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Ep 151 – TL;DR: Telecoms.com (Scott Bicheno/Iain Morris)
DR and Telecoms.com’s Scott Bicheno and Iain Morris dig into rogue AI, the SaaSpocalypse, and the Totogi Ontology.
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Ep 152 – Fastweb + Vodafone charts a new course (Max Gasparroni)
This week’s guest
Mas Gasparroni
Chief Technology & Security Officer Fastweb + VodafoneIn the first half of 2026, telcos spent $65 billion on mergers: Charter and Cox, Vodafone and Three, Fastweb and Vodafone Italy. Every one of those deals leaves somebody with two of everything and years of work to untangle it all. So what do you do with hundreds of systems?
I sat down with Max Gasparroni, chief technology and security officer at Fastweb + Vodafone. He inherited up to 450 systems to rationalize and tens of thousands of nodes in the mobile core, and he’s rolling out AI at the same time. He’s more than halfway through and ahead of plan.
Listen now to hear:
- How Max is approaching hundreds of overlapping systems [04:30];
- Why AI is an “existential journey” for the team [06:18];
- How Max is targeting level-four automation while the integration is still underway [08:05]; and
- Why Max wants less data, not more [10:36].
Links and resources
- Read the full announcement of the Fastweb + Vodafone deal, which includes 20M+ mobile lines, 5.6M fixed lines, and ~€600 million in annual synergies.
- Explore how Charter closed its $34.5 billion merger with Cox, creating a cable giant that serves 37 million customers across 45 states.
- Check out the details of the Vodafone and Three £15 billion deal, which formed the UK’s largest mobile operator at around 27 million users.
- Get TelecomTV’s take on why AI is in Fastweb + Vodafone’s “DNA”—a closer look at the Digital Network and AI team Max stood up to drive his 20+ use cases.
- Learn what has to happen to reduce hands-on network intervention in this TelecomTV panel on fully autonomous networks. Max makes the same case he brings to this episode about incremental automation and clean data foundations.
- Go deeper on the threat Max raises in his TelecomTV interview on AI, legacy tech, and telco security—cyberattacks powered by frontier AI models.
- Staring down two of everything after a merger? The Totogi Ontology maps both stacks into one model you own—so the knowledge of how your telco actually works lives inside your company, not with third-party SIs.
- Picture a Formula One car on a sail. That’s how Max describes the boats of Luna Rossa, Italy’s America’s Cup team. The team used to collect training telemetry over Wi-Fi from a support boat, with a crew member strapped in and holding the access point as it bounced over the waves. Fastweb replaced it with a private 5G network run from shore, and then Luna Rossa won the regatta in Sardinia!
- 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.
Guest bio
Max Gasparroni is chief technology and security officer of Fastweb + Vodafone and a member of the Executive Committee. He has over 25 years of experience in the Telco and IT sector. He has served as vice president at Liberty Global UK, where he led the development of 5G mobile services and cloud solutions. Prior to that, he built his career at Vodafone UK and Ireland, holding increasingly senior roles over two decades, eventually becoming chief technology officer. In this role, he was responsible for defining strategies for infrastructure deployment, 4G standard development, and business technology solutions across eight European markets. He began his career at Cefriel in Milan before moving to the UK in 1999 to work at Motorola on mobile network development.
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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 did Fastweb buy Vodafone Italy?
Max Gasparroni, chief technology and security officer at Fastweb + Vodafone, says the deal created a leading converged challenger in Italy by combining Fastweb’s fixed-line and fiber heritage with Vodafone’s mobile infrastructure. The logic is scale: a more efficient cost structure and more capacity to invest in new technology. The company promised about €600 million in annual run-rate synergies and is already exceeding its plan on synergy realization.
2. How many systems does Fastweb + Vodafone have to merge, and where does it start?
Beyond tens of thousands of mobile core network nodes, Max Gasparroni says there are 350 to 450 overlapping systems to rationalize. The team starts by interconnecting the two networks, then migrates services from one node to another so legacy systems can be decommissioned. In some cases, they build a new, more future-proof system first, move services onto it, then retire the old one. Other telco mergers face the same duplication.
3. Why is Fastweb + Vodafone rolling out AI during the integration instead of after?
Max Gasparroni tells his team AI is “an existential journey,” because fixed and mobile networks must soon support mission-critical applications like driverless cars and agentic AI. A dedicated team called DNA (Digital Network and AI) implements use cases to create a flywheel effect. Max expects more than 20 use cases this year and level four automation in parts of the network within three to five years, built incrementally.
4. Why does Max Gasparroni want less data, not more, for network AI?
Max Gasparroni says the team started by building one data platform, because identifying the clean, minimum set of data is critical. More data requires more processing power and time, which defeats the purpose of use cases like fixing slow network issue resolution. This data foundation underpins Fastweb + Vodafone’s network automation work, starting with areas like network operations where the benefits are greatest.
5. How does Danielle Rios recommend choosing AI use cases?
DR, host of Telco in 20 and CEO of Totogi, says to start from the desired outcome rather than finding places to use AI. She looks for “million-euro problems” like reducing churn, eliminating fraud, or cutting network outages, where you can put a number on the result. This earns business support and gives technical teams a big idea to contribute to, easing fears that AI threatens their value.
6. How can telcos use a merger to cut vendor dependence, according to DR?
Danielle Rios says a merger gives telcos peak leverage, because two of every contract means only one vendor survives. Rather than negotiating a one-time discount, she advises deciding which vendors you no longer need, so that spend never returns. The Totogi Ontology maps both stacks into one model you own, so knowledge of how your offers work stays inside your company instead of being billed back hourly by consultants.