The telecom industry is entering a defining period as AI, cloud platforms, and hyperscalers move deeper into the connectivity stack. Traditional carrier models built on reliability, scale, and access are under pressure as enterprises demand more than bandwidth. Customers now expect outcome-driven services, real-time responsiveness, and intelligent automation that directly supports business decisions. This shift is forcing operators to confront a fundamental question of identity and long-term relevance.
Carrier 2.0 returns as host Steve Saunders examines the strategic crossroads facing service providers. From embedding AI into live networks to closing the gap between innovation and deployable value, the episode explores what it really takes to move up the stack. It also highlights the growing role of fiber networks as critical community infrastructure and economic enablers. The carriers that succeed in the next decade will not try to be everything at once. They will make deliberate choices, execute with discipline, and clearly define the role they play in an increasingly AI-driven digital economy.
Steve Saunders:
What kind of service provider survives the next decade? For most of its history, telecom has been a very stable industry, maybe even a little bit boring. You built your network, you sold connectivity, you scaled your coverage, you made sure everything was super reliable and you competed on price and that was enough. But that model is now under real pressure, not because connectivity doesn't matter anymore, but because now it's just one layer in a much bigger and more valuable stack. AI is changing what networks are expected to do and enterprises are changing what they expect to buy and hyperscalers are changing where value sits in the equation. So the question operators are being forced to answer is now a much harder one, what do we actually want to be?
Spider Man:
That man's an imposter.
Steve Saunders:
I'm Steve Saunders. Welcome to Carrier 2.0.
This episode sets the tone for everything we're going to explore in this new season of the show because right now service providers are at a strategic crossroads. Do they remain utilities, focused on efficiency, scale and reliability? That's not a great look for most of them. Or do they become platforms, moving up the stack into software, services and AI? Or do they specialize as vertical enablers, deeply embedded in specific industries or do they become something else entirely?
Michael Scott:
I am Beyonce always.
Andy Bernard:
Not in this time.
Michael Scott:
Yes, I am.
Steve Saunders:
And behind all of that sits a deeper tension. How do you grow? How do you stay relevant and how do you take risk in an AI-driven economy that is moving faster than most carriers are comfortable with?
Andrew Feldman:
When you move from, "Oh, that's cool. Do it once." To, "I use it every day 25 times." You can't wait 30 seconds to get a response. You want real-time engagement.
Will Townsend:
There are glimmering hopes that they're getting there for operators to fully embrace AI both in the core and the RAN to delight customers and again, unlock monetization beyond access.
Steve Saunders:
Well, let's start with what's actually changed because the pressure isn't coming from inside telecom, it's coming from the customers.
Lee Kwang Yong:
Enterprises needs are changing over time. They're no longer looking for pure connectivity solutions. They're looking for how we can use technology to help them make decisions faster, automate their workflows, and even using technologies to help them make more efficient of processes so customers change the way they adopt connectivity solutions. They wanted more on demand, more outcome base, more SLA focused services.
Steve Saunders:
That's a fundamental change. And once that expectation shifts, the role of the service provider has to shift with it. Well, one response to that shift is clear, move up the stack, become a platform. But that's easy to say and much harder to execute.
Ankur Kapoor:
We have actually embedded AI into the network. It's built into the core of this network now. And that's why we talked about live translation. And live translation is just a use case. It's not the end, it's just the start of an era. The intelligence has to happen close to where the customers are. The radio networks and the mobile core networks are actually going to become a nervous system of this entire connectivity platform.
Steve Saunders:
So that is the ambition, to turn the network into something more dynamic, more intelligent, more valuable, but becoming a platform isn't just a technical upgrade. It changes everything. How you build, how you sell, your culture, and of course how customers perceive you.
And this is where things start to get difficult, because while the strategy sounds clear, execution is anything but.
Joshua Turiano:
The gap that I see I think across the industry isn't so much like a technology gap, especially for telcos, it's a translation gap. We see these demos, they look great. You see the proof of concept videos. They're nice, but somewhere between actually flying the plane and landing it, that signal kind of gets lost on AI. Sometimes people get paralyzed because no one showed them a version of AI that really works for them at their scale and it can work with a lean team. It can work with an existing tech stack. You just have to kind of take your time and piece the puzzle together.
Steve Saunders:
Now that's the reality most operators are dealing with. It's not a lack of innovation. It's actually a lack of translation, turning capability into something that works on a live network with real customers and real constraints and that also makes real money. That's the trade-off at the center of this identity crisis. Now, underneath all of this, the definition of a service provider is already changing.
Janet Rehberg:
When we first decided to roll out the fiber network, one of the big reasons was to help automate the grid to help with outage reduction. And we saw that proven very successful. We're able to reduce about 55% of outage reduction on an annual basis. And the other part of the fiber network was to really help support our community. And we had an independent study do a review this year to look back the first 15 years of our fiber network system. And what it shows in that study is it has brought over $5.3 billion in community benefits to our community and has helped create and retain over 10,000 jobs.
Steve Saunders:
See, that's not a utility and it's not a platform either.
Josh Snow:
Trace Fiber Networks is located in South Central Oklahoma. Started out really as a middle mile provider for our own purposes and evolved into all things broadband, whether it was for schools, hospitals, e-rate, cellular backhaul. But obviously pandemic came through and here in rural Oklahoma, we were severely impacted. From a connectivity standpoint, we were really left behind and that really inspired us to pivot and change our direction and really get into the retail space. So we aggressively pursued federal grants. If you add the bead and then what we've already self-funded and the trans and stuff, our on net connectivity will be over 20,000 locations.
Steve Saunders:
That's what's emerging, a role that isn't clearly defined but somewhere in between.
The Architect:
You are the eventuality of an anomaly.
Steve Saunders:
Still forming, still being figured out, but clearly expanding. So what kind of service provider survives the next decade? Well, it's not the one that tries to be everything and it's not the one that stays where it is, but it's the one that makes a clear decision about its role and executes against it because in an AI-driven economy, relevance isn't inherited. It's defined. Hi, there. If someone shared this episode with you, that means they like you. Please, hit subscribe and catch up on all the episodes.