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Ep 149 – Microsoft deploys the FDEs (Kevin Shatzkamer)
Microsoft’s Kevin Shatzkamer on how telcos can speed the move from AI pilots to production, and the new engineering model making it happen.
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Ep 150 – 6G is different. AI is why.
This week’s guest
Danielle Rios
Founder and CEO TotogiEvery ten years, telcos have to decide whether to move to the next G. The business case has always been based on usage, capacity, and a revenue forecast. That’s because the one number that should drive the decision—what each cell actually earns—has been out of reach… until now.
In this special What’s Up with Totogi episode, I share the keynote I delivered at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf. In it, I cover how AI finally makes that number visible, how one operator in Bolivia is using the Totogi Ontology to rank every site by the profit it earns, and how AI is changing the way telcos can make the 6G call.
Listen now to hear:
- Why 6G will be decided differently than every G before it [02:53];
- The two numbers every tower has—and why your systems show you only ONE [03:23];
- Where telco’s most sophisticated capital decision is being made right now [04:18]; and
- Why Telstra, Swisscom, and Verizon are each building the same thing—separately [08:23].
Links and resources
- Watch the video version of my talk.
- Read my blog, The first G with AI in the room, which reinforces the case I make here.
- Listen to my conversation with Mark Düsener, Swisscom’s chief technology and information officer, who I mentioned on stage. Savvy operators are already building telco-wide semantic consistency to replace their legacy estate.
- Hear my conversation with Mark Sanders, Telstra’s chief architect and head of autonomous networks and AI enablement, who argues that operators need a shared language: an ontology of how a telco actually works.
- Tune into my episode with Stefan Pongratz, vice president of RAN and telecom CapEx research at Dell’Oro Group, for the hard numbers under the biggest capital decision this industry makes.
- Dig into three Dell’Oro Group reports (paywalled) about on where telco CapEx goes from here:
- Telecom Capex Report (March 2026)
- 6G Advanced Research Report (October 2025)
- Telecom Capex Report (September 2025)
- Explore TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks framework and its “road toward Level 4,” the standards the Totogi Ontology is built on. The map can rebuild itself every night against a moving target instead of dying like every data-dictionary project before it.
- Study the Verizon playbook on building an AI context platform at enterprise scale, How to Build an AI Context Platform at Enterprise Scale (Verizon), published through Gartner. Gartner forecasts up to 80% more accurate agents at up to 60% lower cost.
- Wondering which of your sites actually earn their next-G upgrade? See how the Totogi Ontology builds a live P&L for every cell and ranks them by the profit each one makes, so you invest by revenue instead of raw traffic.
- Catch me with VIVA Bolivia CEO Ryan Alvarez at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6, where we get concrete about the next-G upgrade calls that VIVA is weighing right now.
- Salar de Uyuni. You’ve seen it before. It’s the blinding white salt flat where Kylo Ren squares off against Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Red dust kicks up under Kylo’s boots, but never under Luke’s, because Luke isn’t really there. That salt flat is in Bolivia: the largest on Earth, and home to the operator in this talk. Don’t be Kylo Ren, swinging at a ghost. Use AI to see what’s actually there: the profit on every tower.
- Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
- You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
On the podcast
Danielle Rios (DR) is the founder and CEO of TelcoDR and Totogi, and host of the Telco in 20 podcast.
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The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast, and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
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Podcast credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
- Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
- Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is 6G being decided differently than 3G, 4G, or 5G?
Every previous generation was decided using two numbers: measurable network traffic and forecasted revenue. Operators could always measure usage, but the profitability side was guesswork, since no system could calculate real return per site. AI closes that gap. For the first time, telcos can calculate expected profit before committing billions in capital, which is why this upgrade cycle is described as the first one “decided with AI in the room.” Read the full argument in the blog, The first G with AI in the room.
2. What are the two numbers every cell tower has?
Every tower generates two numbers: how much traffic it carries, and how much money it makes. Telcos have always been able to measure the first—usage is real, site-by-site data. But profitability has historically been a forecast, since the information needed to calculate it—subscriber activity, billing, plan revenue, and cost allocation—lives scattered across systems that don’t share a common language, making true per-site profit nearly impossible to calculate.
3. What is the Totogi Ontology, and how does it solve this problem?
The Totogi Ontology is an AI-built map of a telco’s systems, standardized on TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks framework, which automatically rebuilds itself every night as systems change. It connects scattered data, such as an IMSI, a billing account, and a CRM customer record, into a single view, so operators can calculate real profitability per site rather than relying on traffic alone. See how the Totogi Ontology builds a live P&L for every cell site, ranking them by the money each one actually makes.
4. Why are Telstra, Swisscom, and Verizon each building similar systems on their own?
Telstra, Swisscom, and Verizon are each independently building a version of the same “shared language” layer to unify how their systems define common concepts like a subscriber. Roughly 90% of this map is identical across the industry, since a subscriber in Zurich and one in Seattle are structurally the same. Hear how each operator frames the challenge in the episodes with Swisscom’s Mark Düsener and Telstra’s Mark Sanders.
5. How is VIVA Bolivia using AI differently than larger telcos?
VIVA Bolivia has built a single model of its business that connects traffic and profitability data for every site and cell, ranking them by actual profit rather than raw usage. That lets leadership check the return on a potential upgrade at any time, instead of waiting on an annual consultant study. Catch VIVA CEO Ryan Alvarez discussing these upgrade decisions live at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6.
6. Where can I watch Danielle Rios’s full keynote on 6G and AI?
This episode is Danielle Rios’s keynote from TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf. She’ll also be discussing these ideas live with VIVA Bolivia’s CEO at TM Forum’s Innovate Americas in Dallas on October 6.