Invisible Infrastructure with T-Mobile for Business

Summary

---

Revisionist History: "Invisible Infrastructure with T-Mobile for Business"

January 29, 2026 – Hosted by Malcolm Gladwell

---

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Mo Kadaba (Chief Marketing Officer, T-Mobile for Business), Guy Griggs (Senior VP, Ad Sales & Client Partnerships, CNN), and Steve Douglas (Senior VP, Service Operations, Siemens Energy) to delve into the hidden world of technological infrastructure—specifically, how 5G "network slicing" is revolutionizing industries by ensuring reliable, secure, and adaptive connectivity. The conversation explores how this "invisible" technology is changing the way frontline journalists and power plant crews work, and asks what the future holds as these platforms evolve.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Hidden Benefits of Technological Advancement

(03:24–04:29)

• Gladwell opens by highlighting that most transformative technologies operate behind the scenes, largely invisible to outsiders.
• He aims to surface these unseen innovations by inviting experts to share firsthand stories about "invisible infrastructure" changing their fields.

2. Understanding 5G Slicing & Super Mobile

What is Network Slicing?

• Mo Kadaba:
  • Explains "slicing" as allocating a dedicated portion of the 5G network customized for the "performance characteristics" required by specific business operations (04:29).

  “...if you have a network, can you take a slice of that network and create specific performance characteristics via that slice to ensure that businesses are able to drive the outcomes that are important to them.” — Mo Kadaba (04:29)

• Real-Life Use Case:
  • At the Las Vegas F1 event, slicing supported seamless ticketless entry and behind-the-scenes operations despite massive crowds (05:00).

Evolution of the Technology

• T-Mobile deployed its first large-scale 5G slice at F1 Las Vegas three years ago, and has since used slicing at events like the Ryder Cup and MLB All-Star Week (07:23).
• In 2025, two major slices launched: “T Priority” for first responders, and “Super Mobile” for business clients like CNN and Siemens Energy (07:58).

---

3. Slicing in the Field: Frontline Journalism at CNN

(08:54–16:48)

Challenges in News Delivery

• Guy Griggs:
  • Describes CNN’s shift from traditional TV and satellite trucks to digital-first, multiplatform reporting demanding always-on, adaptive connectivity (09:32).

  "Now... there are a million ways of reaching our audience. The landscape has just gotten so much more splintered and fragmented." — Guy Griggs (09:32)

How the Partnership Began

• CNN’s need: Reporters must reliably broadcast from anywhere—even disaster zones or dense events (11:04).
• T-Mobile approached CNN with slicing as a potential solution for live, bandwidth-hungry events.

Proof of Concept

• T-Mobile provided test devices to CNN teams for head-to-head field evaluations (12:55–14:12).

  “We had engineers and field journalists using the technology and just, you know, seeing whether the signal was stronger than some of the other partners that we work with…” — Guy Griggs (14:12)

• Result: Slicing outperformed competitors, leading CNN to equip all field journalists with the new tech (14:28).

Impact on Newsroom Practice

• Transforms the reporter’s phone into a “satellite truck in their hands,” vastly speeding up news gathering and dissemination (16:37).
• Example: At F1, instead of runners ferrying SD cards, photos instantly upload over slicing-enabled FTP, letting editors publish breaking images in real time (16:48).

---

4. Infrastructure in Energy: Siemens Energy’s Transformation

(17:39–24:51)

Field Operations Complexity

• Steve Douglas:
  • Siemens Energy services 2,200 power-generation units across 1,100 sites. Field crews (30–300 people/site) need constant access to technical resources, drawing comparisons to running a traveling mobile factory (18:03–19:36).
  • Historical challenges: Teams lugged boxes of manuals and relied on slow, unreliable communications—even mailing photos for remote engineering review (22:23).

Connectivity Revolution

• Now, 5G slicing enables live 4K video streaming from job sites, seamless collaboration with global engineering teams, instant document access, and efficient payroll/logistics (22:23–23:53).

  “I need whatever environment my people are working at to seem like they’re sitting at headquarters and have access to all the same information.” — Steve Douglas (23:53)

Business Value

• Reduces maintenance time, saves costs, and multiplies operational flexibility (23:12).
• Particularly crucial in remote plants, using 5G and satellite to guarantee connections (24:01).

---

5. Case Study Selection & Cross-Industry Impact

(25:43–27:02)

• T-Mobile intentionally pilots Super Mobile with high-impact partners (CNN, Siemens, F1) to demonstrate value in critical, visible applications.
• Approach: Identify customer “pain points” in industries where adaptive, secure connectivity is transformative.

---

6. Capabilities and Untapped Applications

(28:38–29:54)

• Super Mobile’s “three legs”:
  1. Slicing for adaptive, tailored bandwidth
  2. Built-in security for network-level protection
  3. Satellite capabilities for always-there connectivity, even in the wild
• Untapped use: Large-scale events, political conventions, remote government workers, and safety-led field operations.

---

7. The Potential to Rethink Entire Workflows

(29:54–33:48)

Changing the Nature of Work

• In both energy and journalism, connectivity advancements eliminate previously mandatory steps (e.g., walking back to trailers for manuals, waiting for photo runners).
• See-What-I-See: Real-time video lets engineers or journalists collaborate instantly, eliminating documentation delays or miscommunication (31:53).
• Next-Gen Journalism: CNN’s adaptive live news service (rolling out in 2026) will further extend mobile-first, AI-powered capabilities (32:48).

---

8. Visions of the Future: Wish Lists & AI

(33:48–42:43)

Disruption of Wired Networks

• Slicing replaces what used to require dedicated physical wiring, portending the transformation (and sunset) of wireline enterprise networking (34:08).
• Noted: Massive possibilities in healthcare, where EMS, ambulances, or bystanders can stream real-time video to experts during emergencies (35:06–36:48).

AI Integration

• AI will add diagnostics and predictive power, especially in maintenance (overlaid data, pattern recognition in field reports) (37:42).

  "We've got years worth of running data, we've got years worth of inspection reports. How do you overlay those... and have AI start doing smarter maintenance?" — Steve Douglas (37:42)

• Journalists may soon have AI-powered context—identifying objects or events in live footage to improve correctness and precision (41:32–42:09).

---

9. Reflections: Lessons from Invisible Infrastructure

(42:43–45:40)

• Unpredictable Innovation:
  • Even creators of new infrastructure seldom foresee all its applications.
• Efficiency is Always Lagging:
  • Seemingly optimized systems (news vans, satellite trucks) are upended by new platforms offering better, more flexible performance.
• A New Pillar of Trust:
  • Reliability becomes as central to trust as transparency and fairness; infrastructure that minimizes outages, misfires, and errors—especially in critical settings—builds organizational trust at a new level (44:38).

---

Memorable Quotes

• "This technology allows our reporters to literally have a satellite truck in their hands so they're not dealing with cups and strings and, like, waiting on lines for other reporters..."
  — Guy Griggs (16:37)

• “It's these sorts of conversations...that then gives us the ideas of how can we shape the technology and build the technology in a way that addresses the need.”
  — Mo Kadaba (43:30)

• "We are working towards a new definition of trust here... now we’re adding this fourth component of reliability. I can reduce the number of catastrophic power outages or system breakdowns. I can reduce the error rate of a journalist at the scene..."
  — Malcolm Gladwell (44:38)

---

Notable Moments & Timestamps

• Origin of Slicing at T-Mobile: (04:29–07:53)
• CNN’s Live Field Test: (12:55–14:46)
• “Satellite truck in your hand” analogy: (16:37–16:48)
• Siemens describes remote workflows then and now: (17:39–23:53)
• Business case selection strategies: (25:43–27:02)
• Potential for healthcare, government, future AI uses: (34:55–39:23)
• The evolution of reporting and trust: (41:32–44:38)

---

Conclusion

This episode exposes the often-unseen technological scaffolding—specifically, 5G slicing and adaptive connectivity—that now underpins mission-critical operations in news media and power generation. As Gladwell and guests underscore, the true impact of these advances will only emerge as industries reimagine their most fundamental workflows, accelerate innovation with AI, and transition to a new, reliability-centered definition of trust.

---

Transcript

[Guy Griggs]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

Guaranteed Human in today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal. T Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network according to the experts at OOKLA Speed Test. And they're using that network to launch Super Mobile. The first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built in security and seamless satellite coverage. With Super Mobile, your performance, security and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand. With built in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business. Supercharged. Learn [e-mail] Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky. Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance, coverage layers and security features. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Pushkin.

[Podcast Host]

This episode is a paid partnership with T Mobile for Business. One of the reasons I've enjoyed the revisionist history partnership with T Mobile for Business is that every time I sit for one of our periodic conversations, I learned something I would otherwise have not even thought about. The conversation you're about to hear falls into that category. In fact, as I introduce it to you, it sounds like the start of a three guys walk into a bar joke. It was a top executive from cnn, Guy Griggs. Steve Douglas from Siemens Energy, the person who runs the maintenance operations for one of the biggest power companies in the United States. I'm Mo Kadaba, the Chief Marketing Officer for T Mobile for Business. We sat down together in New York City not long ago and we talked about something called slicing, a technology T Mobile uses to help ensure that when someone absolutely needs a strong network connection, they can get a Strong network connection. 5G network slicing strengthens trust and connections across worldwide industries. Think about this next time you see a CNN correspondent reporting from some far flung remote location, or there's a massive blackout and you're waiting for someone to get the power back on. What you see in both those cases is a professional doing their job. What you don't see is a technology network behind the scenes that makes it possible for them to do their job. This conversation is is about telling the story of that invisible technological infrastructure. I found it fascinating, and I'm sure you will too.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

There's two ideas I want to explore today. The first one is something that I've been struck by, and I'm sure all of you guys have been struck by, which is that the benefits to technological advancement are largely hidden. In other words, only insiders know what the implications of them are from the outside. You can't observe from the outside and know how it changes a specific field unless you're in the field. One of the things I want to do today is have people in the field tell me about all the unexpected ways in which technology changes their business. The larger theme, though, is that we're going to be talking a lot today about infrastructure and this idea that infrastructure is more than simply a passive structural participant in innovation. But I want to start with Mo. We're talking, we're here today because we're talking about something special that T Mobile for Business is doing from a technological standpoint. I want you to describe what it is sort of to set up our conversation and to give us an example from your own world about how that's made a difference.

[Steve Douglas]

Thank you.

[Mo Kadaba]

First and foremost, great to be here with you today and it's great to see you again. So what T Mobile and T Mobile for Business have been doing is innovating our network and creating the most advanced 5G network, frankly, in America and likely on the planet. We call it 5G advanced capabilities. And then with our business customers, we're really bringing this capability to life. That's called slicing. And to your point, this is a term that not everyone knows, they don't know what it does. And slicing is just a way of thinking about, hey, if you have a network, can you take a slice of that network and create specific performance characteristics via that slice to ensure that businesses are able to drive the outcomes that are important to them. As an example, at the Formula One in Las Vegas, that happened a few weeks ago in November, that portion of that network, that slice, can be used for things like ticketless entry to speed up 300,000 people getting in so that they can enjoy the sport and the action. It can be used for back office operations. All the people working behind the scenes, they may be using push to talk devices, they may be using point of sale to make a sale. How do you ensure that that transaction, that traffic, that push to talk click happens when you have hundreds of thousands of people all in a small, limited space? And the answer to that is you dedicate a Slice or a portion of the network to that mission. And so slicing can be used for so many different things. As you mentioned, we're here with our friends from CNN from Siemens Energy. The ways that it can be used, frankly, are limitless and are really, really built to think through. How can T Mobile understand the pain points that our customers have, smash those pain points and help you deliver very specific outcomes? That's slicing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

A couple of questions about slicing before we get into Siemens Energy and cnn. First off, I want to dedicate a slice because that's a way of what, ensuring the reliability of those transactions.

[Mo Kadaba]

Exactly. So what's beautiful about slicing is it gives us the ability to use multiple knobs and levers. One can be dedicating a piece, one could be increasing the reliability or the performance of the network to adapt to the needs in real time. Others be. And we're getting a little bit more technical here. But latency, how quickly is that transaction happening? How quickly are you talking to the network and that signal coming back? Some transactions require super low latency and that's another knob we can turn. But at the heart of it, you can think about reliability and ensuring that the network adapts in real time to the needs of the business.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

When did you guys start develop slicing? This is how new?

[Mo Kadaba]

Great, great question. So T Mobile was the first company in America to Deploy what's called 5G standalone and 5G standalone enabled. This set of capabilities. The first slice at scale that we deployed was with F1 in Las Vegas three years ago. And ever since then there's been Ryder cup and Major League Baseball All Star Week as an example. All of these things have used slicing capability to ensure that the business can do what they want.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And is it an evolving technology? In other words, is the slicing of today better than the slicing of two years ago?

[Mo Kadaba]

Yeah, wonderful question. Just in 2025, we announced two very major first of their kind slices in the U.S. one that we launched in February of 2025 is called T Priority. And really what that does is provides a slice for first responders and those folks that support our first responder communities. Because at the end of the day, what matters to, you know, police and fire and ems, emergency medical is ensuring that the network is working for them at those times when an emergency is happening, when lots of first responders may be showing up at the same time to a given scene. So giving them the capacity that they need in real time and expanding it to support the number of first responders that are showing up. And then the second major slice that we launched this year is one called Super Mobile, and it's actually the one that both CNN and Siemens Energy are using. And we're going to get into that, I think, a bit more.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, yeah. Guy, tell us a little bit about what you do at CNN and how you came to be interested in working with T Mobile and using this Super Slice.

[Guy Griggs]

Yeah, sure. So I oversee all of our partnerships, advertising relationships across the country. I'm all about coming up with smart solutions that drive better business outcomes for our partners and our advertisers. We're going through this pivotal moment of transformation, and I'm glad to be overseeing the ad business as we, as we embark upon this.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

How has technology altered the way you do your work?

[Guy Griggs]

Oh, yeah. I mean, just taking a step back, the media landscape has changed drastically over the last, let's say, 13 years or so. You know, back in 2012, it was all about cable and broadcast TV. It was all about satellite trucks and fixed locations. And for me, it was all about trying to get as much money on to monetize those mediums as possible. Now, you know, whether it's podcasts or newsletters or streaming or linear and cable or events like, there are a million ways of reaching our audience. And the landscape has just gotten so much more splintered and fragmented. So now what we have to do is really meet audiences where they're at. And for me, I have to monetize all of those formats and platforms and mechanisms in a way that actually drives the business. So that's, I'd say, the biggest change. And with that, also, we're becoming a digital first direct to consumer brands. And so we're creating these standalone products that actually reach audiences across every screen, device and platform and reaches them where they're at. And that gets really interesting when you're dealing with marketers like T Mobile and delivering their messages in new and innovative ways.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I'm curious about the first conversations you had with T Mobile. What was the problem that you defined that you wanted to solve? And how did you see slicing as fitting into the this solution that you imagine?

[Guy Griggs]

So as, as we embark upon this digital transformation and to basically transform CNN into a brand of the future, we're trying to define the future of news. And so with that, our reporters really need to stay connected. You know, reporting live from a natural disaster or, you know, in a moment of celebration like New Year's Eve or Super bowl or July 4th or Thanksgiving or whatever that might be, or if they're in far flung places, you know, where there's not a good signal. We need to ensure that our audience gets delivered the information that matters most to them and does not skip a beat. And so as we're embarking upon this digital transformation, it only made sense to outfit our reporters with the best technology in the palm of their hands to ensure that they're capturing that information as it happens in real time. You know, with breaking news, you're either leading or you're following. And, you know, for us to have a competitive edge in this digital transformation that we're going upon, it was critical for us to have a trusted partner that was able to capture news reliably so that we don't break trust with our audiences and deliver what they need.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, I want you to jump in here because one of the interesting things here is that as I when you're speaking, Guy, I've been a journalist my whole life. I'm well aware of all the limitations of the various technologies I've used over the years. But the thing is, I have no insight into what is possible technologically. Right. I just know what I've been given. So I'm just curious, how does the process of educating a company like CNN into what's technologically possible work? Do you. Did someone at T Mobile like, call a guy up and say, hey, do you guys realize there's this thing out there that you may not have heard of? Like, I'm curious about how knowledge gets diffused in these marketplaces.

[Mo Kadaba]

What I loved about working with them is, like any large enterprise that's a little bit of prove it to me and show it to me. And so when Super Mobile hadn't yet even launched, when we started talking to cnn, but we knew that frontline journalism was such an incredible use case for all the reasons the guy articulated that, hey, when breaking news is happening, the camera that you have and the video camera that you have in your pocket on your phone may be that first way of that breaking news making it to the audience. And so we sat down and we were having a conversation about how slicing would enable, even in moments of congestion, in moments of emergency, would give them the intelligent, adaptive connectivity that they need for their frontline to be able to stream as well as all of those, the big moments like fourth of July, New Year's Eve, et cetera. And so what happened was they said, okay, prove it. So we gave them X number of test devices. They embedded them with video crews and news crews around the country, and then they, they put it to the stress test. They went and ran side by side, compares oh, really?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, you did it like.

[Guy Griggs]

Yeah, we did a test. Before we embarked upon this, we needed to make sure that the technology.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Tell me a little bit about the test.

[Guy Griggs]

Actually worked. I mean, we had engineers and field journalists using the technology and just, you know, seeing whether the signal was stronger than some of the other partners that we work with, telecommunications companies.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And it proves who shall remain nameless.

[Guy Griggs]

We will, yes, we won't name their names, but it proved to work and it proved to be steady. And it gave our tech and product teams the confidence and our newsroom to actually say, let's embark upon this. Let's outfit all of our field journalists with this technology because it's going to be critical in our news gathering and news reporting.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So it's like you're at some event and there's, there's some. I can, I can imagine there are, There are moments when there's 100 reporters in a scene and the networks might be incredibly congested.

[Mo Kadaba]

Yeah, it was both about congestion and areas with lots of demand, like New York City was one of the areas where the tests were happening.

[Guy Griggs]

It's important not only from a journalism standpoint, but it was important for a T Mobile and CNN relationship standpoint. It allowed us to deepen our relationship because it's a win, win, win. And it kind of sets a blueprint for how we want to be working with T Mobile more in the future. You know, the satellite to sell security that our journalists have while they're out in the field enables them to do the job that they need to do better than anybody else. Our audience wins because they don't skip a beat. And then T Mobile gets the opportunity to show up in a very meaningful and authentic way, in a trusted way where the audience knows that, you know, what they're seeing right now is powered by this incredible technology. And so it's something that we think is never been done before. Watershed and really demonstrative of where we want to go as a company moving forward.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I remember when I was starting out as a reporter of the Washington Post, I was given a. What was called a Trash 80, a Radio Shack. Like, calling it a computer is way too flattering. And it had two cups. Do you remember the cups? You ran to a payphone and you put the cups on each of the two things and then you.

[Mo Kadaba]

Tones.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You use tones to try. And if you were covering a big event, there'd be like three payphones like half a mile away, and then there'd be a line of reporters waiting to use the. And if you were trying to beat the competition, you just wouldn't leave the payphone. Yeah, you'd just stick there and, like, make the New York Times wait. I worked for the Washington Post.

[Guy Griggs]

Malcolm, you're dating yourself. This technology allows our reporters to literally have a satellite truck in their hands so they're not dealing with cups and strings and, like, waiting on lines for other reporters to finish.

[Mo Kadaba]

I'll give you a real example that was playing out at F1, which is the photographers from any news outlets. Their workflow was they would take pictures and then they would hand their SD card, the memory card from inside the camera, to a runner. The runner would then literally run to somewhere to upload the photos. What we're able to do with slicing technology is we've launched a solution that plugs directly into the camera and uses the slice and the 5G network so that in real time, every photo that's being taken is moving over file transfer protocol to an FTP site. The editors are then able to grab it, which means breaking news is able to happen even faster, and they're able to beat the competition to whatever that iconic next image will be. And getting it out to the eyes everywhere.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. Steve, I'm sorry, I feel we've been ignoring you. Before I get into the way Siemens Energy has worked with T Mobile, I'm curious about your own background. I'm assuming you're an engineer.

[Steve Douglas]

I'm an engineer, yep. Originally, yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And what kind of engineer, actually?

[Steve Douglas]

Marine engineer.

[Guy Griggs]

Interesting.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

How would you describe your current job with Siemens Energy?

[Steve Douglas]

I've got a great job with Siemens Energy. So my organization, my teams, we service the power plants across the United States. Power plants. No different than your car. Every so often, they have to do periodic maintenance. We show up with a crew of people, take the turbines, the generators apart, stem to stern, inspect them, repair them, modernize them, upgrade them, and then return to service to help power America. So last year, Siemens Energy equipment generated about 25% of electricity used in the United States. There's over 2,200 units spread out across 1100 sites in 48 states.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

2,200 units.

[Steve Douglas]

Correct.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

How many people work for you?

[Steve Douglas]

If in my organization, yeah, I have about 1500. And then I bring on about another 3000 contractors every year.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, wow. Basically, if a generator goes down somewhere or a power plant goes down somewhere, you're the person who gets called.

[Steve Douglas]

That's correct.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

How did you come to want to work with T Mobile for business? Tell me how that came about and what was it they offered you that you Needed.

[Steve Douglas]

We have teams on site. So when we go to a power plant, a small event for us might be 30 people on a site for 30 days. You know, a big event for us could be 300 people on site for six months. And it's all about that for six.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You might. You might be as on a site for as long as six months.

[Steve Douglas]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And over the course of that six months, you as. What are you. What are you doing? You're essentially taking it. You're taking the whole thing down and going through it.

[Steve Douglas]

Yeah, Take. Take it apart, rebuild it. You know, there might have been a. Some sort of damage to the equipment, waiting on other parts to show up. We've had events that have taken over a year on different sites. But for our people on site, you were comparing contrasting history. We used to have to show up with boxes and boxes of drawings and manuals. And the connectivity that we get now lets our people access our engineers globally, whether they're sitting in Germany, India, the US it allows them to talk to the factories. It allows them to access drawings, process, procedure. But then it also does things like lets us run payroll. I mean, it enables everything to happen. Because when we show up at these plants, we show up office trailers, bathrooms, cranes, tools, parts. None of it exists when we show up, and none of it's there when we leave. And we do that 300 times a year.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, yeah. So logistically, what you're running is something incredibly complicated. So walk me through. You've got this group of. You say as many as. You say as many as 60 or 300.

[Podcast Host]

Was the high.

[Steve Douglas]

Yeah. Potentially out of sight.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. So you show up and what. Walk me through what the first couple of steps are and how this kind of connectivity would make a difference.

[Steve Douglas]

I mean, we hired union workers. We're partnered with the UBC and hire Millwright. So first thing is sign up. Then it's go to safety training, go to site orientation training. Customer will bring the unit down, lockout, tag out, make sure that all the systems are safe to work on. Then take the machine apart. As the machine's coming apart, you're inspecting every piece. Is it in the condition it should be? Is it worn? Is it broken? Does it need to be replaced? Are we modernizing it?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

These machines are how big? Give us a sense of the.

[Steve Douglas]

From what I work on, you know, on a small side, it's about 80 megawatts. On. On the. On the large size, up to like 1500 megawatts. So 1500 megawatts power, a million and a Half homes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Douglas]

And you know, there's, there's nothing we work on that you're moving with hand, everything's being moved with a crane.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. You're dealing with a complex piece of machinery. You're a German based company, you're, you, you had to show up with boxes and boxes of manuals and you had to be in communication with people who presumably designed the machines back in Europe.

[Steve Douglas]

Yep.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Talk a little bit about the difficulties of that earlier paradigm.

[Steve Douglas]

Going to the earliest parts of my career, if you wanted to send a picture or a sketch of what you found at the site, you actually had to send it by mail, you know, and turn it around and then, you know, you could fax it and then all of a sudden you could attach a digital picture to an electronic communication. And you know, now with this technology, you know, we can live stream in 4K and hey, this is what I'm looking at. Do you see this? Okay. Hey, I want to see from this view, you know, in the technology just allows that real time, regardless of where the people are sitting. You know, collaboration as well as access to all the technical information.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. What's the big payoff for you? Is it that you can now speed up the process of doing these, this kind of maintenance?

[Steve Douglas]

Absolutely. For the customer, the owner of the power plant, whether it's a utility, an independent power producer or some sort of municipality, you know, bringing that unit back sooner is beneficial to them. Getting my crews off site sooner saves me money, lets me send them to another site. So it's all about the speed. And the last thing we want to be slowed down with is communicating with engineering, getting that technical answer, getting that support. I need whatever environment my people are working at to seem like they're sitting at headquarters and have access to all the same information.

[Mo Kadaba]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So T Mobile gives you now able to equip all of those technicians with essentially a dedicated slice, a Super Mobile dedicated slice.

[Steve Douglas]

And you know, as you can imagine, you know, maybe unlike what people are reporting, you know, everything that we're happening is, is kind of more remote. You know, your, your power plants are generally found in, in your city centers and your hubs. So it's that connectivity, whether it's 5G or satellite, lots of different options, but it's connecting our people to what they need.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And how did you find out about Super Mobile?

[Steve Douglas]

It was kind of an initially organic conversation. They came to us, said, hey, we think we've got something for you. We are always trying to get our people that bandwidth on site and we Brought them the problem like what can you do? And that's what started the conversation for T Mobile.

[Mo Kadaba]

I mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. We start with what are our customers pain points. And we knew with Siemens Energy remote workforce, worker safety, efficiency were things that were incredibly important. And so as we were designing and building super mobile as a solution, we really thought through what customers, what industries do we think will really benefit from this value proposition and these pain points that we can come smash? And this is why the conversations with CNN around Frontline journalists began. This is why the conversations with seamless energies around remote workers working in some of the most remote parts of America began. And it was so exciting for us to see that yeah, there was a there there and we could really help our customers win.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The case studies, you've got like F1. Yeah, you've got like Frontline journalists, you know, reporting on. You've got like the power plants that we can't live without enrolling out. Something like this. Do you choose early case studies that you think will kind of capture the attention of. I mean there seems to be an art behind who you're.

[Mo Kadaba]

This, this is why I love business and B2B. I mean like just listening to these stories about solutions that are serving Americans, whether the end consumer that's receiving the electricity or the power or the energy or the person at home or on the go who's consuming news, content, everything in our lives in some way is touched by business. And so absolutely, when we're building any solution we're always thinking about, okay, what are the pain points? What are the specific verticals or industries that could benefit from this? And then because we're deep in the B2B, we're able to bring industry experts to the table internally and trusted partners and customers to have a conversation on, hey, does this really achieve and smash the pain point that you have? And so the answer is yeah, absolutely. And it's a lot of fun too.

[Podcast Host]

We'll be right back.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal. T Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network according to the experts at Ookla Speed Test. And they're using that network to launch Super Mobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built in security and seamless satellite coverage. With Super Mobile, your performance, security and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high Demand with built in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business. Supercharged. Learn [e-mail] Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky. Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance coverage layers and security features. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

[Podcast Host]

And we're back.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Who needs this technology? Who hasn't adopted it?

[Mo Kadaba]

What I love about Super Mobile is that there's three key capabilities. So let's start there. One is the slicing that we've talked a lot about and I think of that as intelligent adaptive connectivity that meets the performance and real time requirements of businesses. The second one that we haven't got into very much is built in security to ensure that as part of any layered cybersecurity defense posture that our businesses are taking, we're helping protect also at the network layer. And then the third one is the satellite capabilities that allow people to communicate from anywhere that they're at. And as I think about that, the one that we haven't really gotten into is events, concerts, political conventions, things like that, where the slicing elements of it I think really, really can help. And then on the satellite side, I still think there's opportunities around workers that are deeply remote outside of energy. Government employees in like national parks as an example, that couldn't use the satellite capabilities in their everyday job and really for safety purposes to make sure that in one way or another they're always on the grid.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. Steve, I had to come back to you for a moment. I'm curious about as you've kind of experienced this technology, have thought about how it affects your workflow and all these. Is there a point at which you start to reimagine what your these job sites look like? I asked this question because I remember we did a T mobile conversation once with these firefighters. Remember those guys?

[Mo Kadaba]

Oh yes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And the firefighters were completely rethought the way they fought fires once they had this technology because they would go, instead of having everything from directed from a command center off site, they would just put a server in the back of a pickup truck and go directly to the fire site and have all the decisions made there because now they had connectivity. So this what seemed like a relatively simple Shift in the infrastructure completely changed the way they thought about firing fighters and fighting fires. And all of a sudden the firefighters on the scene had to make, were able to make all kinds of decisions they never made before. I'm curious about, could you talk about, you must have thought about, wait a second, this means I could do this, this and this, that I've never done before.

[Guy Griggs]

Yeah.

[Steve Douglas]

The idea of a tablet in an engineer, a technician or a craftsman's hand, you know, with the work instructions, the ability to pull a drawing versus walking back to a trailer to do that and then the ability to really just collaborate on the deck plates with an engineering organization, be it in Europe or somewhere else, it's all right in your hands. And that goes into changing and streamlining what we're doing on the customer sites and ultimately eliminating things.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's really interesting. Give me a concrete example of a step you could eliminate.

[Mo Kadaba]

You know, and one example I love is the. See what I see, right?

[Steve Douglas]

Yeah. If we were inspecting a row of blades, you know, you could, instead of me going through and documenting what, what each blade is, you know, taking pictures of it, go through and write a meticulous report. Hey, I just visually inspected these. Going to let you visually inspect them with me. Okay. Hey, they're acceptable as is versus, you know, getting into dimensioning and visual inspections. Just to communicate to an engineering organization.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mo Kadaba]

So like with the camera on the phone, right. Via super mobile now, literally you can, to use a consumer term, FaceTime in someone, an expert and let them in real time see what the technician on site is seeing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And a system guy just. Is there a point where we start to reimagine what covering an event looks like when we radically improve the kind of underlying connectivity? Connectivity.

[Guy Griggs]

We launched last month a new streaming service. It's this adaptive live news experience that's designed for the modern news consumer. Live when it matters, deep when it counts, available anytime, anywhere. It's basically having the entire CNN experience in the palm of your hand on the phone. And with that, it's going to afford us the opportunity to do some really cool things with our journalists. We think in this new age of AI, headlines are going to be commoditized. You can get them anytime, any place, anywhere. Right. But people trust people and we have some of the biggest world renowned journalists on the planet, like people that are anchors and reporters and you know, that millions and millions of people really trust. It's taking the news reporting to the next level. These capabilities aren't afforded right now within this new streaming product. But they're on the roadmap in 2026 and we're hoping that T mobile will be the underpinnings of technology that allow us to do all of that. So that's taking it to the next level.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

A question for all three of you. What would, what, what do you want next? So all of you have described a technology that allows an existing set of processes to be done much more reliably in. Is there something, what's on your wish list? Where could the technology go?

[Mo Kadaba]

Love this question. I mean, at the heart of it, slicing is replacing what used to take wires to do. You mentioned it at the beginning, which was fixed locations in satellite trucks. We talked about F1 at the end of the day. Over the last X number of decades has been this massive transition and transformation from needing to physically connect everything with a wire to now we can use slicing to emulate what wireline networks used to do on mobile networks. So as I think about what's next, it's really about how much more can wireline networks be disrupted to solve real challenges and create value for business customers. And that's what I spend a lot of my time building on.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You haven't mentioned mo. I keep waiting for you to mention health care because I feel like the, the, the, the implications here for health care are huge.

[Mo Kadaba]

Yes, yes. We talked actually once before a little bit about health care. But what I for health care, the way we think about it is one, emergency medical services are first responders.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's right.

[Mo Kadaba]

So they absolutely have access to and we see them using the T priority slice. But then where the magic happens is the integration of that slicing technology for the moving vehicle, the tablets in the vehicle helping save lives, and the ability to transfer and transition that data off of the EMS solution directly into the hospital or the healthcare facility where they're showing up. And I, I have multiple examples I could take you through of hospitals that have deployed 5G purpose built coverage usually to replace something like WI fi, to enable massive amounts of data much faster at lower latency, fully integrated with the EMS community around them to do their thing.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I had a conversation, a heartbreaking conversation with a guy, an ER doc in Chicago, who is training kids in the kind of rudimentary principles of first response. Because on the south side of Chicago it's the public who comes upon a gunshot victim first. Right. And there's might be a 5 or 10 minute window where some civilian is just sitting with the body and he was trying to teach them about, you know, compress the wound or Whatever. But I can imagine. Couldn't you imagine a universe where they just take their phone out.

[Mo Kadaba]

Exactly.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And take a picture of a video of everything and that's sent immediately to somebody who can tell them in real time what to do?

[Mo Kadaba]

Exactly. We're thinking about the Siemens energy example of what I see. I fundamentally believe and know that over time, what we're going to have is just overlays. So you're going to use the camera on your phone and on your phone, as you're pointing at something, it will show you the schematics or it will show you how to help a patient in real time with instructions. So someone can be holding it, someone else can be looking at it and it tells you the thing where I thought you were going to go with the thing we have not yet talked about, which in this year we haven't talked about AI at all.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That was my next. That was my next. I had a. It was. I thought that Steve would be the natural one to. Because clearly that's. You were talking about connecting to the guy back in Germany. Yes, but maybe the thing that you're doing with your. With this connectivity is bringing in AI and having diagnostics that way. Right. Am I right?

[Steve Douglas]

We don't know what. We don't know yet with it, you know, but the promise of just. We've got years worth of running data, we've got years worth of inspection reports. How do you overlay those two together and have AI start doing smarter maintenance, doing more predictive maintenance, deferring maintenance based off of what we can see with the ad, but just getting ready for what? The infrastructure and the power to build this next wave of AI for the us. It's what's driving our industry right now.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The data demands of having a kind of open interaction with. I'm assuming they're far greater than interaction with a human being. If I'm Steve or I'm one of Steve's people and I'm on site and I have some problem and I want to be able to contact the specialist in Germany or I want to have access to an LLM that's like got all the manuals and one is much more data intensive than the other, Right?

[Mo Kadaba]

Absolutely. It really boils down to are you using text, are you using voice, or are you using video? Because the AI compute itself, that's its own server, its own mechanism that's sitting and processing. But then the mechanism by which you're bringing that information to and from is where it gets more intensive based on the modality that you're using. So if it's a chat AI, it could be relatively limited bandwidth that's required voice bit more and then video the most.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, yeah, Guy, have you thought about that in the context of. Is that a challenge or a question that comes up with at CNN about.

[Guy Griggs]

Specifically or just the future of reporting?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

No, because I was thinking in this conversation, you know, we're talking about, what we're really talking about with all of these conversations is we are making, we are increasing the sophistication of the point of connection between whoever has this device and, or whatever and the problem they're trying to solve. And with journalists, that's an incredibly fascinating question because you can imagine a situation where someone is observing something and AI is helping them understand what they're seeing.

[Guy Griggs]

I agree. I think that all of these advances in technology are just going to enable us to do what we do on steroids. Much, much better. It's also going to enable us to potentially provide value or utility to the general public in society. So just getting back to the thing like allowing us to do things better. We defined real time journalism on cable TV 45 years ago. We were the first network to have 24, 7 news. And that costs a lot of money to do. Right?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Guy Griggs]

And so what we're hoping is with all of these advances in technology and literally not needing those satellite trucks and not needing that camera crew and literally having all of this in the palm of your hand, it'll allow us to do that much more efficiently. And then lastly, I would say with the utility piece which is kind of, you know, this hasn't been vetted. This is just my thoughts, like let's say we are running towards the fire or running towards the flood and we're the first on location and we see people that are in need. Is there a way that we through Supermobil can connect to the local EMS or could assess what's going on and say there's a need for X, Y and Z in this moment. So we're not just reporting what's going on, but we're also able to help solve for whatever disaster or problem is happening at that time. So that's kind of like the next step where, you know, I was thinking.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Of war reporting about how war reporting, which is the most confusing and kind of mistake prone the idea that.

[Steve Douglas]

A.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Reporter on, on the scene could be taking video and having, you know, identify that was that plane you see was this kind of plane that belonged to this country and not that country. And that that missile you see Was this kind of missile, that kind of thing improves the fidelity of the on site reporting and has all kinds of ripple effects downstream. Right. Because we have a less corrupted data from the source.

[Guy Griggs]

Totally.

[Mo Kadaba]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. We should probably wrap up. But there's a couple of themes I wanted to kind of end on. The first one is that the effects of technological innovation are unpredictable and unknowable. I don't imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, when you guys were coming up with slicing and with super mobile, you did not anticipate all the ways in which the technology could be used by your customers. You had some of it a sense, I think probably. But when you listen to Guy and Steve, am I right? You hear things that you didn't think that was what it was going to be about.

[Mo Kadaba]

That's exactly right. I mean, again, thinking about the arc of time here, 20 years ago, no one predicted slicing was coming, you know, arguably five years ago. No one saw the rise of AI in the way that it's actually played out from about three years ago. But yeah, as we're was, we're building mobile networks and as we're thinking about the future of now 5G to 6G and what are those use cases and how can they serve businesses 100%? It's these sorts of conversations on hey, what's going on in your business and what challenges are you dealing with and what are you trying to fix or address this year? That then gives us the ideas of how can we shape the technology and build the technology in a way that addresses the need.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Point number two. Reflection number two from our conversation is that the systems that we have built as a modern economy are probably a lot less efficient than we think. In other words, we assume we're doing a pretty good job. Then a new technology comes along, we're like, oh, actually you could do it way better. Right? So just when you think you've optimized a system, you think that, oh, I send a reporter, I got a satellite truck behind the reporter, we're fine, this is the way we do news. And actually no, there's a way better.

[Guy Griggs]

You know, and just in terms of like storytelling formats, you know, super mobile will enable vertical video, which is becoming really hot right now. It's the predominant way that people are consuming video on social media, etc. We're just getting into that game and we're going to be able to tell these visually arresting stories in live format in vertical video mobile first storytelling, leveraging that. And I think the future, you know, the best is yet to come. I have no idea what it will avail, but I just, I already see some future applications of where this could go.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, and then the third thing, and maybe the most important thing is the thing I alluded to earlier is we are working towards a new definition of trust here that we've been thinking about trust for generations now as being about transparency and fairness and predictability. But now we're adding this fourth component of reliability. I can reduce the number of catastrophic power outages or system breakdowns. I can reduce the error rate of a journalist at the scene of a thing. And that, that may be that new additional, that new way of addressing reliability can enhance trust maybe as much as the other sort of three traditional pillars of trust enhancement, which is a very, very intriguing thought. Anyway, thank you. This has been fascinating. Thanks to all of you. An unlikely pairing that proves not so unlikely in the end.

[Guy Griggs]

Thanks so much Ranko.

[Mo Kadaba]

Good seeing you.

[Podcast Host]

This episode was made in partnership with T Mobile For Business and iHeartMedia. Special thanks to Mo Kataba, Chief Marketing Officer, T Mobile for Business Guy Griggs, Senior Vice President, Ad Sales and Client Partnerships at cnn Steve Douglas, Senior Vice President, Service Operations, Siemens Energy and the entire production crew at iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Nina Bird Lawrence and Lucy Sullivan. Editing by Karen Shakurji Mastering by Marcelo d'. Oliveira Our Executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Glatwell.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal. T Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network according to the experts at OOKLA Speed Test. And they're using that network to launch Super Mobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built in security and seamless satellite coverage. With Super Mobile, your performance, security and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand. With built in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business. Supercharged. Learn [e-mail] Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky. Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance coverage layers and security features. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

[Guy Griggs]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Mo Kadaba]

Guaranteed Human.