Automation and AI in telecom - Mobile Europe interview at MWC25

Hello from Mobile World Congress 2025. I'm Michelle Donegan, and I'm here with Rick Hamilton, who's chief executive of Infovista.

Hello, Rick. 
How are you? 
Good. 
Thanks for being here.
Yeah, welcome. Thank you.

Let's start by talking about how you see the telecoms landscape evolving now and, uh, the most pressing challenges that operators are facing.

I think we're sort of in a, what I would call kind of the post 5G era where we all spent money, time, and energy deploying 5G. Now the whole landscape is about how do we, how do we monetize that, how do we get return on that?

It's actually created another subset of this landscape, which is complexity. So 5G in its capabilities has created more network complexity than we've seen in the past. That's obvious. So how do we start to think about that complexity, controlling cost, and really getting 5G to a point where it's serving what it's ultimately here to do, which is expand connectivity around the world.

That's great. And maybe we could talk a little more about AI and automation and, and how you see that developing.

Yeah, I think, you know, AI like, like 5G maybe was eight years ago. There's a lot of conversation, there's a lot of ideas. There's a lot of talk, and the, the whole industry is shaping itself up around what AI can deliver. I think in the industry, we think two really important things. Clearly removing complexity, doing things more autonomously, that saves money, it drives efficiency, that's great.

But certainly how do we improve the customer experience? How do we give all of our customers more of what they want faster than they can get it today? And in ways they haven't even imagined yet? So that, that's pretty exciting for the industry.

I know, Infovista has made some very interesting strategic partnerships. Can you tell us a little bit more about those?

Yeah, I think for us, partnerships are really important because with the movement of 5G and the complexity that's there, AI's introduction into the world, massively complex. There's not a single vendor out there that can really support all of this. There's no one throat to choke, so to speak. So creating an ecosystem is incredibly important to the success, I think in the next decade. Specifically related to AI.

So Infovista is very focused on creating an ecosystem that supports our customers needs. We just, announced a relationship with CSG that, that they spent a lot of time in the cable space, a lot of time in the billing space. We've been in the network space. So we're trying to bring those world together in unique ways. What's happening on the network, what's happening with customers, how do we provide a better experience? So it's fantastic.

And if you could also share some of the results you're seeing  amongst your customers from the technologies that you've been developing.

Yeah, I think as our customers service providers are deploying ai, they're starting to see their ability to create better experiences for their customers, grow what's happening in the home, how do we connect mobile, what's within the home. So we're creating a better user experience through these technologies. If our end customers, end customers happy, we all win.

And final thoughts on how you see the industry evolving and how Infovista will help operators achieve their goals?

Yeah, I think, I think what we see over the past decade and what's gonna happen even faster in the next decade is the notion of connectivity becoming more ubiquitous. So previously we thought about connectivity in silos. You have mobile connectivity and physical network connectivity and fiber and cable and copper.

That world is starting to abstract to just general connectivity, and it's having a massive impact on the world. Where we go, how we access content that's changing dramatically. So it's really this interesting thing in the service provider space where the excitement level just continues to grow and grow as this industry does, more consumers experience better uses of connectivity and technology, and it changes everything.

It changes the way we learn, the way we work, the way we play. It's a fantastic transformation. And I think in the next 10 years, we're gonna see that in an incredible pace.

Rick, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.