, it's thinking about that much bigger picture. It's not about the basic, it's not about the basic connectivity, because I think as you said Rob, we sort of nailed that with 4G for the mobile world. If where we've got fiber, it's nailed. We've got plenty of [00:59:00] capacity, you know, and we're just going to keep increasing that. By the way that the vendors changed that technological paradigm. So I don't think there's a problem with that side. I think the problem is how do we get, manage all of those different pieces at the end of the network, if you like, whether it's in the home or in the factory or out and about in society. And that, and therefore it's got to be a combination of all the different technologies. And this is where the mobile industry keeps talking itself up way, way too high. And if you go to MWC. The gsm, a glitz and glamor, but actually the real work is, is, is not done at that level that we, we haven't seen a lot of, uh, the glitz and glamor that delivers much for the last, certainly three or four years. So I think, I think accepting of the relative position of telecoms and connectivity in the broader ecosystem is really important. And acknowledging that, you know, the wifi will do a job, as I think you said about the factory wrong, acknowledging that fiber will do a job. In some cases, copper might still do a [01:00:00] job, you know, satellite will, but it's got to be contextual rather than just imposing this 6G is going to take over everything, because it won't. And I think, you know, as an industry, we've got to be a lot more practical about the way things get implemented and how the business model rolls up, right? Because if not, a lot of extra money is going to come into the industry. How are you going to fund another big step change in investment, another generational investment change? The answer is you can't, so it's got to be a much more gradual and the fact that we're moving to, to be, we're defined by software now means we can do it more gradually. So in some ways we don't need a 6G standard, you know, in some ways we just need to build on what standards we've, we've already got in place. So I don't believe there'll be a big step change and, and I'm, and I certainly don't believe there's a lot more revenue going to come into the market. But to go back to my previous point, but from a wholesale point of view, understanding, How people want to use the connectivity, synchronizing that connectivity between all the different moving parts. [01:01:00] That's where value will be created, because that, that's how, you know, my, my mum will be looked after in a home via some sort of remote social care package. Uh, and, and be able to interact with everybody she wants to, with doctors, with people and so on. So, I, I think there's a big pragmatic lesson. In the same way that the supermarket story is about a pragmatic, because they're only making one or two percent, so they've got to be on the ball. So, So, you know, the question is, what does on the ball need for telco in the future? CRA: That is the million dollar question. Um, my worry is that a lot of them aren't on the ball. They're just sort of doing group thinking. If you think about every single network equipment manufacturer and telco that I looked up used the exact same tagline for 5G, and that's that you can download a movie in seconds. And I've got a few issues with that. Number one, nobody downloads movies anymore. You stream everything, so it's kind of pointless. Um, number two, If you think about what they're trying to accomplish, you're trying to sell a value to somebody, but what's the real value? If you ever tried to [01:02:00] do it, I mean, I don't know if you guys have tried to download a movie. It's the only time I ever try to download movies right now are when I'm on a plane. And I realized there's no seat back entertainment system. And I frantically go to my phone and try and download a movie. I could have 15 minutes. I've never gotten one whole movie downloaded yet while sitting there on 5g. So not only nevermind a Rob: movie, 20 minute sitcom episode, you can't squeeze that out. Right. CRA: Yeah. It basically works. If you're the only person sitting at the bottom of the base station, um, and there's nobody else within like a one kilometer, then you might be able to do that, but. I just, I found that whole thing comical. So, but what I Chris: Charles, you need, you need to forget about looking at it. You just need to download the audio file with audio description and then close your eyes, put your iPads on and just listen through your ears. CRA: I think everybody should be doing is traveling less in general. I think that'd be the best option right about now. So, but I like this conversation. I like this conversation because I think some of the points that came out that I really do. I'm happy to hear is it seems like the industry is getting a little bit more open towards collaborating. [01:03:00] Cause like normal, what happens is it's a zero sum game. If, if, if I give up anything I'm losing and you're winning and they don't realize that if we work and collaborate better together across the big tech vendors in different spaces, um, in different components of the ecosystem, we can actually drive it forward and everybody can be better off. So that would be a great step in the right direction. I think we also agree that there is still a lot of hype out there around things like IOT and AI and telcos are going to be having a struggle to try and find their niche in there, but they got to do it quickly because, you know, they got to make money. And if they don't make money on that, they're just going to charge us more high roaming rates. And that's not fun for us. So I think it's been an excellent conversation. We've covered a lot of topics. We didn't even get to all the topics that I was going to hit you on OpenRAN, but I thought we'll just wait and see if that ever comes back again anyway. Rob: Yeah, it's just an enabler, right? Same, same discussion. Just an enabler. Got to add, add some value for your customers, right? Chris: It doesn't change the game, does it? Does OpenRAN change the game in terms of that product? I think the key question to ask [01:04:00] telcos is what is the product you think you're selling to your customer? Does OpenRAN change that? No, not at all. You know, does it change your supplier ecosystem? Yeah, it might do. But it doesn't significantly move the needle in terms of making it a better product. I don't think anyway. I think one thing we haven't touched upon is this whole the whole API issue. And you know, are there things that being a more open environment, more open API will allow some of that value to be extracted from the network? You know, you mentioned identity early on, Rob. Does identity, the fact that I'm a blind customer, could they use that information to deliver me a better service? Absolutely they could. Now that's if I, that's if I identify as a blind person, by the way. But yeah, but that, that if we're going to end up and everything we've talked about here towards the customer really leads towards absolute personalization of service, is the service being delivered to me, the right one for me with my business and with my, with my personal life. And we've [01:05:00] never done that. As you said earlier Charles, we, we just sell the same thing to everybody, you know, and we oversell because we, your 250 gig is, I mean, it's ludicrous. We don't, we don't need it. So tell me what I need at a reasonable price and to go, and I know I started with economics, but if you go back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you know, the, the price, the price equilibrium is when supply and demand end up in harmony and people pay a reasonable price for the service they're willing to consume. And I don't think we've ever been in that situation in the telecom industry. CRA: Well, I'm not sure if we're going to get there in the next couple of years either. So I think it's going to be a couple of chapters ahead. Chris: And that's the problem with AI, isn't it? And all these things that everyone says, oh, it's going to change. Remember blockchain? Blockchain was going to change the world five, ten years ago, five years ago. You know, and it gradually is changing the world, but it's, and by the way, the other piece, which I think we haven't touched upon, which is really important here, is that with the AI that we're using now, and Gen AI especially, We don't, we have no idea what traffic levels that's [01:06:00] going to generate, you know, it may be if it goes back to the LLM at some massive data center, we've got problems in the network as we as we've become more and more video and chat based, you know, if it's more locally on the device or on the edge, so that that's a whole new area that needs a lot of exploring a lot of modeling. Rob: Yeah, I mean, if you look at the explosive demand for compute power with AI, so, and that's what's driving, you know, the explosion in the business in NVIDIA, right? Okay. Fantastic. Because for NVIDIA, they have this business model where the more, uh, AI that's consumed and the more compute power that's required, they basically just sell more stuff in the telco industry. The more bandwidth that's consumed, it doesn't mean that they necessarily sell more stuff. Again, they have a different business model where you can have explosive demand for bandwidth and connectivity. They will not have that directly proportional increase in revenue. Um, that an Nvidia will have on the compute side, [01:07:00] right? Chris: It's the opposite, isn't it? Exactly. Rob: They're like, Oh my God, you've just completely caned our network and we didn't get any money out of it. Right. Yeah, exactly. Chris: Yeah. But I mean, and I go back to my opening comment, connectivity has never been in so much demand. You know, we are right in center. Will it, will it command a premium for that connectivity? Not the way we sell it at the moment, not the way we deliver it. And not, not if we harp on about another G coming down the line. But actually, using the AI to actually deliver the service that is required by Rob or by Charles or by Chris, that, that's got to be the answer. And, and we, and we should be able to do that with the, with the, the data at our disposal and the services available. CRA: Ah, but that's the thing. We should be able to do it, but will we? So Chris: that's why we're not chief execs of telcos. CRA: This is true. This is true. I don't think I could go back to a telco. I think I don't mind being a client of the telcos, you know, and helping them out at times, but I couldn't go back full time for sure. So, but anyway, [01:08:00] gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for your time this evening or this afternoon for Chris and this early morning for you, Rob. Um, it's been a great chat discussing all the different things going on in the telco market. And we'll do this again in a few more months and see what else has been happening. And by then I'm pretty sure Once people listen to Chris's and Rob's advice that the telco industry will sort itself out. Rob: I, the only thing I'm certain of Charles is that we're going to have a lot more to talk about as we go forward. But thanks for having us today. It's been great to, uh, have this discussion with you guys and share some insights together. Yeah. Chris: Enjoyed it. All right. Go forth and flourish. CRA: Excellent. Thanks again, guys. Okay. So Rob: thanks Charles. Thanks Chris. Yeah. CRA: Okay. So one more thing I want to do, because I totally forgot at the beginning to ask you to do a quick intro. Um, so guys, like do this now and then just to give it like a 30 second, one minute intro and I'll just cut it in to the beginning. Rob: Okay. CRA: So basically just introduce, I'll say, uh, Chris, can you talk about, [01:09:00] Chris, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and what role you play in the global telecoms industry? Chris: Of course, Charles. So I've, I've been working as an industry analyst, a telecom industry analyst for 40 years now. The last 11 years as an independent, so having worked with some of the big names in the research houses, so I work, I advise, I work with the big players on the vendor side and on the telco side, trying to make sense of all of the dynamics of play in the market. So trying to understand that balance of demand and supply, the relative role of telcos and the role that vendors play in helping telcos fulfill that role. And I also do a lot of work now around, uh, accessibility and inclusive design. In terms of how do we design the technology so everybody can use it equitably. So whether they have, they might have any sort of impairment, they might not be able to afford the most expensive service. So that, that accessibility inclusion is, is another area that I find really interesting that actually could expand the size of the market as well. CRA: Yeah, very good. [01:10:00] Okay. Rob, how about you? Rob: Thanks, Charles. So I've been in and around the industry for 35 years on a fairly international basis, just like we're international on this, this call today, um, spent a lot of that in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, um, done a lot of things in the ecosystem on many sides of the of the equation. So I've worked vendor side of the sea level rules within operators. Uh, I've worked with product providers, IOT service providers. And a lot of what I do now in running my business is working on large transformation programs, building and fixing things in the industry, very service development focus and go to market focus, uh, and doing some of the things that we talked about today in that service environment, bringing some customer focus into it. I'm actually building solutions and taking them to market. CRA: Sounds great. All right. So that was that [01:11:00] I'm sitting here. I'm absolutely roasting. It is so bloody hot in my house right now. It's unreal. You can't see like my shirt. I've got like sweat spots all over me right now. Chris: I shut, I shut the windows cause it was noisy kitchen next door. I do actually have an air con unit, but it's a standalone one. It's so noisy. It would drown you. It would drown out the speech. Rob: Yeah, I'm, I'm quite lucky. Despite it being 39 yesterday, it's actually, it's the morning. It's cool. Cause it cools down at night. I'm in the basement where I am. So it's actually nice and toasty. Cool. Chris: So are you going out for a run now, Rob? Rob: I'll be going out for a run, chasing the dogs around the park is I think is the next thing on the Chris: agenda. Have they settled in? Rob: Yeah. Yeah. They're good. They're good. Dixie says hi to Varley, by the way. Chris: Vali, Vali, Vali reciprocates, actually he's not here, he's out somewhere, he's running around the park with Tanya somewhere, so. Rob: [01:12:00] Yeah, no, the, the, we were just at the park yesterday talking about how the dogs, so, you know, I don't know Chris, you haven't met Dora, our second one. Chris: No. Rob: Um, but they're both, uh, they're both little maniacs, but they're living their best life. I mean, it's, Singapore was tough for them with the heat. Uh, they couldn't spend much time outside. Uh, here, there's just wide open spaces. They're just loving it. And just little other things like, Dixie's skin was like getting rashes from the grass in Singapore. I don't know what it was. Uh, and she was, she lost all of her fur on, on her front. And it was just, anyway, her first grown back, she doesn't get any grass rashes anymore. Her energy levels are higher and they were already high. Um, but the, the dogs will live in their best life as, as, as is the wife. And, uh, Chris: yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. We know, as you well know, so Vali and I spend a lot of time just walking around Chiswick and really, I, the [01:13:00] whole, the whole temperate climate here is just, it is just brilliant that when it, when it occasionally gets up into thirties with everything, I can't live in this, you know, it's like, I don't, no doubt. No, it's great. It is good. And it's um, Rob: yeah, I tell you what, Charles, I don't miss the Singapore humidity, right? I just don't. CRA: There's not many things. There's nobody left. Rob, you know this. I mean, there's literally nobody here anymore. Everybody's taken. Yeah, sorry, man. Sorry. Chris: Is it an age profile thing? Why are people leaving in droves? CRA: Okay, so it's a combination of factors. I don't think there's one reason, but during the pandemic, You Because of the lockdowns, a lot of foreigners left. So that was, you didn't get that next generation coming in. You know, when people left, it wasn't like more, you know, they weren't lowering them as you had a couple of year lag there, which means you had less expats coming in. Rob: Then CRA: what you had over the last couple of years is there has been a lot of anti foreigner sentiment. Um, so what [01:14:00] they did is they're worried about property prices. So now if you're a foreigner and you want to buy a condo, it's a 60 percent stamp duty. So basically they made it impossible, which means I'm trying to sell our place and it's impossible Nothing is moving at all and nothing will move until after the election because they'll keep the stamp duty at least until then So that's a you can Rob: rent it out and just gouge some expats with a extortionately high high rent Yeah, CRA: you know, it's perfect. Those have now come down but at one point rents did double So people who would have been spending ten thousand dollars a month are suddenly having to pay and spend twenty thousand a month That pushed a lot of people out. So that's what's going on here. Also in the sectors that we operate in, all the money, all the innovation, all the talent is in the Middle East right now. Everyone's going over there because people are paying a lot of money. Um, you get a great quality of life ish. Chris: No, you don't. CRA: I know, I agree. That's why issue in the end, you make a lot of money and pay no tax. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just [01:15:00] hit it, hit it for a few years and zero tax, and then get the hell outta there. Right. But yeah, that's, that's where everyone's going right now. Um, and there's literally, I, I was joking. I, my friend runs this thing called the Middle East AI News, and, um, I was joking with them about it. I'm like, I'm gonna do the Singapore AI news and I'm just gonna send out a blank email every week. Rob: Yeah. CRA: And see if people there, because there's nothing going on here right now. Chris: Yeah. CRA: So, um, Chris: well, in fact, my, my son was in Dubai working for, for the beginning of the year, and he, he, he got canned. He came back and, uh, he, he, but tossing up, should he go back? Should he try and find a job there? And he said actually the thought of going back there now, I think it was a hundred and forty Fahrenheit there last week. You just, you can't go out. CRA: My mic was there this week and he said it was 50. Chris: I mean, that's just, you can't do that. No. I think he's decided he's going to stay. He's going to stay, stay with the fridge of mum and dad and eat us out of house and home. So what's CRA: interesting about Dubai and the [01:16:00] whole Middle East right now is you're starting to see it already. They are canning a lot of people. They're bringing people in. They're getting a little bit of information out of them and getting rid of them. They're going to replace it all with local talent. Um, But they are, I mean, they're spending boatloads, um, and they've got the boats. Well, they've Chris: got boatloads to spend, haven't they? You know, whereas the brain drain is, we don't, you know, and it's a No, it worries me. Actually, I don't know, do you ever know Mansoor Hanif, who was the He was the CTO at Ofcom and he was EE before that. He's been down in Saudi working at Neom for the last few years. He just moved. He just left. He's moved back to Spain. And he said he's got another job coming up, but he won't tell me where yet. They, they've pulled back on a lot of those investments for Saudi. So, CRA: well, the neon neon side, Rob: lots of cuts, CRA: right? So I worked on a Georgina, which is the resort comp portion of the neon project. Um, and it's completely batshit crazy. But what's funny and off the record, I've got thousands of pages of master plan, [01:17:00] documents and surveys from every top consultancy from JLLCBRE. And they're feeding them so much bullshit. Like, as there was one survey in there that gave Americans the option, where would you rather go on holiday? Kitzbuehl, Whistler, or, um, Trojena to go skiing in Saudi. And more Americans wanted to go to Saudi Arabia than the other ones. I'm like, no they don't. Chris: Great survey, yeah. CRA: And I'm like, no they don't. I'm calling bullshit on this one. They do not. Chris: Absolute crap, isn't it? But I mean, CRA: this is what they were getting sold by everybody. And they just killed me, like, every other word out of their mouth was, blah, metaverse, blah, metaverse, I'm like, oh shit. So, um, Yeah. But yeah, so it's, there's a lot of interesting things coming out of there. It's, right now there's a lot of money to be made, but that's gonna be closed down, I would imagine, relatively soon. Chris: I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you the link to the latest Be My Eyes. Uh, thing, I think you should look at it because for AI, it is staggering what they, and if I met the founder up in Denmark a few weeks ago, [01:18:00] uh, but, and I also bought myself a pair of metaglasses. Have you, have you tried the metaglasses? CRA: I have not. Chris: And so they, they're, they're classic Ray Bans, they're wayfarers, but with cameras and speakers. So I've, I've used it. I'll send you a little clip of that. I took on it as well. Cause it, in the theater, when you're not supposed to take pictures, you take a little click and you got it. You know what I'm saying? Not, it's not there yet. It's very early days, but you know, but I can see the potential for that, for that sort of eyewear like that to be, to be part of your metaverse. So the, the, the intro, the entry in the metaglass connects through, you have to VPN into the U. S. at the moment because the AI is only in the U. S. But, you know, you say to it, uh, hey, meta, what's in front of me? And it, it gives you a bit of a description, not as good as be my eyes, but I can see loads of potential for that stuff in the future. Rob: But that's one of the things I like about that is it's like the, one of the few things that has a human interface device, that is not a bucket on your face. It's [01:19:00] actually like a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers, right? And that's, that's kind of where, you know, if you're going to have wearable technology, like make it something that people want to wear, right? Chris: So I also, by the way, I have, so Be My Eyes is now available on, on the laptop. CRA: Wait, I'm going to be back in one second, all right? I'm sorry. Keep talking. Chris: I've just, I've just done the Be My Eyes on my, on my screen, Rob. And it's gone off. It's going to come back and it'll tell me what it is. The image shows a video call. There are three participants. Top left is, oh, that's me. I'm top left, apparently. Well, Rob: hang on, Chris. I don't know. I'm top left in mine. So it's obviously wrong. Chris: That is just, honestly, the detail, Rob, is staggering. Rob: Yeah. How, how, is there a, Chris, is there a lag [01:20:00] between, like, when it, like, looks at something and then how quickly it tells it to you and describes it to you? Chris: I'd say, they're trying to get it down to five seconds, so. Yeah. It's about nine seconds. But Be My Eyes, they told me, and I need to verify the numbers, but they said they, they processed two million pictures in May. Mm hmm. Wow, you know, so that's people like me taking a picture of a wine bottle going what wine is this, you know, and yeah Rob: the Chris: video Rob: Sorry, i'm i'm on the coffee It would be a serious problem for me at 8 30 in the morning if I was on the wine But I am slightly jealous CRA: if it makes you feel better. I have a 7 a. m. Call tomorrow with the u. s So Chris: oh nice. Well, CRA: but Chris: they're good, right? Well, listen, that's brilliant. Really enjoy that Okay, i'll send you those be my links and i'll i'll send you a little You A few clips that I took on the cameras, which would Rob: be brilliant. And if you don't mind, cool. Yeah. Keep the chat going on that, on that. What's up, group. Let's uh, [01:21:00] Chris: I'll say no to that. Right. I think I got, I had a message in my ear saying all my files had uploaded. Have you got all the files? Charge Charles. CRA: Um, mine says, uh, do not close this browser. So mine's probably still up loading your stuff. So Chris: I won't close it then. I'll leave it. If CRA: you could just leave it open just Oh, and I'll send you guys stuff. Do I Chris: have Rob: to do something to upload things? CRA: When you click leave session, I think it just says leave the browser open. That's all it does on mine. Actually, you should have a message. You should have a message at the bottom right of your screen. Does it say anything about, can you see that it's downloading your stuff or uploading your stuff? Chris: Yeah, I think I can't finished I it said I heard I heard an audio message saying to finish so right All right, let's go. Tony needs to play bridge in here in a minute. So, Rob: okay All right. Say hi to tanya. Great to see you guys. All right, guys. Bye everybody. Take care. [01:22:00] Bye