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So classical telco networks were comprised of multiple silos sitting next to each other.

So in order to provide the network services to your customer, there are multiple systems involved.

And in the past, each and every system was its own platform, so its own hardware, its own software, its own management solution, interconnected by protocols, which are highly standardized by an entity called 3GPP.

which is producing worldwide standards, and they expect to define how the systems are interconnected.

And then you have multiple of these systems and platforms around, each run by a dedicated team, which own the hardware, software, vendor relationship, all the lifecycle, everything done, and multiple teams sitting next to each other.

A typical telco network consists of three big parts, the access, the transport, and the core networks.

If you talk mobile, access is the base station, so the antenna, what you typically see in some hardware, then of course transport networks, because packets need to go from A to B, and then you have the core network in the center.

So if you zoom in a little bit into core networks, you have at least three big blocks.

One is the packet core.

So this is where all the packets are processed and moved from A to B. Then you have the voice system itself, which is called IMS.

And the third thing is then the customer database.

This has the subscriber information so that the tariff is defined there, how much speed you get.

what kind of services you're subscribed to, all that kind of stuff.

Each of these things, again, is comprised of multiple subsystems.

And how was the communication between those silos, the individual silos?

So the content-wise, I said highly standardized interfaces, so it was very clear what has to happen on that interface.

Team wise, very limited because teams knew exactly that is my system.

That's the interface.

I need to comply to these specifications.

And if I do that, everything is fine.