In this special MWC Barcelona edition of Zero-Touch, Rakuten Symphony SVP Partner & Portfolio Sheheryar Khakwani (SK) reflects on why telecom’s next phase of growth hinges on how industry stakeholders collaborate to turn capability into service.
In this issue, Rakuten Symphony SVP of Technology Devesh Gautam explores what it actually takes to manage networks as software systems, drawing on his extensive experience building greenfield networks at Jio and Rakuten Mobile.
Open RAN has delivered the economic, operational and diversification results for those that have managed to introduce it with high levels of automation and software management across testing, planning, deploying, operating and assuring. These have been mainly greenfield rollouts, unencumbered by existing practices and organization structures.
Cloud deployments, in all parts of the telecom ecosystem, aren’t broken. Yet, in boardrooms from west to east, the decisions that underpinned them are being urgently revisited. Why fix what still works? For many, cloud’s initial promise of infinite elasticity and cost-efficiency has hit a wall, and distribution requirements have outgrown the original promise.
Is a scalable, cloud and AI-native telco network business that powers operational efficiency and delivers robust, sustained revenue streams finally in sight? The Mobile Network editor Keith Dyer spent the year investigating, revealing that this once idealized “future state” is already a reality for leading stakeholders. In this week’s issue of the Zero-Touch newsletter, he highlights his findings and the key takeaways captured in the Future Telco Report, out now.
In this week’s Zero-Touch newsletter, Rakuten Symphony CMO Geoff Hollingworth shares his observations on telecom’s persistent “sexiness” challenge and why his experience at the recent AWS Breaking Barriers Hackathon, held at FYUZ 2025, has him thinking telcos may finally be getting their innovation groove back. Then AWS 6G and AIML Technologist Ejaz Sial and AWS Industries Director Technology Kaniz Mahdi share a readout from the hackathon, which brought together 377 participants from 68 projects and crowned a winner that showcased impressive, AI-driven RAN learning and optimization. First up, Geoff Hollingworth.
As co-chair of the O-RAN Alliance Security Work Group, Rakuten Symphony head of security standards and research Nagendra Bykampadi recently joined industry colleagues in Dallas for the annual Zero Trust Architecture Workshop. Following are key takeaways from his presentation about how 6G’s shift toward AI-native networks will require rethinking security from the ground up, starting with how we define trust itself.
Telecom Infra Project (TIP) executive director Kristian Toivo and Rakuten Symphony CMO Geoff Hollingworth are set to deliver opening keynote interviews at Mobile World Live’s upcoming Unwrapped: The 5G Evolution event, where they’ll discuss the shift to software-based, cloud-agnostic networks and the realities of deploying open and cloud-native RAN architectures. In this article, Geoff and Kristian share their perspective on what it will take to scale openness across networks and how collaboration is shaping the path forward.
“Gradually, then suddenly.” In a 1926 novel, Ernest Hemingway used the phrase to describe how a man went bankrupt. His words also perfectly capture how operators will embrace automation and AI. I shared this quote in my opening remarks last week at Mobile World Congress Las Vegas during the Agentic AI Summit session, Smart Networks, Smart Services: Agentic AI for Telcos.
Digital-first is the undisputed destination for every telco. Businesses that run on software and data versus people and manual processes deliver flexibility in every important aspect of service delivery and monetization.
Enterprise AI adoption is not a matter of if but how. The largest companies in the world are making significant investments across tech, people and resources, angling for an advantage that could pay dividends for those that establish leadership positions.
In 2016, concerned about the excessive hype around 5G, telecom engineer, strategist, and author William Webb wrote The 5G Myth to explain why many of the promised breakthroughs were unlikely to materialize. The book challenged the need for higher speeds and greater capacity, arguing that 4G was already sufficient and that user demand for mobile data would plateau by 2027. William’s predictions were informed by a rare combination of technical and regulatory experience. With a PhD in mobile telecoms and a 35-year career that included roles at Ofcom, Motorola, co-founding an IoT start-up, and advising on telecom strategy, he had seen the industry from every angle.
AI will never be this disappointing again. At the same time, it is amazing. When we live through paradigm shifts, it’s easy to forget that the shift is incomplete and there is always more to come. The Ford Model T was the first generation of mass-produced car. 100 years of automobile innovation later, we can see how basic they were when they rolled off the assembly line.
More than a billion+ users later, LLMs have been adopted faster than any tech in history, powered by the experience shift from “searching” for information and being presented links to getting targeted answers that are “generated” in milliseconds. With this shift came fast-changing expectations across enterprise software, telco operations and daily productivity.
In this special MWC Barcelona edition of Zero-Touch, Rakuten Symphony SVP Partner & Portfolio Sheheryar Khakwani (SK) reflects on why telecom’s next phase of growth hinges on how industry stakeholders collaborate to turn capability into service.
In this week’s Zero-Touch newsletter, Rakuten Symphony CMO Geoff Hollingworth shares his observations on telecom’s persistent “sexiness” challenge and why his experience at the recent AWS Breaking Barriers Hackathon, held at FYUZ 2025, has him thinking telcos may finally be getting their innovation groove back. Then AWS 6G and AIML Technologist Ejaz Sial and AWS Industries Director Technology Kaniz Mahdi share a readout from the hackathon, which brought together 377 participants from 68 projects and crowned a winner that showcased impressive, AI-driven RAN learning and optimization. First up, Geoff Hollingworth.
“Gradually, then suddenly.” In a 1926 novel, Ernest Hemingway used the phrase to describe how a man went bankrupt. His words also perfectly capture how operators will embrace automation and AI. I shared this quote in my opening remarks last week at Mobile World Congress Las Vegas during the Agentic AI Summit session, Smart Networks, Smart Services: Agentic AI for Telcos.
Enterprise AI adoption is not a matter of if but how. The largest companies in the world are making significant investments across tech, people and resources, angling for an advantage that could pay dividends for those that establish leadership positions.
AI will never be this disappointing again. At the same time, it is amazing. When we live through paradigm shifts, it’s easy to forget that the shift is incomplete and there is always more to come. The Ford Model T was the first generation of mass-produced car. 100 years of automobile innovation later, we can see how basic they were when they rolled off the assembly line.
More than a billion+ users later, LLMs have been adopted faster than any tech in history, powered by the experience shift from “searching” for information and being presented links to getting targeted answers that are “generated” in milliseconds. With this shift came fast-changing expectations across enterprise software, telco operations and daily productivity.
In this issue, Rakuten Symphony SVP of Technology Devesh Gautam explores what it actually takes to manage networks as software systems, drawing on his extensive experience building greenfield networks at Jio and Rakuten Mobile.
Cloud deployments, in all parts of the telecom ecosystem, aren’t broken. Yet, in boardrooms from west to east, the decisions that underpinned them are being urgently revisited. Why fix what still works? For many, cloud’s initial promise of infinite elasticity and cost-efficiency has hit a wall, and distribution requirements have outgrown the original promise.
Digital-first is the undisputed destination for every telco. Businesses that run on software and data versus people and manual processes deliver flexibility in every important aspect of service delivery and monetization.
In 2016, concerned about the excessive hype around 5G, telecom engineer, strategist, and author William Webb wrote The 5G Myth to explain why many of the promised breakthroughs were unlikely to materialize. The book challenged the need for higher speeds and greater capacity, arguing that 4G was already sufficient and that user demand for mobile data would plateau by 2027. William’s predictions were informed by a rare combination of technical and regulatory experience. With a PhD in mobile telecoms and a 35-year career that included roles at Ofcom, Motorola, co-founding an IoT start-up, and advising on telecom strategy, he had seen the industry from every angle.
Open RAN has delivered the economic, operational and diversification results for those that have managed to introduce it with high levels of automation and software management across testing, planning, deploying, operating and assuring. These have been mainly greenfield rollouts, unencumbered by existing practices and organization structures.
Is a scalable, cloud and AI-native telco network business that powers operational efficiency and delivers robust, sustained revenue streams finally in sight? The Mobile Network editor Keith Dyer spent the year investigating, revealing that this once idealized “future state” is already a reality for leading stakeholders. In this week’s issue of the Zero-Touch newsletter, he highlights his findings and the key takeaways captured in the Future Telco Report, out now.
As co-chair of the O-RAN Alliance Security Work Group, Rakuten Symphony head of security standards and research Nagendra Bykampadi recently joined industry colleagues in Dallas for the annual Zero Trust Architecture Workshop. Following are key takeaways from his presentation about how 6G’s shift toward AI-native networks will require rethinking security from the ground up, starting with how we define trust itself.
Telecom Infra Project (TIP) executive director Kristian Toivo and Rakuten Symphony CMO Geoff Hollingworth are set to deliver opening keynote interviews at Mobile World Live’s upcoming Unwrapped: The 5G Evolution event, where they’ll discuss the shift to software-based, cloud-agnostic networks and the realities of deploying open and cloud-native RAN architectures. In this article, Geoff and Kristian share their perspective on what it will take to scale openness across networks and how collaboration is shaping the path forward.
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