Senza Fili Sparring Partners

Private networks sound such a good idea. There is a clear need for venues and enterprises to have better on-premises connectivity to support their operations and services. They can augment much-needed indoor connectivity, which today is mostly provided by Wi-Fi. Yet, deployments are only slowly taking off, and that’s the case across geographies. Do we have the technology? Yes. Are they too expensive to deploy? No. So what’s holding us back? Mostly the business models, the (real or perceived) complexity for enterprises to deploy them, and regulatory frameworks geared toward cellular networks owned and run by mobile operators. In this Sparring Partners, I spoke with Maria Lema, Founder and CEO of Weaver Labs, who addresses these issues from the assumption that a private network should be viewed as a strategic investment for the venue or enterprise. Once you accept that, many other pieces fall into place. Listen to the conversation, as I do not want to spoil it, but these are some topics we covered: Sharing the infrastructure, without a neutral-host model Business models, stadiums and beyond Digital real estate Cloud orchestration You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

I don’t think I am the only one annoyed by the homogenization of content, driven by a combination of social media, reduced attention spans, AI and human slop, and strict PR and corporate messaging policies. The side effect of this is that in-person human interaction is becoming more valuable and worth cultivating. This is why I invited Keith Dyer at The Mobile Network to talk about this on Sparring Partners. He has launched a new in-person conference with a format that puts attendee interaction at the forefront. In our conversation, we discussed how industry events have evolved as we become submerged in (and want to avoid) repetitive, shallow content increasingly generated or over-edited by AI. How to preserve independent and diverse views at events and more generally in the published content How to make events more interactive and more valuable to those attending them How should we think of genuine connections beyond traditional metrics Mentions: Check out Keith’s next event on NTN and Sparring Partners in-person meetings You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners’ Substack

Physical AI can impress us with an outstanding performance that rivals or surpasses human capabilities in a few tasks. Over time, AI-driven robots, drones and other devices will expand the range of tasks they can perform with accuracy, reliability and cost- and energy-efficiency. But to achieve this, they need levels of latency, reliability and security that today’s public networks do not support. For many use cases, physical AI will need a private network infrastructure that may or may not be managed by mobile operators. In most countries, mobile operators will not be the main infrastructure players. I sat down with Gianluca Verin, CEO and Co-Founder of Apeiroon, to examine how we should plan and operate mobile networks to successfully and safely operate physical AI in the real world at scale. Gianluca has accumulated in-depth, practical experience on private networks for a long time since he started Athonet, and explains why many physical AI use cases require dedicated, deterministic, edge connectivity, and why centralized cloud architectures are not sufficient: How to think about network requirements as physical AI gets deployed Edge AI, mobile AI, mobile AI bubbles as the foundation for scalable physical AI deployments Physical AI innovation in Europe versus USA: An opportunity that Europe cannot afford to lose To sum it all up, Gianluca said: "A stationary robot is an IT problem. A moving robot is a network problem." To go deeper, check the white paper that Gianluca mentions. And if you want to find out where Apeiroon comes from, see Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander and the nature of science, it is a beautiful and beautifully written short book. You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners on Substack or listen to it on your podcast platform. More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

Innovation in Europe (including the UK) is routinely presented as suffering from all sorts of limitations, with funding and excessive regulation as the top culprits. Yes, things could be much better, but there is, and continues to be, a strong record of innovation in Europe. In this Sparring Partners, Rupert Baines, serial entrepreneur, now working with RANsemi, Forefront RF, Luffy AI, Semiconductor Catapult, UKESF and more, argues (and I agree with him) that Europe lacks the ambition to leverage its talent and resources to the extent that they deserve: What is Europe doing right in deep tech? Injecting serendipity to promote technology clusters Encouraging late-stage venture funding to encourage organic growth instead of early sales Balancing the requirements and tradeoffs of sovereignty, openness, and international collaboration You can watch the video of this podcast and read the transcript on Sparring Partners on Substack or listen to it on your podcast platform. In our conversation, we mention a previous podcast with David Cleevely and one with Mike Short, previous guests of Sparring Partners. You can listen to the podcasts on Sparring Partners too. Other links: Rupert's interview, Arthur Mensch, Mistral CEO, interview in The Economist, and Cambridge Tech Week More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com

6G has to be affordable and resilient, not just for the most advanced, high-GDP markets, but globally. This requires meeting a wide range of requirements, supporting the coexistence of multiple technologies, reducing the cost of providing connectivity, and making it affordable for all. In this Sparring Partners, I talked with Mike Short, Chairman at UK Telecom Labs and AWTG, about what it will take to achieve these goals through: Multi-technology approaches, including Wi-Fi and satellite Network sharing, neutral hosts and private networks New approaches to regulation and cooperation Designing networks for resiliency and redundancy Mike Short is also chairing the upcoming Cambridge Tech Week.   You can watch the video of this podcast on Sparring Partners on Substack More on Senza Fili at https://senzafili.com