Interviews

Boldyn Networks’ CEO for Spain and Italy advocates shared infrastructure and private 5G networks as the essential foundation for accelerating the digital transformation of cities and turning innovation into tangible services for citizens.

With more than thirty years of experience leading telecommunications network deployments across Europe and Latin America, Antonio Ruggiero is spearheading Boldyn Networks’ expansion in Spain and Italy. Having driven internationally renowned projects such as Rome 5G, he argues that the future of smart cities will not depend on installing more sensors, but on building shared, resilient digital infrastructure ready to support artificial intelligence, digital twins and connected mobility.

TSCJ.- Boldyn has announced a highly ambitious commitment to Spain. What is your view of the Spanish smart city market over the next five years, and what role does Boldyn intend to play in the major urban projects being developed with European funding?

AR.- Spain is one of the European markets with the greatest potential for smart city development over the next five years. The country is at a genuine turning point in its digital transformation. One clear example is the enormous interest generated by the RedCyTI call for proposals aimed at promoting smart cities and territories, whose initial budget was doubled due to the high number of projects submitted. Spanish cities have understood that digitalisation is  a strategic priority for improving public services, attracting investment and addressing challenges such as mobility, sustainability and urban resilience through public-private collaboration.

At Boldyn, we want to play a leading role as a long-term technology partner for public administrations, providing advanced digital infrastructure that drives digital transformation and facilitates the implementation of projects supported by European funds (NextGenerationEU). We currently develop advanced urban networks in cities such as London, New York, San Francisco, Sunderland in the UK, and Rome.

In fact, one of our most ambitious projects is Rome 5G, which demonstrates how one of the continent’s most visited and historic cities can become one of Europe’s best-connected and most sustainable smart cities. To achieve this, a shared 5G infrastructure has been deployed across its public transport network, helping improve mobility management, optimise urban services and respond more effectively to challenges such as mass tourism. Rome has already been recognised for its innovation and urban transformation, winning the 2025 Smart City Award at the World Smart City Awards held during the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC).

In all these cities, we deploy digital “highways” that connect the urban fabric with innovation. Our goal is to enable efficient, real-time, data-driven urban management, ensuring that digitalisation delivers direct, sustainable and measurable benefits for citizens.

TSCJ.- For years, many cities have invested in digital platforms and sensors, yet the major challenge remains having robust and secure connectivity. To what extent does Boldyn believe that private 5G networks and shared infrastructure will be the true catalyst for the next generation of smart cities?

AR.- From my perspective as head of Boldyn Networks in Spain and Italy, the answer is unequivocal: private 5G networks and shared infrastructure are not merely a catalyst; they are the only real foundation for the next generation of smart cities. For years, many cities have fallen into the trap of massive sensor deployment, installing isolated platforms and devices while overlooking the fact that if the arteries carrying that information fail or become congested, the entire digital ecosystem collapses. The real challenge is no longer capturing data, but guaranteeing robust, secure and high-capacity real-time connectivity.

Our global experience with flagship projects such as #Rome5G demonstrates that the traditional deployment model—in which each operator duplicates infrastructure—is economically unviable and unsustainable from an urban planning perspective. Through the Neutral Host model championed by Boldyn, we deploy a single, shared, high-capacity network serving multiple operators and municipal services. At the same time, private 5G networks provide the ultra-low latency and critical security, supported by advanced encryption, required by essential public services, ensuring that the network never becomes congested. It is this invisible yet resilient infrastructure that will truly transform urban management, just as we are already bringing this approach to Spain’s industrial and port sectors.

TSCJ.- More and more local authorities are looking to reduce costs without sacrificing innovation. Boldyn’s Neutral Host model enables infrastructure to be shared among different operators. What economic and operational advantages does this approach offer compared with traditional deployment models?

AR.- The Neutral Host model is based on a very simple idea: it makes no sense for every operator to build its own infrastructure when they can all rely on the same network. For a local authority, the traditional model can mean streets being repeatedly dug up for construction work, visual saturation from antennas on historic façades and excessive costs that ultimately hinder innovation. Boldyn’s approach breaks with this inefficiency: we make the investment, deploy a single shared high-capacity network and enable all operators and public services to connect to it.

From both an operational and economic standpoint, the advantages are transformative for local government. For a city, it means fewer construction works, less occupation of urban space and infrastructure that is ready to adapt to new requirements without having to start from scratch every time a new technology or service emerges, while also reducing expenditure.

At Boldyn, we collaborate with our operators and with public administrations to develop and manage a common digital infrastructure on which different stakeholders can deliver their services. It is a model that already works for other essential infrastructure and makes perfect sense, as it transforms urban connectivity into a public service that is as efficient and seamless as water or street-lighting networks.

We believe this approach enables cities to focus on developing new services for citizens while relying on a solid, open and future-ready technological foundation, which is what really matters.

TSCJ.- Artificial intelligence, digital twins, connected mobility and energy management all require real-time data and ultra-reliable communications. What types of cities are genuinely prepared today to take advantage of these technologies, and what are the main barriers still facing public administrations?

AR.- Rather than talking about large or small cities, I would talk about cities with a clear digital transformation strategy. Those that are best prepared are the ones that have understood that technology is not an end in itself, but a tool for improving public services and citizens’ quality of life.

Leading examples such as Málaga, recognised in the IESE Cities in Motion 2026 report, demonstrate that urban innovation is not the exclusive preserve of major global capitals. These cities have a long-term vision, and the key factor is not their size but their structural maturity.

Public administrations face several challenges. On the one hand, they need to optimise public investment and prioritise projects that deliver real impact. On the other, they face the complexity of coordinating the different stakeholders involved and ensuring that solutions deployed today remain useful ten or fifteen years from now. This is why we believe collaboration between public administrations and specialised companies will become increasingly important.

Cities that are truly prepared to become smart cities are those capable of segmenting their networks in real time to prioritise a connected ambulance or process massive traffic flows without causing the slightest impact on citizens’ commercial networks.

To address these challenges, Boldyn is firmly committed to the public-private partnership model. If the private sector assumes the technological and financial risks of deployment through a Neutral Host model, cities can overcome these barriers at once, ensuring military-grade security for their communications while freeing up public resources to focus exclusively on innovation and improving citizens’ lives.

TSCJ.- If we were to interview Boldyn again five years from now, what milestones would you like to be able to point to as evidence that the company has transformed the way Spanish cities manage their connectivity and smart services?

AR.- We would like to be able to say that we have established our model as the undisputed standard for managing urban telecommunications. Our ambition is to bring to Spain a model that has already demonstrated its success in cities such as London, New York, San Francisco, Sunderland and Rome, adapting it to the needs of each territory. We believe the best solutions do not involve starting from scratch, but rather drawing on accumulated experience and applying approaches that have already proven their ability to create value.

If, five years from now, we can say that we have helped accelerate urban digitalisation projects, facilitated shared infrastructure models and enabled more cities to deploy new services more quickly, efficiently and sustainably, we will consider that we have achieved our goal.

Ultimately, Boldyn’s greatest success will not be measured by the number of networks deployed, but by having become a trusted partner for public administrations and the wider ecosystem, helping to build the digital infrastructure that will enable the next generation of smart cities.

TSCJ.- Many smart city projects remain pilots that never manage to scale. What needs to change in the collaboration between public administrations, technology operators and companies for cities to finally move from demonstration projects to large-scale urban transformation?

AR.- Our role is precisely to facilitate that transition by providing the digital infrastructure and collaboration models that have already proven effective in other cities. Our goal is to help public administrations move from isolated projects towards a sustained, long-term urban transformation strategy based on robust, shared and future-ready connectivity.

Public administrations need to move away from the traditional technology procurement model based on one-off subsidies or capital expenditure, which finances an initial deployment but leaves the project without sufficient resources for maintenance and evolution. The real leap in scale will come when long-term public-private partnership models become widespread. In this scenario, companies such as Boldyn assume the initial investment, technological risk and infrastructure lifecycle, allowing cities to pay for the service predictably as an operating expense while ensuring that the technology never becomes obsolete.

The second major change involves ecosystem governance and network interoperability. Until now, technology operators and companies have tended to work in silos: one pilot for street lighting, another independent project for water management and another for mobility, each with its own fragmented connectivity. For a project to scale, we need to understand that connectivity is not a product that is simply purchased and installed. It is a common, neutral and shared infrastructure that acts as the city’s nervous system.

Our experience in Sunderland demonstrates that cities achieve better results when they stop focusing on technology itself and instead focus on the problems they want to solve. Connectivity, data and collaboration between public administrations, companies and other local stakeholders then become enablers of continuous urban transformation, focused on tangible outcomes such as more efficient mobility, better environmental management, greater climate resilience, more preventive public healthcare and, ultimately, a better quality of life for citizens both today and in the future.

Interview by
Manuel Tarín Alonso

With AI making it easier for businesses to tailor prices to individual customers, Maryland recently became the first state to prohibit the use of personal data in setting prices. We asked Yale SOM economist Jidong Zhou whether such restrictions are likely to work as intended—and whether they will benefit consumers.

Setting prices differently for different customers has been a practice for a long time. Are AI tools making personalized pricing more common or more effective?

Yes. Firms have often tried to charge different customers different prices, but AI makes this practice easier, cheaper, and more precise. In the past, price discrimination often relied on fairly broad categories: business versus leisure travelers, coupon users versus non-coupon users, students versus non-students. Today, firms have access to much richer information. A consumer’s browsing behavior, purchase histories, app usage, location data, social media activity, and even items left in online shopping carts can all leave useful digital traces. AI tools make it much easier to analyze this kind of scattered data and generate predictions on consumer preferences. In economic terms, this moves firms closer to “first-degree price discrimination,” in which each consumer could be charged a different price based on their preferences. We are not fully there, of course, but the direction is clear: pricing is becoming more data-driven and more individualized.

AI also makes it much cheaper to carry out personalized pricing at scale. Airlines, hotels, and ride-hailing platforms already adjust prices as demand changes, and algorithmic pricing makes these adjustments faster and more individualized. Similarly, online retailers and subscription services can test different discounts, send coupons to shoppers who seem likely to leave without buying, or offer special retention deals to customers who appear likely to cancel. Digital platforms can change targeted prices or offers almost instantly, so the practical cost of using personalized pricing has fallen dramatically.

The push to regulate personalized pricing reflects some discomfort with the practice. What does your research say about how this kind of pricing affects consumers overall?

A common concern is that personalized pricing, compared with uniform pricing, allows firms to extract more surplus from consumers. This concern goes back at least to Pigou’s classic analysis more than a century ago: in the textbook monopoly case, if a firm knows exactly how much each consumer is willing to pay, it can charge each person that amount and leave consumers with no surplus. This is the standard reason people worry about personalized pricing.

But that conclusion depends on two strong assumptions: that pricing is perfectly personalized and that the firm has monopoly power. Once we relax either assumption, the effect on consumers becomes more complicated. For example, in a competitive market, personalized pricing can actually help some consumers. In particular, consumers who view competing products as close substitutes may benefit because firms have strong incentives to undercut each other to win their business. By contrast, consumers with strong brand preferences, or those who do not shop around, may be worse off, because firms know they are less likely to switch and may charge them more.

My own research emphasizes that the overall effect of personalized pricing is therefore nuanced. It depends on market conditions, including production costs, the degree of competition, and of course also the distribution of consumer preferences in the population. In general, personalized pricing is more likely to benefit consumers in aggregate when costs are lower, when there are more competitors, or when more consumers have weak preferences across competing products.

Can a ban like the one proposed in Maryland be effective? Is there a better approach?

A ban like Maryland’s may address some consumer concerns, but it is unlikely to fully stop personalized pricing, even if we assume that personalized pricing is bad for consumers—which, as discussed above, is not always true. One potential loophole is that firms could raise their posted sticker prices and then offer individualized discounts to selected consumers through emails, apps, or loyalty programs. Economically, this achieves the exact same result as personalized pricing, but legally, it remains entirely permissible under the bill’s exceptions for promotions, loyalty programs, retention offers, or consent-based discounts. As a result, the ban may simply push firms to reframe personalized high prices as personalized discounts without changing the underlying practice.

Regulating personalized pricing is difficult in practice. To evaluate whether such a regulation is working, policymakers may want to monitor how affected firms adjust their posted prices after the law takes effect. If regular prices rise while individualized discounts become more common, the law may have changed the form of personalized pricing rather than its substance. More generally, policymakers may want to regulate the conditions under which personalized pricing is used, rather than trying to ban it outright. For example, they could require firms to disclose when personal data affect prices or discounts, and to keep records that regulators can audit. Of course, these measures also have practical limits: disclosures may be too vague to be useful, and audits of complex pricing algorithms may require substantial technical expertise. Still, this approach may be more workable than a simple ban, because it could curtail predatory “price gouging” while still preserving legitimate, targeted discounts that can benefit consumers in competitive markets.

Dr Lennie Derde, newly appointed CEO of the Ecraid medical research network, explains how European collaboration and EU support are strengthening clinical research readiness

By Horizon Magazine StaffBeing prepared for emerging infectious diseases is not only about responding to emergencies. It also means having the right research systems in place every day, so that new knowledge can be generated quickly and shared across borders when needed.

This is the ambition behind the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (Ecraid), a pan-European, not-for-profit research network whose goal is to improve how Europe studies and responds to infectious diseases, including antimicrobial resistance and other emerging health threats.

Derde, an intensive care physician and infectious disease researcher with first-hand experience of pandemic-scale research, became Ecraid’s new CEO in January 2026. She previously led the European region of the global REMAP-CAP trial, one of the landmark studies that rapidly identified effective treatments for COVID-19 patients.

In this interview, Derde explains why “everyday preparedness” matters, how EU investment made Ecraid possible, and why multinational collaboration is essential when facing threats that know no borders.

Why does Europe need a permanent clinical research network for infectious diseases?

If the past two decades have taught us anything, it is that we needed to change how research is conducted during pandemics. From the 2009 swine flu (H1N1) pandemic to COVID-19, we have seen how quickly infectious diseases can spread – and how unprepared research systems can be.

During the swine flu pandemic, hardly any patients were recruited into clinical trials, and none of those trials delivered results while the pandemic was still ongoing. By contrast, during COVID-19, new trial designs allowed us to generate evidence much faster. But even then, we saw that research could only move quickly where systems were already in place.

That is why a permanent, Europe-wide clinical research network is so important. In a pandemic, you cannot start building a network from scratch. You need hospitals that are already engaged, trained and resourced, and that can start research immediately. Ecraid has spent years building exactly that kind of infrastructure.

We often describe this as a “warm-base” research network. In simple terms, that means research sites are not sitting idle until a crisis hits. They are continuously involved in studies, collecting data, running trials and maintaining expertise, so that when an emergency arises, everything is already up and running.

Ecraid began with antimicrobial resistance and later expanded to pandemic preparedness. How are these challenges linked?

Ecraid is committed to reducing the harm caused by infectious diseases, both for individuals and for society as a whole. In Europe today, two challenges stand out in particular: new infectious diseases that can spread quickly and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance

New diseases, including those with the potential to cause a pandemic, are appearing more often as our climate changes, global travel increases and humans and animals live ever closer together.

At the same time, many bacteria are becoming resistant to existing antibiotics – a problem often called the “silent pandemic” because it develops gradually, but affects anyone who needs treatment for an infection.

With its Europe-wide network of researchers, hospitals and partners, Ecraid has the scientific expertise and the operational capacity needed to tackle these threats in a coordinated way. Importantly, we do this in close collaboration with partners across Europe and beyond, because these problems are global by nature.

How did EU funding help turn Ecraid into a Europe-wide research network?

European funding played a crucial role in turning Ecraid from an idea into a functioning Europe-wide research network. The EU has been remarkably forward-looking in this respect.

The idea for Ecraid emerged during two earlier EU-funded initiatives: COMBACTE (jointly funded by industry), which focused on antimicrobial resistance, and PREPARE, which addressed emerging infectious diseases. Both projects were designed with sustainability in mind, aiming to build something that would last beyond their funding periods.

That vision was carried forward through ECRAID-Plan, a Horizon 2020 project that laid the foundations for establishing Ecraid as a permanent organisation. Then, in 2021, the EU invested €30 million in ECRAID-Base, which allowed us to build our warm-base network, launch large observational studies and continue our platform trials.

Thanks to this support, Ecraid has become a self-sustaining, not-for-profit organisation, funded through a mix of public and industry partnerships. This kind of long-term investment is rare, and it shows how EU funding can create lasting value for public health.

Ecraid uses continuous studies alongside large adaptive trials. How does this help research move faster?

Adaptive platform trials are designed to make clinical research faster and more flexible. Instead of testing just one treatment at a time, they allow several possible therapies to be studied within a single trial, so each participant helps answer more than one research question.

Crucially, new treatments can be added as the trial goes on – a bit like adding a new carriage to a train that is already moving. This means promising options can be tested straight away, rather than waiting months or years for a new study to start.

These trials also use modern statistical approaches that offer greater flexibility in situations with many uncertainties, like a pandemic. Together, this allows us to generate reliable results much faster than traditional methods.

You led the European arm of the REMAP-CAP trial during COVID-19. What did that experience teach you?

The success of REMAP-CAP showed just how powerful international collaboration can be. During the pandemic, researchers around the world shared data, ideas and workloads, allowing results to be generated much faster than would have been possible by working in isolation.

That experience underlines why it is so important that Ecraid stay closely connected with research networks and experts beyond Europe. Infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance do not stop at national borders, and effective research depends on cooperation across countries

Working together is the only way to produce strong, reliable evidence that can quickly improve patient care.

What does “everyday preparedness” look like in practice?

Being research-ready means combining innovative, leading-edge science with the practical ability to act quickly. It’s not enough to have good ideas – you also need systems that are ready to work in real hospitals, with real patients.

At Ecraid, our network is very data-driven. This allows us to understand what each hospital and research site does best. We track how diseases are affecting people through ongoing prospective observational studies, and we combine that with large clinical trials that can quickly shift focus if a new health threat emerges.

We also make sure data can move easily between different parts of the health system – from GP clinics and emergency departments to hospital wards and intensive care units. By designing studies so data can be shared and reused from the start, we can work faster with partners and turn research into better care for patients more quickly.

Looking ahead, how do you see Ecraid evolving over the next decade?

The world of health research is evolving, shaped not only by science, but also by wider political and global changes. Ecraid is designed to be flexible, so that it can adapt to those changes.

Through its role in major European initiatives such as the European Partnership for Pandemic Preparedness and its BE READY NOW initiative, the organisation is helping to build a true interconnected “network of networks” that keeps research capacity active and ready across Europe.

At the same time, familiar challenges have not gone away. Drug-resistant infections, diseases that spread from animals to humans, and other infectious threats continue to affect people’s health.

Ecraid aims to tackle these ongoing risks by working across borders and disciplines, using innovative research approaches to support better prevention, treatment and preparedness for the future.

The views of the interviewee don’t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

Photo: Dr Lennie Derde took up her position as the new CEO of Ecraid in January 2026.

This article was originally published in Horizon the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.