There are plenty of places to read about telecom. Industry conferences produce decks. Trade publications produce news. What I’ve never seen enough of is the perspective from inside the operator’s seat — the actual operational reality of running an MVNO, building a wholesale carrier deal, deciding what to automate and what to leave manual, navigating a regulatory regime that nobody warned you about.

Why I'm Writing Here

I've spent two decades in wireless — carrier-side strategy, MVNO co-founder and operator, and management consulting for the executive teams that run these businesses. In that time, I've watched the same operational mistakes cost operators millions in margin they never knew they were losing. I've watched brilliant market opportunities die because the executive team couldn't execute. And I've watched first-time founders navigate a regulatory and operational landscape for which nobody prepared them.

Denali Llama, this space exists because I got tired of having the same conversations privately that the industry needs to be having publicly.

What You'll Find Here

The operational reality of running a wireless business. Billing operations, rate plan economics, wholesale reconciliation, subscriber lifecycle management, distribution channel mechanics, and the back-office disciplines that determine whether an MVNO makes money or burns through capital wondering where the margin went. These aren't glamorous topics. They're the topics that matter.

Regulatory compliance — the thing everyone defers until it's too late. FCC filings, state PUC registrations, CPNI, STIR/SHAKEN, tax and fee collection at point of sale, and the 50-state compliance landscape that most operators don't fully understand until a letter arrives. I'll go deep here because the cost of getting it wrong is existential.

AI and automation. Churn prediction for prepaid and postpaid, billing operations automation, rate plan optimization through machine learning — where the technology actually works, where it doesn't, and what it costs versus what it saves. No hype. Just the math.

The executive team that makes or breaks the business. I'm publishing a series called The Post-Startup C-Suite that goes deep on the six roles that determine whether an MVNO scales or stalls: the CEO, CRO, CFO, CPO, COO, and CTO. What each role actually requires in a wireless operator, what the right person looks like, what the wrong person costs you, and how to tell the difference. These will be the most direct pieces on this site — and probably the ones that start the most conversations.

What You Won't Find Here

News. I don't report what happened — I explain what it means and what to do about it.

Vendor promotion. I don't sell products. I sell judgment and expertise, and the writing is how I share what I've learned.

Whitepapers

In addition to articles, I will publish in-depth whitepapers covering the full wireless operator stack — from billing operations and rate plan optimization to regulatory compliance, customer lifecycle economics, AI-powered churn prediction, and tax compliance at the point of sale. As those become available, I'll announce them here. If there's a topic you'd like me to go deep on, reach out directly.

Guest Expert Authors

I'm not the only voice on this site. Denali Llama will feature guest authors who are operators in their own right — people who have been in the seat, done the work, and earned their perspective the hard way.

Expect contributions from experts in areas including technology stack architecture and engineering, financial planning and analysis from a strategy and operations perspective, and other disciplines critical to running a wireless business. Every guest author shares one thing in common: they're not theorists. They're practitioners who have built, operated, and scaled the functions they write about.

A Note on Tone

The observations on this site are my own — shaped by two decades of experience across the wireless industry. They're not aimed at any specific company or individual. They're patterns I've seen repeat often enough to write about, in the hope that the next operator can learn from what I've watched others get right and get wrong.

Not every take will land comfortably. That's by design.

Subscribe

If this sounds like the kind of insight you need, subscribe. New articles and whitepaper announcements go to subscribers first. And if something I write is useful to you, share it with someone else who needs to read it. This industry is small enough that word of mouth is still the best distribution channel — for content and for operators.

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Eric P. Jones heads a telecom management consulting practice specializing in MVNO/MVNE operations, regulatory compliance, commercial structuring, and back-office optimization. He serves as a trusted advisor to Executive Teams for Wireless Services Operators, including MVNOs, MVNAs, and MVNEs.