Episode 28: All roads lead to MWC26 Barcelona

The following podcast is brought to you by Tatogi, AI scales on context, not chaos. Most telco AI is stuck reading your data versus taking action. The Tatogi ontology sits above your BSS, OSS and network, so AI doesn't just advise, it acts. Learn more at tatogi.com. [Music] I mean, MWC FOMO is a real thing, right? When you don't go and, you know, when you talk to people who aren't going, they're just like, "You're going? Oh, I wish I could go." And so, I mean, just this last week, I met a team of really amazing engineers and they're like, "Yeah, we're on a little bit of a shoestring budget and as an exhibitor, I get extra passes." And so, I was like, "Yeah, I can, I can't there you guys." And the passes are not cheap. I mean, they're probably 1,500 euros or something, even for, you know, just not even getting into the keynotes. And so, we get some of those, you know, easy passes and I gave them a couple and it was like Christmas for them, right? They're just like, "No way!" So, they have to fly themselves over and put themselves up and the hotel rooms, you know, this is, you know, Barcelona's big opportunity to really capture a lot of tourist revenue every year, right? I'm sure, and they were hurting when, when MWC didn't happen in 2020. But yeah, MWC thumb was real thing. So, I think. -The stringers for your Padelte, aren't they? -Yeah. -They are. They are. They are stringers, you know. -They're not. Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the Mobile World Live podcast. Yes, it is that time of year again. It is just around the corner. MWC Barcelona, looming in the distance and this monster of a show, well, it's almost here. So, here we go with our preview of the big event. I'm your host, Justin Springham and as always, this podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and all major streaming platforms as well as mobileworldlive.com. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and follow. So, let's get into it. I'm delighted to be joined by some expert guest today. They've all been to more MWCs than they can possibly remember. First up, we have Peter Yarek, head of GSMA Intelligence. Also, hello, Peter. Good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Always good to be here. Thanks, sir. Thanks for having me. We also have Mobile World Lives, Cavit, Magician, now regular podcast listeners will probably recognize Cavit's dulcet tones. Hello, Cavit. Hi, Justin. Hi. You're taking the hosting responsibility today. So, it's good. I have. We've swapped roles, Cavit. Look at four to it. Thank you for letting me do that. Then we've also got a special guest today. Somebody synonymous with MWC, especially the post-COVID era of the event. It is Daniel Rios, better known, of course, as DR. DR, great to see you. Hey, Justin. Great to be here. Actually, firstly, I'm going to, I'm going to come to you, DR, because I noticed you've got a newly tweaked job title. You have the title of CO of Tatoge. I did notice that for the last couple of years, you've been acting CO. So, so why, why is that moniker change? Why, why are you now CO? What's going on there, DR? Nothing. I don't think there's anything to really read into it. I just, you know, kind of, I was trying to quietly drop the acting because I was actually on the telecoms.com podcast with Scott Bicheno and Ian Morris. And they were giving me a bunch of grief about it. And I was like, you guys are reading way too much into it. So, I decided to at the beginning of the year just kind of make the title shorter, save some characters. And that way I can, you know, whenever I'm writing about, whatever I'm writing about, people can get to the punch a little bit faster. So, super excited, Tatoge is really going great. And so, just leaning 100% into that CEO role. DR, we are journalists. It's our job to read too much into this. I was wondering if it was a case, I was wondering if it was a case if if a job's worth doing well, do it yourself. So, it's not that. You didn't, you didn't really want the job. So, no, you did want the job. But you, well, if anyone knows me, that's totally how I am, right? I'm a little bit of control freak. So, I mean, acting was kind of in the air quotes at all times. So, um, yeah, I think, no, people were like, why are you acting? You know, are you, are you trying to find someone? And, you know, I was just kind of, you know, people always get freaked out. Like, how can you have so many jobs? Right? I'm, I'm leading Skyberra. I'm leading Tocca D.R. and I'm also leading Tatoge, but they're so intermingled that it's pretty easy to do and no one really freaks out that I have like so many jobs. So, just going to lean 100% into it. It's a lot easier, a lot easier to write just than when we put it on page, so CEO of acting CEO. So, it's just a small, concise, exactly. Yeah, exactly characters. Yeah, for sure. Well, hopefully, D.R. we're have some time on this pod to, yeah, to chat about all the things that you're doing as well, because you mentioned, you know, you've got very, you wear various hats. So, hopefully we all have time to come to that. But we are here to preview the big event. Under, let's talk about how we're getting ready for the big show, Peter. GSMA intelligence. I mean, I guess a bit like Mobile World Live. This is probably one of your busiest times of the year. Give us a bit of an insight into how, how you and your team get ready for this show. I'm sure the February is crazy for you, right? So, can I say, Kevin, I know you were talking about Justin taking over the duties. He's not good. If he was good, he had a lead in there. Hey, D.R., I'm sure you wear multiple hats, Peter. You could have mentioned the hat. I've got, I mean, I mean, that was, that was, that was, I was like, I'm like, like, like, Justin and it says MWC, right? It's, I wore my MWC hat just for this. So, Kevin, write that down. Justin, Justin, you're so, your so brand is well, Peter. Yeah. I know. I do, I do my best for you. You are right. It is, we put out a lot of content like the Mobile Economy Report that folks know the 5G index that people might know. And those are kind of things that we do either for the industry or for the GSMA, but then we have a bunch of customers who are always needy. And they always want to get something out in time for MWC. And it's a good, it's a showcase, right? So, it's an opportunity for us to work with them to highlight their messages. So, we have a bunch of stuff coming out. And I think, you know, but more important than that, it really is sitting down with the team and thinking about what do we think is going to be most important? What do we want to make sure that we have analysts there to be talking to people about, to be looking at, you know, surprise, surprise. I'm sure this is the case for most analyst shops. We're already starting to build out our MWC recap review because we kind of know what the big themes are. We just need to get the people there. And from my perspective, it would be interesting to hear what you've done, DR, but I kind of count everything that happens in February as MWC messaging. Right. I'm like, sort of assuming unless it's, yeah, and I've had to tell my team that's like, unless it's a chain, you know, stock buyback or change in my CFO, you know, that kind of operational stuff might not be, but I assume sort of any product announcement, any major product announcement in February is probably an MWC related thing. I'm guessing that was the case for when you guys and any of your companies develop, where did you always wait for MWC to make the big announcements? No, you're 100% right. I mean, if you're waiting till the week of MWC, you kind of missed your opportunity for making news because the journalists are just getting slammed, right? There's just everyone sending their big announcement. And so, @jogi and previously at Optiva, we probably would try to get our news out probably two weeks in advance so that people like you and the journalist covering the show have an opportunity to write about it. And we don't really miss that window. Because you're really, you know, for vendors, you're trying to get those meetings. I mean, this is a deal show for us. And so, it's an unusual opportunity to have, you know, such a global industry and people are flying in for it and not just anyone. You know, you're not getting that middle tier of management. You're really getting the CXO and their entire, you know, exec team wandering the halls. And so, you want to put the news in their hands so that they put you into their diary and plan to come visit your stand. So, yeah, I think you're right. I mean, we, I kind of start in, you know, we call it rolling thunder in January even just putting something out a little bit quietly. There's a couple that will highlight and really push, but really kind of trying to say, hey, come visit us, come see us. I think the bigger vendors are even doing events before the show, like on Saturday and Sunday, really trying to get that attention and get those briefings done. So, yeah, I think we learned when we took over the Ericsson stand in 21, we learned that Ericsson gets all of their news out two weeks ahead. And so, we've kind of used that as a model ever since. We're like, hey, it's good enough for Ericsson. It's good enough for Titogee. So, you're 100% right. Everything in February is really MWC fodder for sure. Now that you're a journalist cover, I mean, you've been covering MWC for you. Does that kind of help you when you're thinking about what to cover? Do you dread that 9am inbox where you get, where you've got like a hundred different press releases from a hundred different companies? and this is too late, you should have been prepping me two weeks ago. Yeah, I think what the guys were saying there is very true. February is crazy for pre-refs. I think by the time this goes out, we've probably done about five, six, seven pre-refs, so there's pre-event MWC stuff going on in London and online. I think also I've had more pitch emails this year than I've ever had before, so I think that's a good sign. In terms of your original question, Justin, just a solid prep we're doing our MWC preview month-fantly, so we actually extended that from a preview week to a preview month, which shows how big this thing is even before we get to Barcelona, we've been working on the Insight magazine as well, which has been a monster and it will be available throughout the venue in Hardcopy and also online, so it's a guide for everything you really need to know at the event, so to keep an eye out for that. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, this year is 20 years of MWC being in Barcelona. I was there in 2006. They are were you there in 2007? Not even close, Justin. My first MWC was, I don't think a lot of people sort of realized this, but I injured the Teleco industry when I became the CEO of what was then Radney, which then became Optiva, which then now is Kewontel. And so I was named CEO two weeks before MWC 17. I had never really heard of MWC sadly being outside the industry, so it was baptism by fire, flying the Barcelona for the first time, seeing this show, which is so different than other trade shows and other industries, really as a vendor, you're erecting a small office on site to have meetings. It's less of a stand with product demonstrations, and so much more, it's a mini office. And so experiencing that for the first time in 2017, I mean, I was like a baby deer in headlights. I was like, what is going on? It was crazy, but awesome. And I've been going pretty much every year, since then, except for 2020 when it wasn't held. So yeah. And yeah, we'll talk about what happened around 2020, and of course, what happened the year after as well. So DR, you weren't actually there the previous venue, right? Theora Monjouique. Yeah, no, I just know about it in lore, the history. I mean, did you know I've lost track of time? Did you you weren't there for the old venue either? No, no, no. It still exists. You can visit it. It's like a ghost town. You can walk around and feel the ghosts of of of Siemens mobile and feel the ghosts of Alcatel and Alcatel. I mean, you could know what's out. You could feel the ghosts of all the companies that no longer exist by just walking around. Apparently it has a very different vibe though, this time around. It's because we've got talent arena there now. So that's where all the cool kids go, apparently. If you have, honestly, I'm with jokes aside, if you haven't been there, it is actually, it's actually not that far from the current. It's just one straight road. And it is where there's talent arena, so training. It's kind of nice to see not just middle aged people and DR. I am middle aged. I'm past middle aged. You're all horrible at this. You're all horrible at going with it. It is trying to be nice. Oh, you're so sweet, sir. That's the, that's the, the, thank you sir. But it is nice to see the young people over there. And it's the future, the future. That was a real cough, the future of our of our industry, hopefully. So for anyone who has no chance, it is worth going over there. Peter, what's your favorite memory from the old venue? Because yeah, we can, everybody is size CSMWC these days with with Gravia. What about Monjouk? Some memories from that. So, you know, I think the old venue, two, two good memories, one, you know, we moved to the new venue for a reason, right? And I say, we like, I was part of that decision. I wasn't back then. But moved to the news because it's just more modern. The old ones a little bit crumbly, but that's also a bit charming, right? Some of the things that, you know, we're either difficult to get around. But also it's just, it is nicer to look at. The buildings are pretty, and you can see in the distance up Monjouk, you can see, you know, the, isn't that where they held the glomos in the process? Yeah, you the glomos used to be a black tie, sit down dinner with multiple celebrities, a big host at the National Palace. Yeah, yeah, you could sit, I mean, you're down and you can see up, you could see the palace up there. And it was nice that every time because it was different halls, you would have to physically go outside. So you actually got a breath of fresh air as opposed to walking in size. It was just a, it was a different vibe. And then we took the decision, was it 2012, 2013, something like that, to move to, to Grand Vier. I mean, DR's going to ask you about your favorite memory, but I think I know what the answer to that is going to be. And I know what year it is as well. But I'm silly question, but go on, give us the obvious answer. Cloud City, baby, right? I mean 2021, I mean, not a lot of people will say their favorite time at MWC was during COVID, but I'm definitely one of them. I think you are too, because you interviewed Elon Musk who was a remote speaker because you were doing lots of remote speakers because people weren't traveling. But you know, for people who don't know, you know, Erickson Bale, that was a year that MWC moved to June, which I keep arguing with people that is an amazing time to have MWC. The weather was stunning. You definitely can have a ton of yacht parties. But Erickson Bale on March 9th and the show was like late June. It was like the last Monday in June. And so I stepped into that stand, much to their chagrin and retrain, you know, transform the the site into what I call Cloud City. And it was really trying to bring the awareness in the industry that the hyperscalers of Amazon Web Services, you know, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud really could be awesome partners for the telco. They could help them run a lot of their operations and kind of manage the infrastructure of the data center. We didn't have to do all that low-level work. And that would free us up to save money and then be able to invest in the things that matter. And so it was an amazing space. I had John Bon Jovi, when was the last time John Bon Jovi went to MWC, like never. And so it was amazing and stunning. And yeah, that hands down is my favorite MWC for sure. Do you know how hard it was to move from like Valentine's weekend a couple, like a couple weeks forward, getting that two weeks in the middle of February? I mean, so it'll be like 21s, 72 before we get to June. Just just, I mean, that's I'm just doing my analyst part. Well, I think it's hard to do it in June because it's such a high tourist season. I bet you hotels will be a lot more expensive than they are, you know, at the end of February, early March. But the weather was unbelievable. And Barcelona has a little bit of a different feeling in the summer. And so I loved it. I mean, I would do it again in a heartbeat, but probably eats into European vacations. I mean, it take off like two months or something at the summer. As American, it's so crazy how much time Europeans take off. I mean, we never take off. So it'll be hard. We just idea we don't either. It's it's it's everybody else in Europe that does. Right. So many meetings are like, well, can we mean in September? I'm like, it's it's June guys, right? Like, I'm going to holiday. I'm like, okay, as September, it is. Cavett, your favourite MWC memory over the last. I know you haven't been there for the full 20, but in Barcelona. I really like 21 as well, to be honest. I mean, the weather was amazing. There wasn't that many people. Wasn't as much work, I don't think either because it was less sort of news and stuff. And we had that amazing sort of, what was it like a balcony style studio? Wasn't it outside, which was also great. Yeah. It was the only time of year in your guaranteed as they are saying your guaranteed great weather, which means we had our studio. We didn't do anything indoors like we would typically do. You know, we had this outside the South entrance. So we were just basking in the sunshine. There was an Australia beer van at the bottom of the bottom of our studio as well, which was fantastic. And of course, there was a certain there was a football tournament on at the same time. It was a year rose. So it was kind of the perfect. We're building was going on at the same time. So I had so much space in that era since we see it, it's 6,000 square meters for people who don't know. I mean, it's ginormous. And so we were like, how are we going to, I mean, I had just announced Tatoge and everyone's like, how are you going to fill that space? And I'm like, I don't know, but I got 90 days to figure it out. And I had a secret bar in there that was like DR's bar. And I had Wibble-Dim playing the whole time. So I could go and check out see what's going on. I also, I mean, that whole thing came about here because I remember I never been on LinkedIn and you'd put out some speculative kind of message. I think you even tagged Mr. Hoffman and said something along the lines of what Erickson said they were coming. And you put out this speculative LinkedIn message that said, Hey, John, if you want to sell it to me, let's do a deal. Well, I couldn't get a hold of GSMA, right? So I put it on, you know, the news comes out and I tagged GSMA. And literally every journalist, Ray Lemetra, Ian Morris, like all the, you know, light reading up and down the chain. And I was like, I'll take it over. I'll buy that spot and, you know, crickets, right? And so then I went on LinkedIn and John, I think, had posted that Eric's home was out and it was very clear that GSMA was like, you know, this is gonna start a landslide of vendors just failing and two years without MWC, obviously would be pretty tough for GSMA, but it's also really tough for the vendors, right? This is such a great opportunity to fill your funnel and meet with telcos from all over the world, you know, and not spend all the time, you know, crisscrossing the globe. And so it was massively hurtful to the vendors and so I was like, we gotta make this happen. So yeah, I, I didn't know John, I wasn't connected to him. I'd never met him. And I just said, hey, John, I'll buy the space and he DMed me immediately and I'm sure everyone was like, who is this, who is DR? Like they'd, you know, never heard of me. I mean, the TOTE website wasn't even up, right? And so I'm like, I'll buy it. And it took us about a week to put the deal together. Sarah Wiggins helped us and, and they were like, are you for real? I'm like, I'm a thousand percent for real. Let's totally do it and it is amazing. Yeah, thank God we did it. - Do you get a good deal, dear? - I got a good deal. It was like the Ericsson discount, right? But it was, it was a, right. I mean, you were real. There was a real, you could tell it was probably some worry. Will it be full of phone covers? And will it be, this is the, will it? - Well, I know, right? Is it, you know, she and of, of telco, of whatever, right? But no, I was like, it was, it was super for real. And I think the pressure was really, you know, stakes were really high for us to pull it off, right? Because, you know, if it was janky or crappy or lame, right? I think, you know, my balloons would have just like, you know, died, but, you know, I mean, I don't think people understand, like how small the team was and how hard we worked. I mean, people were crying, people weren't sleeping, people lost weight. You know, people brought their families when it was done to be like, look at, you know, I have erected Rome and it's gonna, when it was torn down, you know, 'cause you have to tear it down like right after the show. I mean, I was like, I can't even watch this, 'cause it's like, it's like a baby, right? And like, you know, I wanna remember it forever like this. I still walk by to Ericsson booth and I'm like, it was so amazing, it was such a special, special experience. Yeah. - Yeah, that was, it was a unique, 21 was definitely the, most unique event we've ever put on. But 26, just around the corner. Let's talk about what's coming up folks at this year's and WC, I mean, let's chat about some of the hot topic. Look, I'm just gonna, let's get it open, done. But can we just talk about the obvious, first of all, Peter, AI, of course. But AI is, I mean, it's everywhere, but there's also so many elements of AI out there at the moment. You know, you know, you lead a team of analysts that obviously spend loads of time delving into the world of AI. What, from an AI perspective, what's gonna make headlines at this year's show? - Yeah. - Are you suggesting my analyst was just using AI to write the reports? - Shame on it. - No, yeah. I mean, when it's 50% of the themes, right? I think there are six, six, six themes, three of which are AI. You can tell that either the events team is lazy or it's an important, and they're not, I'm gonna get kicked if I next time I courted the office if I make that suggestion. No, it's obviously what everyone in the ecosystem wants to talk about. And I think it'll be interesting. I think part of it, every year is a continuation of the conversation from last year, right? So you know this will be the year of a gentick. This will be the year of a gentick. Now we mean it. 'Cause last year was the year of a gentick, and we meant it, but we then spent the year going, well, agents may not have lived up to the hype that a lot of people told, right? I think what it was at, see a cloud flare was it that said they're akin to drunken interns, right? Maybe they show up, maybe they don't show up. When they do show up, you don't really know what they're doing. When you do know what they're doing, it might not quite be great, right? I think a lot of enterprises have similar experiences, right? So I think a year later it'll be the question of, okay, what do we really mean? And what do we wanna do with agents? Great. I was just wondering if your webinars just the other day, Justin, one of the MWC previews with the folks from InfoVista, really? And this, you know, the idea of let's start, maybe more narrow, and let's sort of get some proof of concepts out there to actually understand as opposed to some giant sort of holistic view that might have been wrong. So I think we'll hear a lot about that, but I think the part that I'm gonna be particularly interested in is the sovereignty angle. And really, it's sovereign digital services in general, but, you know, this idea of, and 100%, I think everything you were talking about five years ago, on Cloud City in terms of hyper scalers being the front. I mean, we see that now, right? 'Cause Cloud is how most AI workloads are getting deployed, right, and that relationship is there, but five years later, there's obviously, it was sort of the intersection of what we saw in 2021, right? We need to focus more on Cloud, talking to the richest man in the world after his fun, fun, fun birthday, clearly, right? And those geopolitical issues are bringing up questions of how much do we wanna control things in our own countries versus not, right? And so I think this sovereign AI angle, I think I've counted 10 different sessions on sovereign AI, one of the biggest topics that's gonna be, I think particularly interesting, if only because there's exact thing players that you're talking about DR, you know, they have that play in sovereign, or at least they think they do, but other people might not think they do, right? Because there are some people who will say anything you do with AWS cannot be sovereign, as long as it's not in the US, right? Some countries will say, oh no, no, no, that can never, as long as you're doing something in my country, you might be beholden to the US. And so I think those conversations are the ones you need to be having, and it'll be, it'll be fun. Yeah, Peter, I think I sense you kind of hit a few of DR's favorite topics there. I mean, the kind of, you know, AWS Cloud, a Gen2KI, I mean, your, Tertogi right now is kind of, your big tag is AI powered charging solutions. So, you know, how do you see that kind of all playing out this year's show? Well, I mean, I think everyone's pivoting as a software vendor in Telco, if you look at everyone's website, it says Agent or AI or the two together for sure. And for Tertogi specifically, we have found something really special in something that we call the Tertogi ontology. That really allows the Telco to model reality. So that the AI that you're creating, the applications, mobile applications, chatbots, agents, whatever it is, doesn't hallucinate, stays on, you know, within the guard rails and you can really control it. And I think this is the secret sauce. I think, I think a lot of people will be looking for AI at MWC, but I think the real question this year is show me the money, show me that this produces value that impacts my bottom line. You know, I think the high bar is generating more revenue that's kind of something that everyone's been looking for in kind of during spaghetti at the wall in terms of how we're going to generate new revenue in our industry. But obviously cost cutting, right? AI is great at that. And really, you know, sadly, I'll say that the quiet part out loud, it really can reduce the head count requirements that we have inside these large organizations. And that is reality. People don't like to talk about reality, but that is something that really will happen. I think AI will create a lot of jobs. - Oh, we're seeing it already on me there. I mean, we're seeing some of the big US operating system. - Right, I mean, and it's not a talk of thing, right? I mean, it's all large companies. We're seeing it banks, we're seeing it. The hyperscalers are releasing, you know, thousands of people. It's going to happen in Telco and as a XHR professional, which not everyone says, as a software CEO, right? Like, you know, kind of approaching that with honesty and transparency, it's literally the best thing you can do for your people is prepare them for this. This is something that's happening in the world. You're not the bad guy firing people. You're the good guy preparing them for the change that's going on in the world. So training your people and making them part of that journey helps them. And so, like I said, I think people are going to be looking for, you know, showing me the money, showing me how I can get value out of this AI thing. You want me to spend millions of dollars on, right? Prove that it works. And I think the big piece is, you know, people are connecting agents to their data, which is obviously super critical. But you have to really think about how you're developing and maintaining your enterprise wide context. How does the AI make decisions? And so, that's certainly something I'm going to be talking a lot about. Both at my summit, I'm at the Agente AI summit, which is on Monday in hall six at nine. If you want to skip to my part, it's at noon. So, but definitely kind of that show me the money message. And then Peter, as you said, you know, the Sovereign AI and building your own data centers, I think we've got to be really careful. We don't repeat the thing that happened previously with Cloud. I think Telco is really made it about managing infrastructure. And what the hyperscalers did differently was, yeah, it was about that, but also providing usable, scalable software that literally you can fire up with key strokes and paid by the use and paid by the API call. And that's the piece that I'm like, tell us you still need to provide some software to run the AI. And the hyperscalers have that in spades. They've been running these mega data centers for 20 years. And like nearly, yeah, and nearly exactly the same amount of time as MWC, they've been doing public cloud developers. Developers know how to use them. Developers are comfortable using them. They've been using them. They know how to use them. I mean, we were saying that in 2018 when we were looking at Edge, right? And was this sort of this? The telcos have the real estate, but they don't necessarily have the software environment. The hyperscalers have the software environment, but not the real estate. And I think, right, the operational chops and the software to do it. It's so much more than just I bought a bunch of H 200s from Nvidia, right? It's a lot more than that. And so before we go chasing sovereign AI, are we are we really thinking this through? Or are we going to have a repeat of what happened, you know, when Verizon bought Terremark for whatever billions of dollars? Right. How is how do we not repeat kind of some of those old mistakes and really kind of get it this time around? So I totally agree. I think cloud, sovereign AI, agente AI are always going to, you know, at least for 20, 26 are going to be really big topics. Yeah, absolutely. But let's move on from AI because we're all going to be talking about that for the next month. Forever. Yeah, exactly. And then Peter's got a post them WC rap up, which will probably be 99% AI as well. What are you expecting to see as headlines, anything other than AI, there must be gone. Well, before we move on, do you mean 99% written by AI, his report or is it going to be about AI? So that is a dagger to Peter's heart. You do realize, well, you do realize, Kevin, we're just going to get criticized for exactly the same thing. I mean, we're a team of six or seven journalists that in five years time might might be replaced by chat to be said. Yeah, it's coming. It's coming. I think satellite will be quite big this year. The last few years, I think we've heard about that. So I've heard about the competition there is in the market. We've heard about how many players are entering the space and what the potential is. But I think we're starting to see the hype get real to some extent. I think last year, do you remember Justin, we're on Monday morning. We're on the preview for the day ahead and we've had a big deal between AST and Vodafone and how they created a sort of joint venture sat code to serve them and those across Europe. I think we'll hear more about that at the event. Some insider information have been invited to a pre-brief next week ahead of the show just on the eve of the show. So there must be an outing something. On the keynote stage as well Peter and I mentioned sovereignty. So we've got the CEO of UTEL set on stage on Monday morning talking about sovereignty. I think we'll hear about Iris too, which is the sort of European answer to styling. That's sort of hope for it. There's a lot of big operator backers behind that as well. And we're constantly hearing the expansion of satellite beyond communications into areas like aviation, IoT, defense as well. So yeah, I think I'm tipping satellite to be one of the big ones to share. You're really interested in angle there, which I think a lot of people really think about it is the sovereignty angle. Right, because I think a lot of times we're thinking about sovereignty. We're thinking about, again, sovereign AI, sovereign compute, sovereign cloud, but just sovereign connectivity. And you see obviously you hear a vote of phone talking a bit about that in terms of what they're doing with AST, but just this idea of having backup communications, communications that are within the controller purview of a government. It's an important angle. And that even then just picking up on that UTEL set had an agreement in place to sell their sort of antenna business, which was blocked by the French government on these sorts of defense grounds to send the concept of that. Because of this sovereignty issue. So yeah, it's going to be a big topic on what about devices because I mean, the days of massive smartphones being launched at MWC and we can all remember like the Samsung Galaxy S's would take place that launch would take place on a Sunday of MWC now. They kind of do it a week or two. And the full hand I think it might even be this week actually that they're launching the latest Galaxy S. Do we see much you expecting to see much device action Peter? I mean, does that robot phone robot robot phone is that on? That's honor. If you have not seen the robot phone like AI Joe, sorry, I said the AI, I mean, if you have not seen there from a video for the robot phone, go Google it, check it out. I mean, it's actually a really cool piece of of marketing. So you don't know is supposedly a phone with a essentially a gimbal mounted camera. So imagine this is this is this is a great example, right? Imagine your phone is like this and it's a little gimbal that comes off the back with a camera that can look around and it's all AI controlled in theory. The two big questions are one is it real and two how long until you break that gimbal off off and you pull it out and you stick in your pocket with the gimbal out and you break it. But it's a it's a flashy they've been saying that it's it's coming out at MWC. So there is some there is some life in people who want to roll out new phones at MWC because I think CES is kind of given up on being a phone show. And a car show and a everything show right TV show car show gadgets show. I mean, Jensen shows up there to launch his new AI chips. So it's a everything tech show. But I think MWC is still see some good devices launch. I'm also in terms of buzzwords. I'm going to put it and we started off with AI. I'm going to say the dreaded buzzword of six G. Now, thank I think we all left MWC last year grateful that there had hardly been any taught of six G at the 25 event. Are you expecting for there to be much chatter around this next great big evolution of mobile technology. What do you think are we going to hear we're going to get any clarity on it or are we going to get as I kind of think we I wouldn't be spies if there's a message from operator saying look the last thing we need right now is to have to go and spend a ton of cash building out a whole new six G ran it. What do you think? Well, we're 2026 Justin. So we're past the middle part of the decade and we have heard that it's going to be 20 30 when we start seeing six G so I do think we're going to hear more about it this year. You'd imagine there's also going to be a few sort of developed markets to try and win the race, you know, like the double five year remember the Middle East and operators came out early and said I would launch it like two years before anyone thought it was going to happen. And it's just the name is not 2026 6G I just think there's going to be some sort of marketing push around it. But yeah, like this year we've heard about how 6G will be more of a software upgrade than rather than a massive sort of investment into new sort of network infrastructure. So maybe we'll get a bit more clarity around the strategy and the thinking behind 6G. And then we move ahead to 2030 basically, so does anyone say four years ago say we will hear about it. I'm sure. Yeah, what you I mean, you taught to tell coexx all the time. Do they do you hear 6G mentioned in your conversations? I don't. It's kind of like grouchy and mean girls trying to make fetch happen. I think I think the network equipment vendors really want 6G to happen and the telco execs are still, you know, thinking about 5G and that investment, which they were kind of thinking about 4G when they when they started rolling out 5G. And so, you know, they're still trying to justify their ROI and I think until we have a strong case for that, I think telcos are going to try to hold off on 6G as long as possible. Obviously, when one of the competitors in the market starts to make a move, then everyone else has to follow, but if they hold off, you know, 5G and chasing some of these big ideas like Peter mentioned, you know, sovereign AI data centers will be a huge investment to partnering with Nvidia. You know, they're doing, you know, the partnering with all the, you know, satellite companies and, you know, so there's a lot of movement going on. I don't know if they're ready to start talking about 6G from my perspective. Yeah. I think I would just, I would just say you hit the exact dynamic that TRH is, they kind of want to hold off, but once the market does, then they kind of have to move. And so, you've already seen out of, you've already seen out of Northern Asia, right? The Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese operators talking about 6G in some form, right? You've seen a massive progress with 5G in China. We do have an Olympics coming up in another two years. I am guessing that the current US administration wants to be seen as a leader in 6G. Probably they might just rename it 7G. I'm not sure. I might be named it 5G. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I did. I did not say that. But I mean, the Olympics, they always provide a great opportunity for someone to show off the cool cutting edge of technology. And so the US operators will have an opportunity at the LA Games in just two years or two and a half years or whatever it is because of summer. And so I'm thinking as much as you're all right that operators don't necessarily need to or want to do this, that we will start seeing 60 messaging. I know I have talked with some major vendors who said, yeah, this is the year that they start to really double down their six, what is 6G, what could it be to your point D.R. Because they want to start selling it. There's also a big big, big, sporting tournament happening this year in the US. So you know, one with, yes. Yeah, one cup. What is that? What is, what is, what is that sport? Uh, Kevin. It's not soccer, Peter. It is not soccer. When it's in the US, it is. I mean, it's in the US. That was the original name. Let's be clear. I think before football, soccer is the original, is the original name. It predates football. No, I thought we invented, Kevin didn't we invent the game? There's a song called football is coming home. And Trump even said that the real name is football. So I think we'll go by. He did. Did he really? Well, then it must be so. He did, yeah. Wow. No, sorry, Kazen. What's so ever from D.R. I think with this podcast, we got two Americans and two Brits. Yeah. Yeah. We're, you know, it's kind of, we're not dominating here. Unfortunately. No, we covered lots of ground there. What do we get through? We got AI, satellite, 6G devices and road, pounding, Peter's looking forward to the robot, phone, geopolitics. So lots, lots going on at this year's show. I'm going to wrap up. But tell before we do that, let's get an insight into kind of what you three are most looking forward to. From a, maybe a bit more from a personal perspective. D.R. what kind of, what, what, what, I mean, you have a crazy week. I know you're looking for, I've seen that you're looking for players to play paddle with you. I am. Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a big rocket sports person, big tennis player. I've switched to pickleball, which is super huge in the United States. At the moment, I recently won a national tournament in December. So that was super crazy. But Padel is super big in Spain. And did I say it? Did I say it wrongly? It's not part of Padel. Well, I literally lifted up before we recorded today to make sure I think in the United States, people say paddle, but the original pronunciation, because it came from Spain is Padel. So I'll say it, I guess, the right way. But yeah, I'm hosting a little like super casual event. You know, Bill Ockman has this thing called the finance cup in, in, for finance throws at play tennis. I'm, I'm going to try to make maybe the telco cup, right, of rocket players that we go around and, and play play some sort of rockets for it before a big event. But yeah, there's a really great club in Barcelona. It has a restaurant and food. I always make events super fun. I think we're going to have like a DJ and drinks. You don't have to play. You don't even have to bring a rocket. We'll provide that. Just bring your sneakers or your trainers and your outfit and come out and play. It's indoors, so we won't be impacted by the weather, which is amazing. And so I'm doing that on Sunday, and I'm super excited about that. But obviously just gearing up for the show, we have, I think, you know, 70 plus CXO teams from tier ones coming to the Tito Ghibas. So Tito Gis in locked down mode, no sleeping, just getting ready for that. Like I said, MWC is a deal show that's built, this fills your funnel to place where you close deals. So you can meet base to base. Sometimes it's really hard. And so it's the biggest event in the industry and everyone allocates the majority of their budget to the show. And yeah, I mean, I'm super pumped. Can't wait. Because stuff. I mean, after what you did in 2021 in about six weeks, this must be a walk in the park pairing for this year's show. Ozanne Glover says in lethal weapon, I'm too old for this. I've been saying that for the last couple of years as well. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted, right? But no, it was up till like two last night working on it and up really early to do this. So it's just the way it is. You just kind of don't sleep in February and then get back, you get back from MWC and I'm usually have caught a cold because I've, I've been working too hard and, you know, met with too many people, but that's just the way it goes. Yeah, that is a very familiar sense. Thank you, Dio. Peter, from your perspective, personal highlights this year. Yeah, I think in the years right, I mean, as much as the content is always incredible and there's so much great content and so many great keynotes. I mean, the show is ultimately about making those connections, building that pipeline, that funnel. I think for an analyst shop, that's two things. It is meeting a lot of people, having a lot of meetings, but also exposing a lot of people to our content. And so we've ramped up over the last few years. I think when I joined the team, we were mostly a supporting player in terms of being moderators. But now we're running a number of events, right? So we're running the satellite summit. We launch our global trends report. We launch our energy efficiency benchmark. And I'm just excited about all the events that we're actually running and part just to expose people to our, our thoughts, but also to get those connections. And there are so many different topics like I'm running a session around table on ISAC. It's one of those potential 6G use cases, right? Integrated sense and communications. And you just don't have an opportunity to get everyone in one place where you can get, you know, I've got Nvidia, I've got the US Department of Defense. I've got a whole bunch of people on a room. There's not many opportunities to get all those people in place. So I think it is exhausting running all these events, finding the speakers, getting the content, but I think at the end, that's, I think for me and the team, that's what I'm most proud of and much excited for. Yeah. I kind of, I think you, like all of us, you get to Thursday night. You're absolutely exhausted, but there is a massive sense of achievement, right? You've kind of, you've survived the week, but you've done your best and you've kind of pulled it off as well, which is a great feeling. Cavit, we run what we do lost things, that means TV, a live TV broadcast, a magazine, daily news, and you're all over it. What are you most looking forward to? Yeah, I mean, with sort of news arm, aren't we of the, of MWC's say, I'm looking forward to the key notes. I think, I think one that's going to be really interesting. I'm a big breaking bad fan. I watched it when it came out. It was sort of the first bingeable TV show before sort of Netflix jumped in. Aaron Paul will be key noting. I think I'll be quite so real seeing him on the stage. Also his underlying message about the dangers of technology addiction, the need to strike a balance between choosing the right digital habits. It's quite refreshing to especially a show where you're going to see like robot phones and whatever else. We've also got sort of smart rings is becoming, when we're talking about devices in innovation, I think smart rings are becoming bigger. So we've got the Aura CEO, that sort of really driving the wearable market at the moment, the Rit Aura ring. I think it's hit billion dollars in sales last year. It's going to be insightful to hear how people are using AI to make better choices. They empower their health better. Just thinking when we wrote the keynote preview thing for insight, there was a line in it about Gwen Schottloh from SpaceX. I had a line in there saying she was there since 2002. You were like, is that a typo? How was SpaceX around in 2002 but they were? She's going to come into MWC speaking about all sorts of things around connectivity, but we might also hear about the plan to take data centers into space, which is what SpaceX have announced recently. So it's going to be very newsworthy, and I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it's going to be a great event. How would you kind of sum up the vibe for this year? There's also also talk about whether it could be a record attendance, spoken to a couple of analysts that said that it looks likely. I mean, they obviously don't have any insider information on how registration is going, etc. And from the tool that you're having with customers and clients and stuff, you getting a sense that this is going to be a big step? Your message is most analysts just say things without knowing. It's just out there. Yeah, yeah. That is fair. That is fair. No, I mean, I think what is interesting is much as I kind of like miss what CES used to be, where it was more focused, the fact that it covers everything now means that it brings in just so many more audiences, which makes it bigger. And I think you're seeing the sort of expansion of them WC, where MWC obviously was much more now we're talking satellite and AI and cloud and we're talking smart rings and we're talking at all these different topics that we're talking about. Resilience, national security, it means that it becomes much more relevant to a lot of people. You'll come in the hall. They'll be the airport in the future. I think it's the airport in the future. I think that's what it's called. I mean, these all bring in new people who are interested in new markets, right? And so I think, again, I also have no insider knowledge on how many people, but it's hard for it not to be more exciting in the past as you grow the relevance and you grow the the base of people that it's just interesting to. I mean, MWC FOMO is a real thing, right? When you don't go and you know, when you talk to people who aren't going, they're just like, you're going, oh, I wish I could go. And so, I mean, just this last week, I met a team. of really amazing engineers. And they're like, yeah, we're on a little bit of a shoestring budget. And I'm as an exhibitor, I get extra passes. And so I was like, yeah, I can, I can throw you guys in the passes are not cheap. And so we get some of those, you know, easy passes. And I gave them a couple. And it was like Christmas for them, right? They're just like, no way. So they have to apply themselves over and put themselves up. And the hotel rooms, you know, this is, you know, Barcelona's big opportunity to really capture a lot of tourist revenue every year. Right? I'm sure. And they were hurting when, when MWC didn't happen in 2020. But yeah, MWC thumb was a real thing. So I think the stringers for your padellate aren't they? They are. They are. They are stringers before. That's the real. But, you know, the Padael event is going to be super fun because the way we have it, structurally wrote some AI software and run like a little mini tournament. But it's super evenly balanced where everyone will play with everyone else. That even if you are a ringer and maybe you're not as strong, you'll be paired with every ringer. And so it'll be really interesting. You play 16 points, four points each. Everyone serves, you know, four shots. And then you add up your total points to the end of the, at the end of the event. And see who wins. And there'll be fabulous prizes. Probably some medals. So we're excited about that. Yeah. I've never understood what's the difference between pickleball and padell. Could you tell us? There are two different courts. And then with paddle, they have a padell. They have an enclosure, almost like a racket ball where you can play off of the wall. That's probably the biggest difference. Pickleball is much closer to ping pong and tennis having a baby. Right. The Dell is like rack of ball squash and tennis having a baby. So different rackets, different balls, different courts, the wall, and then the scoring is different. So they're pretty different. Paddle scoring is much more like tennis. Whereas pickleball has a totally funky, so it's like old school volleyball. You only can score points when you're serving. So. Right. Totally totally different. But super. I mean, if you play a racket sport, you can play all of these sports pretty easily. And especially if you have that grounding in tennis, you're automatically awesome. Like just you walk on the court and you're amazing. And I think that's what makes people so excited to play it. Is that you're instantly pretty decent at it. And so it's super fun. Yeah. It's a reminder to people that it actually is worth coming. I mean, I know people always look for those sort of suggestions. And yes, the suggestions where comfortable shoes. We've all heard that becoming early for all these things. Like, right. I mean, the opportunity to go to something like that right on Sunday. Or I know there's the circuit X activity that's taking place with a bunch of stuff. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff that takes place on the Sunday. And if people can get it early. I said this last year, it's an unofficial start to MWC because it's a little bit quiet. And you can have some meetings either in a hotel. Justin does it. You know, I'm going to record something with Justin on Sunday. That'll air on Monday. So I am I'm fully running around on Sunday and having meetings. Absolutely. Yeah. And D.R. My first or our first topic of conversation. You're going to be joining us for the MWC review podcast, which will be recording. Obviously it towards the end of the show. You're going to have to tell us all about the the Padel competition. I want to know how you're going to. I will. It'll be it'll be a blast. I'm super excited to exercise before the show. So it'll be fun. We're going to have to wrap up there. But Ler, D.R. Cavit, Peter. Thank you so much for previewing the big show. We wish you a fantastic event. Of course, want to thank our audience for listening to to our mobile wildlife podcast. And we will see you all in Barcelona. Thank you and see you very shortly.