{Core Analysis} is the only independent analyst practice in the telco/cloud space where the analyst is also an active practitioner.

 

Patrick Lopez researches and publishes on the technologies he deploys — which means clients get analysis grounded in operational reality, not just industry consensus.​

 

Clients include Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom, McKinsey & Company, Bell Canada, Telefonica, Akamai, Deloitte, NEC, Huawei, TELUS, Meta, Bain & Co., Citrix, HP, Red Hat, and InterDigital, among others.​

 

Patrick Lopez — Founder & CEO​

Patrick Lopez is an independent analyst and practitioner at the intersection of telecom and cloud, with over 25 years of experience building, launching, and operating telecoms businesses across startups, mid-size companies, and multinationals in six countries.

What makes his analysis different: he has personally led deployments of the technologies he covers — from the world's first commercial Open RAN networks to the first multi-access edge computing deployment. Most analyst firms prohibit this kind of hands-on work. Patrick does both, which means he can tell you not just what vendors claim, but what actually works in production and where the gaps are.

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The full stack, from silicon to strategy

Patrick's expertise spans the entire RAN and cloud infrastructure stack — from hardware (device product management at Philips, including one of the world's first smartphones; RAN ASICs, FPGAs, and accelerators at NEC; antennas and RF systems) through RAN software (CU, DU, non-RT RIC, near-RT RIC), OSS, SMO, and orchestration, to telco cloud (OpenStack, Kubernetes, and AWS, Microsoft, and Google hybrid telco products) and operator business models.

He also brings rare depth in telco messaging — as head of products at Logica, he led delivery of the world's first commercial MMSC, receiving one of the world's first multimedia messages on a live network — and in video in telecom, including encoding, decoding, adaptive bitrate, and telco OTT strategy.

More recently, Patrick has been increasingly engaged on data infrastructure for AI: data pipelines, data governance, AI factories, and Sovereign AI strategy in telecom environments — covering AI-RAN, the AI Grid, and edge inference deployments.

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Open RAN and AI-RAN — from invention to deployment

At Telefonica Group as Global VP Networks Innovation, Patrick's team invented Open RAN — writing the first open and disaggregated RAN RFI with Vodafone at the TIP Summit. He subsequently led Edge Computing, Connecting the Unconnected (a multi-hundred million dollar JV with Facebook and development banks), telco Network as a Service, and cloud-native network platforms.

At NEC as Global VP Product Management for 5G, he oversaw the commercial deployment of Open RAN and AI-RAN at NTT Docomo, Rakuten Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and 1&1 — and led product strategy across Open RAN, Packet Core, silicon (including the Blue Danube Systems acquisition), and network automation.

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Lean Telco

Patrick created Lean Telco — a proprietary telecom innovation methodology that combines Lean Startup, Lean UX, and Wardley mapping for situational awareness and technology strategy. Originally developed from Telefonica's internal Lean Elephant transformation program, it has since been adopted by operators across multiple markets. It was recognised with a Harvard Business Review award for innovation practice.

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Board experience:

Open Networking Foundation (ONF)

Meta’s Telecom Infra Project (TIP)

CENGN — Canada’s Centre of Excellence for Next Generation Networks

NEC Advanced Networks

5Tonic (Open 5G Laboratory)​

 

Track record:

— World's first commercial Open RAN deployments — greenfield and brownfield networks (Telefonica)

— World's first multi-access edge computing deployment — mobile, fixed, enterprise, and residential (Telefonica)

— World's first commercial MMSC — one of the first multimedia messages sent on a live network (Logica)

— One of the world's first smartphones as Product Manager — Philips Ilium Synergy (1998)

— Lean Telco innovation framework — created and adopted by operators across multiple markets; HBR award winner

— Multi-hundred million dollar JV with Facebook and development banks to connect the unconnected

— Open RAN and AI-RAN commercial deployments at Docomo, Rakuten Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and 1&1 (NEC)

— 30+ international awards for new product and technology introduction and execution

 

​Publications & media:

Over 100 interviews and articles with The Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, CNBC, RCR Wireless News, Wireless Week, and others. Analyst report contributions include Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Forrester Research, and Ovum.​

 

Available for:

Consulting engagements, advisory retainers, board roles, and select senior executive opportunities in telecom and cloud infrastructure.​

 

patrick.lopez@coreanalysis.ca