welcome to episode 148 of the G2 on 5g. It's the latest inside scoop on everything 5g. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes, and it's brought to you by more insights and strategy. I'm Will Townsend, and joining me again this week as thorough analyst Ancho sag. Let's get started with my first topic, and just yesterday I posted a Forbes article.

On the LEO satellite space race between starlink and a S T Space Mobile. And it's actually my friend blown up on Twitter. Apparently there's a lot of interest in space and what I did, I had an opportunity to speak with both AST Space Mobile and at t and I gleaned information that's been publicly available from.

T-Mobile and starlink and I published, my hot take on where I think things are at. And the opportunity with LEO is tremendous, to compliment cellular connectivity, especially in areas that are underserved by, traditional fiber and fixed wireless access solutions.

And I did call winner. After, evaluating all the data and and speaking like in lean with a s t space mobile, I really feel like even though when you compare market caps, and this is an interesting topic on Twitter because a lot of folks were comparing a s t space mobile's market cap of about 1 billion with with starlink, SpaceX About 80 billion.

But, at the end of the day, I believe it's patents, it's technology partnerships with companies like Nokia and the fact that a s t Space mobile is focused on satellite to device connectivity versus starlink, which is a fixed, broadband solution. Given the scale it's quite compelling that a s t could have at least initially an edge with respect to an opportunity to scale out the operation.

What I also like as I spoke with AST Space Mobile is that they've signed over 35 MOUs with mobile network operators all around the world, including at and t, and I think we've talked about this on a prior podcast back in April. AST Space, mobile and at and t along with Samsung demonstrated the first satellite to smartphone call.

And I expect more to come in the future. But at the end of the day, if you wanna read more about it, go hit my my Twitter handle at Will Town Tech and would love to hear your feedback. 

I did not read your article yet. Come on, man. I've been a little busy. I bet you have. But I do think that, ast, space Mobile has a very energetic audience on Twitter.

I think a lot of these guys are also investors in the company, which I think is a factor in their excitement. For anything around AST space Mobile. But I do think in some ways they do have a lead. But I also think that they're also they don't have control of how their satellite scope in space while SpaceX does.

You know what? 

Yeah. Because actually, ironically, SpaceX is what's. The vehicle to launch their satellite. So it's quite interesting. 

And also, the way a t Space mobile is approaching this is very different from how other companies are doing it. They're building these much bigger arrays that are like, very large.

I do think it, we'll figure out we'll find out. I think, in the next year or two where everybody is, at least in the first phase I think our conversation with Media Tech was a good one. And they seem to be powering a lot of the chipset side of these things. Yeah. And because of that, I think we're in the very early phases of satellite connectivity.

And a lot of it's pretty low bandwidth at this point. And I think until we start really getting stuff like five, satellite nr and getting NR like speeds I think it'll be very difficult to know who actually has the edge right now. That said, starlink does have by far the fastest speeds for fixed wireless.

Those are even coming down with speed and they've also added that connectivity to. RVs, boats and planes. So it's not like the technology isn't capable of handling moving objects. Good point. Fitting it, making it work with a smartphone is a totally different beast. And I'm really curious to see how this all shakes out.

But they've definitely partnered with the right companies and they're really moving forward. But I wouldn't write off T-Mobile and SpaceX yet, nor would I link Mobile or Snapdragon or all the other existing incumbents. There's a lot of consolidation. I think we're gonna see probably in the next few years and we're gonna see some companies go under.

Yeah. And once that consolidation occurs, we'll probably have a much more clear picture of where the market's at, probably in the next two to three years. 

No, I agree. And in my article I do talk about the fact that starlink is expanding its capabilities for objects in motion as you mentioned, recreational vehicles and that sort of thing.

And at the end of the day I believe competition breeds innovation. And I've spoken about that on numerous occasions. And I'm, this is at a point in time, and things can change, over time obviously. But but it's exciting. It's a space race. I opened that article, looking back at the sixties when, we wanted to put a, an astronaut on the moon.

And it's exciting and I think you're right. There are a lot of fanboys out there that are as team space mobile, investors. And it's been interesting. I've gotten like a lot of great feedback. One of them told me that I made the Space Mob Hall of Fame. I think at the end of the day what's really interesting is there's a ton of attention.

On this topic. Now, there's also a lot of concern around putting, and you and I have talked about this in the past, putting too many satellites in the sky and how that affects, astronomical, concerns and that sort of thing. It's it's a very complicated scenario in the article.

I speak to what you know, SpaceX has done a tremendous amount of infrastructure investment and satellite. They have over 4,000 low earth orbit satellites in space. And Elon Musk is been stated on record as saying he wants to put 30,000 in the air. As T-Mobile on the other hand, space Mobile on the other hand has only launched two and only their second one supports things like beam forming and that sort of thing to pinpoint the accuracy of the signal.

So again, it's really early stages to your point, but it's exciting to watch and, I really felt like there's so much Ambiguity and there was a need to really educate the market here. So the other thing that I found interesting on the Twitter feedback was that my analysis was very balanced.

I know at times I've not been a huge proponent of Tesla, so this wasn't a hit piece. On Elon Musk whatsoever. But just like my take on where I think both companies are at, I also talk about OneWeb. So again, I encourage our viewers and listeners to dig into that article. Would love to get your feedback on that.

But with that I did mention Samsung they were part of that initial. Demonstration with with respect to that satellite, to smartphone connectivity. And unfortunately I missed the Samsung Networks Analyst Day, but you were there and you wanna talk about your insights and what you learned from that event?

Yeah, 

there was it was, I would say like a business review. Like filling people in that maybe aren't as in the loop as you and I are. You and I are pretty good at catching all of the major Samsung announcements and partnerships. And that was pretty much a lot of that.

And there were some NDA stuff, so obviously I'm not gonna talk about that. Sure. There were a lot of conversations that were very, I think, productive. And, we got a good business update on where Samsung Networks is and who their partners are. And we even had a short presentation from somebody from Wind River as a, that's a partner for Samsung Networks.

And yeah, I think it's, their business is really evolving. And we actually got a tour of their new executive briefing center, which is basically all of their latest equipment, all of their latest demos. They gave us the rundown on all the things that they announced at m WC with some of us who hadn't been there.

I was at mwc, but I wasn't invited to the Samsung Networks briefing, I dunno. But it was a good conversation and it was cool to see the new demos. Their demos were really focused on fwa they were also focused on having a network that can be flexible and dynamic.

With V Ran. And then also they had a demo that was focused on xr which obviously I was interested in. Sure. And that was with two HoloLens kind of, it was an actual active demo where you're actually turning on things and with the ex, with the headset. And seeing, augmented reality turbines and stuff like that.

It was pretty good. I think the HoloLens maybe is gonna be on the way out the door eventually. As HoloLens loses support. But they also had a wall of all their RAN equipment and some of their. Other devices for the network. And it was cool to see all that stuff in real person and kind of have them break down, this is used in chorea, this is used on Verizon, just getting a good idea of, their 64 T 64 R versus their two T two R stuff. And just looking at the breadth of options that they have for different types of bands. And they even showed the C band and C B R S combination device.

You can just roll it out once and have both. Yeah. So it was really cool to see that. I think it was very clear to me and everyone else there that the RAND product is the core of their business right now. And their core side for the. I hate to use the word core, but the core side of the network is still very much Nokia and Erickson.

And it's Samsung is trying to work their way into that eventually, but it sounds like most of their customers that are using their RAM product are using Erickson and Nokia core. So that sounds like it's a place for them to improve upon. And yeah, it was just a good briefing. A good day there.

And I, got to see some of the people from Samsung I haven't seen in a while. And I'll see other analysts who have seen, in the last few weeks. Yeah. But yeah, it was a good, it was a good event. And I'll probably do a short writeup, but I posted tons of pictures on Twitter and I'll be uploading videos of all the demos on YouTube.

So you can see on my personal YouTube account, I actually forgot to upload them when I got back yesterday. But I'll do it today. And this should be up any minute after this is published. That's the wrap up there. 

That's great, man. And yeah, I did catch some of your LinkedIn updates.

You were posting a lot of images and that sort of thing. And from my perspective, Samsung Networks is really owning sort of the whole vRAN space. They're really innovating there. I believe they're in their third or fourth generation, third solution. Third. And, and honestly from Iran perspective, historically that hasn't been a strength of Samsung's in the past.

I think it's it's a sort of a testament to like they recognize an opportunity. To differentiate themselves relative to, Ericson and Nokia that are very well established in the radio access network space. Yeah, it's great and again, competition breeds innovation.

But with that, let's move to my second topic. And I do wanna talk about Nokia. And this is a, actually an article that you caught, that you alerted me to, and they signed a private 5G networking deal with D X C technology. So DXC technology is an integrator, and what I really like about this deal is that there's no question.

That Nokia has been an early leader with respect to private 5g through the Nokia Enterprise Business Unit. They've been really, ringing up a lot of, not only proof of concepts but actual deployments. And so what I really like about this deal is in signing an integrator and their footprint is it's actually quite wide.

Yep. And it's very complimentary as well, what DXC technology is doing is that they're really leaning into Nokia's capabilities with respect to radio and core and that sort of thing. And what they are providing is really that the the network operations layer, so the management, the analytics, the automation the secret sauce to make this all work.

And unquestionably Nokia has the same capabilities, but. You know what Nokian has designed and architected has really been for carrier grade networks. And so what D X C technology is really focused on are these private 5G deployments and and obviously From a use case perspective, they are, something that's very apparent to me.

Manufacturing, energy, healthcare, supply chain, logistics, transportation and education. And I think it's a great partnership and it's really I view this as possibly Nokia's, 2.0 strategy with respect to private deployments to really extend. Their capabilities, and you're starting to see this with other players that are in the private networking space.

Cisco, with its 5G as a service offering, they're partnered with N T n t serves as an integrator, just D X C technology is serving as an integrator with Nokia in this scenario. So I think, net, this is gonna give Nokia sort of a wider net to cast with respect to private deployments.

But, Would love to get your insights. 

I'll give you a quick one. B X C is very deeply integrated into very many enterprise companies. It okay. And I think that alone is just a huge opportunity for DXC to quickly deploy private 5G for their customers and no yet to get wins without much effort. 

Okay.

I like it, having a footprint, and certainly, like I just talked about Cisco. Having a footprint within the enterprise it gives you a natural extension in, into cellular. And certainly when you look at what what H P E has done with its acquisition of athe net for core capability, they're trying to do the same thing with Aruba.

They're trying to extend that traditional IT enterprise networking footprint into operational technology environments and Basically drive some incremental revenue tan, whatever you wanna call it. So I did not know that. So that's a great insight, my friend. But let's move to your second topic this week.

And you wanna talk about the EU Commission, and not to be confused with the the European Union, but I think it's called the ec. But there's been a lot of talk about, and we, I think we've talked about this on prior podcasts about making a blanket. Delisting of Huawei and ZTE e across the entire European Union because they're having pockets in different parts of Europe that that are still aligned with Huawei, but I'll let you take it from there.

Yeah. 

So today, actually technically it happened yesterday Bloomberg came out with an article about how Huawei. Had moles within a Denmark operator called tdc. And tried to seal a 200 million deal. And then the operator realized that Huawei had people feeding them information from within inside the company and then also that their security team was being spied on.

And they were getting a denial of service attacks when they left. The company's headquarters. And obviously Huawei denies a lot of this, but this is just something, another example of Huawei doing things that aren't really above board. But the bigger story is that the U European Union Industry Chief Terry Briton on Thursday urged more EU countries to join the 10 that have restricted or banned China.

China's Huawei. And z t e from their 5G telecom networks. So this is the EU industry chief which is part of the European Commission. Yeah. And this is part of their European toolbox, which we actually talked about I don't know, a week or two ago. So this is heating up. And basically they're saying like, follow our toolbox rules or we're gonna have problems.

And they're saying like, follow the rules. Of this whole situation with China, with specifically Huawei and and ZTE e and apparently I saw an article that said something like, you ch if Germany were to ditch Huawei, it's gonna cost them like two and a half billion dollars to do so it's gonna be expensive to make this, these changes, but what they're pushing for is European countries to pass resolutions. Inside their own country that effectively bans e t E in Huawei so that the European Union doesn't have to do it on a European Union scale. And is like urging, was urging European countries to do it.

But now, I was reading the European Commission statement and it just says outright like you work, you need to ban Huawei and ZTE because it's right. Security risk. Yeah, there's stories about the Australians that were having issues with security and they didn't understand, how there was a back door in their networks and there's all kinds of stuff.

And I think at this point I. It has gotten to a point where Huawei and ZTE E are no longer an option in the EU or in the US or any of the five eyes countries. An interesting thing that I also read was as part of the deal that the Denmark operator had signed with Huawei was that they were gonna send.

Equipment and software to the UK to a security facility run by the G C H Q to verify Huawei software and hardware before Denmark implemented it for security reasons and Huawei stopped doing that. And That just, there's a lot of weird, shady things that are going on and my confidence in Huawei's defend defense is not really good anymore.

And I'm starting to think that they're shadier than they let on to people to be with all these stories about how they're just not following the rules and trying to do things to make things less, less legal, in my opinion. 

So I get it. And so the European Commission can set sort of these edicts and these guidelines and that sort of thing.

Much like the United States government has been setting a lot of cybersecurity, guidelines and that sort of thing. But I haven't dug into this, but from your perspective, is there really any enforcement or teeth to this? Or is it just we would like you to comply Turkey, or we would like you to comply outlying, part of Europe.

What's your take on that? Is there some real teeth here? Are there penalties for countries not getting aligned to what the European Commission wants to see happen? I 

haven't seen anything yet, but what I can tell you is the ramp. For the ramp for rhetoric and requirements is growing.

It started from, we strongly suggest to, we recommend to you're gonna have to do this, you're gonna have to do this. They're giving them an opportunity to fall in line before they get pushed 

into line. So yeah, it's like being the stern parent. And yeah, it's try trying to move them along.

Yeah. I think that's, I think realistically if we don't see more countries cross that, that line in the next year or two, it's just gonna become an edict. 

Yeah, I got it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So let's move to my third and final topic, and I wanna talk about T-Mobile and Google Cloud, signing an edge deal.

And I actually, I expected this a long time ago because when you look at least in the us, when you look at what Verizon's been doing with AWS and what at and t has been doing with Azure they've been edifying their networks at t moved. Its mobile converge core to. Azure and there was a transfer of manpower and intellectual property and woman power that went along with that.

And t-Mobile's a little bit late to the Edge party, but this makes a lot of sense. And so this is with with Google and the Advanced Network Solutions part of T-Mobile. An area of T-Mobile that you and I have talked about on numerous occasions, and I really like the strategy that T-Mobile's employing.

It's a hybrid approach. It's public, it's private, it's both that addresses, certain use cases. It's by vertical, so it's smart city. It's manufacturing, it's healthcare. It's a number of different. Scenarios and I've mentioned this numerous times that that edge is a supercharge for 5G use cases.

When you put compute. At the data creation point on a network, whether it's on the very bleeding edge of a network, fat edge, thin edge, or lots of definitions of edges that people like to use it's, it can be powerful and and then it can reduce, latency and it can improve throughput and that sort of thing.

So I think this is a long time coming and So I think, it's a positive move on t-Mobile's part. They've been on the bench, with respect to this. And honestly, I think when I look at all, when I look at the three, tier ones in the us I I'm just gonna say that I think at and t has done the best job of actually taking edge.

Being very purposeful and directional with respect to the use case. So Smart Factory with General Motors is an example with at and t, and Verizon on the other hand, has been just, let's just go edge. Fify the network for the sake of doing it. Let's see what use cases flow through, right?

And so I think T-Mobile is a really nice, happy medium because they have this advanced network solutions portfolio. They have these defined verticals or these defined use cases, and they're now, they're bringing, Google Cloud into pitcher. To edify their use cases and solutions.

So I think on the surface, it's a win-win. It's a meet comp from my perspective for T-Mobile. They've actually they've they're sitting now at the the edge compute table. But what are your thoughts? 

I think this is an interesting one because I also think that Google Cloud is probably the most aggressive.

Player trying to go out there and get new business. They're the ones who have the most room to grow 

and most to lose, right? So they're you can argue they're in the third position, right? Aws, number one, Azure continues to gain ground aws, but they're a close number two, right? Google Cloud.

I think they 

have the most to gain in the least to lose. 

There you go. Okay. Great counterpoint. 

But I think also Google Cloud part of what they're also looking at is they're more focused on 5G applications for their cloud. Okay. And I think them deploying Edge Compute is gonna be really valuable for T-Mobile.

Yeah. I also think when you look at T-Mobile, they're also a little bit more Android heavy than the author operators are. So they're more likely to have, for Android develop reasons, wanting to target their user base. Yeah. So there's a couple, there's a couple points of synergy here that I think makes sense.

I also saw that there were some talks about xr which I thought was interesting. Yeah. And yeah I think this is a good match, but I also think, T-Mobile I think T-Mobile's pretty cloud agnostic. Unlike Verizon, who very much seems like an AWS house for sure, at t who definitely seems like an Azure house.

I think T-Mobile, they can lean towards Google cause I think that's, they're the one operator that hasn't really committed to a necessarily one cloud partner. But I also don't think that they're fully committed to Google, nor do I think any of the other operators are fully committed to any cloud.

But it just seems like the other two have already made their. Decisions and partnerships and put them in place. 

Yeah, you've gotta lead with one, right? And then, fast follow with the others. I am gonna shout out to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, oci. Because they are really making some moves in the telecommunication space.

So I'm just gonna put that out there. There, there hasn't been a lot of visibility around, big wins with operators in the us but I think, o c I is someone to keep an eye on. In the near term. But yeah, love your insights there, my friend. But let's go to your third and final topic as we wrap up.

And, we've talked about dish off and on and you wanna talk about coverage and where they're at. So I'm gonna let you take it away. 

Yeah. So this was a a thing that lots of people were expecting was gonna happen, but needed to happen for Dish, which is that they hit their 70% coverage.

Requirement, which means they won't get fined or they won't lose like 2 billion, right? Yeah. And this is a combination of dishes AWS four as well as 700 megahertz E block, AWS H block, and 600 megahertz spectrum. So that's a lot of low band. AWS and this will obviously be easier to propagate, so it won't necessarily be super fast.

But what's interesting is it's already like a commercial 5G network standalone network with with, open ran. So there, they're a more modern network. And it's gonna be interesting to see how, this actually performs as a network. So I'm actually gonna reach out to my contact addition, see if I can get a fourth line of service on a fourth carrier.

Yeah. But yeah, I think at this point the next barrier will be hitting, I think it's 90% of the population. And that's gonna be the most difficult cause Yeah, the first like 80%. Is really easy, or even the first 70%, it's starting to get into the less dense areas where people are more difficult and costy to cover.

And the next deadline will actually be 75% by 2025, but that requires a lot more densification in capital. Yeah. And as we know we talked about, their financial situation. They might be actually looking for more funding, which might be a function of this. 75% requirement.

But they've got two years to do that. And yeah, it's, their stock's not doing great. But I think if they can really make it through this tough time I think they will be a compelling fourth. Yeah, operator. They will probably end up being more of a budget play, but also I think they're gonna end up being more of like a private networking company.

And I think that's where a lot of their 

profits will be. Yeah. No, I agree. And we've talked about this in the past, so they can't go head to head with the big three and, expect to be successful, so they're gonna have to like, Not niche themselves, but differentiate themselves, and so it's certainly private.

Is an area. I've talked about iot in the past as an area of differentiation, T-Mobile's running with that with its t i o t, initiative with Deutsche Telecom and harmonizing the whole, notion of iot, on a global basis. But yeah it's all good.

Let's not forget about US Cellular, although it's funny. I shared some insights about US Cellular. Probably a few weeks ago. And I had one person on Twitter like be very vocal about the fact that they're not properly investing in infrastructure and areas of rural America that really need it.

I think, that might be an interesting subject for you united to dive into a little bit deeper. Like, where is US cellular setting? Because all of a sudden, dish. It appeared, and they're focused on this cloud native, highly disaggregated architecture to drive agility and, CapEx and opex benefits, but where's us cellular in the whole big, scheme of thing.

So we might have to reach out to their cto. And and have them on a future podcast. But but with that said, my friend, it's been another great podcast. I'm operating on one hour of sleep. I took a red eye from Las Vegas, so I hope I didn't seem too punchy on our podcast. But I always love talking about 5G with you, but why don't you take us home?

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topic interesting. If anyone out there would provide insights for a future 5G PO topic on a future podcast. Please reach out to us on social media. Will is at Will Town Tech and I'm at On Shell Sag. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week.

And don't forget to like and subscribe. And subscribe.