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Telco in 20

Telco in 20

By: Danielle Rios TelcoDR
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Over the next 20 years, the telco industry will radically change as we move the entire IT estate to the public cloud to use AI. Are you ready? Telco in 20 helps telecom execs drive transformative change through the savvy use of public cloud and AI. Host Danielle Rios and high profile guests from across telecom share their vision for the industry’s future, the impact of artificial intelligence, and what telcos need to do to thrive.© 2020-2025 TelcoDR Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Ep 143 - Norlys bets big on Telia (Daniel Askeroth)

    Ep 143 - Norlys bets big on Telia (Daniel Askeroth)
    Jun 23 2026
    Telcos love mergers. In 2025 alone, the industry spent nearly $70 billion on M&A, and every single deal brought its own baggage. New systems, new cultures, new tech debt—all bolted onto everything that came before. Everyone celebrates the deal. No one celebrates the hard work of bringing two organizations together. For this episode, I sit down with Daniel Askeroth, senior vice president of telco at Norlys, the Danish energy and broadband co-op that acquired Telia Denmark in 2024. Daniel spent 17 years at Telia Denmark. Now, he's the one tasked with stitching his old company into Norlys, which is itself the product of 40+ prior mergers. We dig into how he runs the integration without breaking the customer experience, how to unite workforces without losing the people you need most, and what Daniel would do differently if he had to do it all over again. Listen now to hear: Why the people side of mergers takes longer than anyone expects [03:20];How Norlys keeps integration invisible to customers [05:08];How AI is changing the way Daniel’s teams build [06:48]; andWhat Daniel learned from temporarily stepping into an HR role [11:58]. Links and Resources: Read Bain's Telecom M&A: Here Are the Latest Deal Trends Worldwide for the latest on where the industry is placing its bets.Learn more about Norlys's $926M acquisition of Telia Denmark and why adding mobile was the missing piece in its full-service play for Danish consumers.Check out Daniel’s LinkedIn post about the Norlys leadership role-swap. He traded his telco seat for one in People & Culture for a few days and came back with a different perspective on the business.Every merger means bringing together new billing stacks, CRMs, and decades of past decisions. Learn how the Totogi Ontology sits over all those acquired systems so they speak the same language.Want to see the Totogi Ontology in action? Catch Team Totogi at DTW Ignite, running June 23-25 in Copenhagen.Daniel's kids discovered historical architecture through Pokémon GO, a location-based mobile game that uses your phone's GPS and camera to catch virtual Pokémon at real-world landmarks. Launched in 2016, it peaked at 232 million players and still draws 55 million monthly players and $545M in annual revenue—accidentally tricking a generation into exploring historic landmarks. Who knew Pokémon GO was still going so strong?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 they can bring. Follow DR: Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.Follow DR on X @TelcoDR The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews! This week’s guest: Daniel Askeroth is senior vice president of telco at Norlys, a Danish energy and telecoms cooperative. He leads Norlys’ telecom business following the acquisition of Telia Denmark, including the integration and transformation focusing on simplifying systems, aligning cultures, and driving large-scale technology and organizational change. With over 17 years of experience at Telia Denmark prior to joining Norlys, Daniel brings deep expertise in telecom operations, transformation, and leadership. He is passionate about building strong teams and delivering customer-focused, future-ready connectivity solutions. Podcast Credits: Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDRSenior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo MediaSenior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard MarketingAudio Editor: Andrew CondellSupervising Producer: Amanda AveryAssociate Producer: Kriselda DionisioMusic: Dyami Wilson
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    18 mins
  • Ep 142 - AT&T bets on the last mile (Shawn Hakl)

    Ep 142 - AT&T bets on the last mile (Shawn Hakl)
    Jun 9 2026
    Every major telco is racing to claim a piece of the AI infrastructure stack. Operators like Telefónica, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank, and TELUS are betting on sovereign clouds, AI factories, and GPU-as-a-service to deliver local data, national compute, and a seat at the AI table. Then there's AT&T. In March, it announced AWS Interconnect - last mile: fiber and fixed wireless plugged directly into AWS and engineered for AI workloads. AT&T’s view is that enterprises using AI don't just need more compute—they need flatter networks and faster connections. So it’s betting on the layer it owns outright—the last mile. In this episode, I'm joined by Shawn Hakl, SVP of product at AT&T Business. We dig into why the operator is partnering with hyperscalers instead of competing with them, the use case where AT&T deployed AI at the edge to cut latency from 110ms to 40ms, and what an "agent-consumable" network actually looks like. Listen now to hear: Why AT&T sees hyperscalers as partners, not rivals [05:18];What it takes to put AI into production at telco scale—and lessons learned from AT&T's internal deployment [07:14];The edge AI deployment that cut latency from 110ms to 40ms for a live customer [08:45]; andWhat it really means to make a network "agent-consumable" [10:55]. Links and Resources: Read the AT&T and AWS announcement on AWS Interconnect - last mile, which brings AT&T's fiber and fixed wireless connectivity directly into AWS environments.Learn more about AT&T's edge AI collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA, which pushes real-time AI inference directly to the network edge.AT&T doesn't just sell AI solutions; it runs on them. Learn how Ask AT&T has evolved into a full agentic platform, with more than 100,000 users consuming 27 billion tokens a day and teams building custom AI agents with a drag-and-drop tool.Want to scale AI agents without the semantic chaos? Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI the business context it needs to discover, act, and execute—so agents stop flying blind.Shawn was on the Canadian national luge team, which means he knows a thing or two about commitment once you're flying down the track. Elana Meyers Taylor knows that feeling too! At age 41, in her 5th Olympic appearance, she finally won the Olympic gold medal in women's monobob at Milano Cortina. So, Shawn might be right—stick to the plan!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 they can bring. Follow DR: Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.Follow DR on X @TelcoDR The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews! This week’s guest: As the senior vice president of product at AT&T Business, Shawn Hakl is responsible for the portfolio servicing enterprise, public sector, partner, and small business segments, which generates over $30 billion in annual revenue. A seasoned leader in cloud, AI, and communications, Shawn’s unique knowledge of software, security, and infrastructure is helping enterprises, government, and small businesses harness the power of technology to successfully execute on their digital transformation. In his current role, Shawn is responsible for wireline, 5G/wireless, voice/UC, security/SASE, data center, AIOps, and Network-as-a-Service product lines. Podcast Credits: Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDRSenior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo MediaSenior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard MarketingAudio Editor: Andrew CondellSupervising Producer: Amanda AveryAssociate Producer: Kriselda DionisioMusic: Dyami Wilson
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    19 mins
  • Ep 141 - Tele2 goes back to the future (Ove Wik)

    Ep 141 - Tele2 goes back to the future (Ove Wik)
    May 26 2026
    Every operator made the same bet—go digital, close stores, turn over distribution to the resellers. Somewhere along the way, they gave away the customer relationship. In the first half of 2025, data usage grew in 92% of markets while ARPU grew in only 50%. Operators are delivering more yet earning less. Tele2 is fighting back. It’s opening physical stores while everyone else is closing them, consolidating six IT stacks down to two, and using AI to rebuild subscriber relationships at scale. For this episode, I talk with Ove Wik, EVP and CTIO at Tele2, about what it takes to reclaim customer relationships, why most BSS transformations never get finished, and what real change actually takes. Listen now to hear: The question that got Tele2 from six IT stacks to two [03:58];The 80/20 trade-off most operators refuse to make [05:45];Why Tele2 is opening physical stores while most operators are closing them [09:41]; andWhat real BSS transformation actually requires [12:13]. Links and Resources: Check out Tele2's latest annual report. CEO Jean-Marc Harion declares that the company is going "back to the future."Learn more about Tele2 and Telenor's Net4Mobility joint venture, which just hit 99.9% 5G population coverage in Sweden.Since we recorded this episode, Tele2 has named a new CEO. Nicholas Högberg will take over for Jean-Marc Harion as president and CEO on July 1, 2026.Are you planning a transformation and don’t know what trade offs to make? Use the Totogi Ontology. It maps your business processes and customer interactions so you can see exactly what matters and make trade-offs with confidence.Tele2 is using AI and hyperpersonalization to rebuild subscriber relationships. Watch my MWC23 talk, SUPERCHARGE your MVNO with personalization to see how operators of any size can use subscriber data to deliver tailored, individual offers that grow ARPU and stop churn—exactly the kind of direct customer engagement Tele2 is now chasing.Ove renovates homes in his spare time and knows how to finish projects. If only all telco transformations made it over the finish line! This clip from the movie The Money Pit shows how quickly things can go wrong.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 they can bring. Follow DR: Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us knowFollow DR on X @TelcoDR 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, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews! This week’s guest: Ove is CTIO at Tele2. He has spent his entire life in telecom operators, starting in Sweden at a time when one incumbent provided fixed telephony. He has navigated more than 40 years of telco evolution that has included intense competition, extensive product portfolios, and international operations. With a background in engineering, Ove has worked in technology, product management, sales, operations, and strategy. Some of his international assignments have included COO at Yoigo Spain, Head of Transformation at Salt Switzerland, and Head of Digital Enablement at Veon Group. For more than 25 years, he has worked to drive change through a combination of technology, organization, and culture. Podcast Credits: Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDRSenior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo MediaSenior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard MarketingAudio Editor: Andrew CondellSupervising Producer: Amanda AveryAssociate Producer: Kriselda DionisioMusic: Dyami Wilson
    Show More Show Less
    19 mins
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