Hosted by Jason Walls, Director of Technical Marketing at QA Cafe
Episodes
70
Latest episode
Jun 2026
Language
EN-US
Epik Mellon is a podcast about networks; the real people and crazy stories behind the amazing fact that the Internet even works. Networking folk are mavericks, adventurers, and nerds all rolled into one. Sponsored by QA Cafe , w e discuss how people like us got into the field, the real issues and funny circumstances we've been in, and some real conversations about the state of the industry, technology, and the future of communications. If you ever wanted to know "how the sausage is made" behind network communications, you'll find it at Epik Mellon. Epik Mellon is a portmanteau of "Mellon Epikoinonión" - a rough Greek translation of "the Future of Communications." It might also involve fruit sometimes. No promises.
In this in-person episode at the Broadband Forum Summer 2026 Member Meeting and BASe Tech Summit in Milan, I finally got Madhura Paduvalli on the show to talk about her life as a CPE engineer and volunteering in the standards world. With some special shout-outs to CDRouter and the team at QA Cafe!
In this episode I got to talk with one of our longest and most favorite CDRouter customers, Carl Wuyts of Telenet, who has been working with broadband gateways and Wi-Fi as both a vendor and a service provider for a long time. We talk about struggles with deploying broadband, customer experience, and more!
In this episode, Ann Olivo from Silicon Labs, who is also the VP of Marketing for Thread Group and Vice Chair of Marketing for Matter at the Connectivity Standards Alliance, have a great conversation about marketing people involved in networking standardization, how important it is for translating technology into value, and why it’s a labor of love.
In this episode, I chat with Jason Thompson of TELUS, one of the major Canadian ISPs, about the customer Internet experience, what ISPs are doing with new tech, and why connecting real people and making their lives better is what broadband networking is all about.
Another person I love to work with that is as passionate about standardization as I am, Cristina Radelscu-Banu and I sit down and talk about the reality of deployed networks vs. bleeding edge, and taking a high-level view of technology.
I have known so many great people who have not just made a difference in the industry, but a difference in my life, and Gavin Young from Vodafone is no exception. In this episode, we discuss a holistic view of technology, the era of smart CPE and smart networks, and how operators face an exhausting goal of ensuring things “just work” for everyone, all the time.
Listeners know that I love diving into the real stories behind who makes your Wi-Fi and Internet work. I can think of few more interesting stories than Aleksandar Radivojša from Serbia Broadband (now Yettel). In this episode we fly all over the map talking about language, being “in between the hammer and the horseshoe” of CPE quality and customer satisfaction, and how even bees have their own network protocols.
Fritz! Box, the router with the great name deployed in Europe, always had a great story for me when it came to really owning a product line and the impact it has on end-users. In this episode, I chat with my friend Eric Van Uden of Fritz! (formerly AVM) about how customers view their Internet service, the retail router market, and what we love about being bridges between the worlds of technology and commerce.
While at the Fall 2025 Broadband Forum meeting in Tuscon, I sit down with Jeevithan Muttu, where we dive into the implications of LLMs for coders, for broadband, and for culture. Special thanks to @Viodi for recording!
It’s always rewarding to find someone with as much passion and energy for networking standards as I do. In this episode I chat with Pedro Mouta of the Wireless Broadband Alliance about the human side of standards, how we make the business case, and how Wi-Fi and broadband are really about one thing: the end users’ experience that is in the hands of operators.
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Jeremy Snyder
Richey Malhotra
Drive Electric Alabama
Proxify
Rupa Singh
The National Academy of Sciences
