Telecommunications company

And I was watching, and this is like right before the dot-com bubble.

For two years, I had all kinds of people telling me, like, you're crazy working for Telco.

You got to join up on these companies.

And I would go meet, and I'd be like, I don't even understand how you can make money.

So apart from the tens of thousands of network nodes in the mobile core, in the OSS domains, we're talking about between 350 and 450 systems that we need to rationalize.

This is Telco in 20, a podcast that helps telco execs achieve a competitive advantage with AI and the public cloud.

It is hosted by Danielle Rios, also known as DR.

Today, we're talking to Max Gasparroni, the Chief Technology and Security Officer at FastWeb Vodafone in Italy.

Hi guys, I'm DR. Telco M&A hit $65 billion in the first half of 2026.

In the US, Charter acquired Cox in a deal worth more than $34 billion.

In the UK, Vodafone N3 joined forces in a 15 billion pound deal.

Max Gasparroni is the Chief Technology and Security Officer at FastWeb Vodafone in Italy.

But the reality is that they stumbled into it.

So the way why people started thinking Edge is big is simply because Telco happened to possess assets that could be valuable in a distributed computing environment.

So that is luck.

like there is no bigger starting point for me rather than oh i just happen to have this very valuable land i may sell it and make a bunch of money now how you sell it that is what will define how much money will you make it and when do you sell it will also define how much return are you going to be able from their money that you just have you did not plan for it by the way as i'm thinking of companies that have valuable assets and you know locations maybe would be good to have an episode on utilities turning into telcos let me know if you think that could could make sense still sort of part of this transformation metamorphosis idea so it could really you know fit the bill but let me know i drop my message if you think that that makes a lot of sense So effectively, because they have fiber routes, central offices, network sites, we know that like power connections.

And if we then need to, let's try to be a little bit, let's try to look at some possible future.

So how this market can develop? On one side, you can try to be optimistic, right? So there is a bit of a telco renaissance.

And that would be sort of the scenario for Telcos.

The user physical infrastructure, network expertise, relationship, and they build differentiated edge business.

What would tell you if they're an early adopter versus a lagger, you know, in MicroMore's kind of innovation adoption curve?

Yeah, and you know, it's funny, Telco should be an early adopter of a lot of things, but they kind of buck the trend.

I would suggest if they are uh, running their own cloud or, uh, vocally supporting a particular cloud technology or a provider, then it gives you a really good idea.

That's the

The technology is really just a lever to do that, but it's not the critical factor in driving through to success.

Tim, you mentioned your Telco experience in your introductions.

I too spent a number of years in Telco and they faced this exact challenge with the advent of 3 and 5G and devices like iPhone.

You know, they really lost their gatekeeper position controlling the customer experience as, you know, customers finally had access to the open internet.

and telcos were clearly concerned that they would be relegated to a utility provider rather than, let's say, a media company with higher valuations.

So that's how the idea for Gix came about.

So the Stripe for Telco was kind of the original idea.

Well, the Stripe for Telco was what we discovered while building hardware and building Wi-Fi networks.

Yeah, sorry, I mean at that point, right? So not the original idea, but like the first version of what Gix is today.

That was the first version of gigs.

Yeah, the big one.

Before moving on, actually, if you don't mind, let's just dive a little bit deeper on that because you find the aggregator, first of all, just in terms of timelines, like started 2018 with the first idea.

When does this kind of stripe for Telco's idea come and how long are you in this exploratory phase until you discover this aggregator?

Teleco actually did do a lot of innovative ideas.

Remember when The iPhone came, there was a change in the ROI mentality of the Telco because Telco before that, they always measure ROIs by minutes.

How many minutes you get? And I give you a package to have more minutes, right? And then suddenly iPhone came and said, no, don't think about minutes.

Minutes has a limit.

You can have as much people talking the whole life, 24 by 7, you still have a limit, right? But you know what you don't have a limit for? Data.

It's unlimited.

So Telco did adapt, did actually move from one ROI model to another ROI model, which was very lucrative, right? I think we have this time again.

I think we need to rethink because I think edge AI, physical AI, sensing is going to become another way of looking at the ROI of the network.

But it was mainly for their growth, basically, because they are private sectors.

So for example, SK is, uh, my company, basically, they create a bunch of mesh service like between Telco and a credit card company.

So even ten years ago, they create a mobile pay-- mobile, sort of mobile credit card using your two G cell phone.

They were trying to, let's say, create a mobile credit card back then.

SIM, right? Subscriber identity module.

So identity is always our role to play, right? Telco's role to play.

But right now we are underutilizing our assets.

We only use that identity part only to send the OTP code.