Mplify Member Summit – Americas | Recordings & Presentations
All Mplify members can access the complete collection through the Mplify Member Portal, including additional recordings, workday sessions, and downloadable slide decks.
Summit Agenda
Simply click below to see that day’s planned agenda. Updated often so please check back.
Wednesday, 23 Sept 2026
State of the Industry, Mplify Vision, Strategy & Work Plans
8:45
Opening Remarks
Kick off the Summit with a review of Summit objectives, themes, opportunities for participation and Mplify highlights as we head into the final quarter of 2026.
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Kevin Vachon
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9:00
NaaS for the Agentic AI Era: Mplify Vision, Strategy and Roadmap
AI is rapidly changing how networks are built, operated, and consumed. This session explores Mplify’s strategic vision for the agentic AI era and the role of automation and ecosystem collaboration in enabling AI-ready connectivity. Pascal lays out Mplify’s NaaS Federation concept, the market need, why Mplify as leader and initial implementation plans.
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Pascal Menezes
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9:30
Mplify Work in Progress Report & Getting Involved
Mplify is evolving how member work is organized and advanced across the alliance. This discussion looks at new approaches to collaboration, execution, tooling, and roadmap development designed to help members move faster and work more effectively. We’ll summarize efforts in the key work areas of NaaS for AI, Federation, Agentic LSO and new Cybersecurity Certification efforts.
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MODERATOR
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LSO Co-Chair: Michał Łączyński
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Marketing Co-Chair: Divesh Gupta
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CBC Co-Chair: Antonella Sanguineti
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TCC Co-Chair: Samaresh Nair
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9:55
Panel | Evolving Certification for the NaaS for AI Era: Carrier Ethernet, SASE and Beyond
As networks evolve to support increasingly demanding AI workloads, certification provides industry leaders with a powerful way to demonstrate capabilities, build customer confidence and differentiate in the market. Service providers and technology companies will share the benefits they have gained from Carrier Ethernet and SASE certification, from validating performance, interoperability and security to strengthening credibility and demonstrating readiness for NaaS and AI-ready infrastructure.
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MODERATOR
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Dawn Howell
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TCC Co-Chair: Samaresh Nair
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Chetan Narang
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10:10
NaaS State of the Industry – Analysts’ Perspectives
Leading industry analysts that are independent judges of our 2026 NaaS Excellence Awards, join Mplify Principal Analyst Stan Hubbard to discuss industry progress as evidenced by this year’s record number of award submissions and provide their perspectives on the exciting year ahead.
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MODERATOR
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Ray Mota
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Steve Thomas
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Brian Washburn
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Greg Bryan
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State of the Alliance and Voice of the Members
10:55
State of the Alliance Fireside Chat
Hosted by Mplify’s Chair, the Co-CEOs share perspectives on Alliance industry positioning and value proposition. Most importantly, they examine key accomplishments and priorities, imperatives and milestones for the year ahead.
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Daniele Mancuso
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Franck Morales
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INTERVIEWED BY
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11:15
Voice of the Members – Open Audience Discussion
An interactive discussion where members share perspectives, priorities, and implementation challenges directly with Mplify leadership. The session is designed to encourage open dialogue around what the industry needs next and where the alliance should focus moving forward.
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Daniele Mancuso
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Franck Morales
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Pascal Menezes
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Kevin Vachon
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NaaS in Action – Americas Perspectives
11:30
Thought Leadership Perspective | The Network That Provisions Itself: A Network-as-a-Service Vision
Enterprises spin up compute in seconds and still wait weeks for the connectivity underneath it. Comcast Business Chief Product Officer Bob Victor makes the case that the delay is a coordination problem rather than a network problem, and lays out the Network as a Service architecture the company is building toward.
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Bob Victor
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11:45
Panel | The Network at Your Service: The Rise of the Programmable Network
As AI, multi-cloud, and distributed applications reshape enterprise IT, the network must evolve from a connectivity layer into an intelligent, programmable service. In this panel, leaders from Lumen and Alkira will explore how Network-as-a-Service is advancing beyond transport to deliver orchestration, automation, visibility, and control across clouds, users, applications, and infrastructure. The discussion will examine what enterprises need from NaaS in the years ahead, including greater agility, operational simplicity, and the ability to dynamically adapt network services to business demands. Join us for a forward-looking conversation on the future of the programmable network and what NaaS must become by 2027 and beyond.
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MODERATOR
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Andre Laurent
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David Klebanov
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John Speranza
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13:30
Thought Leadership Perspective | Trusting Strangers: From Trusted Cognitive Transit to Trusted Agentic Federation
As AI evolves from answering questions to acting autonomously, networks must evolve beyond connectivity to enable trusted, secure interaction across enterprises, clouds, countries, and service providers. Building on Sparkle’s vision of Trusted Cognitive Transit, this session explores the emergence of Trusted Agentic Federation and how federated NaaS platforms can enable secure, interoperable agent-to-agent collaboration across organizational and geographic boundaries. The discussion will examine the role of identity, trust fabrics, security, and verifiable autonomy in the future AI economy—and how the Mplify Alliance can help enable trusted, automated digital ecosystems at scale.
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Daniele Mancuso
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13:45
Thought Leadership Perspective | The AI-Grade Network: From Connectivity to Intelligence
AI is changing what enterprises require from their networks. AI-grade networking must deliver an intelligent, programmable, secure, and converged foundation that simplifies connecting locations, clouds, applications, and AI workloads, while providing workload-aware intelligence, governance, and automated operations to improve visibility and optimize performance and cost.
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Tony Guillory
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14:00
Demonstration | Own the AI Gateway
GPU capacity is exploding, but most service providers are watching the AI infrastructure boom happen around them, not through it. In this session, MaiaEdge demos a reference architecture that turns service providers into the gateway between distributed GPU clusters and the customers who need them. With Layer 2 connectivity over any transport and instant interconnection, service providers can connect customers to GPUs without new builds or custom configuration. Stop watching from the sidelines, become the AI gateway, and monetize the boom.
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Abilash Menon
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14:15
Thought Leadership Perspective | AI Intent Is Not Network Authority: Zero Trust for Agentic Traffic
Mplify’s NaaS for AI roadmap asks the network to authenticate and authorize AI agents and models, not only users and devices, and to contain a misbehaving agent. Both require a decision networks have never had to make: whether a requester that generates its own intent gets authority to act.
The principle this session follows is that AI-generated intent must never automatically become network authority. Every agent, tool, and high-impact action should be explicitly trusted, policy-controlled, observable, and reversible. The session works through agent identity, segmentation and containment, and continuous authorization, asking of each what evidence would show it working. It draws on SecureIQLab’s published validation of twelve cloud security services to separate what this design can prove today from what it cannot.
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Cameron Camp
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14:30
Fireside Chat | The Verizon Journey to Wholesale Partner Automation
Verizon Partner Solutions (VPS) is one of the world’s largest wholesale operators, with a diverse variety of go-to-market channels. Over many years, VPS has invested heavily in a state-of-the-art partner exchange platform, delivering extensive portal and API capabilities, with customer service as top of mind. Scott Melanson leads this initiative and will outline Verizon’s journey to partner APIs, the role that Mplify has played, and discuss what’s next along the journey to automation.
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Scott Melanson
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INTERVIEWED BY
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14:45
Demonstration | Quantum Safe NaaS Connectivity in the AI Era
As AI workloads drive an unprecedented volume of sensitive data across edge, cloud, and data center environments, enterprises increasingly need connectivity that is not only secure and future-ready, but also compliant with tightening regulatory requirements. This session showcases RAD’s quantum-safe MACsec encryption and hybrid key distribution, demonstrating how service providers can deliver scalable, standards-based, enterprise-ready secure NaaS that is ready for today’s compliance landscape.
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Ron Insler
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15:00
Thought Leadership Perspective | Latin American Digital Infrastructure Market
Orchest will provide a top-down view of the Latin American digital infrastructure market, offering insights into regional developments, industry priorities, and opportunities for greater collaboration. The session will explore how standards and automation can help accelerate market development and strengthen engagement across the LATAM ecosystem.
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Jeremy Villalobos
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NaaS in Action – Global Developments and Insights
15:35
Panel | Building the Interconnection Ecosystem: How Marketplaces are Enabling the Next Generation of NaaS
As enterprises adopt AI, multi-cloud, and distributed architectures, they increasingly expect network services to be as easy to discover and consume as cloud services. This is driving greater collaboration across the connectivity ecosystem, supported by open APIs, automation, and industry standards.
This panel will discuss how digital marketplaces, API-driven automation, and ecosystem partnerships are simplifying the way network services are discovered, purchased, and delivered. Participants will share practical examples of how these approaches improve customer experiences, increase operational efficiency, and create new growth opportunities.
Attendees will gain insights into how ecosystem collaboration and automation are helping shape the future of Network as a Service (NaaS).
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MODERATOR
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Dawn Howell
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Mary Stanhope
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Christian Nascimento
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15:55
Thought Leadership Perspective | Independent Validation: From Vendor Claims to Measurable Trust
As enterprises adopt Network-as-a-Service, they need objective evidence that network and security solutions perform as promised. This session explores how independent testing can validate security products across dynamic and continuously changing environments. We will demonstrate how AI-powered test agents can rapidly run test scenarios, execute repeatable assessments, and convert the results into actionable insights. This approach helps vendors strengthen their products while enabling enterprise buyers to verify claims, compare competing solutions, and apply independent evidence to security planning and risk management.
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Ahmed Garhy
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16:10
Panel | Building Resilient Networks for the AI-Driven Enterprise
Vodafone will host a panel discussion to explore how resilient, secure, on-demand and high-performance networks are enabling enterprise AI transformation and the next phase of Network-as-a-Service. The discussion will examine how LEO strengthens always-on connectivity and how networks and security must evolve to support deterministic AI workloads at scale while addressing cybersecurity, compliance and operational & digital CX challenges.
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MODERATOR
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Mark Bennett
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Steve Thomas
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Alexander Dmytriiev
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Ali Shaikh
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16:30
Thought Leadership Perspective | Cracking the NaaS Ecosystem Automation Challenge using AI
Today’s NaaS provider offerings are mostly limited to overlay, on-net and cloud connectivity services. However, customers need a rich set of end-to-end network services that connect their sites, people, agents and systems regardless of location. To address the gap, NaaS providers must extend the reach and range of services they offer by integrating partner provider services. Ecosystem automation is the means to do so, but it is highly complex. AI can help providers overcome this complexity. In this session, we will share insights on how AI can be used to build and maintain an automated ecosystem of partner providers.
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Michael Kearns
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16:45
Thought Leadership Perspective | AI‑as‑a‑Service Through the Console Connect Fabric
This session showcases how PCCW Global’s Console Connect platform is redefining enterprise networking by merging AI‑driven automation with AI‑ready infrastructure. On one side, AI agents transform the customer experience by turning intent into outcomes — automating quotes, orders, and support for on‑demand connectivity. On the other, the AI Gateway provides enterprises with private, secure, SLA‑backed pathways to frontier AI models, ensuring governance, performance, and scalability.
Together, these innovations position Console Connect as the intelligent fabric that both simplifies how networks are consumed and empowers how AI is delivered, enabling enterprises to accelerate digital transformation with confidence.
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Divesh Gupta
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17:00
It’s a Wrap – Analyst Perspectives
We conclude Day 1 with a panel of leading analysts, hosted by Mplify’s Stan Hubbard. They share candid perspectives on the state of NaaS, evolution of AI-ready digital infrastructure, Mplify’s strategic direction, and the opportunities and challenges the industry must address together to accelerate adoption.
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MODERATOR
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Ghassan Abdo
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Charlie Reed
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Grant Lenahan
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Mauricio Sanchez
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Erin Dunne
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17:25
Closing Remarks
Thursday, 24 Sept 2026
Mplify Views
The Summit’s new Mplify Views sessions move from direction into execution, focusing on agentic AI for LSO and NaaS for AI. Topics include MCP-based orchestration, agent-to-agent coordination, automated interconnect, federation models, and the service attributes required to support AI at scale.
8:50
Opening Remarks
The day opens with a welcome and overview of the discussions ahead, setting the stage for a highly interactive program focused on member engagement, open dialogue, and practical implementation conversations around NaaS for AI and agentic orchestration.
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Kevin Vachon
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9:00
NaaS Federation | From Foundations to Launch: Agent-Enabled Services and Trusted Onboarding
How do providers work together to deliver trusted AI-powered services?
Building on the direction set in Lisbon, the NaaS Federation is moving from concept toward launch following Board approval to prepare a detailed launch plan. Boston brings members together to align on scope, architecture, and the commitments required to stand up a federated ecosystem. The discussion focuses on agent-enabled services, trusted identity based on W3C DID and Verifiable Credential standards, partner discovery, NaaS catalog access, and legal identity. Participants will also review the new onboarding project defining federation credentials, governance, and member participation as the industry moves toward launch.
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SESSION LEAD: Karthik Sethuraman
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SESSION LEAD: Isabella Melli
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9:45
User Story | Redefining the Connectivity Experience Through Interoperable NaaS
Colt and Equinix present an industry-first integration combining Colt On Demand Last Mile services with Equinix Fabric Marketplace, using Mplify-compliant LSO Business APIs to enable interoperable NaaS. The integration lets customers discover Colt services, get pricing, request quotes, and place orders directly through the Equinix Fabric experience — extending automated connectivity beyond data centers to customer sites and removing fragmented, manual cross-provider processes. Achieved through close collaboration aligning quoting, ordering, and fulfilment workflows across two independent platforms, the project demonstrates how open standards enable interoperability while preserving operational autonomy, offering a blueprint for cross-provider NaaS automation and AI-ready infrastructure monetization.
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Dawn Howell
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Mirko Voltolini
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10:00
NaaS for AI | Securing AI Networks: SD-WAN, SSE, Zero Trust, Quantum-Safe and Trusted Agents
How do we secure AI-ready connectivity across distributed networks?
Building on the momentum from Lisbon, NaaS for AI has advanced considerably across both training and inference use cases, with standardization of the LSO product model—Carrier Ethernet, Cross Connect, SD-WAN, Cloud Connect, IP Peering, and Power & Space—providing a common foundation for AI service delivery. Security now takes center stage as AI workloads traverse distributed and federated environments. The session explores new SD-WAN, SSE, and Zero Trust test requirements, quantum-safe connectivity, and trusted agent identity, extending standardized, verifiable delivery into the security domain while supporting secure AI infrastructure, Agentic LSO, and the NaaS Federation.
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SESSION LEAD: Bhaarath Venkateswaran
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SESSION LEAD: Samaresh Nair
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10:40
NaaS for AI continues
11:10
User Story | When GPUaaS Meets NaaS: Is the Network Ready for On-Demand AI?
NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS presents an “AI-Centric ICT Platform” strategy exploring how GPUaaS and NaaS can converge into a new AI infrastructure model, since distributed AI workloads require GPU and network resources to be provisioned together, on demand. The session introduces a newly launched GPUaaS offering per-minute GPU billing paired with enterprise NaaS for secure, on-demand WAN connectivity, plus a roadmap toward on-demand 100G connectivity via NTT’s IOWN technology. Three use cases — distributed AI training/inference, remote cloud rendering, and Physical AI — illustrate the key takeaway: NaaS must evolve beyond connecting sites and clouds to dynamically connecting AI compute, data, and applications wherever needed.
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Wenyu Shen
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11:25
User Story | Multi-Agent A2A Troubleshooting for NaaS
Colt, Amartus, and NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS present the Silent Comet Accelerator project’s 2026 use case, showing how interoperable AI agents can autonomously detect, troubleshoot, and resolve network issues across a federated NaaS ecosystem, with humans looped in at key decision points. Using Agent-to- Agent (A2A) communication and MCP-enabled capabilities built on LSO standards, the demo walks through a live scenario: degraded London–Tokyo connectivity triggers agents from each company to investigate, coordinate, and execute an approved mitigation. The session highlights reusable A2A/MCP patterns aimed at reducing fragmentation and enabling plug-and-play agent interoperability across providers.
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Dominik Pacewicz
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Yuta Yamagishi
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Victor Fernández
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11:40
Agentic LSO | Blueprint, Architecture and Trusted Agents
How will AI agents transform network operations?
Following the progress shared in Lisbon, the Agentic LSO Blueprint has its first named release: Agent.Fergie.1 — a runnable stack of eight MCP servers, an L2 orchestrating agent, per-API skills, knowledge packs and a conformance test kit, covering the LSO product fulfilment chain and its first assurance flow. Boston reviews what the release contains, the Agent-to-MCP security scope, and the Seller Capability Statement that tells an agent what a Seller actually supports before it acts. It then turns to the decisions still open to the membership: where LSO-to-ASR mapping belongs, which Reference Architecture use cases the Blueprint does not yet reach, and which direction — agent depth, API coverage, or SDK release target — should move next.
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SESSION LEAD: Michał Łączyński
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12:30
Demonstration | Handshake: Autonomous Agentic Wholesale Telecom Commerce
A regulatory- and global standards-compliant autonomous agent commerce system for wholesale telecommunications. It enables carrier-to-carrier trading (buying and selling bandwidth, connectivity, and network services) where AI agents negotiate, compete, and commit deals within human-defined mandates — escalating to human review when appropriate.
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Dr. Andreas Freund
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12:40
Closing Remarks
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Isabelle Morency
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