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Ep 150 – 6G is different. AI is why.
DR takes the main stage at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum to tackle the 6G decision—and the one number telcos have never been able to see.
Podcast
Ep 151 – TL;DR: Telecoms.com (Scott Bicheno/Iain Morris)
I’ve been a guest on the Telecoms.com podcast three times, and the dynamic never changes: hosts Scott Bicheno and Iain Morris see doom, I see upside. This year, Scott admitted he’s bored of his own dystopia and wanted someone to argue the other side. So he brought me in to talk AI.
We get into why one number can mean two completely different things inside the same telco, why the SaaSpocalypse is real and Salesforce should be nervous, and why I think the Totogi Ontology is the fix for telco’s AI problem. Three rounds in, we still don’t agree on everything, and that’s what makes it so fun!
Listen now to hear:
- Why telcos shouldn’t wait to clean their data before starting with AI [16:08];
- How Scott could vibe-code his way off Salesforce [26:03];
- What changes with 6G—the first G with AI in the room [43:53]; and
- How the Totogi Ontology keeps AI from running amok [1:02:24].
Links and resources
- Listen to the full two-hour-plus version of our conversation on the Telecoms.com podcast. The complete version has every tangent, from 6G to rogue AI to bourbon.
- Watch my keynote from the AI-Native Telco Summit on why 6G is the first G you can decide with revenue in view, and how one Bolivian operator already sees the profit on every tower.
- Read my latest blogs on the data layer and the 6G decision:
- “The first G with AI in the room” on why “build vs. buy” is the wrong question.
- “I wrote this with AI” on why “AI-ready” means nothing until you know where your data lives and whether your agents can actually consume it.
- “The Big O of AI” on why the real bottleneck to AI-native telco is your org model, not your tech stack.
- Explore TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Accelerator (ANTA), the community built to push operators from AI pilots to deployments that scale, and the AI-Native Telco Index, the first evidence-based read on how 56 operator groups are actually doing AI.
- Dig into the OpenAI statement Scott kept quoting—its account of “the Hugging Face incident,” where internal models slipped their controls during a July 2026 safety test.
- Brush up on Huang’s Law, the idea that AI chips leap ahead faster than the old Moore’s Law clock—the reason I keep warning operators that GPUs have roughly 18-month shelf lives, not the five years they’re used to.
- Ever been handed an annual list of which towers are profitable, on a consultant’s stale slide? Learn more about how the Totogi Ontology builds a P&L for every cell.
- The Totogi Ontology is already live at VIVA Bolivia, the operator I couldn’t yet name during this interview. Read how it’s deciding network investment by revenue, not capacity.
- Meet the women behind NVIDIA’s chip names—Grace Hopper, credited with popularizing the computer “bug,” and astronomer Vera Rubin—in this Business Insider piece.
- See the physical-AI moment everyone’s chasing: the imploding, kickboxing stars of China’s Humanoid Robot Olympics and the Tesla Optimus that I’m ready to move into my house and name C-3PO.
- Raise a glass to the Pappy Van Winkle I brought along and to the legend behind it. In 2013, someone stole more than 200 bottles from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, a caper the press dubbed “Pappygate.” Investigators estimated its black market value was worth $100,000. The ringleader received a 15-year prison sentence but walked out after only 30 days. The sensational theft became the focus of international headlines and the subject of Netflix’s true-crime docuseries, Heist.
- 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
The Telecoms.com Podcast is a weekly show hosted by industry experts Scott Bicheno and Iain Morris. The format centers on irreverent and engaging discussions about current trends, controversies, and major news in the global telecommunications sector, often featuring special guests from telecom operators, vendors, and analysts.
As the editorial director of Telecoms.com, Scott Bicheno has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over 20 years. Prior to Telecoms.com, Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics.
Iain Morris is the international editor at Light Reading. Prior to boosting Light Reading’s UK-based editorial team numbers, he was a successful freelance writer and editor covering the telecom sector. He was previously the lead telecom analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.
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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 can one number mean two different things inside the same telco?
Teams often share a metric’s label but calculate it differently. Danielle Rios describes a Totogi customer where network and finance both reported ARPU, yet used different formulas. The same happens with the meaning of “customer,” which network, billing and other systems define differently. Connecting those systems to the Totogi Ontology exposed the mismatch, so the telco can fix it right away instead of launching a multi-year data-cleanup project before starting AI.
2. What is the Totogi Ontology, and how does it keep AI from running amok?
The Totogi Ontology is a model of how a telco works, built from interviews with the operator’s own experts, and it sits on top of existing BSS, OSS, network and finance systems. According to Danielle Rios, it doesn’t use AI to invent rules. If a situation isn’t captured, it doesn’t act. Every decision has an audit trail showing which rule fired and who owns it.
3. How is VIVA Bolivia using the Totogi Ontology to decide network investment?
VIVA Bolivia connects network, charging, plan and marketing data through the Totogi Ontology to build a profit-and-loss view of every cell. Instead of relying on a consultant’s once-a-year slide, leaders can ask which towers are profitable before committing to a roughly $300 million 4G-to-5G upgrade. The goal is to invest by revenue, not just capacity. Read how VIVA Bolivia is deciding network investment.
4. Why does Danielle Rios call 6G “the first G with AI in the room”?
Because 6G is the first generation where operators can decide with money in view. Past G decisions relied on capacity data and consultant business cases. With AI and a data layer such as the Totogi Ontology, a telco can model costs and revenue at the cell level before upgrading. Read DR’s blog, “The first G with AI in the room,” and watch her AI-Native Telco Summit keynote.
5. What does the “SaaS-pocalypse” mean for companies like Salesforce?
Danielle Rios argues that AI makes it easy to vibe-code a replacement CRM. A company could build its own front end on top of Salesforce’s API, migrate functionality over time, and eventually use Salesforce as only a database before swapping it out. She doesn’t expect this overnight, noting that customers are already seeing unusual discounts. Hear the full debate on the Telecoms.com podcast.
6. How long do AI chips last, and why should telcos care?
DR warns that GPUs have roughly 18-month life cycles, not the five years telcos are used to, because better chips keep arriving. This pace is often called Huang’s Law. Enterprises buying AI workloads won’t want chips from three years ago, and the capital treadmill is heavy. She asks whether telcos are ready to fund it before chasing GPU-as-a-service.