Michael Bird

So let's talk about the new system then.

How have you gone about upgrading and what's changed?

What's different?

Is some of the applications tricky to migrate away from dedicated hardware?

Because mobile technology, cellular technology has been around for decades.

Billing systems probably have been around for decades.

Because I guess the interesting thing about telco infrastructure is that your infrastructure sort of has to talk to your competitors' infrastructure to some extent.

And you can't just be like, wow, let's just update to something that's a bit more modern because presumably that won't necessarily communicate correctly with other networks in other countries.

And the other thing that is maybe particularly unique to your industry is the fact that it's critical national infrastructure.

You're providing service for emergency services.

That cannot go down.

Exactly.

So from a migration perspective, there must have been a moment where you had to switch a new system on and switch the old system off.

So how did you manage that?

Was that quite a challenging process?

I guess avoiding downtime is really important.

The new way of structuring your system, does that help to avoid downtime?

When it comes to automation, how much the new system is automated compared to the old one?

Where do you see the future of the telco industry?

I guess like relating from a technological perspective, there's going to be 6G and 7G and those continual changes, like how is that going to impact your job, the wider industry as well?