AI Tokens, Sovereign Tech & the Themes Defining 2026

Intelligence & Noise is hosted by Peter Jarich and Tim Hatt and comes out every week on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.

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Intelligence & Noise \ Episode 1 summary

The first episode of Intelligence & Noise, the new podcast from GSMA Intelligence, does what the industry rarely does, cuts through the noise to talk honestly about what's actually happening in mobile and telecoms right now.

Co-hosts Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence, and Tim Hatt Head of Research and consulting, kick off the inaugural episode by taking stock of the stories that have defined the first half of 2026. Drawing on GSMA Intelligence's research and direct conversations with operators around the world.

Five themes, one thread running through all of them (09:41)

Tim maps out five themes that have dominated the news flow so far this year. AI and compute. The march from 5G towards 6G. The rise of satellite and non-terrestrial networks. The push towards digital sovereignty. And quantum security. Peter adds something that cuts across all five — the business model question. Every major technology shift in telecoms right now has an unanswered monetisation question sitting underneath it. That framing shapes the whole conversation.

AI is moving deeper into the network (13:45)

GSMA Intelligence tracks AI deployments across more than 700 operators. The early pattern was predictable — roughly half of deployments targeted customer care, extending what automation had already started. That's changing. Investment is now shifting towards the data centre, the cloud, and the network itself. Peter and Tim read this as a meaningful signal. The industry is moving beyond cost efficiencies and starting to seriously pursue new revenue lines.

The AI grid and why telcos should be paying attention (16:07)

Peter spends time on a concept that he thinks is being underplayed. Rather than building enormous centralised AI factories, the AI grid model connects smaller distributed compute deployments into a larger pooled capacity. For telcos, the opportunity is real. Their existing edge infrastructure and the growing demand for sovereign compute puts them in a strong position to deliver this. The Telefonica edge story and NVIDIA's GTC announcements both point in the same direction.

A quantum security gap that nobody is talking about (28:19)

The UK government committed £2 billion to a national quantum computing effort earlier this year. It barely registered. Tim thinks that's a problem. Only 7% of IoT devices are currently quantum safe, which means there is an enormous latent vulnerability building as quantum capability advances. The threat isn't theoretical either. Harvest now, decrypt later — where bad actors access encrypted data today planning to crack it when quantum arrives - is already happening. Tim makes the case that this needs to come up the agenda fast.

What operators actually say about satellite (02:09)

There is a version of the satellite and telecoms story that gets told a lot. Telcos don't get it. They're being naive. They don't see the threat. Peter and Tim push back on this. The operators they actually speak to understand the trade-offs clearly. They see the role satellite can play and they see the risks. The gap is between the industry narrative and what's happening in the real conversations. Closing that gap is part of what the podcast is for.

On the road (31:08)

Tim closes with a report from a GSMA delegation visit to Canada. It's a country trying to figure out its place in a shifting geopolitical landscape, with a telecoms regulatory environment that has been squeezing investment in ways that are starting to concern the industry. Coming up the co-hosts flag DTW Ignite in Copenhagen, MWC Shanghai and Gitex Europe in Berlin.