Pioneering Cloud-Native and AI-Driven Telecom Innovation

Your Professional Journey

Q: Looking back at your career in telecommunications, what pivotal experiences have shaped your current role and expertise in network architecture and innovation?

Looking back, two experiences stand out as especially formative. The first was leading the IP Networks Division at Telefónica R&D during a period of rapid technological change. That role gave me a global perspective on how large, complex networks operate —their challenges, limitations, and, most importantly, the many opportunities for innovation that appear when you truly understand the problems and keep an eye on emerging technologies.

The second was being part of the team that pioneered Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), first within Telefónica and later at an industry level through the foundation of the ETSI NFV group. From the outset, it was clear this initiative would reshape telecommunications, shifting network functions from hardware to software and opening the door to more flexible, scalable operations.

Together, these experiences —seeing both how to make networks more efficient and how to transform them through virtualization— have been central to my current role and continue to guide my approach to network architecture and innovation.

Q: What aspects of your current work do you find most fulfilling, and how have your multidisciplinary experiences influenced your approach to solving industry challenges?

What I find most fulfilling in my current work is the chance to operate at the crossroads of disciplines such as network architecture, cloud computing, and software development. This multidisciplinary view provides alternative ways to approach challenges, drawing on established practices from the cloud and software worlds and adapting them to telecommunications. When adopted thoughtfully, these methods can deliver significant benefits to our industry.

Equally rewarding is the human side of the work. Leading and mentoring talented teams, collaborating across diverse cultures, and learning from different perspectives have been as enriching as the technical challenges themselves. It is especially motivating to see how collective effort, applied to cutting-edge technologies, can shape the evolution of our industry in meaningful ways.

Industry Insights

Q: From your perspective, what are the most transformative trends currently shaping the future of network infrastructure and connectivity in Europe?

The trends shaping network infrastructure in Europe are part of a global transformation, yet certain aspects stand out in the European context.

One is the push for digital sovereignty, which is fueling interest in local data centers, edge computing, and European cloud ecosystems. This creates opportunities for telecom operators to play a stronger role in the computing landscape, especially as networks and cloud services may become more seamlessly integrated. In this context, the adoption of cloud-native architectures and software-centric approaches will be key to overcoming traditional silos between networks, data centers, and applications.

Another important trend is the growing emphasis on open standards and interoperability. Beyond fostering innovation and collaboration, this shift should ensure that European operators can rely on a diverse set of suppliers and technologies with reduced friction —an increasingly important priority given the known risks of over-relying on a limited set of proprietary technologies.

Finally, I cannot avoid mentioning AI. While practical adoption in telco is still at an early stage, its potential to transform network management is enormous, from anomaly detection to assisted decision-making and proactive optimization. Europe has much to contribute in this space, and the coming years will be decisive.

Q: How do you see the role of open standards and interoperability evolving in the context of next-generation networks and smart environments?

Open standards and interoperability are becoming more critical than ever in the context of next-generation networks and smart environments —and we now have more tools than ever to achieve them. Beyond traditional, formal standardization processes, a vibrant ecosystem of open-source projects is driving collaboration and accelerating innovation in the telecom sector. Open source is increasingly valuable as a complement to formal standards, since well-managed projects reduce uncertainty around reference implementations and provide industry-ready solutions that can be quickly adopted.

In practice, standards and open source projects are collaborating more than ever. Projects such as Kubernetes, which have become de facto standards in their domains, are now serving as starting points for formal standardization. This dynamic is particularly relevant for next-generation networks, where many emerging standards assume —explicitly or implicitly— the presence of widely adopted open-source technologies. The fact that these solutions evolve with contributions from far beyond the telecom sector enriches the ecosystem, increases the pace of innovation, and helps ensure that networks are better aligned with the broader digital landscape.

Q: Sustainability is increasingly central to telecom strategies; what innovative approaches or overlooked opportunities do you believe could help operators reduce environmental impact while enhancing performance?

Many of the key levers for sustainability in telecom are already well recognized, but as with any optimization effort, it is more of a journey than a final destination.

A clear example is the migration from copper to fiber, where Telefónica has been a European leader. Beyond improving network performance, this transition has delivered substantial reductions in energy consumption and environmental impact. Similar modernization efforts and legacy system shutdowns are likely to bring further savings in the coming years.

Looking ahead, I see significant potential in applying AI and machine learning to energy-efficient network management —optimizing resource allocation, reducing consumption, and enabling more proactive operations. Of course, this comes with the challenge of ensuring that the energy footprint of AI workloads themselves does not offset these gains. Still, I remain optimistic that, with careful design, AI can become a powerful ally in making telecom networks both more sustainable and more efficient.

Your NETWORK X Participation

Q: At Network X, what key themes or insights are you hoping to share with attendees, and why are these particularly timely or relevant today?

I will be participating on a session on the opportunities that cloud-native infrastructures and applications bring to the telecom industry. Beyond the initial wave of hype that often accompanies new technologies, we are now reaching a stage where these approaches can genuinely transform how networks are operated.

In particular, the adoption of GitOps and intent-based technologies may open the door to a more efficient and reliable way of managing telecom infrastructures. We are moving away from orchestrating a rigid “choreography” of steps and conditions —often difficult to replicate and highly technology-dependent— towards declarative models where the desired state is defined at a higher level of abstraction and continuously reconciled in a closed loop. This allows configurations and requirements to be applied consistently across different platforms and clouds, even in highly distributed environments.