Serious about networks, unserious about everything else.
Telecoms.com Podcast turns the telecoms industry's big themes, from 6G and AI RAN to Starlink and network APIs, into sharp, jokey conversation instead of a solemn briefing. Vendor announcements get read closely, and a story about a dancing robot that got too close to a customer table sits alongside talk of autonomous network levels.
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Telecoms.com Podcast takes network technology seriously and very little else. Titles such as 'VMO2, Huawei and AI doom', 'AI grid, Nokia and social media' and 'Satellite, AI and 6G' map the ground: operators, vendors, spectrum, satellites and a great deal of AI. The detail is real. One discussion turns over a 55-45 figure that Nokia cited for VMO2's network footprint, asking where it could have come from when others say it is wrong. That leads to a bigger question: how much control does a telco keep over what its suppliers can announce? Elsewhere, the hosts wonder whether 'AI Grid' is just AI RAN rebranded, pointing out that grid is already the telco word for how radio sites and spectrum are laid out. 6G comes up repeatedly, often with doubt attached. At one point operators are described as downbeat, wary of another big investment cycle and open to 6G being a continuation of 5G. History gets a hearing too. A question about why nobody talks about NFV and SDN any more lands on the view that virtualising network functions, the hot technology of the 4G era, probably fell short of expectations. Automation gets the same raised eyebrow. The level zero to five scale for autonomous networks came from the car industry, with China Mobile named as a poster child, and it prompts talk of how one automated error can be amplified by the systems that build on it. The forward-looking material is just as specific. The Mobile World Congress preview asks whether AI agents could become the customers for network APIs, checking for a SIM swap or whether a phone is in the same place as a credit card while rating a transaction for fraud risk. That thread brings in model context protocol and a paper Camara put out on it. Satellite and fixed wireless access come up when a speaker previews a report that found Starlink in use in urban areas as well as rural ones. In the episode titled 'Live from MWC 2026', one speaker describes going live in a commercial network at small scale and gathering data at TTI level, likening it to an MRI of the cellular network. Guests appear in several episodes, and one admits on the way out to having been a listener for years. The manner stays loose throughout. The hosts rib each other, drift into pub plans and, in one sign-off, thank Danielle, crowned the queen of props, for gourmet jelly shots. It sounds like people arguing about the industry, not a press release read aloud.
Made for: Suits a listener who follows operators, vendors and mobile network technology closely and would rather hear claims about 6G, AI RAN and network APIs tested in blunt conversation than repeated from a keynote. A tolerance for swearing and pub talk helps.
What sets it apart: It combines close reading of vendor and operator claims, down to where a single 55-45 figure came from, with an irreverent, sweary looseness closer to a pub argument than an industry briefing.
Once a week we get together in a studio somewhere in London to take the piss out of telecoms and technology for an hour or so.
Openreach's migration deadline comes with the question you would ask: who loses service?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A disputed 55-45 footprint claim opens up the awkward power dynamics between VMO2, Nokia, and Ericsson.
Telecoms.com Podcast uses the disputed 55-45 footprint claim around VMO2, Nokia, and Ericsson as a compact lesson in how telecoms messaging can get messy in public.
A candid telecom discussion connects AI infrastructure language to the physical risk of putting technology in the wrong place.
AI Grid gives the Telecoms.com Podcast a practical route into the infrastructure sitting underneath the AI debate. The phrase is treated through the language telcos already use for radio access networks, including sites, spectrum, density, and new base stations, while the…
Starlink's urban growth meets telecom AI that still needs people in the loop.
Satellite connectivity is no longer framed as a rural-only fix, and telecom automation still has work to do before operators can trust it without close human oversight.
A weary MWC conversation weighs whether 6G is a real leap, a 5G continuation, or a new-spectrum label.
The on-site Mobile World Congress special finds telecom in a wary in-between moment, with 6G already in the air while operators sound cautious about another heavy spending cycle.
A grounded episode on AI agents as telecom customers, with MCP and network APIs clearly in view.
The episode is strongest when it treats the AI agent as a new kind of telecom customer. A fraud check might query a phone network about SIM swaps, identity, location, and whether a phone and credit card appear to be in the same place before deciding whether to trust a…
Telecom news, sorted by people who track it.
Telecom strategy in deployment detail.
Network architecture, measured against the business case
Rural broadband's money, rules and workforce, explained plainly.
Private 5G followed into campuses, classrooms and spectrum policy
Celona talks private cellular, with an analyst checking its reasoning.
["Telecoms.com Podcast centers on VMO2's RAN tender, Ericsson, Nokia, and a disputed 55/45 split at Virgin Media O2.", "Scott Buccino and Ian open with LinkedIn feedback from David Kavanagh at Apple Australia, Shagan Karki, and Michael Roger at Huawei Canada, plus a sponsor nod to Cohere Technologies.", "The episode also covers Nick Jones's OnlyRans.net parody and Dean Bubly's LinkedIn joke about orbital catering and toasted sandwiches from VLEO orbit.", "Scott and Ian then argue that AI WAN is broader than AI RAN and connect VMO2's network plan to densification, massive MIMO, and 5G-Advanced features."]
Telecoms.com Podcast's 'AI grid' discussion centers on NVIDIA's push to sell telecoms an 'AI grid' story, anchored by Jensen Huang's line that base stations will become part of AI infrastructure.
Telecoms.com Podcast's Satellite, AI and 6G uses MWC Barcelona to compare a quieter 2026 show with GSMA's 105,000-attendee count and its 58% adjacent-industry mix.
["The show opens with the hosts joking that the biggest MWC news is Accenture buying Ookla, and Mike Dano appears as the Ookla analyst on the spot.", "Mike Dano says the dominant show themes are AI, wearables, AI RAN, 6G, and satellites, and he points to Starlink's direct-to-device keynote as the clearest satellite story.", "Ray Dolan pushes sensing, public safety, military, transportation, consumer localization, and industrial automation as the case for 6G.", "The conversation also covers Bruno Zabiba-Orange's skepticism, Tom Rondeau's OCuDU open-source work with the Linux Foundation, and Nvidia's role in AI RAN and AirScale hardware."]
Telecoms.com Podcast’s MWC 2026 preview focuses on Dean Bubley’s view that AI agents may become the customers for telecom APIs.
Fran Heeran of Red Hat uses this Telecoms.com Podcast episode to explain why NFV was the 4G-era answer and why containers now dominate telco software design.
On Telecoms.com Podcast, Juliet Scott says Openreach's PSTN and WLR shutdown is now pointed at 31 January 2027.
Telecoms.com Podcast spends this episode on Deutsche Telekom's cloud sovereignty push, Matt Berryman's Unlocked story, and AI-agent chatter around Maltbot/OpenClaw.
["Telecoms.com Podcast's Ericsson, AI and Nokia centers on Ericsson's R-app stack, SMO, and massive MIMO optimisation.", "Ian hosts Ericsson's Ibrahim Eldiftar, who leads the cognitive software and services solution line and explains why that portfolio matters.", "The episode asks what programmable radio networks are for when operators want AI-driven control, open interfaces, and better spectral efficiency.", "The clearest example is massive MIMO cell-shape selection, where Ericsson Radio offers 12 shapes and AI helps manage the combinatorial search across sites and frequency layers."]
Telecoms.com Podcast uses CES and Jensen Huang's "physical AI" framing to argue that the latest AI buzzword is being sold as a new phase for robots and autonomous systems.
A special edition of the Telecoms.com podcast recorded at the Fuse event in Dublin, discussing Nokia's transformation and industry leadership.
The hosts discuss a long-running scandal involving wrongful prosecutions linked to a flawed computer system, with a journalist's role in uncovering it.
A special episode of the Telecoms.com Podcast recorded at Digital Transformation World in Copenhagen, featuring guest John Strand discussing industry trends and Open RAN.
A discussion on the shifting identity of MWC from a mobile-centric event to one dominated by AI and cloud, with telco presence shrinking.