The Five Nine

First, there was machine learning. Then, generative AI. Now, we’re in the midst of the agentic AI revolution. But agentic AI is a waypoint rather than an endpoint. So, what’s next? The answer is physical AI. 

But what is physical AI, in practical terms? What is it good for, how mature is the technology, what kinds of networks will it need and how can we all prepare for what’s coming? Nvidia and Nokia have ans...

Telcos are DROWNING in debt. No, not financial debt, though they do have some of that. We’re talking about crippling amounts of technical and data debt, which could keep telcos on the sidelines of the AI revolution.  

We’ll be looking at just how bad the situation is, what telcos need to do to make it right, whether they can move fast enough to ride the AI wave and what they stand to gain if they do. 

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You may have seen one streak across the night sky. And there could be one hovering a few hundred miles above you right now. No, I’m talking about UFOs but satellites and more specifically, the thousands of Starlink satellites that have taken over our skies and changed the broadband landscape forever.  

Ookla’s Sue Marek and Joe Madden from Mobile Experts dig into how Starlink has helped thrust satellite techno...

Description: You’ve probably heard about quantum technology in news headlines, but what is it and what does it really mean for telcos? Fierce’s Masha Abarinova sits down with quantum networking leaders Noel Goddard, CEO of Qunnect, and Frank de Jong, Quantum Safe Network Lead at Orange Business, to delve into how operators are putting the technology to work. #quantum #qubits #connectivity #TechTalks #Networks 

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In this sponsored episode of The Five Nine, Fierce Networks contributor Daniel Frankel sits down with Hemanth Sampath, VP of Engineering at Qualcomm, to explore how 6G will unlock new user-experiences and operator services.

Sampath outlines a shift from app-based smartphone content consumption to AI-agent driven, natural interactions – extending to AR glasses & wearables. This evolution will driv...

Speaking live from the 3GPP plenary meeting in Prague, Juan Montojo, Vice President of Technical Standards at Qualcomm Technologies, shares where mobile networks are headed as 6G development begins. Improving coverage, energy and spectral efficiency, and user experience are at the center of these early-stage efforts - all while reducing the cost to deliver data. 

A defining feature of 6G will be the integration of AI. Unlike 5...

This week we’re taking a look at the big bottleneck that could bring the AI revolution to a screeching halt: power.

AI requires a lot of high power chips deployed in a LOT of data centers. But while hyperscalers have plans to build up new data centers to support AI demand, they’ve run into power shortages in key areas. They’re particularly feeling the crunch in the U.S. So, we sat down with a pair of guests to fig...

This week, we sat down to unpack one of the biggest emerging concepts in the broadband space – the open access network. 

Open access, like any broadband network, is no cakewalk and comes with its own share of challenges. But it also presents underrated opportunities for the industry, particularly in the United States where the model is less often used.  

Utopia Fiber and Gigapower are two of just a handful of o...

Guest host Liz Coyne wrangled an exec from Nokia Bell Labs to talk about the company’s recent mission to the moon. The mission came as Nokia Bell Labs celebrated its 100th anniversary but the landing didn’t go quite as expected.  

Nokia’s Thierry Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia, tells Liz all about why the company is aiming for the moon in the first place, what it learned from t...

This week, we delve back into the intersection of AI and networking, and more specifically what enterprises need to know and prepare for as AI moves to the edge.

Just how distributed will AI really be? How will enterprises decide what workloads go where? And what should they be thinking about and planning for to make the AI-driven future a reality?

We sat down with GTT SVP of Product Engineering to sift through these thorny questio...

The Fierce Network crew made it back safe and sound, for the most part, from Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona. But the show, which is essentially the official start to the year in telecom, gave us a lot to think about. We spent the week digesting what all the announcements from the show mean for the industry and now we're looking forward to what the rest of 2025 has in store for operators. Here’s what we have our ...

The hotels are booked, the bags are packed and at the end of this week, the flights will be boarded. But what will we find when we get there? That’s the question we’re going to tackle today and the answers just might surprise you.

With me are Fierce Network’s editor-in-chief Liz Coyne, executive editor Monica Alleven, Senior Reporter Dan Jones and our Research guru Mitch Wagner.

This podcast is written and hosted ...

This week, we delve into the nitty gritty of one of the biggest turnaround stories in telecom in recent years: that of Frontier Communications.  

Frontier recently made headlines when Verizon agreed to pay $20 billion in cash to acquire the company as part of a bid to drastically expand its fiber footprint. That deal is now expected to close in Q1 of 2026. But while it’s flying high now, Frontier’s fortunes we...

This week, we explore the rise of sovereign clouds across the globe. 

You’ve probably heard of GDPR by now, or at least data privacy. And while sovereignty is sort of in a similar sphere, it’s more about data direction than privacy.  

We sat down with Vultr’s Kevin Cochrane to examine what sovereignty means, how it’s accomplished and the impact AI could have on the landscape. 

This podcas...

This week, we sat down to pull back the curtain on the idea factory chugging along behind the scenes at one of the largest hyperscalers: Google Cloud. 

CTO Will Grannis heads up Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO, or OCTO, which is comprised of senior Google technology experts and former enterprise CTOs. Together, this team sifts through the company’s big ideas to figure out what will work and what won’t. ...