Transcript
Pablo Tomasi: So welcome back to the Telco Drift, a podcast exploring tech telecoms and other sci-fi stuff. And today I'm joined by Ruth Brown from Omdia. So Ruth, welcome to the Telco Drift.
Ruth Brown: Thank you. Thanks, Pablo. And thanks for inviting me.
Pablo Tomasi: So we're going to talk a lot about enterprise and Wi-Fi today. But it's interesting because I've been following your work for quite some time. And I know that you cover pretty much everything that you can think of across the mobile infrastructure space. And I also recently seen the podcast that you did with Gabe on 6G. So maybe we're going touch about that later on. But before everything, as usual,
Pablo Tomasi: Can you share something about yourself particularly Because I know you were part of the industry before becoming an industry analyst. how How is that change?
Ruth Brown: Yeah, so say you're right. So I've been an analyst for four years, firstly with Heavy Reading, and then Heavy Reading became Omdia Go-To-Market Team when we were rebranded at the end of last year.
Ruth Brown: So I've been covering mobile networks and sort wireless stuff as well for um that time. And like I say, before that, for the majority of my career, so 25 years, feeling pretty old now saying that, I worked at BT. So I used to cover ah mobile networks. I did sort of some of the 21 CN networks that was sort of MPLS. I did Wi-Fi networks as well over that time. So I was much more hands-on.
Ruth Brown: um It is different, isn't it? and that And I suppose you become, I don't want to be cynical, I don't to become cynical, but it's nice to have that background because you can understand what works and perhaps what might work or what you've seen still trying to work for a duration of time.
Pablo Tomasi: So is is it like very different then moving out from like people that are actually doing and creating things and contributing to society to people that are outside and helping them guiding or how how How does it feel? Because i i as I mean, from my point of view, i sometimes I feel like because we're on the outside, we're naturally criticizing, you know, people that are working very hard to make things happen. And that's because we need to kind of counterbalance their optimism, not necessarily the techie people, but the marketing folks who are always overly optimistic.
Ruth Brown: Yeah, i I know what you think the last probably the last eight, nine years, I was in research area. So it was very much looking at the new proof of concept stuff coming along, you know, how it was going to get into the market and why you do have the optimistic viewpoint.
Ruth Brown: I mean, I remember some of the early network slicing demos, obviously, that was like hugely exciting, you know, getting into that. But obviously, now where we sit in 2026, we're still waiting for a lot of that we're seeing static slicing, we're not seeing, um you know, full dynamic slicing from everybody. But I'm not necessarily sure it's made me negative or sceptical, because I can appreciate the work people are putting into it. Because I remember just creating these demos is a lot of work working with these vendors, that really highly innovative, and they're
Ruth Brown: trying to be part of this story, trying to make something better, I think. So I don't think you become, I mean, obviously you're allowed to be a bit more real and and say, I think this is not going to work or I'm not sure that optimism's right. But I don't think it makes you pure cynic or it hasn't made me completely change my mindset.
Pablo Tomasi: not Not yet.
Ruth Brown: oh yeah
Pablo Tomasi: That's good. you know We need to kind of...
Ruth Brown: Maybe five years in, I've known.
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah, but balance a little bit there. But it is an interesting point that you're mentioning. So because you know all the effort that you go be you know behind the scenes of something that from the outside you're not really thinking, then you have a better appreciation for like how difficult it is.
Pablo Tomasi: while ah I don't have any idea what goes behind the scene. And so for me it's like, oh sorry, this doesn't really hit the mark.
Ruth Brown: Yeah, absolutely.
Pablo Tomasi: or
Ruth Brown: And also things like the network monitoring side. So I've done that from a really low level capturing packets to someone looking at some of these more graphical tools, especially in from the early days, across both mobile and Wi Fi network.
Ruth Brown: So when you hear about, I think people talking about how they could improve knocks of the future, or, you know, use AI to make network monitoring telemetry better.
Ruth Brown: i I guess visually I can picture that a bit more because I have seen it, you know, and and seen it in the past. So yeah, that is helpful.
Pablo Tomasi: Okay, very interesting. And I know, yeah, that definitely people would like have a proper background from the industry, always ah highly regarded. And yeah, as as I was saying before, you have been working on a lot of different things for Omnia. So clearly, you you know what you're talking about, and that's why you're here on the show. But before we chat on Wi-Fi, I know that you recently were attending NetworkX Americas.
Pablo Tomasi: So how was it? Good show, interesting stuff, something unexpected coming up from that side of the world?
Ruth Brown: Yeah, so do you know what? It was a really great show. Obviously we missed you, Pablo.
Pablo Tomasi: Of course.
Ruth Brown: Not the same without you.
Pablo Tomasi: Lots of people asking for my presence there.
Ruth Brown: You'd like me to say that. No, it was a really great show. So it was over three days. um The first day was a workshop day. um So I co-chaired the 6G Summit with Gabriel Brown, no relation.
Ruth Brown: i say um And that was, you know there was a lot of enthusiasm for that. That was really great, actually. There was some really good presentations. um ah gen to you know that um AI native and 6G started off as kind of quite a high level discussion and now it's become a little bit more fleshed out. Now we've seen some of the later plenary workshops starting.
Ruth Brown: So that was really good. um I guess in the the main days of the conference, the sort of days, so day zero is workshop days, days one to two were the main conference days.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: There was this kind of overarching ai enabled network theme going through. i mean, so a lot of discussions around AI, agentic AI ops, the kind of progress people are making. um So from AT&T's side, they were talking about already they're using 700,000 changes a day in their network are kind of um made by AI, which was fairly impressive, I think, really. um They were also you know talking a number of different operators, both AT&T and t and um I think some of the others, like Verizon Comcast, were saying about the fact the uplink traffic's going to really change. and I know we heard that at Maple World Congress as well, didn't really that change. um
Ruth Brown: And then on the other side, there was quite a lot of discussions really about using AI to really drive instead of you know measuring kind of much more ah network type KPIs, new throughput latency jitter, being much more about experience.
Ruth Brown: So um Derek Peterson from Boingo Wireless had this really good um internet of me, so internet of my experience kind of phrase that he used to sort of frame this.
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah.
Ruth Brown: So really drilling down into what's important for the user and and framing it. And then probably the last super interesting thing, so I was chairing or moderating the on the keynote panels, which was about how AI is going to really drive through convergence. So moving, especially in the US, it's been quite billing-focused convergence up until now. So it's been about kind of bundling together you know products like mobile, fiber, et cetera.
Ruth Brown: But they were sort of talking or the discussion was about you how we can use AI really to drive innovation, but also the way we deliver services. um Josh Goodall gave this really good example about how setting up new services, they're so much quicker. It's you know a much, much tighter timeframe. They're iterating sort of daily, they're getting feedback. It's really sort of short in the timeframe. So that was interesting.
Pablo Tomasi: Okay, and I know we are supposed to talk about something else, but and I'm just curious. You're talking about 6G, right? And you know how it's going to be AI native and everything and so on. Has anyone asked in this stupid question of like, why why do we need to rush into 6G when 5G hasn't, we can say hasn't really delivered that much yet?
Ruth Brown: yeah so Yeah, so obviously, and especially last year, that was before the first initial 6G workshop kicked off.
Pablo Tomasi: Why do we need to stick to that timeline?
Ruth Brown: It was all about it felt like G fatigue, people were questioning the cadence, should it be every 10 years? i mean, feel I've seen many generations, probably 2G onwards, I've been working in industry. And it's always, like you said, it's fallen into this 10 year cadence.
Ruth Brown: This has been the first real pushback on that. And certainly last year, there was a lot of
Ruth Brown: kind of push back, do we need it? um What's the point with, like you said, we're still trying to ah pay for and roll out the full kind of aspects of 5G. But I think, especially from the last um plenary, which was in April, I think some of that has softened a bit. So we part of our 6G summit analyst remarks that gave I gave, sort of co-presented that with Gabriel,
Ruth Brown: um we were going through kind of feedback from both the first initial workshop and this first plenary in April, and it has softened a bit. I think instead of that, do we need 60? It's become much more practical now. So people are like, how can we deliver it? What can we deliver in the first phase?
Pablo Tomasi: So so kind kind of living a little bit like the broader big picture and focusing on, let's say, smaller bite-sized chunks. We're going to do this and that type of thing.
Ruth Brown: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose just like ah getting into the normal standards development phase now, so people starting to push in aspects that they're interested in and thinks and things they'd like to include in the study. So at this stage, you you start off with this huge number of...
Ruth Brown: um interesting points people want to do and then you've got to kind of um I'll say whittle them down or kind of prioritize certain things or perhaps blend certain items that's typically what happens it feels almost like lobbying I've i've certainly felt like that across the years so sometimes you get
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: a specific technical aspect which might start off written by maybe two or three vendors or operators or a group and then they'll either try and get other people on board push it through or perhaps it will merge with another idea so we're at that exciting I think it's an exciting stage yeah
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah, it should it should be and and you know sort of we'll we'll see how it develops. i haven't really looked much into 6G to be fair, but I'm sure that eventually you know we we all have to start looking into that.
Ruth Brown: Yeah. Yeah. i think Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: and it wass like there is There is not much other choice. But now, okay, let's let's move back to the to the actual theme of the of the podcast.
Ruth Brown: yeah
Pablo Tomasi: um and And so I wanted to to touch touch with you on Wi-Fi because I've been talking about Private 5G in some of the other episodes. And of course, Wi-Fi always comes up one way or another. So would be good to hear someone that has an expertise and on that side of the market and to hear that story and see how it compares maybe with some of the things that we talk about in private 5G
Pablo Tomasi: So maybe let's just start. what's What's new with Wi-Fi? Is it becoming more deterministic? Is Wi-Fi 7 big developments? Or but what else you think it's relevant for the audience?
Ruth Brown: Yeah, so I think one of the major focuses and and shifts, so um in the past, probably through the different generations, so each generation is now certified with a specific number.
Ruth Brown: So from about the
Ruth Brown: 2000, we've had these different Wi-Fi, um like Wi-Fi 1, 2, 3, etc. And like you say, we're now at Wi-Fi 7. So I think over that time, the initial focus was kind of increasing speed, you know, throughput capacity, etc.
Ruth Brown: um I think as we move especially the um Wi-Fi 7, you know, obviously that did have a transition. It had um kind of a huge uplift in speed potential.
Ruth Brown: But now as we're moving towards these kind of later proposed standards, we're moving away from this kind of speeds and feeds towards experience. So, you know, on the horizon, we're we're still obviously developing Wi-Fi 7. But on the horizon,
Ruth Brown: the um The main remit and focus of Wi-Fi 8 is around ultra-liability. So it's it's much more experience-focused. It's about trying to, like you said, control that experience. So it's deterministic. So we're thinking about coverage at the edges. We're thinking about handover, roaming, et cetera, on earth on a Wi-Fi access point.
Pablo Tomasi: So does it mean that the difference if I'm deploying a Wi-Fi network or a private cellular 4G, 5G or 6G, whatever it's going to be, is going to become less and less from a performance point of view? Or are there still, i mean, i imagine coverage is always going to be sort of cellular strength, right? But in terms of that more predictable performance,
Ruth Brown: Yeah, so you're right. I mean, I've always felt like, and would be great to get your viewpoint on it, it's always felt like Wi-Fi and 5G, especially private 5G, have been like two competitors, you up against each other, like I'm the best, or or maybe even like one's been the little brother of the other or vice versa.
Ruth Brown: um I guess at the moment, they i would say they're complementary or don't fully overlap, do they? Because... especially for private 5G you might potentially deploy an outdoor environment. So you're a logistics firm, you might deploy it on part of your campus, because you want to very much nail down the service requirements um of a specific area, um and know what the quality is. But like you say, as you move to these um later generations, so I mean, Wi Fi sevens got um the six gigahertz range now. So it's
Ruth Brown: um a lot better in terms of kind of achieving um and mitigating against and ah interference, but achieving a kind of a lower latency, which I suppose originally you would have only um thought possible with perhaps 5G or mobile network to be able to kind of nail it down.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: um And I suppose in theory, the capabilities are getting closer, especially, you know, now people are looking more into deploying outdoor Wi-Fi, and there's aspects about you know being able to use higher power out to Wi-Fi, et cetera. But I still think we're gonna have scenarios where perhaps Wi-Fi is better for certain things or you know, perhaps we even um kind of branch the two networks, you know, integrate them.
Ruth Brown: um It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts as well.
Pablo Tomasi: me.
Ruth Brown: But I do think there are certain scenarios where either devices you use or kind of the cost limitations or perhaps even your existing infrastructure.
Ruth Brown: and We know Wi-Fi is being deeply integrated into enterprises for many years, you know, probably the early two thousand s
Pablo Tomasi: I mean, from from my point of view, I like what you're saying that the technologies are complementary, which which I believe that's the case. But that is also the problem with private 5G The moment that you are complementary, you're not essential.
Pablo Tomasi: So that means that your total addressable market shrinks significantly. because you're not going to eat the launch of Wi-Fi in a lot of cases. You're just going to go for certain applications that really need that sort of extra performance. And we know that those applications are not that many right now. So if the market is small, then sort of everything else kind of shrinks down in a sense. And that's what we're seeing now.
Pablo Tomasi: Some people living the market. I'm not going to name names because they disagree with me.
Ruth Brown: he
Pablo Tomasi: And some people kind of retrenching here and there.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: um but But that sort of, you know, kind of follows up with the next question that I have. um So you mentioned that there's been like quite a few, a couple of decades, the fact that Wi-Fi becoming a cornerstone of the enterprise. Why did it become so important? I would imagine that any enterprise nowadays, right if you say Wi-Fi, they they know why they need it. And it's essential. I can imagine anyone saying, oh, no, I can live without Wi-Fi.
Pablo Tomasi: So what what was the secret to their success?
Ruth Brown: Yeah, so I think, and and I feel like I've lived through some of it, which makes me feel quite old already.
Pablo Tomasi: No, no ways.
Ruth Brown: So I think, you know, Wi-Fi has been quite liberating to the enterprise. So, i mean, I remember when I first started work back in the two thousand everyone was wired in, you know, you had ethernet cables, you wanted to choose location. It's like, Oh, I've got port to click into is my cable, you know, the cable clip broken. Is that going to cause me issues?
Ruth Brown: Um, and that was, you know, everyone was very much tied to a desk. And then I think as we got into the early two thousands, we started to see laptops appearing, which had wifi in,
Ruth Brown: um And it was like very, it was almost like I felt reasonably quick. I would say in the uptake, obviously, it provided more flexibility for enterprises. They won't have to channel into walls, rip them out to put in new cap for five cabling at the time.
Ruth Brown: um So that from that side, it was quite cost effective. They weren't moving structural, having like add cabling under the floor, you know extra copper.
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah.
Ruth Brown: um But I think the other major advantage is so um you know Wi-Fi 2.3, which was you know picking up in that era, really, they bought you know they were able to operate at broadband speeds. It wasn't like um mobile at the time, which obviously in that era, 2.3G wasn't so much private mobile. It was just you know um operator macro scale mobile. So it was a very different proposition, I would say.
Pablo Tomasi: And I mean, a bit of a curveball, but some some people are saying, i've read it somewhere, if if you get sort of laptops of the natively 5G, that will change the fortune of Wi-Fi and the fortunes of sellers in the enterprise. Do you think that's a fair statement?
Ruth Brown: So i no, I don't think it is because I think the cost implications, I mean, if you think about it, once you've got a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, you're connecting into your local LAN, you're not paying any kind of contract data, etc.
Ruth Brown: um Yes, you might have a 5G enabled laptop connecting to your private network. So in that scenario, you're not, you're just, you know, connecting in.
Ruth Brown: But I think
Pablo Tomasi: See you.
Ruth Brown: If you think of the typical enterprise, say us, the two of us going into like the Informa building, for example, if I had a five g ah laptop, I would probably still be connecting to the macro network rather than um onto the local LAN. And I would also have terrible experience inside because because it's all double glazed and energy efficient glass and concrete. And a lot of these new buildings are like that. and we know that it's it's a kind of a bad experience for indoor mobile.
Pablo Tomasi: your seller.
Ruth Brown: And we see that across a lot of London, don't we?
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah.
Ruth Brown: And yes, I think it's it's good in terms of it's it's liberating if you've got this laptop and you're moving about. i think there's a lot of advantages. But again, I think it's down to the use case you want to use it. And I don't think it's a definite yes or no. i think it depends on the use case you're using it in.
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah, and and I agree with you, I think, because on one side, people are listening to the technology world, they always say, oh, we are lacking the scale of devices. We need more native devices. But then then again, the network is is meant to serve limited number.
Pablo Tomasi: of devices, and not because it has to serve limited number of devices, just because the use case that it supports normally are like, I don't know, tens or whatever, twenties of devices, right?
Pablo Tomasi: it's It's rare unless you go in China and places like that, that you're going to have like thousands of AGVs, for instance.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: It's more likely you're going to have twenties or so. um So yeah, still still trying to find out something that will make private 5G kind of get back into the hype so I have a few more years of work, but...
Ruth Brown: yeah
Pablo Tomasi: It's a tough ask.
Pablo Tomasi: But then if if we then, and and you touched a little bit about that sort of the indoor experience, and you know there is like, again, from the 5G side, there was like a lot of emphasis on like, you can roam inside and outside because you're a cellular you know, it's 4G, whatever. But I believe Wi-Fi is also looking at similar solutions in terms of roaming across different networks. Can you you know share a little bit more details than my one-liner?
Ruth Brown: yeah so i guess it depends i mean there's many ways roam um so Firstly, if we talk about kind of the at the macro level, so you're on like a 5G network, either as a consumer in the house or someone who's like ah a business traveler and then you're coming into your office environment.
Ruth Brown: um So really, you know Wi-Fi has been the base underlying kind of um technology that you've walked into an environment and you've been pulled onto it.
Ruth Brown: um And I think that's most of the experience we would have is either at home or, you know, when we go into an office, for example. So that kind of macro level um scale. um So we know that there's issues in terms of at the moment there isn't proper roaming. The tradition, the transition is pretty harsh. it's a It's a break before make. So that means if you're on a voice call, you get that break when the IP address changes from the mobile network to the Wi-Fi network.
Ruth Brown: um And that can be quite harsh. But then I would say, you know, the majority of the time, say watching YouTube, you're listening to music, you've got some sort of buffering, you will never notice that. So for a lot of scenarios, that's not a problem. So the...
Ruth Brown: I suppose roaming or the not so much roaming in that scenario works pretty well. um Over the years, and i' you know I've actually tested this back in back in the day as a kind of researcher and engineer looking at actual proper you know wireless and mobile network integration.
Pablo Tomasi: like
Ruth Brown: And we've seen, it I mean, 4G, 5G, they're talking about 6G as well, you know moving towards this. But I guess in the standards, it's always been some kind of People have wanted to do it I suppose, it's complicated.
Ruth Brown: there's loads of There used to be loads of technical issues around identity. How would you know the identity between the two networks?
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: um You know, because you've got different identity in mobile versus Wi-Fi. um As Wi-Fi becomes more sophisticated, they're always also trying to move towards anonymizing, um you know, identity on that side, which makes it more difficult.
Ruth Brown: But I guess overarching all of this, and especially if we look in an enterprise um scenario, it's more I'd say the technical um problems are probably lower than the kind of operational problems, the um problems in terms of who is actually going to own, manage that customer, you know, the um ecosystem problems in terms of the devices, which devices support this or that.
Ruth Brown: And that becomes much more of a bigger issue. So I guess that macro scale integration is you know, although there's ambitions, it's much more longer term, or perhaps we'll never actually see it happening because what we've got is enough.
Pablo Tomasi: Okay.
Ruth Brown: So, you know, there are different alternatives. And, i'm you know, I'm sure you've you've seen some of them, you know, on a private network um solution, you know, enterprises or enterprise solutions looking at actually doing convergence on a smaller scale between their kind of corporate Wi-Fi or LAN network.
Ruth Brown: and also things like open roaming, which is a kind of federated model
Pablo Tomasi: I like something that you said, you said what do we have is good enough. and And I think that's sort of the the secret to a lot of innovation that is not happening, right? Because you could put resources and money and do something that is slightly better. But if if we don't need it, right? you know if What we have is sort of okay. Why why should people kind of you know lose their sleep trying to figure out a problem that doesn't need to be solved? And I think a lot of time in enterprise, like, okay, some things are are okay. Let's just not touch them.
Pablo Tomasi: Why should we? Let's live a simpler life.
Ruth Brown: Yeah, and I think, again, it comes down to the scenario, and maybe this is ah an overarching theme to all like other private networks, wireless networks.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: and You might be in a scenario where you want to deliver that experience. People are prepared to pay more to have something that's better, something that they can guarantee. So, you know, there's a lot more progress in like these venue environments. You're at an airport, you're at a stadium, kind of making that really good. And that is something people are prepared to pay for.
Ruth Brown: But I think the kind of standard network experience is people just kind of want it. or are they will they just deal with the fact or grumble, yeah, i might have to turn off Wi-Fi or I might have to, you know, disabled five G really. um The problem is is, as we both know, is when you get to the edge of coverage, it's the transition.
Ruth Brown: And even, i guess, as we move towards trying to make that better and some of these new um AI concepts coming in and and technology are looking to improve that.
Ruth Brown: So at the moment, um convergent solutions, which are kind of in place or or engineered, are very much looking at signal strength as the switch to move people over.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: And that can be quite difficult to manage and understand. So really, you need to move to this much more experience driven concept, you know, understanding what it's actually like, not just looking at a signal strength at the edge, because you might have good signal, but you may have terrible bandwidth, or the network might be really congested. So you don't want to move over to it. So there's a lot of concepts to consider before you make this decision before you to kind of retain that deterministic network, which you know, you were talking about with private 5d, for example, like nailing it down, you know, keeping it, keeping it solid.
Pablo Tomasi: and And you talk about experience ah a few times, which seems sort of where the whole mobile ecosystem is moving in a sense. like ah So we we we have the connectivity that's sort of good, but it needs to be something different. It needs to perceive something to be perceived as something different in a sense. for people to to truly to truly make the most of it. But if we take sort of experience more generally and we're thinking about innovation that that will eventually drive that that experience or companies that are again pushing the boundaries, ah who would you recommend to have a look at?
Pablo Tomasi: you know Any sort of tech innovation, any company that you think, i yeah.
Ruth Brown: he's doing He's doing cool stuff. So I think certainly for the kind of next generation of Wi-Fi chips, so Wi-Fi 8 I spoke about earlier, you know, at Mabel World Congress, we're already seeing some um examples. and Obviously, the chipset vendors have got to kind of get ahead of the game to start looking into it.
Ruth Brown: So CoolCom unveiled this new FastConnect chip at Maple World Congress and sort of Dragon Wing for the next kind of era. So they were showing some of these higher speeds, you know, some of, um you know, talking about some of these ah new experiences, how it's going to become, you know, or the focus is going to be much more about edge coverage, um you know, about a a better, kind of handover between access points and there's better coordination.
Ruth Brown: um So those MediaTek again, they were, you know, looking into um demos and and it's showing ah sort Wi-Fi 8 along with Zysol as well. They were showing that demo together.
Ruth Brown: um The other thing I think that's kind of interesting as well is if we look at some of the traditional players, you know, like Cisco, for example, it's obviously been a long term enterprise player, same with kind of HPE Juniper.
Ruth Brown: Both of them are looking much more into kind of agentic capabilities, you know, what can they do with sort of agent actions for networking?
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: So I think um Cisco, you know, we're talking about it at Cisco Live about um you know agent actions for networking, rolling it out into their Meraki access points and kind of ecosystem first.
Ruth Brown: Juniper HPE has obviously had this missed AI for a while, but both of them really heavily concentrating on kind of AI agents. And I think we're seeing this across most um Wi-Fi and chipset providers. There's this massive AI focus actually across the whole industry, isn't it, right now?
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah, there's a bit of an obsession about ai everything right that is happening, and and I'm sure there is a good reason for it.
Ruth Brown: yeah
Pablo Tomasi: um But on the on the ah AI agent side, because I hear that talked a lot about also in mobile network infrastructure, AI agents. So that's, in simple terms, that's the future. You need to have a bunch of agents because they're going optimize everything you do on the network.
Pablo Tomasi: Is that how it is, or is that ah overly simplifying a very complex...
Ruth Brown: Yeah, sorry. I mean, people are building it out in stages and obviously it works at different levels.
Pablo Tomasi: Hmm.
Ruth Brown: So, you know, if you think of the the network as a kind of horizontal plane, so say it's ah a mobile network, five g for example, you might have um a i um within the mobile network that's helping you to optimise certain aspects, you know, the um the network, and or NWDAF, which was a feature in 5G was going to be very much about, you know, analytics and and and AI and all of that.
Ruth Brown: And there's talk about
Pablo Tomasi: I know Roberto loves talking about NWDAF
Ruth Brown: He does love it. He does love it. You're right.
Pablo Tomasi: He really loves it.
Ruth Brown: Yeah. So, I mean, at that layer, yes, there's also um from a point, especially as you move to AI, they're talking about, sorry, not AI, talking about kind of these new agent layers to handle kind of communication, security, um agent signaling, et cetera. So that is a change.
Ruth Brown: But, I suppose people are starting off where we are now. Some of it is just at the, you know, what can I do with root cause analysis? So people are building in stages, you know, adding in these agents, you know, how can I optimize my energy and my radio, for example, because we know, you know, RAN sites use up a lot of memory.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: memory And the agents is, you know, this kind of people are starting them out as kind of individual agents. But I think the power is really once you start linking these kind of multi-agent systems together.
Ruth Brown: Although, again, that was another big conversation in Dallas as well about, you know controlling this, understanding them, you know, interoperability between agents from one vendor or you know maybe the operators written them versus another.
Ruth Brown: And I think we're only kind of scratching the surface at the moment because you know we've we've got this kind of horizontal network layer of agents and then we've almost kind of got vertical interactions between either our compute layer you know into our BSS OSS So it it feels like agents working at every angle.
Ruth Brown: and that's complex, isn't it, to both
Pablo Tomasi: Okay, so it it does it does sound very complex.
Ruth Brown: watch, operate, monitor, check it's doing the right thing. Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: So the the idea, and again, just trying to understand here, is like you're going to have an agent that is sort of focusing on a narrow task. Let's call it task. And then you have, let's say, you know hundreds or whatever it is of them. And then you're going to have like an overarching agent that is coordinating what everyone else is doing.
Pablo Tomasi: And this is across different vendors. and and And now we're sort of starting with like one agent doing something small.
Ruth Brown: like it yeah a supervisor.
Pablo Tomasi: I imagine you still need to have people that are kind of checking that the agent doesn't go rogue. Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think we're going to kind of kick out all our um network operations managers and engineers overnight. No way. It will certainly build in stages. And I think almost in this interim period, and that was, I had a panel around and AI ops.
Ruth Brown: And one of the questions I was asking is, do we think in this interim period, it's ah as you introduce agents, is it more effort because you've got to have people watching them checking their behavior, checking the outcome.
Pablo Tomasi: Mm-hmm.
Ruth Brown: rectifying, you know, almost that iterative loop of giving human field feedback as well to improve them. Is that more effort than if you just had a human doing the task? and And maybe this interim period, there is a little bit more effort, but you're you're trying to build it and build confidence in it so you can then start stepping back.
Ruth Brown: But i I feel that will probably take a few years just to get to that stage, especially the regulated environment we're in.
Pablo Tomasi: it It does make sense, what but what I found it sort of a bit surreal is that sort we're living in that that moment where you are training your replacement. Effectively.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: and And I remember, yeah, there was like something, you know, with some of the, you know, AI assistant that people are developing, you're there helping to get back, get up to speed, but effectively it's like, dude, this thing is going to steal my job eventually.
Pablo Tomasi: So it's like little bit on like, it's strange, strange feeling.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: Not everyone's of course, but at least it seems that for for the time being, because of the complexity that is involved, you know, all our friends in network operations still safe, which is good.
Ruth Brown: yeah
Ruth Brown: an I know. But would it have your humour, Pablo? Is it good?
Pablo Tomasi: my My humor is like, you know, an acquired taste for many people have been told. It is what it is. But okay, since I think we've covered pretty much everything that that I was interested in. So thanks thanks a lot ah that, you know, helps clarifying a lot of the points about sort of what is happening in Wi-Fi and how it's relevant in the enterprise.
Pablo Tomasi: But since I'm trying to have a slightly different podcast, also want to get some of your recommendations on things that are not necessary.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: i know they it's Ideally, they are tech related, but not necessarily anything like books, TV series, movies that you think, okay, just this is something that I think is really good or interesting and that the audience should should know.
Ruth Brown: yeah So I'm going to have go movies. With the ah podcast name, I'm obviously going to have to bring up the Fast and Furious franchise. You know, quarter mile at a time speed. I think that like fits in well with that. but may pop speed I'm not going to deny they started to go downhill later in the series. They became less real. They got more tech.
Ruth Brown: But um i'm not I'm not sure the count the caliber of the story changed up a bit.
Pablo Tomasi: um um I'm not going to lie, I was not taking you for a fast and furious enthusiast.
Ruth Brown: Oh, I love it. it's this it's a classic It's a classic franchise, and I'm reliving it with one of my sons. But I guess on um on a newer serious film note, so I just watched Project Hail Mary.
Ruth Brown: i don't know if you've seen that, the Byron Gosling film.
Pablo Tomasi: No.
Ruth Brown: That's really great, actually. So he's a science teacher, and he finds himself in space, and he's got to kind of stop the sun from dying. so that's all I'll say, but it's, yeah, it was a fun film.
Pablo Tomasi: Okay, i'm fantastic. and And I remember Kristine also mentioned Project Hail Mary a as a a recommendation. So definitely I need to to add that. Because I'm adding all the recommendations.
Pablo Tomasi: so I have a long list of books. Then I have my own list of books. And at the end, you know I'm kind of reading a book a month, to be honest, tops. So the list keeps growing.
Ruth Brown: Yeah.
Pablo Tomasi: And then one day I'm going to get through everything, hopefully.
Ruth Brown: Yeah, she's got some great book recommendations. I'm starting to write them down too. Just need more time in my day. It's always things to do.
Pablo Tomasi: Yeah, that's always a problem. We don't have enough time, unfortunately. But anyway, so ah Ruth, thank you very much for you know for taking time out of your schedule to to join me on the on the podcast. that I really appreciate And again, for anyone that is listening, I'm going to put Ruth's details from LinkedIn so you can reach out to her if you have any questions or like any additional comments on anything that is mobile related. So again, Ruth, thank you very much. And thanks everyone for listening.
Ruth Brown: Thanks very much.
