Hi, I'm Ester Navarro, I'm Head of Core Networks Portfolio Marketing. Thank you for joining our Nokia Real Talk. Today, I'm with Fini Irles, she's the Head of Data Core Engineering at Vodafone Group. Thank you so much for being with us at our Nokia Real Talk. Thank you, Ester. I'm glad to be here with you today. Vodafone is the largest European and African communication company. They offer a broad range of services, including mobile and fixed networks. They serve in 22 countries, with over 330 million mobile subscribers. Recently, they appointed a new CEO and announced a new strategy focusing on connectivity and digital services to enable an inclusive and sustainable society. Fini, we have the pleasure of working with you to get deploying our packet core in three Vodafone markets: Italy, Spain, and Ireland. How do you expect 5G Standalone Core, and specifically the Single Packet Core strategy, to support you in these markets? But first of all, could you explain to us what you mean by Single Packet Core? Let's start with Single Packet Core. What it is for me is basically a convergent core and will serve both needs: 4G and 5G for us. And how it will help us, from my viewpoint, is going to produce a simplification in our network because after the journey, we will be able to dismiss some of our still-present legacy packet core. I'm also expecting that it will bring simplicity, speed, and an increase in how we can use more efficiently current hardware deployed comparing virtual towards cloud deployments. It also opens with 5G SA to flourish more our partnership with our corporate customers because we're going to be able to boost joint innovation and offer to our customers the network that they need. Ester, I'm wondering, in your view, what might be the benefits that deploying Nokia Packet Core can bring to operators as ourselves? Thanks, Fini. I would like to highlight first our global experience and our long history in the telecommunications market. We have a strong market position, and we operate in almost 130 countries. I don't know if you remember it, but Nokia ran the first 2G call in the world, and this was more than 30 years ago. We have built trust during decades with our customers. Another benefit is that our products are standard compliant, and we have a very solid roadmap and a clear future vision of the future of our networks. We are constantly investing in R&D, and we offer our customers open solutions supporting multiple clouds, hardware agnostic, and our products are cloud-native by design. Also, very important for the Vodafone strategy is our common packet core that supports all mobile generations and access domains. Before, you mentioned 4G and 5G, but our common packet core supports 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. This means for Vodafone that we are offering you a small evolution to 5G to support high-throughput, ultra-reliable, low-latency slicing, and AI-enabled automation. So Fini, let's talk about data services. How do you see the benefits of 5G, and what are the most promising use cases for Vodafone Group? 5G offers versatility. It brings speed, latency, and multiple connections. The first use case that comes to my mind is FWA. Why? This is very useful for customers that are demanding mobility and, at the same time, to not be dependent on sending a technician to the home so they can build the service anywhere. And it brings somehow a seamless experience quite comparable to a fixed service. Some other use cases are STEP. STEP is Safer Transport for Europe Platform, and it helps drivers to run safer in a more protected environment when they are commuting. It helps riders or pedestrians in a city. For this use case, latency is a key fundamental factor. Many other use cases can be explored in a smart cities environment. 5G enables a very large number of users connected as for IoT devices such as water meters, traffic lights, street lights. Recently, Gartner has named Vodafone as a leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed IoT Connectivity Services worldwide. I also have in mind drones. Drones might play a fundamental role to help people to avoid working in challenging health and safety conditions thanks to streaming images. For instance, it's going to be very helpful in speeding up rescue activities. Ester, you have a privileged global view. In your experience around the world, what are the most famous or most usable use cases on 5G right now? We have many different depending on the regions. North America and China were the first to start with 5G Standalone, and they focused on enhanced mobile broadband cases, cases mostly for the consumer to bring them fast data rates and just to build premium services. Then Europe came a bit later. They have been focusing, as you probably know, they have been focusing more on the enterprise market. And what we see is that you European operators, you have focused on slicing the networks for the different enterprise cases, also bringing the UPF appliance on the campus to bring low-latency applications to the networks because they are much closer. And also something that you can benefit from is offloading the traffic because offloading the traffic means that you don't need to carry a lot of traffic through the network. That is something that we call Local Breakout. In Asia Pacific and Japan, and also in India, they have been having a similar focus to Europe, and they are focusing as well on gaming. Latin America, Middle East, and Africa, they are still analyzing how to monetize 5G. Another application that you mentioned before and that is really big and popping up all over the world is Fixed Wireless Access because it's bringing high bandwidth connections to fixed subscribers. This has been the difference that we have seen around the world. Now, in general, what we have seen is that the consumer use cases have been offered first as cloud gaming and virtual and augmented reality. This is still very much a niche. The case that we see with major growth potential is related to industrial use cases. Slicing will let enterprises tailor their services to their specific network needs. Low latency and automation enable use cases like robotics, which can improve manufacturing. I want to share with you something that I have heard from my colleagues. We are now here recording in Finland. I heard that in Helsinki, you can order food, and you get this delivered by robots. They are self-driven small robots that bring you the food at home. I have seen the pictures. It's really amazing. That could be also another use case that we will see deployed around the world very soon. Fini, which technologies are crucial or the best enablers for your Single Packet Core strategy? Any foreseen challenges? This is a very good question, Ester. Let's start with the enablers. You already covered one of them, network slicing. This is definitely a key one. We recently made use of it in the UK in the King's Coronation. And thanks to network slicing, we are able to split our network into this concept of slices, basically to serve different needs. So sometimes our customers might ask us for streaming. Streaming means high speed. Some other slices might be serving emergency use cases or multi-access edge computing to grant low latency, for instance, in autonomous cars needs, so the V2X concept. And then we have the large enablers on IoT and smart cities. And there, the throughput is not the fundamental piece. It is more enabling a large number of connections to the network. It's also very promising, the APIs ecosystem, because this would enable somehow to expose our network through the concept of network as a platform. Some other operators call this Open Gateway. And with that, some developers can make use of it to offer other services to customers. I remember last year that we delivered a dynamic bandwidth use case exposing our network to serve our customers located in La Palma, in Canary Islands. You might remember this emergency that we suffered because of the volcano. So this helped us to react very fast and cover basic connectivity needs for our customers there. Now, if I look more into the operator side, what are the enablers? Hyper-threading is one fundamental, both for the control and specifically for the user plane. Why? Because this will bring a more efficient network and will help us to decrease the cost per giga. Automation, orchestration, continuous testing, continuous deployment. It will help us to overcome the complexity that CNFs, that cloud is bringing, so to ensure that we can make shorter time to market. Very interesting. Really caught my attention about the volcano explosion in Spain. It's great. How are we helping the society with our technology, right? Yes. This is so rewarding as a professional. Let me move now into the challenges, Ester. So if roadmaps are delayed, if some of the features are not coming when expected, if cloud network functions technology is not mature enough when we will need to move large and big amounts of throughput in an optimized manner, this will be definitely one of my first challenges to take care of. One other might be the multi-vendor ecosystem. It is true that 3GPP defined very well all standard interfaces, but some challenges on that area might arise. Additionally, let's not forget, this is a new quantum-leap transformation technology that plays usually very well in greenfield environments whenever you are starting from scratch to deploy a network. But on our side, we need to ensure a smooth transition from our current network and make sure that there is service continuity. It must preserve a seamless customer experience. Ester, may I ask you now, how can Nokia support our objectives for data services with your technology? Sure. Well, let me start again with something that I mentioned before. I think we can support you with a smooth migration to 5G Standalone because what I mentioned before, our converged packet core, what we support all mobile generations, 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G, and also all access domains from fixed to mobile, satellite, you name it. Also, our solution can be implemented on multi-cloud infrastructures. In your case, Vodafone, we are supporting VMware Tanzu. We are also fully compliant with the 3GPP standards with the Release 16 and 17. And our open and simplified APIs can empower developers to create new services easily, which is fundamental right now. And with this, what we will do, we will unlock the potential of 5G. We know the potential of 5G is very much into the new use cases that are to come. Something that I believe that Nokia is a pioneer in the market is our offering Core Software as a Service. I don't know if you have heard about it, but this is the perfect solution because it will allow you to deploy on-demand services in just a few clicks. For example, there is a concert, and you need more capacity, extra capacity for just a short period of time. This is something that you can quickly deploy using our Nokia Core Software as a Service solution. That sounds great, as you shared, for some specific use cases where speed in delivering matters. This has been a very interesting conversation about technology. But there is something very dear to my heart that I would like to talk with you as well. It's women in technology. I heard that Vodafone appointed a new CEO, and it's a woman, Margherita Della Valle. I think that is something very new. And I have not heard about many CEOs in technology companies that are female leaders. And also, you have such a high profile, and you are a leader being a woman in such a big company. So can you share with me some tips for women in technology? How can we succeed in this kind of world? Thank you, Ester. I'm also very passionate about sponsoring how we can boost more the presence of women in technology. First, definitely the power of the role models. And as you said, having a C-suite first time ever, Margherita leading our company, this is so inspirational for many women in the company. What other tips? I think it's as well important that you don't put limits in your mindset. So we talk and we read a lot about imposter syndrome. And basically, it's a lot on us. So to really trust yourself, you can do whatever. And some other tips that I found very useful for me are always having some time in your diary to focus on your career, learning, development. And what is more important and really boosts your career is finding your mentors. Get support from allies and dedicate time to flourish your network. There are many people around that can support you. I especially found super important female networking. I couldn't agree more. Female networking, yeah. Ester, I'm aware of that you are also a very active advocate for women's inclusion in technology. Please, can you share how you are actively promoting it? Well, Fini, I think I'm doing a lot, but for sure not enough. I'm co-leading a female network inside Nokia. It's called our Greenhouse. And our slogan is, "The world will be a better place to be when more women are in leading positions and functions." Our goal in this community is to help female talents to grow their potential and advance in their careers. On top of it, I'm a coach. And I'm coaching many Nokia female colleagues. And I help them to reach their potential. I'm also a mentor. And I contributed to some programs that Nokia has with some technology companies, like with Etisalat in this case. And there, I'm also mentoring some female talents. Once a year in Germany, the government organizes the so-called Girls' Day. It's a day where the technology companies open the doors and invite girls in high school age. We show them what is technology, how could they work in technology careers, because we want to promote the so-called technology studies, STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. There, I present myself as a role model, explaining my jobs and what are my responsibilities to the girls. As I said, I think I'm doing a lot, but for sure not enough. There is still a long way until we will reach gender parity in our industry. I think you're doing great. This is so powerful. I agree with you that this is restless. We need to do more. Indeed. So, Fini, a final question. We are very excited working together with Vodafone Group. I want to ask you how Nokia is doing so far, and how can we continue to support you on this journey? Ester, Nokia is doing well so far because it's all about building the right intimacy and a true partnership. When you bring close to my engineers, your experts, to understand firsthand how our network is designed in every market and how we can seamlessly evolve to your Single Packet Core and 5G Standalone, it will help, definitely. I think some other thing that is going to be very useful for me in this journey is you helped me to create the right bonds not only with your delivery teams that work very closely in the different countries, but also with your product responsibles across the world. This is fundamental because the journey will not be perfect. All these multiple interactions are already enabled. Personally, I'm eager to see how your product performs in our live network. Thank you for your feedback. I'm happy to hear that we are doing well. We will follow your advice. Thank you. Thanks a lot for hosting me that well, Ester, today. Fini, thank you so much for this great discussion. I'm looking forward to our future collaboration. It has been really a pleasure.