Welcome to episode 149 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 Federal Analyst Al Sag. Let's get started with my first topic and I want to talk about Vodafone and they are the first in the United Kingdom to roll out 5G standalone to four cities.

This includes London, no surprise, Manchester, Glasgow, and Cardiff. They are dubbing their 5G service, 5G Ultra, and it's initially only available to customers who have a Samsung Galaxy S 21 or S 22 device. Their Vodafone is saying that more devices will become 5G ultra compatible next month. And hey, we've been talking about standalone and how that's gonna unlock the true promise of 5g.

Now, this is an article that appeared in Fierce Wireless just a few days ago, but hey, Europe is still, finally coming around and catching up. So what do you think? 

I think it's interesting that they're, they decided to call it 5G Ultra. I do think it's interesting that they're trying to create a delineation between all the other 5G and then 5G Ultra.

I think that's a very clear indication that they believe that customers need to know that this is a newer, better version of 5g. Yeah. Which I can't necessarily disagree with. And I think maybe US operators should maybe even follow suit. Because when standalone becomes available, there's gonna be more spectrum than users were previously available to.

A lot of them were like, oh, using mid low band and expecting 5G speeds with Ultra, they'll probably be using mid band and low band combined. Yeah. Low Latency and new services. So I do think this might be an opportunity for operators to. Reset expectations for 5g because a lot of 'em have failed to deliver because they sat on standalone for too long.

Yeah. And I think that they're talking about better battery life, better performance, better coverage. And those are all true. Those are not made up capabilities. Those are actually improvements that come with standalone. I do think that there's some. Validity in doing this for cities.

Not the greatest beginning. They gotta upgrade the core in those places. Yeah. We'll see what happens, but I do think this is a positive development and I'm glad that they're not charging extra for it. But I definitely think that there should be an attempt to reset expectations with standalone.

I agree. 

And it's interesting in the US Verizon, they've carved out what they've been doing with millimeter wave ultra, I believe they call it ultra, they're ultra white band service. So I think, your point is well made that it. It's probably behooves, operators as they move to standalone.

So certainly in the US as at and t and Verizon build out their mid band spectrum assets, C-band and and other assets like One 10 that they, they delineate that. I'm not surprised. Obviously those four cities are some of the larger, more densely populated parts of the United Kingdom.

And that's certainly where you're gonna get a faster, return on the investment in upgrading that core infrastructure. But yeah, it's kudos to Vodafone. That's a huge milestone and I think as they get expanded device support that those cities will rapidly increase.

But with that, let's move to your first topic this week. I'm actually in Odessa, Texas. I came here to move my daughter in recently discovered that a s t Space Mobile's actually headquartered in Midland, which is a sister city. And I don't wanna steal your thunder, but to our viewers and listeners, I'm actually gonna get a tour on my way back to Austin tomorrow.

I'm gonna spend 45 minutes with a s t space mobile. Probably be sharing the details of that on our next podcast. But you wanna talk about a T space mobile. And I caught this news as well with a successful test of 4G speeds with at and t. And this occurred in Hawaii of all places. 

Yeah, so this was a test using commercial 4G devices.

Yeah. And this was done using the Blue Walker three satellite and they were able to achieve 10 megabits per second speeds. I chose not to use the headline 4g. Because while it did use 4G smartphones, there was no clear indication that this was a three G p 4G test. And 4G is a three G P standard.

Because we haven't really heard a clear statement of three G P compatibility yet. I'm hesitant to fully commit to the 4g nomenclature that, that, that is in the press release. But they did use at t Spectrum they used Nokia's Rand technology. And they were also doing voice calls as well.

And yeah, they, they're able to show that this capability is operating on commercial equipment, whether that's smartphones or infrastructure. And yeah I think this is a great development for space communications using commercial devices. Obviously I think we all want to see 5G come to fruition, which I believe will be happening next year.

And their goal is to have a, three GPP standard based 5G connection to a 5G commercial smartphone. I think that's most likely going to happen next year. That's actually from what I've read and I hope that we continue to move down this path. This will be a, gradual improvement as a launch, more satellites improve coverage.

I don't know the reason why sat why Hawaii was chosen specifically. But I'm sure it's easier to aim the satellite at an island in the middle of the ocean rather than trying to find a specific place in the continental us. But yeah, I think the actual speed they were claiming was 10.3 megabits.

But I'd love to hear what you have to say about this. Yeah. 

No it's impressive. And I shared some, some insights on Twitter last week when this news broke. And then also, I think it was Mobile World Live. They published an article I. Talking about AST Space mobile's plans to move towards 5G next year with with enhanced support on their satellites.

From my perspective, this is just a great, proof of concept demonstration that their technology and some of the things that I wrote about in that Forbes article, which again, I want to thank all of my new Twitter followers. For the input and the passion that we're seeing around this subject.

But direct to device connectivity is it's very compelling and and clearly a s c space mobile is proving with its intellectual property. That they're able to accomplish this with at and t and they signed over 35 letters of understanding with other mobile network operators, including Rakuten, which, and I also believe Rakuten is an investor.

And and so I think we're gonna start seeing, and this is just my hypothesis, I don't have any information to this point, but I think we're gonna start seeing. More announcements from other operators beyond at and t as as s t Space Mobile works through a lot of those memos of understanding.

But, at a high level, again, very compelling. I think what I'm waiting for, the next logical step, they've demonstrated voice. Would be video. And and so I'm expecting, at some point we'll hear more about that. There are no details that have been provided to this point, but but no it's very compelling and from my perspective, Boy, this could, and I've written about satellite communications, being a part of a larger portfolio to address the digital divide.

There are certainly other elements that are in play there, but certainly satellite is, it's beginning to emerge. As as an important, part of that entire ecosystem. But with that, let's move to my second topic and I wanna talk about Sierra Wireless and Amdocs working together. And what they're wanting to do is simplify the deployment.

Not only the deployment, but the procurement and the actual build out of private networks. And It's a pretty complicated endeavor. I've talked about private cellular, both LT E and 5g. There are a lot of different routes to get there. So I won't rehash that, but at a high level one of the biggest challenges is in sharing that, with an enterprise that already has deployed traditional networking infrastructure both, ethernet wired and and wifi, that in introducing a private network, Does not become an overlay.

Because that, basically creates complexity that would force network operators to have to swivel chair and, manage their traditional brownfield, deployment and then, potentially new greenfield with private cellular. And Amdocs is no stranger to this this area.

They do a lot around software orchestration and automation, which is mission critical to make this work. But Athe net is also involved too from the core perspective. And I really like how, three companies are coming together to, to really solve the complexity involved in deploying and managing and, and constructing these 5G networks and.

This is also really positive news because Sierra Wireless was acquired by Simtech, and Simtech has been very focused on Laura Wan. And so I've been waiting to see what, what that, what the synergy would be. Bringing Sierra, into the fold. And this is a first step from my perspective, but I don't know if you caught the news, but would love to get your insights here.

I didn't 

catch the news, but I was reading it while you were talking about it. Yeah. I do think it's interesting just because Amdocs is very involved in accelerating digital transformation, I think more than a lot of other companies have. And they need that wireless component to enable them to.

Connect the different devices and points of sale and whatever devices are generating actual business data. Yeah. And I think there's, there's always been a disconnect between the companies managing the data and how the data's generated and how it gets from point A to point B.

So I think having companies like Sierra Wireless. Be involved as well as athe net. I think it's a good demonstration of how companies need to work together to make these things happen with private wireless. I don't really know what solution will come out of this but I'm, they're calling it a complete solution.

And we'll see what kind of private cellular networks come out of this. But I have a feeling that this is gonna be more of a standalone thing again. And that this is gonna be probably using C B R S and, it'll probably also be anchored to a commercial network as well. And yeah, we'll see how these things work out, but, we're seeing quite the flood of private network offerings now And I don't think they're gonna go away anytime soon.

But I do think there's gonna probably be some consolidation in the next couple years as things start to either grow or die off. Yep. And yeah, I think this is a, just a positive for, affirmation of the fact that private networks are probably going to be the next big opportunity in 5g after fixed wireless.

Yeah, I agree and I agree on your consolidation point as well. H p E recently acquired Athe net to give them a capability to compete with the likes of Cisco and others. You're right. I think we're gonna see in, I've spoken about this in the past it's been a fairly slow ramp into private wireless, private cellular.

But I do think once the public network operators get to full standalone like Vodafone and T-Mobile are doing today, I think, that opens up the opportunity to do a lot of different interesting things like hybrid networks which is something that, that T-Mobile is is positioning with its advanced net advanced network solutions portfolio.

Some mix of both public and private. And then when you start talking about, once the mobile network operators get to standalone network slicing where they can guarantee quality of service for, and fine tune connectivity for aspects like latency and throughput and device support.

I think it'll really, it's really gonna catch its full head of steam, and that's likely gonna be towards the end of this year, first of next year. But it's all positive from my perspective. But let's go to your second topic and man, we keep talking about this airline, 5G thing and it just doesn't die.

And I did catch this news, you shared it with me before the podcast around a July 1st deadline. So you wanna talk about that. 

Yeah. So this is the deadline we've been talking about for the last couple months. Yeah. And because there's, this deadline is July 1st, which is this week. We obviously haven't had a chance to see what the outcome is of that deadline.

So that deadline will be this Saturday. But effectively what it means is, The F C and the F FAA have both agreed that they will no longer be restricting the 5G operator's cellular broadcast power around airports, meaning that there is an increased potential for interference. This has been an issue we've been that has been being, I would say, kicked down the line.

The bucket's been kicked down the line. I 

call it kick the can. They're playing kick the can with this one now. 

Yeah they're basically kicking the can down the road. But this has been something that we've known would be an issue. The reality is most new airplanes don't have this problem.

This is an older aircraft problem. And Europe, they've already dealt with it one way or another. No. Planes have crashed as a result of this. They've been using the spectrum longer than we have because this is mid band 3.5 ish. It's a little higher, like 3.7, but what's interesting is most of the spectrum that would be potentially interfering with planes hasn't even been made available yet.

Yeah, the way that the spectrum's being released, I'm gonna do a visual, is they're doing a block B block, C block, and the airline altimeters are up here, but we've only released the stuff down here yeah. It's it's infuriating because I don't actually think there will be a real true interference until the higher blocks are released and by then the airlines should have already had their airplanes.

Yeah. Re retrofitted. But the thing is that airlines were pushing this issue and they tried to get the FAA to. Kick the can down the road and maybe pull, 5 billion out of the 90 billion that was spent to pay for their upgrades and. I believe there was a fund, if I recall correctly, in the past we were talking about it.

And they did get some money to do this, but they were dragging their feet and didn't really push quickly. I think United was like, we're done. We're good. We did it. So it's possible, right? Like it's totally possible. And the thing is, So the, all of this I'm leading up to is basically saying that secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday warned that the potential for flight delays for some carriers who haven't taken action by a deadline, meaning that those airlines will not be able to fly those aircraft in.

I think it's cloud not cloudy, in like foggy. Environment. The thing is it's summer, so it's less likely to be foggy. So it's very unlikely that we will get very many situations where an older aircraft is foggy in the summer and not able to land or I think it's mostly land. I don't even think it's take off.

Yeah. But all I'm saying is this is all avoidable. I think mayor Pete, or sorry secretary Pete. Basically is covering his ass because there's gonna be cancellations and there's gonna be delays and the airlines are gonna try and blame him. So I think he's trying to get ahead of it and blame them.

So this story gets out before July 1st so that people are aware that it's not his fault that this is happening, it's the airline's fault. So this is very much political pandering. In the statement he said that, More than 80% of domestic fleets say, serving US airports has already been retrofitted, but that there's a significant amount of aircraft still waiting for the retrofit to be for the C-band situation.

But yeah, I think some of the airlines, and I believe JetBlue is one of them. And I think possibly American, I was looking at some of the stories about this. And trying to figure out like which airlines are actually impacted. But yeah, it says United, Southwest and American Airlines have reported they will have no outstanding planes by the deadline.

So yeah, jet Blue says they have 17 aircraft. So really what I'm saying is like this was avoidable. Yeah. And it was on the airlines to do it, and some airlines were able to actually achieve it. So it's not like it's impossible. So at this point, I think the blame lies on the Air Airlines and honestly if I were the F FAA or the fcc, I would be finding those airlines.

Yeah. 

Yeah. This is an issue that just seems to never wanna resolve itself or go away. And I am traveling on the second, I'm headed to the Florida Keys, but I'll let you know if I make my American flight to Key West, 

but should be fine Americans. Americans not on the 

list. Yeah, so good.

They're my airlines. Hey, let's go to my third and final topic. And I want to talk about a subject that's quite interesting. I've read about this in the past, but there's a TV station in Boston that is wanting to sort participate in the 5G ecosystem by broadcasting from.

Their particular station. And this is interesting. It's a, it's an IP kind of over the air, pipeline that can be leveraged. The standard is called ats, C3 0.0, yep. Atc, which is sort, yeah. And we may have talked about this on a prior podcast but it's a Boston TV station that's the first to test.

5G broadcasting. And so they've requested a provisional license from the FCC to do this. But what's really interesting now, they don't intend to become an M V N O or do anything like that, but, It's interesting in that it could supplement existing 5G cellular networks. And if you think about coverage gaps and that sort of thing, it could be quite interesting.

I don't know. I found it an interesting topic. It was actually an article in light reading that Jeff Baumgarter wrote just last week as well. But again, this is something that I've read about in the past, but it sounds interesting. What do you think? 

I had a question for you actually.

Yes. Do you know which station call sign it is for that Boston station? It 

is. Yes, it is. W o l D. 

That's a w o l 

D? No, w o l D. Interesting. Yeah, so it was on June 12th. They, it says they filed for an experimental license with the fcc. And so it's, so the technology is it's using u h frequencies delivering data one way.

It's only down. And it's like it's intended to complement existing 5G cellular networks. And so I remember, I recall about a year ago, I spoke to a company that was focused on this and It's actually a company that, that operates one of the largest footprints of TV stations. And I don't know if it's ganet or what the company was but this is a mo, this is a monetization opportunity.

Fewer and fewer people are tuning into broadcast TV and they're either and cable is getting, the cords are getting cut there too. Everyone's streaming these days. And so this could be a pivot. For that industry to to monetize what they're doing. But yeah, it's interesting.

I could see that being useful for low band spectrum for sure. Cuz they've got these big masks and they have the licenses to broadcast at pretty high power. Yeah. So I could see them helping to create good coverage in the areas that they're located. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this get gets utilized to improve coverage and maybe speeds.

But I really see this as more of a coverage thing. 

I agree. Yeah, for sure. And it definitely is gonna be low band, given the profile of what they're trying to do there. 

And so that's, a lot of the stations were already broadcasting at 600 and 700. That's how a lot of them ended up getting that spectrum.

For sure. Hey, and I just wanna apologize to our viewers. My, my lighting keeps going in and out. I'm trying not to lean into my camera, but I not in my home office. So just, a quick apology there. But let's move to your third and final topic. And you wanna talk about Ericsson and some direction that they've provided on future growth?

Yeah, so this is part of their biannual, maybe even quarterly mobility reports. So they updated their mobility report and they actually changed their projection for when in 2028 they were expecting to hit 5 billion 5G devices. And now that projection has come down to 4.6 billion.

Yeah. So they've recruit reduced it almost to 10% or actually 8%. And it's interesting because. It also reduces their total expectation for total subscribers by a hundred million. And I think it's interesting because I think that maybe they're, taking a bit of more of a conservative approach now.

Yeah. And trying to maybe change the models, which that they are building their expectations. But I actually, I might actually disagree with these revisions because I actually think that. While things are taking a little bit longer, 2028 is still quite a ways down the road. Yeah. And I think there are still some things that can change in the meantime that would potentially get us there.

What I think it could also be is that maybe they're also seeing that standalone isn't rolling out fast enough. And because standalone hasn't rolled out fast enough, a lot of the new use cases haven't been realized yet, which means then that next phase of growth in, in the new G hasn't really occurred yet.

Cuz if, remember 4g, the first implementation of it, nothing really used it. And people were just getting a speed boost and that was it. Yeah. But then once it was out there for long enough, the applications started to come through and then, Utilization went through the roof, and I think they're gonna see something similar with 5g.

And maybe they're just seeing that peak occur after 2028 because of the delay to get a sustainable one, which I find, really frustrating since it's been four years now. Yeah. But yeah I think that's my perspective. I'm not really sure if I agree with it, but I also can see why they would do it.

Yeah, I hear ya. And Yeah, it is quite interesting how standalone has gotten strung out. And so I think, we were talking about on one of your topics, playing the c y A game. This might be, Ericsson's attempt at that. But I'll also say at the same time that I am, I'm quite impressed with its cradle points divisions focus on private cellular as well and really growing that footprint.

And you could argue that, Next to Nokia, cradle point's been out there, in front they're like on their third or fourth generation set of infrastructure. And I just participated in a LinkedIn live last week and we were talking about use cases and that sort of thing.

We didn't really go deep into the Cradle point portfolio, but I do think you know that acquisition by Erickson Just right at a billion dollars is really gonna pay dividends long term to, to Ericsson. It's gonna give them an opportunity to have a bifurcated strategy where they can go deliver carrier grade to very large multinational enterprises, continue to, to focus on the mobile network operators, but then, have Cradlepoint as well.

So two paths to get there. So I think, they're, again, I'm not a financial analyst. But I believe from a technology perspective that they're very well positioned. And this might just be a an exercise in c y a. But with that, I think we went a little long a day, but we had some great conversations.

But why don't you take us home? Absolutely. 

We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topic's interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide insights on a specific 5G topic for a future podcast, Please reach out to us on social media, will is at Will Town Tech and I'm at on. We hope you have a great week and please tune it again next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.