Episode 1: AI Tokens, Sovereign Tech & the Themes Defining 2026

Peter Jarich (00:04)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Intelligence Noise podcast from GSMA Intelligence. I am Peter Jarich, the head of GSMA Intelligence, and I am here with Tim Hatt. Tim, say hello.

Tim Hatt (00:16)
Hi, everybody. Great to see you and great to be here, Peter.

Peter Jarich (00:20)
So this is the inaugural edition of our podcast. We hope it's one of many more to come. And what we hope to do with this podcast is a couple things. One, really take a look at what's going on each week. I'm gonna frame this within the structure of the GSMA's CEO newsletter. Now, if you're lucky enough to be on that distro, you know what that is. That is a newsletter that goes out once a week from our Director General.

That includes two really important pieces of news, something that happened in the last week that he thinks is particularly important. And every week we work with a number of people to help put that together, to vet ideas, to suggest ideas. And every week there's generally four ideas put together, two of which are chosen, two of which don't make the cut. So what we want to do is use that as a sort of jumping-off point to talk about what we think is important in the industry, and maybe what's not getting enough attention.

I don't want to call that because my marketing folks won't let me. The "What did Vivek, our DG, get wrong?" But that's probably what I'm going to be calling it. What didn't he pick, and why do we think that maybe those things are important? So that's what we hope to be doing. If we're doing it well, we'll make a link to our research, because these should all be in some way connected to what we're looking at, if our team is doing their jobs correctly. But mostly we'll be trying to cut through the noise.

To lend some insights and intelligence. Tim, are you up for this? Are you signed up? Is it good on your end?

Tim just said yes, and he's not just being Canada nice. Tim, I saw yes, right?

Tim Hatt (02:09)
I think you did give a yes, and I think this is exactly the conversation we want to be having, given so much is happening in the telco ecosystem and broader tech world.

Peter Jarich (02:18)
Cool. So, you know, I am probably, until I'm told to stop, I'm probably gonna begin each week with a bit of an anecdote, because folks that know me know that that's how I roll. And so you might notice I'm wearing my MWC hat. Fun fact, this is a nicer version of the hat that you sometimes see. This was the hat that was given out in the 2021 edition. So I wear it with a bit of pride of being—

[unclear]

—of the summer, but I'm wearing it for a reason. And it kind of links back to the podcast. So I was doing a call with a customer the other day, and they said, "Wow, Peter, like, you—what's wrong? Like, you're wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie." And I'm like, "It's, it's, I'm, I'm working." They're like, "But they're used to seeing me at MWC or at a work event." And I'm like, they kind of see one side of what's going on with me and with GSMA Intelligence, and don't always get the full picture.

And I think for me, it was a bit emblematic of what we need to be doing to have a better job is getting the word out of what we do at GSMA Intelligence and why we're hopefully running this podcast. Because I think a lot of times people think of the GSMA and they see GSMA Intelligence at MWC. And it's an incredible opportunity for us to get our insights out there, to talk to people about what we're seeing in the industry.

Always, always so honored when people show up for our Global Trends launch, when they show up for our end-of-the-show wrap, but they kind of see that one side of us, right? Or they think they know us for numbers, right? The numbers that get quoted in the keynotes, the numbers that get quoted as part of the Mobile Economy. And they don't always necessarily know that what we really should be doing is trying to provide some guidance and insights around the industry.

And I think that that's my hope. And as we launch this podcast, I want to make sure that we're kind of connecting that broader version of what we do, because every time—and I know people think that this is a compliment—and they say, "Hey, you guys are like one of the best-kept secrets in the industry. You guys have so much insight," and I know they mean it as a compliment. It's—it doesn't always feel like a compliment, and it shouldn't be a secret kept secret. And I'd like to make sure that we can share some of those insights with all of you.

So that was a bit of a preamble. And with that preamble out of the way, let's get into it. So, Tim, I said that what we're gonna do here is use the CEO newsletter as a launch pad. And I'll be honest, like, the CEO newsletter predates me. I've been here for a little over eight years. When I first started with the team, I was told to ignore or not be involved in the CEO newsletter if I could avoid it. And that has not been the case for a while. Give some background on what the CEO newsletter is,

Tim Hatt (05:17)
Okay.

Peter Jarich (05:18)
and really what its goal is, maybe a bit of history.

Tim Hatt (05:22)
Yeah, sure. So the CEO newsletter is a long-running output that our, as Peter said, our Director General puts out every week. And really the idea is a simple one. And it's to keep the top leadership of the mobile operators and broader telco ecosystem informed of the most important things happening in the industry.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of stories that take place every week. Could be something related to M&A, could be a product announcement, could be a political development, could be a regulatory development, etc. And so what we're really trying to do is sift through all of that and come up with two stories in particular that we think are the most impactful or will be the most impactful down the line.

As you're going to see as we get into this podcast, the topics can vary quite a lot, from technology-driven stories to commercially driven stories to stuff about geopolitics. But our mission is still the same, which is what we're trying to do is understand why the story matters, what it means for our stakeholder group and the broader ecosystem.

I think one other point I'd mention is that from our vantage point as analysts at GSMA Intelligence, we obviously contribute to that effort. We also try to link our own research in where possible to show how we are analyzing some of these stories. And that's really what we want to get into in this podcast as well, when we go beyond the headlines, deeper dive, and really understand what it means. So that's what the newsletter story is. It's two stories a week, key topics in the industry that go out to all the CEOs across the sector.

Peter Jarich (07:00)
And I'll say, I think as much as the distribution list for that newsletter is a particularly impressive set of folks, I think the internal one of the people who've edited is pretty impressive across the GSMA, right? So obviously our team's involved, but you've got, you know, chief engineer, you've got head of networks, you've got security folks, you've got spectrum folks, you've got a pretty broad set of folks that chime in, make sure that we're catching the right angles. And so it's always a good piece.

So again, what we hope to do as we go across the course of this is every week look back and talk about the two stories, but really pick the one of those two stories that we thought was most important or resonated most with us. We might mention what the second one is, just for fun. And then talk about sort of what wasn't discussed and maybe the most important of the stories that weren't picked.

Because like I said, generally four stories are put up, Director General picks two. So that's our chance to say, "Where did Vivek get it wrong?" Which my marketing people will stop me from saying at some point. But until they do, I will keep saying that, and I hope our Director General doesn't mind. I think I know him enough to know that he won't fire me tomorrow.

Tim Hatt (08:16)
Yeah.

Peter Jarich (08:19)
So then what we'll try to do is make that connection. And then after we go through those two things, I will probably along the way pull in some guests who can talk about the research and the research they've done that played into that. If we have time left after doing that, then we might talk about some other research that we've done, flag something that came out of the GSMA Intelligence team that we think is particularly interesting or people should know about, particularly timely.

And then we're gonna end with a bit of an "On the Road" section, where we talk a bit about travels that we've been to, things that we've recently learned from our travels or going to visit customers or other events.

Not just MWC and what we're looking at, what's coming up.

So with that said, let's get to it. Recap the year. We'll do this in terms of obviously, as we get into this, we'll do this pro-weekly, but it's essentially mid-year, right? So it's probably worthwhile, rather than looking at this last week, to take a look back at the year and what took place over the year, the whole corpus of those stories.

And Tim, you know, it's not quite mid-year yet, but there's a lot of stories you covered, right? Two a week, you take some weeks for breaks. No one's reading this during MWC, so there's a few weeks for breaks in there, but it's a lot of stories that have gone through.

Tim Hatt (09:41)
Yeah.

Peter Jarich (09:42)
Before we get into what we thought was the most important of the stories that was picked and the most important that wasn't picked, themes. I mean, what are you seeing as themes across all of those stories from the first several months of the year?

Tim Hatt (09:56)
Well, there's several of them. And I think, as you say, we're almost at the halfway point of the year, which is 26 weeks. So we're, you know, over 40 or 50 stories. And that gives us a good sample size to start to, you know, distribute these across different themes.

And I think when I look back at the body of news flow that we've seen, you know, I think it broadly separates out into five key themes.

I think one, first and foremost, AI and compute. You know, this has a bearing across all parts of the tech industry, the telco industry, and of course the broader economy and all of our lives, you know, goes without saying. Many dimensions to that, whether it's we're talking about networks or whether we're talking about new business models, you know, that I think we can get into. That's certainly one of the themes.

I think a second theme is sort of the onward 5G progression as we're now seeing, you know, 5G standalone builds. And indeed now much more noise around what 6G looks like. So this whole potential 5G to 6G transition that wasn't really necessarily talked about last year or two years ago. Now that we're two or three years out from initial launches, you know, that's starting to get, I think, more flesh on the bone, more announcements there.

I think a third theme is around sort of what you might call just market developments and the changing paradigm of connectivity. And by that I mean really this is where the satellite and NTN developments fit in. That has been one of the biggest era-defining changes to the sector we've seen, not just this first half, but the last three or three years. That's big.

Fourthly, policy and regulation, and specifically within that, this push towards sovereignty, however you define that—on data sovereignty, sovereign compute, and how that concept extends to sort of tech as a geopolitical lever. I think, Peter, we're going to get into that today and no doubt on future episodes of the podcast.

And then finally, security and quantum continues to be a big theme. How do nations use technology to protect themselves? How do private businesses, including mobile operators, protect themselves? What innovations are we seeing in both security and quantum compute? That continues to be, you know, a focus area. Less perhaps than the others, but still a key theme.

So those are what I would say. But Peter, I mean, I want to get your reaction to that. I mean, how do those resonate with you? How do you see the tenor amongst those?

Peter Jarich (12:29)
No. Yeah, yeah.

No, I think whether or not they resonate with me, you are spot on in terms of those are being the big themes for the industry and what you saw reflected, you know, in the stories that, you know, as an organization and definitely we wanted to put forward and were represented in the CEO newsletter.

I think the one thing that was kind of interesting is that maybe a bit horizontal across those is also not just sort of changing models in terms of connectivity, but business models, how telcos are leveraged. And sort of each of those has a bit of a business model angle to it, right? What's the business model behind NTN? What is the business model behind, as we look at things like trust, safety, security, quantum, right? What is the business model behind AI and AI and compute?

And so I think that that's sort of a bit of a horizontal that kind of makes into all those stories. It may not always be the, you know, the number one story, right? The story might not be, you know, "Hey, Operator X just announces a new business model." It might be technology-led, but the business is usually in there in some way. And so I think that's—that was the only thing that—

Tim Hatt (13:45)
Yeah. And it's a good point because we've been in this kind of change from, you might call it, telco to techco, some people call it that, the last, you know, two or three years. And a lot of people have sort of discussed that, but not necessarily known exactly what it means.

I mean, in 2022, 2023, coming out of COVID, you know, it was mostly about deleveraging, selling off non-core assets, things like towers, to focus more on the core business and move towards a more digitally driven mindset.

I think now when we're in an AI era firmly, you're seeing a lot more detail from management and leadership teams around how what a changing telco actually looks like. You know, how the network works, how customer care works, how your supply chain works, what the customer relationship looks like, what new revenue lines you can reasonably pursue, that kind of thing.

And I think the data that we're seeing is starting to really kind of illuminate that, you know, across the board. If I give you one data point just right there, I mean, when we look across 700-plus operators, you know, we see that AI deployments originally, about half of them, targeted customer care.

Not surprising, because that was really just extending what we'd already seen in automation. Now we're seeing a lot more shift to the data center, to the cloud, to the network. And that tells us that there's an increasingly shift from just harvesting cost efficiencies now to monetization, which I think goes off your meta-theme of changing business models.

You know, another meta-theme there is just monetization, monetization, monetization. How does that work? What are we seeing? And so those are all really big themes in practice.

Peter Jarich (15:37)
And if you are keeping count, this is one to zero with Tim showing me up in terms of quoting data. So I am behind the eight ball already with no data points prepared.

Tim Hatt (15:45)
But—

Peter Jarich (15:47)
the eight ball already with no data points prepared.

Tim Hatt (15:51)
Data is data is my language. But you said, Peter, we were gonna go to a single story. So, you know, we've laid out the themes. I wanna come to you. Like when you look across those five themes and there's been a lot announced, what would you highlight as the single biggest thing and why?

Peter Jarich (16:07)
Yeah, so I'm gonna look at an MWC sandwich here. And no, no ham. I'm not talking thin-sliced, wonderfully delicate pork. But right before MWC and probably time to MWC, 'cause it's good to talk to customers, you saw Telefónica talk about what they were doing in terms of edge and edge deployment, with a link, you know, in terms of edge compute.

But also in terms of sovereignty. And so that made it in. But then post-MWC, you've got GTC taking place. So that's NVIDIA's big, big event in California, Santa Clara, I believe. And, you know, they were talking about sort of the idea of AI grids, right? And building on AI grids, which was also a bit of a discussion point at MWC with some of the vendors.

And, you know, I think of those in the same way, in part because, you know, the idea of an AI grid, as much as it doesn't have to be distributed, obviously it can, right? So it can feed into some of these things that you see operators talking about.

But it also feeds into, I think, if the story is right for telcos, right? The AI grid story for telcos, and just take a step back, probably should define this for folks.

When we're talking AI grid, or at least my understanding is that we're talking about how do you not necessarily develop one giant, ten-gigawatt, one-gigawatt—I mean, no one's talking ten gigawatt, but you—gigawatt giant AI factory or multiple hundreds-of-megawatt AI factories.

But how do we take maybe smaller AI deployments, AI compute deployments, and pull it together into a larger pool? So you're essentially calling it a virtual AI factory, but, you know, you have a grid of compute that connects to deliver a higher amount of compute capacity, right?

And I think from a telco perspective, right, a couple things here that make sense. One is how does that fit in with what they're thinking about in terms of edge? And that goes to, again, the link to the Telefónica story.

But then also, to your point, how do we think about building out those AI capabilities which can then be monetized? Right. And how can those be monetized in a couple ways? Again, making the link to the Telefónica stories that we're talking about sovereign services and the push towards how do I leverage those capabilities—edge, AI compute, whatever it is—to deliver sovereign services.

But then also, and I think this is the part that doesn't get enough attention. I think we haven't talked enough about, but it's telcos looking at AI compute deployments to sell tokens, right? Or to sell AI compute itself.

And I'm not just talking about GPU as a service. GPU as a service has been around for a while, but also, you know, delivering that, like developing that to sell to customers.

A lot of discussion out there in the industry about what's going on in China, Chinese operators packaging up tokens as a service, where they're going out to customers and selling customers bundles, whether that's as a consumer, whether that's as an enterprise, but going out to end users and saying, "Hey, here you go, right? You don't just need connectivity, but increasingly you're using AI services. So those AI services depend upon having tokens in place. Here you go. I will sell you a bundle of tokens," right?

Maybe as a way to get back to serving customers what they want, maybe as a way to get back to sort of something that can be metered.

Regardless, I think you see those two things, and although they weren't connected and they were on either side of MWC, you can see that connection there between how we're thinking about edge services, how that plays together with AI, and how, you know, as you call that AI monetization with sovereign as a part of that being connected.

So I thought that those things as a particularly interesting dynamic for me. And I'm sure we will get into this—the sovereign dynamic and the AI dynamic and how that plays regarding things like NTN or whatever else. There's all sorts of different angles there, which is why, you know, I found it particularly interesting.

And, you know, I think it also goes just as a final piece and why I think the NVIDIA story was actually particularly important was also recognition that the sovereign story is something that isn't necessarily region-focused.

So if you go—and honestly, if you're out there and if we reference some research on the podcast and you're not a customer and you hear about it and say that sounds interesting, please reach out. Doesn't mean you're always gonna get it. Doesn't mean I'm gonna hand it over to you either in a full light of day or in a dark alley, but where we can, we would always love to share that with you.

And one of the things that we did after MWC was we went and we pulled together all the content from MWC on sovereign, right? So all the sessions, had folks at all the sessions, had folks listening to what was taking place to really say what was the message from MWC.

And the message from MWC around sovereignty was very, very, very European-focused, which isn't surprising, right? The show is in Europe. A lot of the discussions on sovereignty are taking place from a European angle.

And so I think the NVIDIA side of things and how you can think about AI grids and how you can use those to support sovereign services as more than a European story, I thought was a good way to end that.

That was a lot of words, Tim.

Tim Hatt (21:38)
No, it's super interesting. And I know we're gonna go to sort of the lesser-flagged part of things in a minute, but just to add on to that, because it is really important.

I think the other thing that interests me in this whole sovereign discussion is that two things. One, and you kind of hinted at it, one is that there is a new question mark/opportunity potentially for telco operators as a business line in servicing compute on a sovereign level.

And I say that because it connects to this point of governments now using technology as a core part of their national competitiveness on an international stage. In ways—and I would hazard to say we're at a point in world modern history, last 30 or 40 years, certainly in the computing era, where it's never been as high as it is now.

And that is going to be an interesting dynamic to follow the next twelve to twenty-four months in particular, whether operators can form a competitive USP because of that, even though they're subscale versus the hyperscalers, and what sort of role governments play in this. The French call it a dirigiste economy, you know, government and industry partnerships working for the greater good.

You know, how we see that playing out. I think that's just a dynamic that's really fascinating.

Peter Jarich (23:02)
No, and I think to your point of the question of scale versus subscale, I think one of the things that I took away—a couple of weeks ago, I was with DT out in Bonn and, you know, obviously this is a big part of what they're looking at: cloud services, sovereign services.

And, you know, they made a really simple point, which was, look, you know, yes, we've got services and yes, we know we're gonna be competing with, you know, some of the hyperscalers, but if we can offer the same capabilities and the pricing isn't different, then you get a bit of that sovereignty as the edge, right?

If you're sort of looking at this as, well, the services are the same, capabilities are the same, and they claim that we get into 100% capabilities, you know, like AWS, and the pricing is competitive. Well, then, if only as a customer, if only as an insurance policy, you say, "Well, you know, I mean, would I rather it be more sovereign?" Yeah, it's probably good to have in your back pocket.

Tim Hatt (24:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Jarich (24:10)
You said we were going to, because we don't want to run out of time, especially on this, our first one. What didn't get flagged?

Now, if I look at the themes across what didn't get flagged, no surprise, pretty much all the same things that you're that you call this. But I mean, these are the things that have been the industry, right? NTN and new connectivity models, 5G, 5G-Advanced, and 6G, right? Talking about security and sovereignty and talking about AI and compute, same thing on both sides.

So if you think about maybe—and this is a lot, right? You know, we're gonna, in the future it'll be easier because we'll be saying, hey, there were two stories that weren't chosen, and which one do you think is most important? And I'll be giving y'all a bit of a heads-up.

Sometimes they'll be pretty boring. Tim and I are gonna have to—Tim and I, there'll be a good reason why they weren't chosen, and Tim and I are gonna have to sort of really stretch to tell you why it's important.

But across the course of the year, all those stories, what wasn't chosen, what do you think was most sort of the most egregious example of something that wasn't chosen?

Tim Hatt (25:20)
Well, if you'll allow me, I'm gonna give two, but I'll give one first. So I think—am I allowed? If I could do that, I'll be brief.

Peter Jarich (25:22)
Please. I did. I did, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Hatt (25:28)
So I think the first one is an extension of the AI discussion, and it's a story about the AI capex boom among the hyperscalers.

The announcement actually came in February and it was specifically linked to Meta investing ten billion dollars in a new data center campus in Indiana, at a one-gigawatt power draw, and that really being important both for showing the expansion of what was possible for Meta, but also looking at how that plays into the wider AI boom.

You know, and I think we're seeing there 50% CapEx spend up in 2025 versus 2024. That's a huge growth rate for particularly businesses that haven't necessarily been infrastructure-laden.

And when I talk about that cohort, I'm talking about AWS, I'm talking about Google, I'm talking about Microsoft, I'm talking about Meta, I'm talking about Oracle, and that's putting aside some of the spend we've seen with OpenAI and towards Anthropic from NVIDIA and others.

And I think it matters because it reaffirms this point that these guys are betting big on AI. And the infrastructure investments are worrying some of their investors, despite, you know, demand materializing.

I think it also shows that there is a perceived competitive advantage to act early. And I think for the operators, the mobile operators, what's interesting is that it shows there's a potential profile change in their own CapEx down the line as it starts to move away from just RAN CapEx, as we, you know, building up 4G and 5G and radios and all the rest of it, towards their own data centers to outfit for things like AI factories and compute and inference.

So I—I—that's definitely one of—

Peter Jarich (27:18)
Even, even I'd say that—even I'd say their own use. And again, those of you keeping count, two data points from Tim, zero from Peter, which I'm probably not gonna remedy this going forward with being good at calling out data.

But, you know, we've heard from—and I've had conversations with customers, with operators who've said, look, to your point about building out AI capabilities and AI compute, you know, they run some POCs. They've deployed some AI use cases and it's been great. And they've gone to scale it across the organization.

And what they found is that the costs have gone through the roof. And so I think even beyond the CapEx, further own monetization, all the stuff that we've been talking about, how AI can be used, the AI for telco versus telco for AI, there's gonna be a point at which it will make sense in some cases to actually in-house that compute just to make sure that they can support it at a reasonable cost.

Tim Hatt (28:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the question of if it's a bubble or not is to a certain extent not the right one, even though that will generate a lot of headlines.

I think it's more, in the long term, does that CapEx pay back? And do we see AI drive the ROI that these companies are expecting? That remains to be seen, but we do know it's here to stay.

The other one, if I can quickly call out, is on a completely different level. It's about quantum computing.

And it's specifically the UK government announcement in March that they would be devoting two billion pounds to a national quantum compute effort. I think the significance here is that this issue is an important one, but often doesn't get a lot of attention. It sort of sits in AI's shadow, a bit on the back burner.

But quantum computing is really the next generation of computing. It works a lot faster than traditional computers, and it has both benefits but also security risks.

And the reason I call out this story is it's an interesting example of A, a government getting ahead of technology—usually it's the other way around—and B, looking towards the use cases of not only security but biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, and other kind of weather-related applications where we're seeing and likely to see quantum play a role in the future.

So I would call out that one as well. And I think going back to our research, we published a report earlier this year on the IoT dimension of quantum and sort of what the risks are. And only seven percent of IoT devices are currently quantum-safe.

So this is my point around it being a latent gap that needs to be closed on a security level. And I think we're gonna probably see more on this topic again in the coming year.

Peter Jarich (30:04)
And I think, and just going back there, when you talk about some of the security risks or some of the risks that go along with it, really the risks being considered are more about when quantum becomes available in a way that it can crack encryption algorithms and are devices ready, right?

And I think IoT is a good example, right? Where you're talking about low-cost, sort of oftentimes battery-powered devices, not necessarily developed into a space where they, you know, you thought about having encryption necessary or at least something that would be post-quantum ready to hold up to some sort of quantum cracking.

Tim Hatt (30:38)
Yeah, exactly. And we're seeing, again, something we can probably get into on a future podcast, but a lot of innovation in how to step up security against things like "harvest now, decrypt later," which is essentially an industry term for hackers accessing data now, even if they can't decrypt it. And that happens at a later time.

These are things that really, I think, need to be brought up the agenda and up the visibility spectrum across the sector. And so it was good to see that announcement.

Peter Jarich (31:08)
Cool. So we've gone through five months of news in a scant half an hour or so. So let's, let's, as we close this up, a bit of the sort of "On the Road" section.

I'm luckily have been somewhat stable for a while, but you were in Canada last week, isn't that right?

Tim Hatt (31:36)
I was. And it was not as it usually is for a family holiday or seeing friends and family. This was a business trip back to Canada as part of a delegation from the GSMA to really engage with the Canadian industry and government and regulator, which we haven't necessarily done that much in the past and wanted to do now.

And I think what's really interesting is Canada is at an interesting juncture in its own trajectory. Its neighborly relations with our good friends to the south have been better than before. And there's a national, I think, agenda to pivot both economically and geographically and diversify to other partners.

There's also a recognition in parallel that telecoms and technology is a key part of that diversification. And so really our visit was about highlighting that and really making the point to the government that a healthy industry is in everybody's interest for national competitiveness and for consumer benefit.

So we had an event, I was there with our chief marketing officer, the head of policy and regulation, and some other experts, you know, talking about these issues, and it was really successful. It was well received.

There was a lot of people—I had conversations with all the mobile operators, the regulator, the government. And I think everybody is on board for how to make that transition. And so it's really probably going to be the start of a broader engagement with the country that we engage with.

Peter Jarich (33:15)
What's the biggest concern in Canada right now? What did you hear of the one thing they're all trying to solve?

Tim Hatt (33:25)
Well, at an industry level, I think the concern is that regulation has been unduly price-focused. And that is leading to a point where there is pressure on investments, there's pressure on cash flow, and there is pressure on the sustainability of the financial returns and therefore the attractiveness to investors.

And there's a recognition that that needs to change. So I think that that challenge is clear.

On a national level, people want to, you know, ensure that Canada has its rightful place in the world, and, you know, technology is playing a role there.

But what I would say is they were really receptive to a lot of the things we were talking about and it was a timely visit.

Peter Jarich (34:11)
I hear that for fans of the Mobile Economy series there might be a deeper dive into Canada at some point from the team.

Tim Hatt (34:19)
The series will roll into Canada. We're excited that we're gonna bring that into the roster in the second half of the year and try to do it justice.

Peter Jarich (34:27)
The impact of 5G on maple syrup production. Does it, does it?

Tim Hatt (34:32)
Well, it might. Whether it's poutine or maple syrup production on the cover, we we've yet to decide. But I can actually say—

Peter Jarich (34:37)
I hope it's maple.

Tim Hatt (34:40)
There was poutine at the event. I was pleasantly surprised. I've never been to an event where I went to the post-event cocktails and there was a bar of poutine. And so I took great pleasure in introducing my friends and colleagues from abroad to this great culinary delight.

Peter Jarich (34:52)
Wow. If I could go back in time and replan my wedding reception, a poutine bar would have been just wonderful. Would have been horrible in Costa Rica, 'cause I'm pretty sure that's not what you eat in a hot, hot climate.

Tim Hatt (35:05)
Yes, that would not go down well. We are also looking ahead, though, Peter, to events coming up. And I know we've got a bevy of them coming up before, you know, the July-August period.

Peter Jarich (35:17)
June is—June is—June is pretty busy. We've got DTW. I'll be in Copenhagen. Been there for the last few years.

DTW is the TM Forum's event. I think it's technically DTW Ignite, which is how you keep it separate from Dell Technologies World. So that's always good.

A bit of a focus on AI automation. AI's really been such a boon to, I think, their relevance. And I always like what they do because they really pull in some great use cases. Always good to see customers there.

And then I think that's the reason why I won't be at Shanghai, but I think Shanghai's—do we see Shanghai is the week right after?

Tim Hatt (36:04)
It is. Yep. We'll be there again. We're gonna be there on multiple levels.

We're running our satellite and NTN Summit. We're gonna be having a roundtable looking at the road to 6G and the monetization models there.

We're going to be involved with some investor activity there. We're gonna have some policy-focused events. And then we'll wrap it all up with an analyst panel at the end to digest what it all means.

And it's an interesting place to go because—

Peter Jarich (36:34)
Yeah, if you've seen our analyst panel in Barcelona, it's kind of like the one in Barcelona, right? Just with a more regional angle.

Tim Hatt (36:39)
Yeah, exactly. With more regional angle.

And it's always interesting going to China because, to a certain extent, China is China. It's unique in many ways, but it's also a view into the future for what technology might look like in other parts of the world down the track. So it's always a fascinating place to go.

Peter Jarich (36:57)
Yeah, I think—I was—I think last year you and the team put out a good piece of research after MWC Shanghai, which talked about the takeaways but kind of ended with the "don't necessarily see this as something you compare yourself to or something that is realistic in every market," because China is its own—I mean, its own space—with an ability to drive certain technologies faster than maybe in other regions.

But that's what makes it so great to be in. And we'll—you and Pau Castell is Chief Economist, and Pablo Iacopino, who heads up all of our syndicated content there.

Tim Hatt (37:33)
Yep. And one last one, Nicola. We're gonna be at GITEX Europe in Berlin. Sylvia Pusello from our team will be flying the flag there.

And that's really about the European technology scene, but we'll be talking about AI, we'll be talking about the road to 6G, and, you know, the broader European competitive environment.

Peter Jarich (37:53)
So all of this, beyond my initial point saying that, you know, what we want to do is make sure folks understand actually what we do at GSMA Intelligence—the stuff we're looking at—that we don't just come out of a cave or MWC once a year, that we're out there.

But it's also just a reminder, an invite to come and see us. If you're gonna be at DTW, if you're gonna be at GITEX Europe, if you're gonna be at MWC Shanghai, reach out. We always love to connect at those.

And I think we'll wrap up this inaugural edition.

What I would probably do, and I'll probably do in the future, is to think this is the time when, if you're on a podcast, you say, "Go and rate us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts."

But this is our first episode, so I'm not gonna tell you to rate us yet, 'cause it'll get better. Right? So wait, maybe wait four or five in until we've actually hit our stride, but still send in your ideas.

Let us know what you want to hear about, what we should be talking about, what we shouldn't.

And Tim, thank you very much.

Tim Hatt (38:58)
My pleasure. Great to talk with you, and look forward to doing it again in the future.

Peter Jarich (39:03)
Thanks, everyone.

Tim Hatt (39:05)
Thanks, guys.