Lauren Thorpe

This morning, we announced another quarter of outstanding results on our Q2 2024 earnings call, proving once again that our unique formula of best value, best network, and best experience drives differentiated outcomes. Here are some of my favorite highlights: 📈 Customer Growth: Our durable and differentiated profitable growth model led to another quarter where we outperformed our peers across the board. We added 1.3M postpaid net customers, our highest EVER Q2 postpaid phone net adds, crossing the incredible milestone of 100 million postpaid customers—a testament to our industry-leading growth. We also reached 5.6M customers for our high-speed internet product, with an industry-best 406k net additions. 💰 Financial Growth: We are successfully translating our customer growth into outsized financial gains. We led the industry in key year-over-year growth areas, including Service Revenue (+4.4%), Core Adjusted EBITDA (+9.4%), and Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $4.4 billion (record high and +54% YoY). These results show that our customers recognize we are the best at connecting them to their world. Reaching the 100 million postpaid customer milestone is a clear signal that we’re rapidly evolving from challenger to leader. On our way to becoming a truly digital-first company, we now have one super app #TLife which combines several domains including account management, rewards, Magenta status, broadband management, peace of mind, and much more. As we hit the halfway point, 2024 is shaping up to be another historic year full of profitable growth. Our confidence in our strategy is reflected in our raised full-year customer and adjusted free cash flow guidance. I’m incredibly proud to be part of the Magenta leadership team that keeps delivering such incredible results. Together, we’re driving T-Mobile to new heights! Check out more Q2 highlights and the full earnings call below ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gCGs3jyx

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As always, thank you Azita Arvani, for spending the time to share your thoughts on #AI in #Networking with James E. Carroll and me. I realize you have a busy schedule and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your perspectives to our audience. If you're interested in Azita's perspectives on AI, check out the video here: https://lnkd.in/gFxynSrE And download our most recent AvidThink Report: "Pipe Dreams and AI Realities: Nextworking's Midlife Crisis"

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Another world-first: 1.6Tb/s. Learn about the technological advancements of WL6e in this Chalk Talk.

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Always scary listening to yourself, especially when "swearing in church" 😊. This is quite enjoyable since we are just speaking - ZERO corporate messaging! At least until we get right to the end when I couldn't help myself. Rakuten has a very clear customer promise... “We're trying to sell technology to people who don't care. Why are we doing that? Why are we screaming from the rooftops that you can get 5G here? Nobody cares, nobody cares, because it makes no difference to them. If we were selling hotel rooms, we'd sell a hotel room for the same price in Manhattan as we were in Oklahoma City. I mean, it's, we don't, I think we've lost touch as an industry with what we need to have as a customer promise. I think initially, because our customer promise was so tied to technology, it was a lot easier. So do voice everywhere, we're building networks that do mobile voice. So that's really simple. We've got disintermediated from the customer experience with smartphones. That's why the app economy took off and 4G was pulled through. It didn't lead it. It pulled through. We were hoping, by the way, as an industry, that someone invents something that pulls us through again. But (the fundamental problem) we haven't got a customer promise. Now, let me flip to my day job. And this conversation has had nothing to do with my day job, which is why I've enjoyed it so much. Rakuten has a very clear customer promise... Listen to the end to understand what that is. And thank you to Monica for being a wonderful host!Always scary listening to yourself, especially when "swearing in church" 😊. This is quite enjoyable since we are just speaking - ZERO corporate messaging! At least until we get to the end... Let me highlight that bit... “We're trying to sell technology to people who don't care. Why are we doing that? Why are we screaming from the rooftops that you can get 5G here? Nobody cares, nobody cares, because it makes no difference to them. If we were selling hotel rooms, we'd sell a hotel room for the same price in Manhattan as we were in Oklahoma City. I mean, it's, we don't, I think we've lost touch as an industry with what we need to have as a customer promise. I think initially, because our customer promise was so tied to technology, it was a lot easier. So do voice everywhere, we're building networks that do mobile voice. So that's really simple. We've got disintermediated from the customer experience with smartphones. That's why the app economy took off and 4G was pulled through. It didn't lead it. It pulled through. We were hoping, by the way, as an industry, that someone invents something that pulls us through again. But (the fundamental problem) we haven't got a customer promise. Now, let me flip to my day job. And this conversation has had nothing to do with my day job, which is why I've enjoyed it so much. Rakuten has a ver... Listen to the end to understand what that is. And thank you to Monica Paolini for being a wonderful host!

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Watch out, world! Dan OMalley and John Gieske are taking real-time communication to a whole new level with Sentra Gen AI. 🚀 They're not just talking tech—they're unleashing AI magic in ways that make us rethink what's possible in communication systems! 🔥🤖 #Nybsys #SentraGenAI #AI #TechInnovation #RealTimeComm #PTT

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The future of telecom

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"The age-old wisdom of a Native American proverb, “You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep”, resonates strongly with the current malaise pervading the telecoms industry. It is a fitting metaphor for the industry’s collective denial of its own flawed 5G gambits, which is costing it dearly in capital and, more deeply, compromising its long-term viability." Credit: Luke Kehoe, "5G: telcoms’ denial of its flaws and failures is costing them dearly" Short term the industry needs to get back to basics - customers, efficiency, 101 running a good business Long term... #6G cannot be the next #5G https://lnkd.in/eQDy-vj6

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This is a great article about #SuperBundling, well done Avi Greengart

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You know you’re in a business that matters when lofty publications like The Atlantic weigh-in on 'The Streaming Wars'.    In 'The Dream of Streaming is Dead' (May 16), Jacob Stern scrutinizes the latest bundles from The Walt Disney Company and Comcast to ask if this is any improvement over cable TV. The problem, Stern believes, is that going it alone for the streaming service providers hasn’t actually worked.    We cannot say that. Recent announcements from both Disney and Netflix suggest healthy growth so far this year with Disney+ becoming profitable last quarter. The recent actions taken by the streamers (password sharing crackdown, new pricing tiers) are bringing in more customers and more revenue, and bundling is one of the actions driving growth.   The dream that Stern refers to about streaming being a better, cheaper version of cable was always just that — a dream. Ultimately, someone needs to pay for the content creation — streaming was never going to change those economics. What it has provided is more flexibility and a disaggregation of the larger cable packages, allowing consumers to choose. There is certainly a risk that fixed bundles of streaming services get so large they look more like cable bundles. But consumers want choice: in what services to select, in how to bundle, and on the trade-off between value and flexibility. That's the real dream of streaming, and it's very much alive. https://lnkd.in/eye4tvaH #streaming #cable #TV

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Will mixed reality glasses be the gateway to unlocking new AI powered capabilities? Interesting to see the Meta Ray Ban smart glasses are now to incorporate real time language translation, potentially eliminating language barriers and improving communication. You can imagine on a social level this could be great, but on an industrial level this combined with Augmented and Virtual reality can bring benefits like: 1. Remove geography - meaning you can truely work collaboratively as teams from any location. 2. Remove language barriers with natural language translation to communicate with machines and language translation to improve communication with each other 3. Remove bias and inequality based on appearance, as in the digital world people can take on the appearance of their choice now with the language of their choice 4. Enable AI workers to work collaboratively as part of blended human and AI workforces. Do you think that Augemented and Mixed Reality headsets are adding value? Do you agree with Meta that they could replace the smart phone? Or rather do you believe the smart phone and AR/VR glasses will co-exist, and that the glasses will become another device like the smart watch that will work with the smart phone? #meta #meraverse #ai #web3

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Following up on a few recent posts with objective critiques of #generativeAI and #RAG and good discussion threads. To be clear, I'm not against #DeepLearning, generative AI or #NeuralNetworks - every technology has its use case, which is actually my point - #GenAI is not a solution, its part of one. Assuming you can justify cost, energy and resource consumption, security issues, IP and copyright concerns, etc. - #LLMs are very good for brute force tasks that are time-consuming, tedious and error-prone anyway, where the expectation for correctness is lower. Document summarization is a good example. #GPTs are also good at generating first drafts of anything where human oversight is assumed (because it is not accurate or consistent). However, here's where we run into problems - turns out LLM outputs degrade with complexity (uh, oh!). The output may have profound issues buried inside, which means the onus is on people to review thoroughly. However, studies show humans are prone to accept the results of the human-like natural language exchanges and blazingly fast brute force outputs as authoritative and skip rigorous review (go figure). Emerging RAG tool-chains (and the innumerable variants) represent workarounds attempting to optimize LLM outputs and eliminate hallucinations with nominal results and questionable ROI. These techniques support static, one-off manually-coded pipelines per use-case. They generally don't offer #enterprisegrade security, performance, scalability. Rather they offer flimsy scaffolding for experimenting with GenAI. So industry is racing full-steam into the trough of disillusionment. As I've repeatedly stated, organizations need practical solutions that leverage generative AI while mitigating its weaknesses. In a series of posts and demos we've described our "Domain-oriented generative AI architecture". Instead of merely trying to optimize or control LLM outputs, GenAI is simply a component in a broader solution architecture to deliver meaningful business use-cases. Our #domain approach off-loads processing to https://enterpriseweb.com/ as a back-end #automation platform. It leverages domain knowledge to efficiently ground LLM interactions in context so they could be understood deterministically. It allows us to: 1) optimize interactions with LLMs, minimizing training, tuning, prompts and tokens; 2) use knowledge-driven #orchestration to automate optimization of LLM outputs across use-cases while mitigating GenAI security, IP/copyright, latency, costs, sustainability concerns; and 3) to enable natural language conversations to drive enterprise-grade contextual automation with strong IT governance https://lnkd.in/e_s8rv5C; https://lnkd.in/e2rssMWK; https://lnkd.in/eZiC6RGN; https://lnkd.in/eBEWR87w; https://lnkd.in/eVyTu3Rc;

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My colleague, Geoff Blaber recently attended Intel's Vision 2024 conference in the USA. Geoff published our latest instant insight report diving deep into the announcements at the event detailing the company's AI ambitions. The battle for the ownership of the white-hot deployment of AI was writ large across the event. Intel Corporation was keen to remind the world that it too has a huge part to play in the market as it accelerates. Key Takeaways 🔘 Intel Gets Real: While acknowledging AI's hype, Intel cut through the noise by highlighting the real challenges enterprises face in rolling out AI: unclear ROI, data quality woes, privacy concerns, and more.  🔘 Intel's Strategy: It's clear that Intel understands it takes more than just chips to succeed. It’s emphasis on system-level offerings – a mix of silicon, software, and engineering support – is targeted at lowering costs and simplifying AI adoption. This feels very aligned with the wider industry's needs. 🔘 Challenging NVIDIA: Intel is boldly taking on Nvidia by positioning its products around power, performance, and openness. It’s support for open-source frameworks like PyTorch indicates a future where developers aren't locked into a single ecosystem. Get the Full Scoop: Read CCS Insight's Instant Insight report for a deep dive on Intel's strategy and what it means for telecoms. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/eBZaqYC7 #IntelVision2024 #AI #EnterpriseSolutions #Telecoms #Innovation

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thanks to Bernd Heinen for sharing this iOS screenshot today. It's fascinating to see Apple are planning to allow individual opt-in/opt-out for P2P RCS and A2P RCS (RBM) individually: a feature that incidentally isn't available on Android. I'm comfortable that most people will see the benefits of opting in for RCS but I hope there is similar, if not identical, adoption for RBM. Apple positioning it as a carrier-based service ("Your network provider will...) should help, but it seems odd to offer this for RBM and not for A2P SMS which would work by identifying/blocking alpha sender IDs for example. Let's see what happens... but this is all good news.

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The industry is buzzing about Apple's support for RCS services—it's been a hot topic lately. As someone deeply involved in the RCS world, I can barely contain my excitement. Apple has long favored its messaging platform, iMessage, over adopting RCS. Its reluctance likely stemmed from wanting to ensure user experience and security. The adoption of RCS could ramp up Apple's competition with Meta, although it won't necessarily challenge WhatsApp directly. But it's a positive move for Google and MNOs. With SMS usage dwindling, RCS was being relegated to advertising, reminders, and one-time passwords. A strong person-to-person service is also essential to complement business services, which are now a primary revenue source. Without personal messages, opening rates and campaign ROI would plummet. If Google and Apple push RCS for deeper device integration, it could shake up the OTT/messaging landscape. This could be a game changer for businesses, allowing them to connect more effectively with customers. RCS streamlines enterprise-customer communication, unlike OTT apps that require downloads. With Apple’s adoption, the gap in rich messaging functionality between platforms will narrow. As a leader in the industry, I am eager to see how this shift will reshape the dynamics of digital communication. We all need to be ready as we step into this exciting new chapter. Globe Teleservices Pte. Ltd. GTS TechLabs Rajiv Singla Sudip Chatterjee Pallavi Kudtarkar Awnish Chaudhary Alok Maurya Ranga R S (He/Him) Murthy Muniyappa Prabhat Kumar CERF Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Chris Almeida Akbar Ladak

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Hallelujah! Diana Goovaerts and Elizabeth Starr Miller Coyne of Fierce Network just reported from #DTW24 that AT&T's Yigal Elbaz said he's "looking for vendors to build technology that can be managed #holistically as part of a #horizontal layer in the technology stack rather than overseen as individual verticals." https://lnkd.in/eaTmz74a Excuse me, but I'm going to take a bit of a bow here. EnterpriseWeb has been promoting and demonstrating horizontal architecture for network and service management since 2013 when we led the 1st ETSI #NFV proof-of-concept, as well as the 1st ETSI #ZSM poc in 2016. Our #nocode platform with it's harmonized, standards-based Telco #knowledgegraph model helped win six consecutive TM Forum catalyst projects, with AT&T championing several of them. In 2022 we won a Fierce Telecom award for an Intel #5G #MEC testbed demonstrating a "super" SMO that worked across the #RAN, #Core and #Transport and between layers 1-7 so it could dynamically configure and continuously optimize slices, services and functions to maintain low latency and energy consumption at 50Gbps. In May of 2023 we premiered #Telcograde #GenAI for #intentbased #orchestration with Microsoft demonstrating how a developer can talk to the network to design, deploy and manage complex services. At #MWC24 we demonstrated how the same natural language interface could be used as an abstraction across a set of #CAMARA #APIs. It's been a year and no telecom vendor has replicated these capabilities or matched our performance. I was beginning to think I might have to bleed on stage for the #Telecom industry, but I now have hope. The industry might just have finally had enough with its manually-integrated, tightly-coupled, bloated and brittle silos, which hold back #automation and #AI initiatives. The future is here folks... no need to wait. Here are a few links - Blog "Abstraction for Interoperability and Automation": https://lnkd.in/e6uD4sYB MWC24 demo with RedHat and Microsoft "GraphOps for the AI-enabled Telco": https://lnkd.in/e27kFS-h MWC24 demo with Intel, Microsoft and Fortinet "Dev-centric Networking with CAMARA APIs": https://lnkd.in/ekQD3Sgw MWC24 interview on TheCube with RedHat - https://lnkd.in/dsFyrx-D

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Fixed wireless and fiber subscriber growth slowed in Q1 2024, creating a supposed positive trend for US cable. However, cable broadband losses accelerated in the quarter amid slower housing formation and a halt on ACP enrollments. https://lnkd.in/eUrdki-q

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🚀 Exciting news in the tech world! 🌐 3GPP has approved a new logo for use on specifications for 6G, symbolizing the next leap in connectivity and innovation. As we continue to push the boundaries of technology, 6G promises even faster speeds, lower latency, and unprecedented connectivity. 💡 #6G #Innovation #FutureTech 📶🔝

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Missed our AI-powered, cellular-connected PC webinar? Don’t worry, you can watch on demand! You’ll hear about how organizations are leveraging 5G to upgrade device fleets for seamless work across locations. Click on the image below to watch the replay at your convenience. #VTeam

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