Anita Dohler, NGMN (00:00):
Ladies and gentlemen, dear audience, dear colleagues, dear friends, welcome to NGMN's annual Press Industry Briefing at this Mobile World Congress in 2025. My name is Anita Dohler. I am the CEO of the NGMN Alliance and I will just lead you a bit at start through what to expect today and our achievements from 2024. We then have a very prominent part of our present industry briefing. This time is the handover from our chairman between 2020 and 2024 Arash to Laurent. And at the end we will provide you with a short forecast of what to expect from us in 2025 with regards to the already agreed initiatives. And the second part, the second 30 minutes as always, will be open for questions from the audience.

(01:17):
Quick recap. With regards to NGMN what we are, we are an operator driven alliance. We reflect the entire value chain in our membership and we focus on mainly three strategic topics since 21. So one is how to master the route to disaggregation, including network automation and the achievement of cloud native solutions. The second big topic are green future network sustainability, including energy efficiency and alike. And the third big topic, as our name suggests, the next generation mobile networks alliance is of course six G or how we say by owned 5G as well. That's a recap of the membership. So we have around 70 company across the entire value chain working together in NGMN and with regards to the publications of the last year. So this is guidance we provide to the industry. To start with the route to this aggregation we provided in December 24, some publications which focus on four possible operating models identified by NGMN, describing their pros and cons for operators to make the right decisions with regards to their decisions for operating models.

(02:48):
When it comes to sustainability, there was guidance with regards to metering and virtualized run infrastructure and also a roadmap to green future networks. So that's a phase approach and there are 16 measures grouped into a short, mid and long-term and also into their impact with regards to 60. We of course continuously also provided guidance and will continue to provide guidance. One part was to review the IMT 2030 guidance where we came up with some suggestions, but in general the alignment is there. And just also a recently beginning of 25, the project we published, the network evolution guidance. So that was a very recent publication and of course I encourage everyone to download and not just read, but to apply it in practice what we are doing. The next final publication I want to mention here at the present industry briefing from 24 is guidance with regards to a radio performance assessment framework. We will describe this a bit later also because we will continue that part where we want to provide a clear baseline to the industry, how to assess any performance gains over and above 5G.

(04:22):
With this, I would like to close the first, a very short recap of what we achieved in 24, and it is a great pleasure for me to provide Arash, a big, big thank you for his leadership to the NGMN Alliance. He is extremely passionate to provide value to the industry. He led the alliance and the board of directors and also myself as A CEO through quite Turt times in the last four years. Thank you very much Arash and welcome. Our new chairman was elected by the board of directors just on this Sunday. And with this I hand over to Ray Mara from telecom TV for the panel discussion with both of our chairmans. Thank you.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:24):
I am Ray Le Maistre. I'm the editorial director at Telecom tv. Delighted to be here today to moderate the q and a part of or this panel discussion part of today's proceedings. I'm here with Arash Ashouriha, senior VP of group technology at Deutsche Telekom, who as Anita noted, has been the chair of the MGM on board for the past four years up to now. And Laurent Laboucher Orange Group, CTO and senior VP of Orange Innovation Networks, who is the new chair of the NGMN Board. So gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for being on stage here today. So we're going to take a look at what's happened and what's coming forward. Arash. Let's start with you. I'd like to start with some of the key advances made by the NGMN Alliance during your time as chairman. Let's start with network disaggregation. One of the N GM's strategic pillars during your tenure has been mastering the route to disaggregation with operating disaggregated networks or Odin being one of the main topics. Now, this was a focus, a project that was launched as the excitement around open ran was building, but which of course isn't limited just to developments in the radio access network. What have been the lessons learned from this particular initiative and what role has the NGMN played in advancing disaggregation?

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (06:53):
I think first of all, the realization that the ization of our network asset is inevitable. So every operator, no matter which geography you are in, no matter which evolution part you are in, you are still in 4G, you're about to launch 5G or you even have already 5G advance, you need to ize your rest. And as an operator driven industry alliance, we try always to focus to address something where the majority of the operators will benefit from. And that's commonly addressing how we change the operating model. Now, of course, in a pre competitive environment, which means instead of each of us going through a very painful learning curve, doing many mistakes all over again, try to focus and bring the knowledge together. And I would count on what is, let's say, the biggest achievement is first. I think we have now published also for the bigger industry, a very clear defacto handbook cookbook, how you need to change your operating model no matter if you want to have a third party cloud running for you and you put your network functions on top where you take a bigger role, you are an si, have a, all of that is covered.

(08:16):
And then specifically one thing which I am particularly proud of is our cloud manifesto, cloud native manifesto. Because to this state, I think we have to confess, we have visions, but sometimes our visions, we are faster than the ecosystem evolution. And I would say with cloud native, we thought the industry will be much faster. We had to hard realize that it's a long way to go. So basically, okay, we said let's pause, let's see what we have learned and let's see how we can also help our ecosystem, our supplier system to be more focused instead of orange asking for our friends in America asking for Z, and we ask for D to be consistent. And I think that has been amazingly achieved or appreciated by the industry.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:02):
And of course it's been very beneficial to the industry to have the NGMN helping to pull the industry forward and show what can and should be done. And this is of course a very important development. And then there's the Green Future Networks. Before AI dominated the headlines, green issues were front and center. At an event like this for a couple of years in this industry, how has the NNG men's work helped to shape energy efficiency strategies in the telecom sector? And what have been the key takeaways for you from the Green Future Networks initiative?

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (09:38):
First of all, let me get something straight. We started in NGMN to tackle sustainability before it became a trend. And the reason is, as an operator community, we have realized that our network infrastructure has a huge impact on the environment. So we better address not only energy efficiency, which is basically also you can counting money, but also the overall sustainability aspect. And I think we started by, in a very strategic approach, we started with addressing how the telcos should tackle sustainability. So our first big publication actually was sustainability strategies overall. Then we said, okay, what are the low hanging fruits, which is best practice sharing on energy metric, how you measure, how you drive more energy efficiency, and then sustainability KPIs. And remember, in our ecosystem, unfortunately the r and d budget is quite limited, so we have to be super clear. And again, if you come with common approach and common requirements, it's much more likely that the suppliers can take them and put them as part of the product.

(11:02):
And I think what we have learned is there's so much things we can do and we believe, and I'm personally super convinced that actually with AI we are not going to supercharge the efforts because through ai, first of all, we are going to go with energy efficiency places we have never been quoting Star Trek. And second, I realize, and secondly, through AI also the whole supply chain, the scope one, two, and three aspect in terms of how you understand it's going to be, which would have been a manual efforts of thousand man years, right, could be handled a much more efficient way. So looking forward to the next wave, which my friend would drive us the AI to supercharge them.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:43):
Absolutely. Well, and as you point out, I mean Laurent, these are going to continue to be key areas, key strategic areas for the NGMN in the coming years. I mean, these are ongoing developments. They

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (11:57):
I'm a bit surprised. I saw that we have fixed everything concerning Green Future Networks. No, did we? No, I left some work for you. Joke aside. Joke aside, I think we started, and I think we were, and thanks to you Arash and the whole NGMN family and the board members, I think we were very vocal on green future networks and from the beginning, and thanks a lot. I think we still need to pursue this effort because we still have some areas that we need to fix. We started with, mentoring is key. We need to provide the right data coming from our networks. We need also to be able to compare different options to deploy radio networks because radio is one of the most consuming part of our network. And this is also part of what we will achieve. And we will also provide guidelines on how mobile network operators can play a role also in the management of energy with agreed players.

(13:13):
So I think we have a lot to do, but as you said, it's not just a question of energy consumption, it's also a question of the full ecosystem, how we can bring together the supply also with operators and how we can really measure, understand scope, the different scope including what is the most challenging is scope three, scope three and four, scope three. Clearly we need the whole industry to be fully engaged and fully committed. So that's part of what we will do. And so I truly believe that we will be, again, very vocal on great future networks into the near future.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (14:05):
And as Arash mentioned, cloud native has been an important part of the work going, but there's still a lot of work there to be done. Can you just dig a little bit deeper into why this is not only an ongoing focus for the NGMN, but why it's so important?

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (14:24):
So cloud native is a precondition for automation, for efficiency, but also for the delivery of very innovative services. When you think about all the monetization opportunities we have in front of us, taking token for instance, dynamic slicing for many B2B, B two, B2C use cases. Also the fact that we more and more expose our capabilities to the ecosystem through APIs and so on, that means that underneath we need very clear cloud native foundation. This is really the precondition for everything. So we are also NGMN working with other partners. Linux Foundation plays a very important role and we have a very strong relation with Linux Foundation, CNTI. So the cloudnative Transformation initiative, telecom initiative is key here. And we will work with Linux Foundation in order to help the industry to transform itself. It's a deep transformation. It's much more than a technical transformation. It's really also business model transformation.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (15:36):
Absolutely. And Arash, if I can come back to you next, because one of the hot topics of the moment, six G has been a key pillar of N GM's work. While you've been the chairman with 2025 set to be a key year for 60 planning and strategic initiatives starting next week in South Korea, how has NGMN been preparing its members and the industry for what's coming forward with six G?

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (16:02):
So again, I need to clarify something with, and I see here my dear friends from multiple GG with very few exceptions in Asia and in the us. The truth is that we have not yet delivered fully on our 5G promise, which is 5G SA everywhere. So 5G evolution will go on. Now there has been learnings, multiple learnings how we launched 5G originally, and the share fact that in order the standardization bodies to push for 5G, they had to split the standard into multiple pieces starting with NSA going forward. So we decided let's take the learnings while 5G is still available and collect what did we already learn and what do we want to avoid? What can we do better? And I think in the last couple of years it was thinking more outside of the box. Key message is has been not yet another air interface number one. Number two is everyone talks about software, why can't we not Hardware which you buy once and instead of 5G six G, which is also how the suppliers are monetizing, just having very incremental feature sets coming into packages maybe even two, three times a year. And then also appreciating that six G, whatever it'll be, it'll be the first technology which is non connecting, non-terrestrial to terrestrial

(17:34):
And it's going to be ubiquitous access. And we have been shaping that. And I think now, and by the way, one of the reasons which I'm very, very happy that after four years we have chairman is I think now is the time to go ahead and say, okay, we did a good thought process and we shape the thinking, but now we need to lead the industry towards the standardization and realization.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (17:59):
And again, Lauren, this is obviously something that's going to feature prominently in the N GM's work schedule in the next four years, but what needs to happen next? How can the NGMN help the industry formulate the most appropriate six G strategy?

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (18:15):
So 2025 is really a critical year because this is the beginning of standards. So pre studies in the context of 3G PP, and we definitely need to be extremely clear on the priorities, the requirements regarding this new very important piece of standards for the industry. In that respect, I believe that it's also an opportunity for us to reflect a little bit upon the notion of gs. So of course, six G is something which is already considered as important in the industry. But as Arash explain, I think we need to decco a bit more hardware evolution and software evolution. We live now at a time where software and AI come at fast speed, incredible speed, and we need to bring innovation in a much more continuous way, very focused on what are the features which matter for our customers, B2C and B2B. And yes, at some specific milestone we will need some hardware upgrades. We will need also more spectrum. So we will need also to include that, but we need to reflect upon these two axis one access, which is really the features that we need to bring at the speed of software. And also the other axis where from time to times, yes, there will be a need to do upgrades on the hardware.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (20:02):
Okay, so there's clear continuation and evolution of the work done under your tenure rush and into your chairmanship, Laurent, but there are also new areas of focus as well. Can you just tell us a little bit about N GM's upcoming work on network simplification and future networks?

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (20:23):
So two pieces of work which have started and that will be public very soon, and which are also very linked with what we've just said. One is around simplification framework for network simplification. We have to cope with complex networks that mean also complex network operations because we have to deal with different technology generations. So it's becoming extremely complex. So this piece of work will provide guidance, also good practices in order to simplify as much as we can. So this is really the framework for network simplification. The other piece of work is the framework for the future communication with this evolution, this gradual evolution from 5G to six G. And this notion of continuous innovation that we need to bring taking into account also all the different aspects which are not just terrestrial mobile access but also including what you said also and so on, how we can bring that in a way which is relevant and meaningful for our customers. So these two pieces of work will be very important and they will become public very soon. Okay. Well

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (21:52):
We certainly look forward to seeing the results of that work. Really key areas for the NGMN and finally a irrational or any key messages that you would like to send out to the industry. Ir maybe we can start with you.

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (22:08):
So first of all, I mean I had my aha moment this morning. I was here 7 55 having my coffee in our booth and then our CEO comes to me, okay, what did you learn? What is the major thing? Here we go. No, but seriously, I think it's the first time I believe in humankind history where technology is evolving faster than we can adopt it. It's the first time, that was my answer. Hopefully my job is secure. Now coming back to what Laurent said, for us, we are super innovatives. We are great, but we have never been the best in speed of adaptation. Therefore, it's essential that with six G or any evolution that we fully focus on ization so that we can have incremental small pieces to cope. If we would need to go back and change hardware change, that model doesn't work. The whole world will pass telecommunication by the speed of light.

(23:21):
So I think my key message is let's work together and remember, chairman, I've been best orchestrating just the great work and everything is the great work of my fellow board members and all experts to be honest, who working day and night on this amongst the operators. But my key message is let's embrace software, let's embrace cloud nativeness, let's embrace ai. And I like to finish with a very, very old, I'm Iranian born and a thousand years of history. People now look only at the MOAs, the dark side, but let me go back. We always say when the wind of change boats, the smart man wins a windmill to make use of the wind, the idiot is building a wall to protect himself. I think that's a good way to inform me. Thank you so much.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (24:14):
Excellent, great insight. And Laurent, any key messages from you as you take on the chairmanship?

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (24:24):
First of all, I really would like to congrat and thanks a lot my dear friends Arash, because you provided huge, tremendous leadership over the past four years and I am very glad you know why because I know you will still be there and Arash promised me to stay and you will be also extremely active and thank you. Thanks a lot Arash. I would like also to thank a lot Anita, because Anita was also and still extremely, extremely efficient in driving everything which happened in NGMN and all my fellow board members and all the contributors. I think it's really, as we said, a good time for being extremely clear in the industry. NGMN is a and o driven organization, but it is a very open organization with and we absolutely need the industry to challenge also the requirements and the message that as m and o we try to provide. It's a dialogue. It's a dialogue also with academia, technology is going extremely fast. As you said, we need this collective effort in order to shape the future of the mobile industry. Thank you very much.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (25:57):
Okay. So thank you very much to Arash and Laurent for giving us their insights. We're going to hand over now to Luke from Vodafone who's going to ease us into the q and a part of today's session. Thank you very much, Luke.

Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone (26:18):
Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. So my name is Luke Ibbetson. I lead the research and development team at Vodafone group, but I'm also very proud to lead this strategy and program committee within the NG board. So this is a very, very dedicated subset of the board that's responsible for overseeing really the execution of the NGM programs, holding ourselves to account in terms of doing what we say we're going to do and helping the board to deliver as much impact as possible from this organization. Thank you. Jess. Can I have the, are you going to do it? So I think a lot of these have been heralded by our chairman, old chairman, new chairman, Arash. Laurent has spoken through some of these items already, so I'll go through them quite quickly. First of all, the route to disaggregation. So we are planning to publish a new cloud native of assessment methodology, which is going to help provide a toolkit for operators to monitor where they are in the cloud native journey.

(27:27):
We consider this to be a very, very important initiative and it's one that underpins a lot of the developments that is going to be needed in the coming years. Green Future Network should have heard a great deal about it as well. It's one of the flagship programs within Engine Men. I think it's one that's also driving a great deal of industry engagement and recognition of the leadership that this community is able to generate. So we're going to continue this work, we're going to start doing a lot more work around energy management, around smart metering. So watch this space. We've got a very, very good roadmap for the Green Future Networks program. Now these next two are the frameworks that Lauren mentioned, framework for network simplification framework for the future communications networks. Both of these are being led by, especially this has been led directly by the board, but it will be including the Fullman community.

(28:23):
And it's really starting to look at not just how we might specify some things such as six G and 3G ppp, but how we as operators get the best possible outcome for customers as we go into this next era of communication. So combining satellite fixed networks, mobile networks, and how we make sure that the innovations that our technology partners are bringing to us are able to deliver very, very good useful value to our customers. And I think Engine is the only place really where we come together and provide these views in such a coordinated way. Both of which of course feed into then the next generation of six G also one of our flagship programs. And I think this is going to be a very, very important time both for us as a community and for the industry at large as we work out how to get the best possible value for customers out of the transition that's coming and make sure this is as smooth as possible. So I think you've heard the key points from a ration and Laurent in terms of the importance of software ization, making sure we don't start to create incentives just to rip and replace hardware for ugs. That isn't what we're after with nng. We want to see how we can consume new technology in a way that delivers that value to customers. So I'm going to hand over now back to Anita who'll take us on the Q and a. I think.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (29:50):
Thank you. Luke just took quickly mentioned it's not only what we presented here, what NGMN is working on. We also have a project on network automation. We do have a security competence team and we have a very impactful project on base station antenna characteristics. So those projects of course are also quite important and will continue in NGMN. So having said that, I would like to invite our board members who are here to join me for the q and a session. So first please K Leo from China Mobile. Exactly. We can all come on stage. Dan from Telo, Susanna from Liberty Global, Mike I from US Cellular and Taki you from SKT. And of course please Laurent and Arash. Luke, please also join us again, we can actually also go all on stage because I believe it would even fit there. And I would encourage everyone in the audience because that's your opportunity to ask the questions you always like to ask to the C level of mobile network operators. Are there any questions? Who would like to start? Elisa will bring the microphone. We need a microphone. Okay. Okay. Stephane. Stephane please. Yes. And please always say your name and your company before the question. Thank you.

Stephane Teral, Teral Research (31:55):
Thank you Anita. So I'm Stephane Teral from Teral Research and I have a question for Arash. So you said nobody in this world on this planet is ready to introduce a new air interface, but don't you think we're stuck with OFDM? Because look, I mean you have that beautiful 5G new radio anchor into LTE that goes to the VPC and we see actually by collecting data that the VPC market is fine, we thought it would be declining and in fact it's not declining flat. But 5G is not going anywhere as you clearly said. So don't you think that in six G it would be better to get out of OFDM or maybe not totally. What if there is a new waveform that can be combined and coordinated with OFDM that can make our life better? What about that?

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (32:58):
Yes, let me, because you asked me, I will start and then I will handle over to our six G lead. My good friend look, just to be clear, what I meant with that is if you look GSM 3G, and I don't even mention Y-C-D-M-A and all these other adventures, 4G 5G, it was mainly radio interface spectrum efficiency or speed. And then everything else came with it. And the fact is we built networks on top of each other and we created a lasagna stack as I call it. My plea was, or basically what we have defined in NGMN is six G is much more than just an air interface. It's a complete rethinking potentially rearchitecting the entire network, maybe even starting with the core, with the service-based approach. And then obviously there's so much research going on that Luke can pick up on how a potential also evolution on new radio could look like. But it's going to be much more than just that. Luke?

Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone (34:02):
No, just to build on that. So one of the things that I'm not sure if it was mentioned earlier or not, but one of our recent publications is called the Radio Performance Assessment Framework. So this is a way of us making sure as operators is that when people start to bring forward these great new proposals for things that might be able to go beyond OFDM, we're able to assess it against the benchmark that the great technology that we're deploying today and for the next few years we'll be deploying. So if we look at all of the features that have been added to 5G in order to allow it to continue to evolve and improve its performance, that sets a very, very high bar for something that would then look to potentially replace it. So we absolutely pro innovation, so we want to see some fantastic, I would love somebody to come up with something that could outperform RFDM. We haven't seen it yet. We haven't seen it yet. And in the absence of that, we want to make sure that the focus in six G is around creating value for customers through using smooth evolution of our technology in a way that allows us to operate networks as cost-effectively as possible and deliver the right service quality. That's what people care about, not what GS sit behind the box colleagues. Any

Takki Yu, SK Telecom (35:21):
Ask a good question? Actually I think it is. It really depends on the use case and killer service. So a lot of different opinion and discussions are going now in three GPP and many organizations. But key message from my side is 60 should be market service demand driven, not technology driven. That's the key I think. So if we have a very good service or killer service or application use cases, then we may need some new air interface for some specific use case. But yeah, it really depends on the use case. That's my opinion.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (36:06):
Any other additions additional questions from the audience?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (36:15):
Thank you Ray Le Maistre from telecom tv. I'd like to ask everybody on stage actually how they feel in the next four or five years that the operator community can best take advantage of the investments they have already done in 5G and will continue to do and to get the best possible returns from that to make it worthwhile and give confidence that whatever comes next is going to be worthwhile not only for this industry but for the customer basis as well.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (36:48):
Thank you Ray.

Mike Irizarry, UScellular (36:49):
I love that question. I think there's opportunity to get more out of five GI was reflecting on your question on OFDM. I think applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to that existing air interface will get us more spectral efficiency. I think one of our biggest challenges optimizing costs to your point around return on investment. So fully leveraging ai, machine learning and orchestration will help us improve our margins and I think if we can demonstrate that improve that we can get more out of the existing use cases that will build confidence with at least my CEO and our shareholders and board of directors that we should take the next step to further evolve 5G with the enhancements across the different domains, whether it's cloud, the radio network and operations as we work towards six G, whatever that looks like. So I think we really need to focus on getting more out of 5G and building confidence on that pathway to the next generation.

Jérôme Birot, TELUS (38:05):
It's a great question and if I mention six G in my company, I get walked out of the door

(38:12):
Of the room for sure, it's taboo. Our CEO will come and ask when are we going to start monetizing 5G? So definitely they definitely don't want to hear about six G is coming, we need to get ready. And my colleague was saying like Mike was saying, AI did not exist when 5G specs were created. So just think of the potential of what we can embrace with this new capabilities today with our existing networks. Private wireless network was supposed to be the killer use case. Well in Canada where 80% of the population lives within hundred kilometers of the US border, the geopolitics starts playing a key factor. So investment is going to be key to monetize what we already have. And if you think about the amount of private wireless network that you really need when you double click on it, half the time customers need better coverage and with 5G you have new technologies like slicing that can actually provide private wireless network like capabilities. So why not use this and monetize and sweat all those assets, lean on new technologies that are coming fast and furious, AI machine learning to manage our cost and get a better return on investment.

Guangyi Liu, China Mobile (39:44):
Thank you. I think also agree, it's maybe the top one question I think asked by the management peoples from my perspective, I think first of course we need to work together, especially the operator community work together to cultivate the new device, new applications. That's the first one, especially for the consumer markets. I think that's the most important for all the operators. Second one is we try to cultivate the new products, new form factor of the products for the network to serve the very diverse, very differentiated vertical use cases that will be the potential for the mobile operators to grow. A third one of course I think we also need to look forward, we have learned a lot from the practice of 5G, how we can just make it better to, for example, just like RH has mentioned, how can we just for future, can we extract the network, make it be more easy to monetize the network's capabilities like open API at this future by this way we think we maybe we can achieve what we really hope.

Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone (40:55):
I think Ray, you framed it extremely well. That is exactly what we need to do. Such an early stage of deploying the full range of 5G capabilities. And so when we look at the excitement that the prospects of people trying to evolve GE yet again is creating in terms of people bringing new service ideas, new device types, new ideas that could lead to good commercial outcomes. My challenge back to them more ways is why don't we do this on 5G, we can do this on 5G, we can evolve 5G way beyond where we are today. So I think it's a great question and is one that I'm confident that if we continue to build on what we've started, we're going to be able to deliver some good outcomes. The last thing we need though is to be creating the perception that we're about to rip and replace everything. Start again, that's not credible and it's not what we as an association are advising our technology partners to be considering.

Suzana Grujev, Liberty Global (42:00):
Okay. I think you asked some of the question what we can do today. So with the API and the open gateway and the cloudification and authorization, we are moving a little bit towards more monetizing the network. But one of the topics that we picked up for is the network simplification. And it doesn't start with network simplification in CG or whatever G. It starts actually how can we try to be deploy our networks more easily, more agile in order to focus more on the services and the broader community than just fixing whatever G we have in the network. So it's really and working together with the whole ecosystem to move it towards to implement the use cases that are there.

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (42:54):
I think it's always good to reflect upon what will happen in the next five years. And I think your question is really crucial here. I believe what we will experience as an industry with AI will be fantastic, fantastic and it'll transform completely the way we build and operate networks. It's very difficult to think about it just looking at what we need to do in the coming months. But if you think of it in the next few years, that will completely change the way we operate networks. The first point. Second point is it's not just about efficiency, it's really about what kind of value we can create and we don't need to wait for six G for that. It's really about also what kind of new workloads we can support as a telco platform. As a network platform. And we need to transform ourself as into a network platform and we cannot do that alone. Each one of us it has to be organized, it has to be united of course we need to obey with the competition laws and so on. But we need to work together in order to make that happen. And AI for network will support network for ai.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (44:32):
Thank you. Are there more questions from the audience? No, then I would like to ask our board members, so we talked about that the by owned 5G development that we need to do it really value driven, we talked about operational efficiencies, we had already in the first 30 minutes quite a lot of topics with regards to sustainability and also disaggregation. So my question to our board members is are there any specific areas in addition to what we already discussed when it comes to disaggregation, your experiences in moving to a cloud native networks, what you would like to also convey to as a message to the industry maybe

Jérôme Birot, TELUS (45:37):
Few things. Cloudnative workload are key. Like AR mentioned it, it's the key and Laura mentioned it as well. The key for automating our networks, the market is hyper competitive. The industry is shrinking. How do we sweat those assets? Software is our network, desegregating our network driving a better economy of scales across the board. Automation, automation, automation. And with that those foundational items, we won't be able to stay competitive in this industry that continues to demand more for less. So for us driving true automation end to end, including the testing, including the workloads, software rising, everything is our key priority for the next foreseeable future.

Mike Irizarry, UScellular (46:39):
It's a great question Anita. I think we often get focused on the technology as we transition. The thing that I believe we've learned is we have to stay aligned, we have to stay aligned as a vendor community, as a carrier community. And that's one of the things that next generation mobile networks does so well. It brings the vendors together, the carriers to force us to consider the big picture of an ecosystem. And when we do that and stay focused on it, I think we can accomplish a number of very important things. One is sustainability, having a better impact on the ecology and the climate. Number two is improving the operational efficiencies and spectral efficiency. When I look at one of key use cases, and Jerome mentioned it is the rapidly growing usage from fixed wireless access. We have to figure out a way to lower the cost to deliver those bits and at the same time improve the spectral efficiency because in some countries auctions haven't even started yet for the next capacity layer of the network. And then I would say the most important thing is making sure we're satisfying our customers at the end of the day they pay the bills which ultimately go into the investments and if we can stay aligned as an ecosystem, I think we can accomplish all of those things and it's easy to lose sight of that when you get enamored by all the cool and exciting technology. So let's stay focused on collaborating.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (48:19):
Thank you Mike.

Guangyi Liu, China Mobile (48:22):
Thank you. I think it's Anta ask us a very good question. Especially I think when we have so many years development on the dedicated hardware system. So it's really from five GI think it's give us a chance to rethink it and see how can we just make a network to be more flexible, to be more elastic and agile for new features and especially new services for the collaborative, I think it means we can share the hardware between the communication and the new services like the computing, like the ai, it can help us to save the cost of the deployment. Second, I think collaborative means we can orchestrate the network functions very flexibly and address the very diverse, very, very differentiated use cases, especially for the verticals. I think it'll provide us new solutions which can provide us the personalized customized hardware and software. By this way we can minimize the cost of such kind of deployment for vertical use cases, which really will fulfill the gap between what our current solution and the cloud solutions. I think that's my answer.

Takki Yu, SK Telecom (49:47):
Just a quick comment for that actually. Well Cloudification and ion from technology perspective is very good, very nice, but operation in real world is totally different story, very difficult to operate in. So I want to emphasize the importance of operation model in real world it is well different situation, a different environment in country in every operator. So we need to make well-designed operation model for cloud and aggregation. Yeah, that's the comment.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (50:24):
Thank you Taki. Other comments then our other big topic sustainability. So we talked about energy efficiency but also the requirements related to metering. We need to of course also consider any impact of disaggregated networks. So what is your opinion with regards to the priorities maybe wrong or

Laurent Laboucher, Orange Innovation Networks (50:56):
I think one of the major challenge we have in front of us is not only to look at scope two, but really to consider scope three and to address it in a way where we can do our job, which is to report our progress. And today it's still a bit challenging when we have to report and you know that when we do our financial reporting, now all of us, most of the time we also need to report our CO2 footprint obligations and we cannot do that without our vendor partners. They are part of our supply chain, they are part of our scope three. So how can we do that in a way which is consistent, which is measurable, which is not greenwashing, but which is really addressing what needs to be done in order to help our planet.

Arash Ashouriha, Deutsche Telekom (52:01):
So I think I'm building on top. So first of all is walk the talk, right? We at DT started already and because we have a joined with Orange, we have a joint procurement company. We started already a couple of years ago to have 20% of the whole sourcing scoring dedicated to sustainability. And this will put an extra push on the suppliers, but I like to come back and look future. I think with AI everyone looks at many other things, but as I mentioned earlier on with ai, we will supercharge our efforts on sustainability, understanding the supply chain suppliers, understanding the chains, making sure that we can make something out of the data, both for decision making and steering. And last partly I do believe that there will be always the trade off. And by the way, that's why we are paid capacity. So cost capacity, but also let's not forget the energy consumption with it.

(53:09):
And as we move forward, I hear a lot AI run, I run, I run means up to eight times energy cost. So I mean there's a fuss, but the reality is we need to be super conscious on what are we trying to do? Do we need really GPUs or can we not do most of the things with CPUs, which is our conviction? We don't need GPUs and therefore also make the right architectural choices. One thing is saving on what you have. Another thing is having sustainability in your DNA how you design certain things. And I think there's a way to go

Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone (53:53):
And I would fully endorse the comments from my two illustrious colleagues, but I would just add as well that it's one of the reasons why when we look towards the way people might be trying to frame the six G piece and we'll look at individual technologies that in themselves might showing incremental energy benefits. We are advocating a much more holistic approach so we can look at the overall gains or losses as we start to introduce technologies that might be more efficient on a radio layer, but require huge massive M panels that consume many, many watts of energy. So we're trying to make sure that we keep ourselves honest, one of the frameworks that we produce in engine and allows us a way of measuring the impact of individual technology innovations in a much more holistic way. And this is something that isn't generally followed within the way that standards happen to be built because they're developed in different working groups in a very, very silo manner. We to operate our networks in this way, we see the energy bill at the end of the month and we need to make sure that as we go through to the next generation, we don't lose sight of this, but very much support the previous comments as well.

Guangyi Liu, China Mobile (55:11):
Maybe from different operator. We are in different stage of the network development. So from my perspective, we also need to pay attention to the new technology trend. For example, the ai. So how SAT will make very fast in commercial. I think a commercial launch. So it's also an opportunity for the mobile operators. Can we create some new opportunity, some new medicine from such kind of application, such kind of deployment. So I also see especially I think in two days before, two days before I think GSMA has set up community on the network of ai. So we also see we need also consider how we just help us to cultivate some new service, new application for us even besides what we are doing, try to control the cost of the network. I think that's also very important. We need to pay attention to it.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (56:13):
Thank you.

Takki Yu, SK Telecom (56:16):
Let me add more about ai. So well a purpose of AI is to improve reliability and operational efficiency and performance of network. And also we need some monetization. So there are two directions. AI for network and network for ai. So we both direction, yeah, super important for us. So actually in the first part, so we can reduce energy consumption or improve the performance and reduce the operational cost. And second part, we can inate all kinds of assets that we have with AI service. It's more proactive lore of network for AI service. For example, real time AI service, interactive AI service. We can run AI computing at the edge or we can combine network, API with real time AI service for example. So both of direction are important I think.

Anita Dohler, NGMN (57:27):
Thank you Taki. Are there any other questions from the audience? That's the last opportunity for questions? No, then if there are no other comments from our board members and I would like to thank everyone from our board members on stage. I would also like to inform you big applause that we have more of our board members here in the audience and also some of our academia and vendor members and of course the entire NGMN team. So we have Elisa, Christina, spark, and amra, thank you a lot to the organization. And last but absolutely not least to Jess from Vodafone who was really very supportive with her team and colleagues and Luke to make this happen. And if you're not yet part of NGMN, but you are in a mobile telecommunication ecosystem, then I invite you to join us because collaboration is as important as it was never. So we really at this moment in time, we need to collaborate. We need to move together, the industry into the right direction to create additional value to our customers. Thank you.