Quick Talk: A TM Forum podcast

This year's judges of TM Forum's Excellence Awards give a behind the scenes glimpse into how they choose the winners and why.

During more than 20 years as CTO of Telus Ibrahim Gedeon played a large role in shaping change in both the company where he worked and the industry. Now, as CTO Emeritus of Telus he shares a frank assessment of the telecoms landscape in a discussion with Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum.

Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt Technologies, explains why diversity, equity and inclusion programs are an important part of the company's strategy to achieve growth and remain competitive. 

Kim Kyllesbech Larsen, Industry Analyst, TechNEconomY, and former CTO of T-Mobile in the Netherlands, discusses how telcos' capex and opex trends are evolving with Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum.

In this podcast we explore the history of Open APIs and how they have led to the development of TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and the opening of TM Forum's Innovation Hub, as well as changes in how TM Forum members are collaborating. 

Marc Einstein, Research Director, Counterpoint Research, discusses how Japanese telecom operators have been diversifying their businesses in the face of a large drop in average revenue per user.

The telecoms industry is busy drawing up and implementing roadmaps for the next generation of operational support systems (OSS) that will support future intelligent network services. Dahyr Bergara, head of OSS at NTT Data, and Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, discuss the challenges telcos face, as well as approaches to creating an OSS that delivers more operational autonomy and paves the way to intent-driven network services.

Nathan Bell, who led digital transformation projects at M1 Limited, Telstra, and Telkomtelstra (now known as Digiserve) before becoming a partner at Kearney discusses the challenges of digital transformation and the extent to which AI can help telcos evolve their businesses with discusses with Mark Newman, TM Forum's Chief Analyst.  

William Webb, Independent telecommunications consultant and author discusses the thesis of his new book 'The End of Telecoms History' with Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum. Webb contends that the telecoms industry is at a turning point, with communications service providers in many parts of the world no longer required to build networks to catch up with consumer demand for services. But is he right? 

In June TM Forum and MEF a joint initiative to align API development and enable end-to-end automation for MEF network-as-a-service (NaaS) services. We caught up with Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF, to discuss how he sees collaboration on standards helping the industry to automate the delivery of complex multi-provider network services.  

Lead judges for this year's TM Forum Excellence Awards, Camille Mendler, Chief Analyst, Omdia, and Joann O'Brien, Vice President, Digital Ecosystems, TM Forum, discuss the key industry trends revealed by this year's entries, including in the important new categories of AI and network monetization, as well as what makes the winners stand out. Listen to the podcast to find out more. 

Patrick Lopez, Founder and CEO, Core Analysis and Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, discuss the global telecoms market's current commitment to the development of Open RAN and where the Open RAN market is heading. 

In the run up to DTW24 – Ignite, which is taking place 18-20 June in Copenhagen, Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum, Dr. Steffen Roehn, Partner at Bain & Company and Chairman TM Forum, and Dean Ramsay, Principal Analyst at TM Forum, discuss what to expect from this year's event as the industry seeks new growth avenues, while adapting to the rise of AI. Listen to the podcast to find out more. 

Ayedime Amadi, Senior Manager Enterprise Architecture & Customer Channels for MTN Group, talks about her passion for helping people develop technology and leadership skills, which in turn help MTN Group transform from a telco to a techco. 

  Sami Luukkonen, Managing Partner of Telco+ at Singtel Group NCS, shares his learnings from AI and generative AI (GenAI) deployment and how the technology can help transform the telecoms industry.

Jacques Bonifay, CEO of Transatel NTT, has played an integral role in developing the global MVNO market since co-founding Transatel in 2000.  In this podcast Bonifay discusses how global MVNO services have developed, including in the IoT space, and where he sees future opportunities for growth with Mark Newman, chief analyst, TM Forum

Justin van der Lande, Research Director, Analysys Mason; Andrew Baldock, Product Marketing Director, Infovista; and Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, got together to unpick proceedings from the first day of TM Forum's DTW 2022 event in Copenhagen. Their discussion delves into major telco industry trends, including hyperscaler-telco relationships, changing industry business models and AI adoption.

Camille Mendler, Chief Analyst, Service Provider Enterprise, Omdia, and head external judge of this year's TM Forum's Excellence Awards, discusses the winning entries with Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, and shares which category provoked the most debate between judges.

TM Forum analysts, Mark Newman and Dean Ramsay, discuss some of the industry trends they are identifying as they research their upcoming benchmark report ‘Telco to techco: capex and opex implications'.

TM Forum analysts, Mark Newman and Dean Ramsay, take a look at recent developments in enterprise markets, including Telefónica Tech's acquisition of Incremental, Verizon's huge US Department of Defense contract win, BT's Division X and enterprise revenue growth in China. They also wonder why feature phones are making a return.

TM Forum's analysts Mark Newman and Dean Ramsay discuss trends at Mobile World Congress and consolidation in Europe as Orange and MasMovil enter exclusive talks to form a joint venture in Spain.

TM Forum's chief analyst, Mark Newman, discusses Google's $700M acquisition of a 1.28% stake in Bharti Airtel, which is part of a wider investment that could total $1bn, as well as its latest collaboration with Deutsche Telekom on messaging, sovereign networks and TV. 

Dean Ramsay, principal analyst, TM Forum, takes a look at some of the latest news in the telecoms industry, including 5G deployment near US airports; what Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard means for communication service providers; NTT's collaboration with Airbus Space on Space RAN; and whether telcos are getting much more serious about creating greener businesses. 

Open RAN attracted a lot of attention from across the telecoms industry in 2021. Dean Ramsay, principal analyst, TM Forum, discusses what helped spark the huge interest in Open RAN, as well as the current state of play and whether momentum will continue to build during 2022.

Adan Pope, CTO of Intrado, whose career spans leadership roles at Ciena, Ericsson and Telcordia, discusses what cloud-based systems and agile methodology mean for telecom leaders and how to get the best out of employees that span different generations and technology skills.

Adan Pope has spent more than 20 years as a chief technology officer in the telecoms industry. He drew on his experience of managing through periods of technological and business change to co-author the book 'Respect the Weeds', which looks at what makes digital transformation succeed – and fail. Adan talked to TM forum's Inform about how he perceives the industry today; the importance of principled leadership and how to enable employees to adapt and thrive amid transformation.

TM Forum analysts, Mark Newman and Dean Ramsay, discuss the implications of AWS' move into turnkey private networks, competition for the enterprise customer, and European telcos' call for big tech platforms to contribute to network costs and regulatory action on data spaces.

Aaron Boasman-Patel, Vice President, AI & Customer Experience at TM Forum, and Brian Smith, Accenture's Global Comms & Media Innovation Lead, discuss why traditional telcos need to become techcos, strategies to bring about change, and what success might look like.

In this week's QuickTalk podcast TM Forum's CEO, Nik Willetts, and Steffen Roehn, Chairman of TM Forum and Expert Partner with Bain & Company, discuss the evolution of communication service providers' operational and business models; cross-sector partnerships; cloud native IT deployment and the pressing need for new skills within our industry.

Analysis of the latest news from Orange; Nokia's industrial edge solution, tower asset sales, data governance and partnering.

TM Forum analysts, Mark Newman and Dean Ramsay, discuss trends from the first week of C-level presentations at the Digital Transformation World Series, including partnerships, 5G monetization, cultural change and operational simplification.

TM Forum's Chief Analyst, Mark Newman, and Principal Analyst, Dean Ramsay, delve into the stories behind the recent headlines in our new podcast series Two weeks in telecoms. 

Vicky Sleight, TM Forum's Global Director of Human Factor and D&I, discusses why diversity & inclusion is of strategic importance for the telecoms industry and shares news of upcoming initiatives to facilitate and benchmark D&I.

5G offers communication service providers (CSP) the possibility to develop new business lines. But which strategies and services are likely to deliver the revenue growth that has proven so elusive in recent years? Mark Newman, chief analyst, TM Forum and Dean Ramsay, principal analyst, TM Forum are undertaking extensive research to find some answers for an upcoming report Mapping the Path to Telco Growth. They talk about the approach they are taking and why in Inform's latest Quick Talk podcast.

This episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, is all about how Open APIs save telcos time and money. Host Liz Coyne, TM Forum's CTO, George Glass, and MEF's CTO Pascal Menezes discuss the two industry association's joint efforts to align their APIs per the request of their largest telco members. TM Forum announced the collaboration as part of its Digital Transformation World Series event happening online until November 12, 2020.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne and TM Forum's AI and customer experience VP, Aaron Boasman-Patel, talks about how telcos can keep their AI in check at speed and scale -- especially when something goes wrong. He also talks about how collaboration projects inside TM Forum are helping to solve AI challenges with a new API suite, AI check lists and more.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne and TM Forum's chief analyst, Mark Newman, discuss the partnership of Orange and Google and their thoughts around public cloud, edge computing and 5G. They also chat about telco Q1 2020 earnings and even talk about Trump taking on TikTok and Microsoft's interest in owning the social media platform's US business. 

In this episode of Quick Talk, host Liz Coyne talks to Vicky Sleight who heads up TM Forum's new Diversity and Inclusion Council and runs collaboration projects focused on Diversity and Inclusion specifically. Vicky not only talks about how diversity and inclusion can accelerate business transformation, but also discusses the difficult role of today's Chief Diversity Officers and offers perspective on what companies need to do to set these new C-Level folks up for success.

In this episode of Quick Talk, Liz Coyne talks to Ros Singleton, chair of the advisory board of UK5G. UK5G is the UK's national innovation network dedicated to the promotion of research, collaboration and the industrial application of 5G in the UK. TM Forum is one of the core delivery partners alongside Cambridge Wireless and Knowledge Transfer Network. As the organization's mission is to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of global 5G development, Ros provides insight into the latest projects and programs going on under the organization's umbrella.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, I talked to Bruno Chomel, Chief Information Officer at Orange Poland about how the operator transformed its IT systems from legacy solutions to software, rolled out a new platform called Orange Flex that lets its customers change their services via an app, and the challenges the company faced when doing the transformation. Bruno will also be passing along his recommendations operators going through the same thing.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, I talked to Lester Thomas, Chief IT Systems Architect at Vodafone and TM Forum's Chief Technology Officer George Glass about how operators can cut cost while monetizing their 5G investments – especially considering the current economic climate.  One way of accomplishing both is by utilizing an Open Digital Architecture, a blueprint for modular, cloud-based platforms that can be orchestrated using AI, ultimately giving traditional operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS) the old heave-ho. Side note: see if you can tell at which point my Pandemic Puppy started gnawing on my ankles. If you have never tried podcasting about telecom with a new puppy, I highly recommend it – just because we all need a little more chaos in our lives right now.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne asks TM Forum's chief digital officer, John Gillam, what telecom industry collaboration is good for -- if anything. Spoiler alert: it is. Find out more on our latest episode.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne and TM Forum's chief analyst, Mark Newman, discuss Rakuten Mobile's 5G deployment delay due to COVID-19, the impact of US-China relations on Huawei, and taking mobile broadband pricing for granted. 

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne and TM Forum's chief analyst, Mark Newman, discuss the merger of 02 and Virgin Media, and Microsoft's acquisition of Metaswitch. We cover what the mergers mean for customer experience and the telecom industry at large, and what's ahead for mergers in uncertain times.

On this episode of Quick Talk, a TM Forum podcast, host Liz Coyne and TM Forum's chief analyst, Mark Newman, discuss the spikes in data usage around the globe, and how telcos need to move fast to monetize them.