matterfact
Telco in 20
4w ago·18m
Ep 142 - AT&T bets on the last mile (Shawn Hakl)
Every major telco is racing to claim a piece of the AI infrastructure stack. Operators like Telefónica, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank, and TELUS are betting on sovereign clouds, AI factories, and GPU-as-a-service to deliver local data, national compute, and a seat at the AI table.
Then there's AT&T. In March, it announced AWS Interconnect - last mile: fiber and fixed wireless plugged directly into AWS and engineered for AI workloads. AT&T’s view is that enterprises using AI don't just need more compute—they need flatter networks and faster connections. So it’s betting on the layer it owns outright—the last mile.
In this episode, I'm joined by Shawn Hakl, SVP of product at AT&T Business. We dig into why the operator is partnering with hyperscalers instead of competing with them, the use case where AT&T deployed AI at the edge to cut latency from 110ms to 40ms, and what an "agent-consumable" network actually looks like.
Listen now to hear:
Why AT&T sees hyperscalers as partners, not rivals [05:18];
What it takes to put AI into production at telco scale—and lessons learned from AT&T's internal deployment [07:14];
The edge AI deployment that cut latency from 110ms to 40ms for a live customer [08:45]; and
What it really means to make a network "agent-consumable" [10:55].
Links and Resources:
Read the AT&T and AWS announcement on AWS Interconnect - last mile, which brings AT&T's fiber and fixed wireless connectivity directly into AWS environments.
Learn more about AT&T's edge AI collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA, which pushes real-time AI inference directly to the network edge.
AT&T doesn't just sell AI solutions; it runs on them. Learn how Ask AT&T has evolved into a full agentic platform, with more than 100,000 users consuming 27 billion tokens a day and teams building custom AI agents with a drag-and-drop tool.
Want to scale AI agents without the semantic chaos? Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI the business context it needs to discover, act, and execute—so agents stop flying blind.
Shawn was on the Canadian national luge team, which means he knows a thing or two about commitment once you're flying down the track. Elana Meyers Taylor knows that feeling too! At age 41, in her 5th Olympic appearance, she finally won the Olympic gold medal in women's monobob at Milano Cortina. So, Shawn might be right—stick to the plan!
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
As the senior vice president of product at AT&T Business, Shawn Hakl is responsible for the portfolio servicing enterprise, public sector, partner, and small business segments, which generates over $30 billion in annual revenue. A seasoned leader in cloud, AI, and communications, Shawn’s unique knowledge of software, security, and infrastructure is helping enterprises, government, and small businesses harness the power of technology to successfully execute on their digital transformation. In his current role, Shawn is responsible for wireline, 5G/wireless, voice/UC, security/SASE, data center, AIOps, and Network-as-a-Service product lines.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson
Then there's AT&T. In March, it announced AWS Interconnect - last mile: fiber and fixed wireless plugged directly into AWS and engineered for AI workloads. AT&T’s view is that enterprises using AI don't just need more compute—they need flatter networks and faster connections. So it’s betting on the layer it owns outright—the last mile.
In this episode, I'm joined by Shawn Hakl, SVP of product at AT&T Business. We dig into why the operator is partnering with hyperscalers instead of competing with them, the use case where AT&T deployed AI at the edge to cut latency from 110ms to 40ms, and what an "agent-consumable" network actually looks like.
Listen now to hear:
Why AT&T sees hyperscalers as partners, not rivals [05:18];
What it takes to put AI into production at telco scale—and lessons learned from AT&T's internal deployment [07:14];
The edge AI deployment that cut latency from 110ms to 40ms for a live customer [08:45]; and
What it really means to make a network "agent-consumable" [10:55].
Links and Resources:
Read the AT&T and AWS announcement on AWS Interconnect - last mile, which brings AT&T's fiber and fixed wireless connectivity directly into AWS environments.
Learn more about AT&T's edge AI collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA, which pushes real-time AI inference directly to the network edge.
AT&T doesn't just sell AI solutions; it runs on them. Learn how Ask AT&T has evolved into a full agentic platform, with more than 100,000 users consuming 27 billion tokens a day and teams building custom AI agents with a drag-and-drop tool.
Want to scale AI agents without the semantic chaos? Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI the business context it needs to discover, act, and execute—so agents stop flying blind.
Shawn was on the Canadian national luge team, which means he knows a thing or two about commitment once you're flying down the track. Elana Meyers Taylor knows that feeling too! At age 41, in her 5th Olympic appearance, she finally won the Olympic gold medal in women's monobob at Milano Cortina. So, Shawn might be right—stick to the plan!
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value they can bring.
Follow DR:
Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know.
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve won 2026, 2025, and 2024 Hermes Creative Awards, and 2025 and 2024 MarCom Awards. We are also recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes seconds to do in your app and really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
This week’s guest:
As the senior vice president of product at AT&T Business, Shawn Hakl is responsible for the portfolio servicing enterprise, public sector, partner, and small business segments, which generates over $30 billion in annual revenue. A seasoned leader in cloud, AI, and communications, Shawn’s unique knowledge of software, security, and infrastructure is helping enterprises, government, and small businesses harness the power of technology to successfully execute on their digital transformation. In his current role, Shawn is responsible for wireline, 5G/wireless, voice/UC, security/SASE, data center, AIOps, and Network-as-a-Service product lines.
Podcast Credits:
Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson
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