Meet 20 cutting edge global telcos who serve over 3B customers across 20 countries along with select vendors, investors and startups building the future of the communications. This high impact, personalized annual event jams telco case studies, startup pitches, technology demos, facilitated networking and prearranged, private meetings into a full day, can't-miss agenda.
Telecom Council's 2024 annual summit, Telecom Talks, draws a select group of telcos, telecom vendors, and communications startups and investors from around the world to Silicon Valley to talk about the technologies impacting the telecom industry, the networks, and subscribers.
Silicon Valley, California, May 10, 2024/Meeting Recap/ On May 8th, the Telecom Council hosted its annual Telecom Talks Summit at SRI in Menlo Park. This event brought together over 160 industry leaders and innovators to discuss the cutting-edge technologies that are transforming the telecommunications landscape. Attendees included representatives from major telcos, telecom vendors, and communications investors, creating a dynamic environment for collaborative business discussions.
The summit featured a variety of engaging sessions, including keynotes, panel discussions, and fireside chats. Expert industry analysts from Roy Chua of AvidThink set the stage for the day’s discussions, providing insights on market trends and opportunities for innovation. One of the highlights of the event was a series of case studies showcasing successful partnerships between telecom operators and innovative startups. These presentations offered valuable lessons and real-world examples, where we learn which telcos are both willing and able to support successful startup partnership and, at the same time, meet communications startups who have the chops to work with an incumbent telco with the challenges of reliability and low-risk tolerance.
Telecom Talks is also a great forum for cutting-edge carriers to prove they can be good partners for the startup ecosystem. Some example on today’s agenda included T-Mobile US introduced a 5G connected telehealth startup, Dopl Technologies, who they are supporting through T-Mobile’s 5G Innovation Lab. Bharti Airtel introduced their work on Smart NOC through a partnership with TierOne OSS which resulted in a transformative leap in customer experience and operational efficiency. TurkTelekom got a lot of attention form all the carriers in the room for their startup partnership in WiFi quality of service with QuantWifi. More next generation thinking came from Softbank Telecom who is working with Findability’s AI for business process automation in a rare example of a young company working in the core of a telecom’s business. Another example of 5G monetization came from Canada, where Rogers is working with a V2X startup to add intelligence and connectivity to traffic intersections to improve safety and efficiency at each intersection through their support of NoTraffic a startup from the Silicon Valley.
These sessions sparked lively discussions among those in attendance, during official breaks, lunch, and high-ROI, curated one-on-one meetings. There were also opportunities throughout the day to visit demo tables and interact directly with the entrepreneurs offering cutting-edge technologies.
The Telecom Council seeks to be a catalyst, and the early phase of lasting business relationships, and the MatchMaker service is a major contributor to its success. This service facilitates prearranged meetings designed to connect companies with mutual interests, enabling meaningful connections.
We’d like to thank our sponsors of the event. TierOne OSS Technologies introduced their next-generation Smart NOC for business transformation deployed by Airtel. Cloudfabrix, which unifies observability, AIOps and automation using Explainable AI and streaming data for data-centric AIOps to enable Autonomous Enterprises, joined us on stage and in the demo area. We appreciate the sponsorship from the province of Quebec, and the government of Canada, each of whom also brought us some great, qualified startup companies with their presentations.
All in all, judging from the feedback we got in real time, the Council considers this year’s Telecom Talks a resounding success. But it’s not us…it’s YOU! The thoughtful presentations and lively discussions underscore the vibrant and collaborative spirit of the communications industry. We thank SRI for their hospitality in serving as host. We'd also like to extend a sincere thank you to all of our presenters, panel speakers, and of course, the attendees. All the presentations will be available in the Telecom Council’s Member Library.
Agenda includes telco and their startup partners on a wide variety of technologies that are important to the next-generation of networks and services:
15 telcos scheduled 125 meetings with startup hopefuls, with a further 40 meetings being progressed outside of the portal. Tata Communications and T-Mobile sparred for the top spot of most meetings, so we called it a draw with both telcos scheduling over 15 meetings between the onsite and online MatchMaker. AI Ops, Telco Cloud, and Immersive Entertainment proved to be the technologies that most motivated our telco members to schedule meetings so we hope to see those companies return to the Telecom Talks stage sometime in the future as Case Studies!