Dean and Ben Talk Tech
Telecom analysts Dean Bubley & Benoit Felten discuss tech news, industry publications, regulation / policy and statistics, relating to fixed and mobile telecom, plus cloud and adjacent domains.
Dean and Ben Talk Tech
DBTT Episode 6: DNA & Brussels Connectivity Summit, MWC preview, Private 5G and upcoming events
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DNA, MWC & P5G
In this episode, Ben & Dean discuss the recent Connectivity Summit event in Brussels and what it told us about the EU DNA Digital Network Act proposals. Dean gives a preview of what to expect in Barcelona at MWC, and also a quick update on the state of Private 5G markets. Benoit highlights an upcoming BEREC event about FTTH and copper switch-off.
00:33 - Last week, Dean and Ben met in Brussels at the Forum Europe event on Connectivity, which brought together regulators, policymakers, telcos, industry associations, vendors and a slew of consultants to discuss the DNA proposals.
It covered a lot of ground, from satellite and spectrum, to overall telecoms consolidation and investment plans. But while it had a lot to say about 6G and sovereignty, the fixed broadband world and contentious issue of "voluntary conciliation" for IP interconnect and other disputes got much less airtime. We discuss the good & bad outcomes. (Dean's LinkedIn write-up of the Brussels event is here).
16:10 - Dean kicks off the segment what to expect as themes at MWC in Barcelona, starting with Sovereignty, Satellite & Automation. Yes, there will also be a bit about spectrum, 6G and network APIs as well, but they probably won't be the stars of the show in terms of announcements and on-stage discussion. We also dive into the difference of sovereignty for telcos vs cloud. (Dean's next Unthinkable Lab workshop will cover telecom & tech sovereignty & resilience issues on April 23 - Link)
25:25 - A quick segment on growth of private cellular networks, and the role of telcos in P5G, plus a comparison with Wi-Fi for enterprise wireless. (Dean's write-up of the recent Uptime Private 5G event is here).
30:01 - Upcoming events:
- See Benoit at BEREC's workshop on European Copper Switch-Off (link)
- See Dean at the IWCE event on Critical Comms, courtesy of the Safer Buildings Coalition, on a panel about in-building emergency comms (link) and at vCon Spring (link) to discuss vCons and AI+voice for telcos.
Hello and welcome to the sixth edition of the DBTT podcast with myself, Dean Bubley and Benoit Felton, um, from Fiberevolution. And we are gonna be talking today about, um, what's going on in Brussels, some upcoming things that are happening in Barcelona. Um, and then, um, more generally about a couple of areas like private networks and satellite. Benoit, we, we were in Brussels together last week. What, what were your takeouts on that and the, and the DNAI.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:you can expect the views to be a little bit, uh, biassed towards their way of, of looking at the world. Um. For me, there's two big takeaways. The first one is, I think everyone looked at the DNA and thought, okay, where's the simplification? 'cause that was supposed to be the big thing. I had a bit of an epiphany, uh, and I think it was the one but last, or even the last, um, panel where this guy from the commission said, look, previously. All of this was operating as directives, which countries could implement or not implement or implement differently, had some leeway from now on. There's one rule and it comes from us and, and to be honest, I had not really clocked this reading, the DNA, I was aware of the veto powers that the commission wanted to give itself and stuff like that, but I didn't realise that. It was this kind of takeover in such an aggressive way. And the interesting thing to me is that actually that's not simplification. There's still plenty of rules everywhere. It's more harmonisation, you know, with a crowbar it's, it's like, you know, you're gonna harmonise whether you like it or not. And
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Okay.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:is a connection between simplification and harmonisation. But what that means is what everyone was expecting was lighter rules. Less rules, less overlap between different, you know, areas of regulation. And I don't think we get very much of that. If anything, we do get is a very forceful attempt by the commission to say from now on, it's one rule for all. So that's a really interesting,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:it's a shift, which I, I don't quite know how this is gonna play out because the council is likely to be. Not very happy about this. I, I haven't yet spoken to, well, I've spoken to one regulator who is clearly unhappy about this, but I haven't spoken to more than that for now. But I suspect there's gonna be a hell of a lot of
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:and if that is their only simplification play, then I'm a bit concerned there's gonna be no simplification at all.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:I, I, I, I also got similar vibes, but I also, I would say, I think it got framed a bit in that there's a few things which sort of have to be harmonised. Which they're using as the crowbar, and I think particularly the pan-European satellite authorization. Yeah. Which sort of makes sense rather than, yeah, because, so that's, that's very easy for them to hold up and cc it's necessary. Um, and then, then I think the, the question of whether that same, almost like authoritarian and sort of centralised, um, do as we say. Attitude really applies to whether it's on sort of mobile auctions, whether it's on fixed network structure, um, I think that gets caught up in the wake. I think it's easy for them to generate headlines on harmonisation, on satellite, on sovereignty issues, on some of the resilience on subsea fibre and stuff like that. But I think that the meat of stuff that goes on in access networks, I think is gonna be much more contended. You know, they, they've now got, essentially, they, they're trying to give themselves a veto. On a Spectrum Auctions, for example.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Not just spectrum auctions,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:No,
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:trying to give themselves the veto on significant market power. Uh, they're trying to structure response to significant market power, in a way that they would control. I mean, there is, it is quite a, an attempt at, at, you know, uh, yeah, as, as I said, harmonisation, whether you like it or not,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:it. It's, it's, it's more stick than carrot. Um, although the, the word demand did crop up a couple of times, uh, during the, during the event. I mean, there were quite a lot of people who were channelling the sort of draggy report, and I suspect they'd probably use that as justification.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. One, just one thing on the satellite authorization thing, it was funny to me to hear Amazon saying, look, we don't mind about doing this in 27 countries. It's not a big deal. So, so that like, you know, that kind of cut. You know, pulled the rug under the commission a little bit on that,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:more, more generally. I think the thing that struck me, I mean, so the simplification thing is a kind of an overarching theme. more specifically, the thing that struck me, and again, hearing it live at the event, made me rethink what I dread in the DNA. Is it kind of fixed with nowhere to be seen. Um, they, they not only did, was it virtually that no panel was themed around fixed, but more importantly, virtually no one, apart from possibly Robert Murrick actually mentioned fixed at all. And, and it made me, you know, recast the whole thing in a slightly different light. For example, like all the mentions of data and statistics, which came from this analysis Mason report for Connect Europe, they all mentioned FDTH, but never VHCN. And VHCN is supposed to be very high capacity networks,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:and. Um, you know, DOYs 3.1 or DOYs four cable, um, the stuff that's the target to deliver gigabit connectivity. And suddenly you're like, wait a minute. Have they thrown cable under the bus entirely
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:It, it is funny because we had this discussion there and to me it's, it's almost a bit like the us. The US has a much stronger telco versus cable Coast split, where in Europe hasn't really existed. And I'm wondering if, if we are gonna go in that direction now. Um, but, uh, I, I, one quick bit of background. I mean, I, I go to quite a few of the Well Forum Europe and Forum Global events. One of the things I should say is that they're very heavily spectrum oriented and wireless oriented. So they have a series of global events on spectrum policy around the world. Um, and then Europe, they used to have a 5G event, and I think this, this one we went to came about by them. Blended together the 5G, and it might have been, I can't remember, it's competitiveness or sovereignty or something like that. So they don't really have as much heritage on the fibre and copper side or cable for that matter. So, you know, just to sort of contextualise the specific event. Um, and I mentioned that to the organisers. I think they'll probably look at it also, the timing. Yeah. The, it came out the, the event was one month after the DNA and if it's normal conference, they would've. Nailed down all the speakers two or three or four months in advance. So it's sort of the timing. Probably didn't do them many favours either.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:You're, you're probably correct, but, but to me, putting aside the event bias, which, which may have been there, it, it, it just, it just landed on me that actually there's not all that much. Fixing the ne. And then one thing in particular, and this was a really interesting exchange in my mind, was Robert Morrick saying, look, at some point the commission needs to decide if they want infrastructure competition in fixed or if they don't, because that means you, you can't juggle these two
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:at the same time and say, on the one hand, we want, we want, um, regulation to go away.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:other hand, we want. know, infrastructure sharing or local monopolies and, and I mean what they want or not, is actually largely irrelevant. The market has built itself with, if you look at this. a territorial basis, it's
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:50 plus percent of Europe is gonna be infrastructure monopolies on fixed, and I'm probably very generous saying that it's might be 70 or 80, and population wise, it'll be flipped over, right?
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:of the population will be in a monopoly situation, but the fact is there will be monopolies, so you cannot not regulate
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:you're willing to go back to pre liberalisation days where basically someone does whatever the hell they want.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:they're not resolving this in the DNA at
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh, I, I think the whole wholesale area on both the fixed side, whether it's open access or whole wholesale fibre and on mobile, uh. We look talking about MVNOs conspicuous by their absence. There, there were some, I think one of the Tower Company Association, EWIA, was a sponsor again, so they, they got a bit more on the infrastructure side. Um, but it the, the sort of the, the retail wholesale split, I asked a question at it. Yeah. It seemed to have been overlooked. Um, by, by many 'cause it poses this sort of awkward questions about competition. 'cause one of the things that the, for the Connect Europe and others were saying, oh, there's this disconnect between, um, you know. Usual thing of, of pricing is, is flat or low. You know, we are not generating enough revenues, and the usual link is, oh, can we change net neutrality rules or can we allow consolidation? But the elephant in the room is actually in a lot of markets. For mobile, for example, MVNOs. Drive pricing, not how many physical network operators there are and to, to, to a degree. I would say the same with, um, fixed because of the history with UN-bundle local loop and it's, it's the retail competition, not how many infrastructure owners there that drive consumer prices.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Absolutely no. No, but I mean, there's no doubt that in the commission's eyes there is a huge infrastructure competition, bias. They cannot resolve themselves to think, okay, maybe you know, healthy competition on top of a single or low number of, of. competitors is fine. They, they just can't resolve themselves to
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:that's the whole issue with the French model, which pushed for a single network everywhere that's, you know, wholesale everywhere and, and it works perfectly fine. Now it does raise, because we're gonna talk about resilience, it does raise a resilience question mark. Absolutely. I mean,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:off if you decide that one network is enough. you can still have competition. What you, what with regulation by the way. What, what lose is, you know, a second network to fall back on.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Um, having said that, the systems such as they are. Um, if one network goes down and you have two, then it still means 50% of people, whatever market share that network had, are gonna be down. Just because the other network's still here doesn't mean everything works as normal. So, but anyway,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:off exists at no doubt about it, but it's not even addressed. This, this is, to me, the really big thing that's, that's not being addressed at all.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:No, I, I would agree. Actually, one thing I, I would say on the positive side that came out is they're paying a little bit more, more attention to the demand side of things, and particularly to B2B cropped up a couple of times, people discussing, you know, industry, enterprise, government as customer, um, you know, which, which is a good thing, even if it's partly you there to sort of crowbar in things like network slicing and stuff like that. But it was also recognition. There was a session on private networks, which we'll talk about later on as well.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Yeah. Well, and I think. You know, I mean, part of it is you take B2B out and standalone. a non-story because as, at least until now, no one's really figured out a way to make that, you know, a, a consumer benefit.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:no.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Um, and, and so yeah, it's, it, there's a bit of a chicken and egg thing between this, you know, we
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:need standalone and we're behind the rest of the world on
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:uh. Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Uh,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:argue that if you're not, if you're not looking at B2B. Having said that, I think. I mean, private networks is absolutely an important topic. I'm still not clear that
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah,
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:changes anything
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:not, not much. I mean, I mean, to, to be honest, uh, yeah. One, one takeaway you could say is that the killer app for 5G standalone is it supports six G in future, which is bit of an Irish Really?
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Well, yeah. And that, and that's also what they're arguing. But, but it's, it's a, it's a bit of a weird
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:So, so there's maybe one last thing which we can briefly touch upon, which was another, you know, conspicuously absent. Discussion, which is this conciliation mechanism
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:commission has put in place on IP interconnection. Um, which is, uh, it's interesting 'cause in the recitals there's no justification for it. And in fact, on stage, again, there was no justification for it. They were saying like, well, it's not, it's not binding, so why would you care? And you're like, well, if it's not binding and it
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Why would you, why? Why would you, why would you bother? Yeah. It is like, why would you care? Or why would you bother? I mean, y Yeah. Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:So there, there is something, I mean, said this previously, but it's getting to a point now where I, I struggle to take the commission at face value when it comes to justifications. And this, this one has something fishy around it. And, and I mean, I don't want to,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:to point fingers or,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah. Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:paranoid too much, but insistence on this being in there fishy in, in and of itself.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:it is. Although, I mean, I, I still think this has got. Ample opportunity to backfire as well, because once you start having conciliation for people who have, you know, gripes about each other or, or sort of, um, the sort of ecosystem grievance procedure. Well, you know, the interconnect ecosystem isn't the only ecosystem where people have grievances with each other. Uh, and so it could be applied to, you know, neutral hosts versus op MNOs onboarding. It could be around supportive EIM devices. It could be there, there's like. About five or 10 or 20 different places where having a forum to have the regulator mediate your argument that doesn't quite breach any rules, um, could be useful. And some of them will be Protel Telco and some will be anti telco. So I think it is like, be careful what you want, what you, what you wish for four.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:you and I agree and, and actually. I mean, I could see this backfire in a more fundamental way around IP interconnection because we know that basically most peering in Europe is not free.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:There are negotiations going on. These are all behind closed doors. No one wants to mention amounts or anything like that, but you could imagine, you know, a hotheaded uh, content provider such as meta. Saying fine, you wanna play that game? I'm gonna open conciliation requests everywhere where I'm forced to be, to pay.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Um, and, and suddenly it doesn't look like the telcos are the grieved parties. It looks like the other guys are. So, I, I mean,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:I just think it's a very stupid idea. I mean,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah. Yeah. There.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:day,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah. Right. Should we move on? Um, so next week we, we are recording this, uh, towards the end of, uh, February, um, half the telecom world, uh, decamps to Barcelona, um, for a certain event, uh, I'm gonna be in Barcelona, but not at the certain event. I run my, uh, uh, my, my sort of boycott of the, uh, event itself, Frank, for a couple of different reasons. One is that it's just. Frankly, too, too much hard work. Dealing with 500 requests for meetings as an analyst. And I'd much rather just have a, um, a a sort of me set, set of my own curated sessions with clients and friends and conversations. I actually want to have, um. But I think there's gonna be some themes that come out. And, and one of the nice things is that I'm gonna have time to listen to some of the, uh, con, uh, conference, uh, sessions and actually drill into them a bit more and see if there's anything substantive or if it's just press releases. Things I'm expecting to hear about next week. Um, sovereignty, satellite and automation. Obviously AI over everything, but I think that the ai, it's gonna focus on. Network automation is gonna be a, a big theme. I think they're gonna downplay the sort of AI native for six G and almost like say, well automation is the first step. I think satellite is gonna crop up in lots of different ways 'cause it's the buzzword du jour. Um. I think that there's probably gonna be a bit of fatigue talking about, um, uh, some of the spectrum issues. Network APIs are gonna be there, but it's sort of still work in progress. I'm sure we'll see some announcements, but the key thing for me is, is anyone actually using them? Um, I think we'll talk, we'll see about agent AI meets. Network APIs, but for me, sovereignty, um, is gonna be a huge one. And, and Benoit, I know you are, you are seeing that as well, but I, I think this see a bifurcation between what that means for cloud AI and data on one hand. And sovereignty for telecoms I think means something different.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so obviously, and I dunno if you've seen this, but there's a, there's a story that just came out, uh, yesterday, I think, or the day before. it's a story from late last year, but it's about Switzerland not wanting to use Palantir, because Palantir would not guarantee. US government intervention or could not guarantee that US government intervention, um, you know, would, would not mean that Switzerland would be at the mercy of whatever the US government wanted to do. And, and so I think the, the, the whole online world is now engulfed in this. Which I would say is a fundamental sovereignty question, as in, are we actually independent if we use whatever tools we decide to use? And of course the flip side of that is, are there other tools we can use that are more sovereign? Um, and if yes, where the hell are they? And, and, and the, the, the big issue is that, again, this is a trade off, so if you're gonna go for. A European provider for whatever government services you're using, will undoubtedly as of today have a step back in functionality and you're gonna have to deal with something that's not as sleek and not as effective and probably more expensive. But if you don't do it, you keep that window open, which, and again, you know, the, the, the only. Uh, response that I can think of that we got, which is not a very convincing one, was Microsoft saying, we will fight with all legal measures that we have any request by the US government to switch off services in Europe. But
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:a guarantee in any way, shape, or
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Um, well the, some of the things that I've seen is various partnerships, you know, with European systems, integrators, operators, defence, um, uh, contractors and others. So I think there's, well, I can't remember, I can't remember which of the cloud companies is partnered with tallies, for example.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:It's
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Is it Google? Yeah. So I think you'll see a lot more of that where they're the governance and the, the legal structure is defined that there's no big red off switch in the White House. Um, yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:And in fact, if this things continues for long, this kind of debate, I am wondering if you might not see one of these big US tech companies saying, you know what, actually I'm gonna create a 49% owned European subsidiary that has other parties in there. Just so that I can evade the, you know, extraordinary rendition powers of, of the US government. I mean, financially would not make sense, but strategically it might.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh, uh, and to some extent I, you know, we are seeing that in other areas. I mean, so that's on the cloud side, and, and then there's a whole bunch of other questions like, well, yes you can, you can create chips with risk five and things like that, but you, you, you're not gonna recreate a European Nvidia. So that one's for, but, so some of the stuff on the cloud side, uh, are clearly. The supply chain is gonna be international, whether we like it or not. So it comes down to the rules and data governance. The telecom side's a bit different. I mean, firstly 'cause Ericson and Nokia are based here on the, on the, well, both mobile and Nokia case fixed side, um, as well as we'll talk about in this moment some private network vendors and others in the defence industry. There was a panel in Brussels about the Iris squared satellite. Network, which is clearly a really important sovereign capability, is work on things like timing, timing, um, which is essential for both the, the cloud and also for running mobile networks. You need timing, synchronisation, and obviously yeah, an alternative. Galileo is an alternative for GPS. So I think that the, that there is more work on that. And I, I, I definitely see this sort of slightly different discussions on the telecom side and on cloud side. Now, one of the things telcos would love to do would be the providers of cloven sovereign cloud service. So they see, so for telcos, there's a, there's the risk side and which is more on the resilience rather than sovereignty per se. And there's an opportunity side, which is our national telcos, particularly the big telcos, sovereign. X providers. Um, and, and, and so I think it's a slightly different discussion is is one that I'll, I'll have at my next unthinkable lab in April. Uh, and I think it's, it's, it's interesting to to compare that where the, where, where it gets more tricky is the telco de increasing dependency on cloud to run the networks and the B-S-S-O-S-S.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Well, so yeah, you're absolutely right. And in fact, this is against, again, the Trojan horse that the commission is using to say there's convergence, but it's exactly this thing, but. And we know that's nonsense because there's no convergence between, you know,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Telecoms and electricity.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:and cloud or electricity and cloud just because they use cloud tools. But anyway, the, the, putting that aside, I, I think I agree with you. Um, the, the key question to me on the telco side is, are they actually capable of, of delivering this? Because they, they keep telling us that they are, you know. Functionally equivalent to these big tech companies. Um, you know, the whole TechCo thing, you've been
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Hmm.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:it for years, but are we really seeing that happening anywhere? And I'm still struggling to actually see, uh, kind of strong examples of someone taking a position that would effectively mean, okay, I'm a telco, but that's actually my side business. My core business is being, you know, a cloud provider. I
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Um,
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:see anyone
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:no, there's some that come. You could argue, you could argue SoftBank, um, in Japan and certainly Rakuten. Rakuten is a, a cloud company that became a telco rather than vice versa. It's sort of going back to
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:it's a good
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah, but that, but in Europe, I can't really think of anyone. Um.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:can I.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:No. Um, one, one thing I would say on Telco is doing sovereignty. The, the, there's a number of them that do have quite a big footprint in things like defence. So for example, you know, Tellier and Lenor, uh, the Nordics, um, you certainly do. And, and, and there's a number of them that run networks for government and healthcare systems and, you know, emergency services, ESN in the uk and a few, so, so they're certainly doing critical national infrastructure, which is sort of sovereign services.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:It is, but it's very much that telco business side rather than the cloud side. I mean, I
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Oh
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:core issue to me is cloud is marketed and managed to market itself as a very horizontal solution. So the verticalization of cloud comes from, uh, integration, not from the, the systems themselves. The
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:are super flexible and they're adaptable to anything. Verticals is something telcos have been really shit at forever. And, and if you pick any one telco, you'll find maybe one or two verticals where they are actually not that bad because they've put a huge amount of effort into getting into that. But then all the rest, they're shit at. And, and I think what it comes down fundamentally is understanding the needs and figuring out the go to market for each of these different verticals
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:they're
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:And,
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:good at.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:and that is a perfect segue into the last segment on a very quick one on private networks, because that is specifically about verticals.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Yeah.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Uh, and I, and I, I, so I've, I've covered private networks, private cellular networks for more than 20 years actually. And, you know, it's, it's notable, the UK is coming up in 20th anniversary of its, um, first local low power spectrum. Auctions. Um, and I was, uh, speaking, uh, an in person at an event a couple weeks ago called Uptime, which was, uh, run by uh, one of the former ethernet execs, uh, Nando Menon. And that was like a private 5G. Where are we? Yeah, he was pitching it as pre Barcelona, but it was very interesting to talk about where we are. And the answer is there's probably about 5,000 global in production, private 5G networks, plus. Sort of test and trial ones and small ones. Plus there's probably a legacy of another five, 10,000 of older 4G and I think still some two G and 3G private networks. But we're starting to hit the inflexion point on scaling. So there's a couple of companies that are now deploying money, many sites. So the, the headline one is probably a company called Cargill, which does food processing, which is rolling out private networks. You know, to like hundreds of sites. And it is pretty much cookie cutter fashion, slight differences, you know, country by country because of availability of spectrum and um, the role of operators. But I thought that's a really interesting example of not just one port or an airport, but hundreds of diverse sites in the same, same organisation. And there's also some of the telcos now are, are getting their act together on private networks. Often they're, they're sort of moved away from this vision of, oh, we'll build one 5G network, deploy standalone, and slice it up for private 5G, or, what was they calling it? Non-public networks. Instead, they're realising systems integration play. They can use their national spectrum. Maybe at some point it converges on slicing or hybrid networks. But for now, you know, you actually, for example, in Latvia, it's the Latvia and Telco deploying. Or involved in the network in the Baltic container terminal. And Vodafone was essentially saying, you know, that they had to get a little bit less precious about their macro network and realise that they have to work on verticals and smaller integration projects. Uh, and so I think some of the operators are now getting better at it, but there's still the other integrators and in-house development by the air buses, this world as well.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Well, and also, and this is very often the elephant in the room in this conversation is this a huge amount of private networks that are on wifi and,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Yeah. Oh yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:they're gonna keep being there because the device ecosystem is actually a
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Oh.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:flexible on wifi than it is on on 5G.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:The, yeah, uh, it was not, it is devices. It's also people and experiences. So the number of people with a certificate on their wall saying they've passed the Cisco or Aruba or whoever's certification programme is probably a hundred x greater than the number of people who are certified to. To deploy and run a private network, a private 5G network. Um, yeah, there's, there's literally millions or tens of billions of people who can put a half decent wifi toge network together and probably a hundred thousand wizards. Um, you know, so, so I agree. Now there's certain places you can't do that. So on a port area, which covers, yeah, 15 square kilometres, you can't do that, but it's.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:that to me is key. Is it like this understanding that 5G is not gonna take over the world when it comes to private networks. That it has very specific advantages that can be leveraged for certain things. And certainly if you're doing defence, you know, the, the, the whole sim card integration thing creates a level of security that's very hard to replicate on wifi and I com completely agree with that, but. WiFi's here to stay and, and,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:yeah.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:and the, the actual private network ecosystem, if we look at it broadly, is gonna have a range of very different solutions. 5G is going to be one of them. Sometimes it's gonna be fully dedicated, sometimes it's gonna be slicing, sometimes it's gonna be a mix of both. It really
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:uh.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:geographical area, the type of devices that you're trying to connect. so,
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:And it, yeah, and, and to be honest, you've got satellite private networks, you've even got fibre private networks. I was amazed that the Brazilian oil industry has got like a thousand kilometres of its own subsea fibre, uh, out into the Atlanta. Um, you've got Laura and various and Halo for low power iot. So yeah, there's an awful lot of private infra network infrastructure. This is actually one of the things that Brussels doesn't seem to have realised that it talks about investment in networks. Well, actually there's an awful lot of enterprises and companies invest in networks, but it's like thousands or tens of thousands at microscale rather than three big ones that are easy to count.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Yeah, but that's what they want. They want three big ones that are easy to count.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Cool, right.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:uh, maybe a few quick announcements, uh, for the coming month. Uh, so maybe I'll start. There is a really interesting workshop that I've been invited to speak at in Brussels on the 17th of March, organised by Barrack, uh, hosted at the IRG by, uh, by Barrick. And, uh. It's gonna be on, on copper Switch off. Lots of really interesting speakers there. I'm really looking forward to that and for sure we'll discuss that on our next instalment because it is an important, uh, topic right now.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:No, I, I saw the invite for that, but actually I'm away myself that week. I'm speaking at a event. Uh, there is a critical communications event in the US and Las Vegas that I've been invited to speak about, you know, indoor wireless connectivity in the importance for. Uh, uh, public safety. So the Safer Building Coalitions invited me to that. Um, and then the following week, I'll be in Dallas at an event called V Con V Con's, A, a new emerging standard for, um, conversations, voice messaging, and others. And how you standardise that and you have appropriate controls and governance around keeping records of who said what to whom and why, and for what purpose and all the metadata. Uh, and that's, uh, one, uh, initiative that, uh, Jeff Pulver and others, um, who, who were previously involved in VoIP, uh, have been promoting. And I think it's really important for the sort of future of AI and voice, particularly on analysing what was said in a conversation, what are the outcomes, and maybe hooking that up into CRM or something else. So I'll be in the states then.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Cool.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Cool. Excellent. Look forward to, uh, catching up. And I, I think the copper witch off one is, is a really important one. And as we've said before, the fixed networks side of it is, is getting a bit overlooked. To be honest. I think it gets overlooked by many people and I think that, that we need to, to, to keep him honest on that.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:Absolutely. Yeah.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:Excellent. Alright, cheers.
benoit_1_02-23-2026_101554:to you, Dean.
dean-bubley_1_02-23-2026_091556:And you Thank you. Bye.