Welcome to episode 158 of the GT on five G. It's the latest insight scoop on everything five G. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes, and it's brought to you by more insights and strategy. I'm Will Townsend in joining me again this week as fellow analyst anal sag. Let's get started with my first topic and both anal and I are gonna start with Forbes contributions that we've made just this past week.

I wrote about Druid software and Napa Tech and how they are aiming to disrupt the five G core infrastructure space. So on plenty of podcasts, an you and I have talked about, A lot of the challenges around private five G adoption. And just cellular networking, adoption in general. Multiple paths to market and that sort of thing.

But certainly one of the concerns is around expense. And when organizations are looking at the overall cost of deploying cellular infrastructure versus, let's say wifi becomes a lot more expensive, just. Based on the bill of material the nature of using licensed versus unlicensed spectrum and that sort of thing.

So Napa Tech is a company that I've been talking to for quite some time, and so recently they introduced me to Dr. We reviewed a solution or a partnership that both drew it and Epie launched at Mobile World Congress Barcelona way back in February. And what this is aimed to do is provide better performance at a very aggressive cost point with respect to core infrastructure.

Druid software has been around since 20 the actually 2000. They're based in Ireland, and they provide, they're a software company by, nature of their name, and they are focused on supporting the core part of network deployments. And they're backward compatible. Their solution is backward compatible all the way to tg.

But what was really interesting about their announcement at way back when at Mobile World Congress was. Teaming with Nappa Tech, who is a smart nick manufacturer, and what Napa Tech does with their smart network interface card is offload. What's arguably the most computational intensive endeavor, which is called five G user plane function.

So this allows basically a complete offload from the C P U on a server and it provides much more efficiency and it also has some pretty dramatic savings in the form of power consumption and that sort of thing. So it's one of these win-wins. It's It's price optimized and it's performance optimized.

As I mentioned, I did write a Forbes article, so I invite our viewers and listeners to dig more into that. I know I'm the infrastructure guy and you're the device guy, but any thoughts 

on this? I will be honest with you, I have not heard of either company. Okay. So before this podcast, I wasn't aware of, their position in the five G core infrastructure space.

But I do think, the way that the market is moving today, I think we're gonna have a lot more talk about core and infrastructure than we did in the past, because I feel like I. This is part of kind of something that I have a paper coming out fairly soon, just summarizing the state of five G networks today, both on the side and on the infrastructure side, but talking about how we've been very ran focused for a very long time and I think there's gonna be a lot more focus on core in the coming years because that's really where the innovation's gonna be happening for the most part.

And that's where the uniqueness really happens. With five G now. So I do think it's gonna be really interesting to see what Drew and App Tech do. But I will say that I'm not as familiar with them as you are, but I think you're gonna be one to help change that. Yeah, people should check out your Forbes article and I would definitely will give it a read over the weekend while I'm flying to Asia.

Cool, 

cool. And your insights are spot on. The focus has been on the ran and you and I have talked about on prior podcasts, concerns around softening with that. But hey, the focus on the RAN was because we have this tweener we have with five G. We have standalone and non standalone.

And again, your insight is spot on because now the goal is to have these mobile networks move from. Non standalone to standalone and core. That's what it's all about. It's upgrading that core to five G. Yeah, check out my article. But let's talk about your first topic. And this is also the subject of a Ford's Forbes post that that you that you put out there.

And this is around the Maui disaster and the responses from all the mobile network operators. It was a great read, but I wanna let you share kind of some of the insights there. 

So honestly, this has been a very evolving situation as many people know. Last, a little bit more than a week ago, there was a pretty serious disaster in Maui where a wildfire basically swept away in entire city.

The death toll's now over a hundred, and that probably not. Stop rising over the next few weeks, unfortunately. But I wanted to know, what the state of cellular networks was. And I reached out to all of the operators and they gave us a brief, they gave me a briefing on kind of what they were doing.

Across different carriers. And I'll say that, at t-Mobile and Verizon have all, responded very quickly. It seems like T-Mobile is just hitting all cylinders. Every day I'm getting an update from them and actually they're. C e o sent out a note to, to their employees and as well as the community in Hawaii and what their efforts are and how important it is to the company to help.

So they're doing a lot of stuff. I'll say that a trend I noticed across all companies was satellite communications is very heavy to deploy these temporary networks. All companies have deployed cells on wheels, which are known as cows. Most of those cows are in the Laina area, obviously, because the towers were burned down there, but there were other fires around the island as well.

So Verizon had to restore service up on the up country near the mountain. And at and t has also deployed a lot of satellite assets near and around La Laa. What's really interesting, and I think you saw this, is that T-Mobile is using SpaceX starlink to supplement connectivity. They have cell cellular coverage covered now. So there is no loss of coverage anymore, but they're adding additional assets and bandwidth through starlink and deploying them in hotels and different command centers. All companies are using retail stores to distribute Water and charging devices and some companies are discounting, charging, and then all of them have now decided that they're to the end of the month. Everybody has free service. No one's paying for additional overage. There's, everyone gets unlimited. Yeah they've been jockeying with that. I've been watching the dates move back more and more where initially it was like maybe for a week, and then now it's it's eventually all reached out to the end of the month.

So it's, I think it's great to see companies competing for generosity and all the companies I've noticed have donated at least a hundred thousand dollars to the charity. I personally have donated some money to the Hawaii Community Foundation, which runs the Maui Strong Fund, which has already raised something, the ballpark of $35 million.

Wow. And that's not including a hundred million dollars. Jeff Bezos says he is gonna donate. So I really think it's a good thing. It's really encouraging to see how much these carriers are responding to, deploy this extremely critical infrastructure because at and t runs FirstNet, which is, a big responder network.

Both at both T-Mobile and Verizon also have first responders, and they're taking care of them with 24 7 support and giving them, priority access to the networks. It's just been really interesting to see how these companies are responding. Also, I'll say one last thing.

All of them have I implemented some kind of text donation scheme where you can donate two different charities on the island of Maui through text messaging, using your billing some so you don't have to, enter a credit card, any credit card numbers and just gets tacked onto your bill at the end of the month.

Yeah, that's a great way to give as well. But I'm really impressed with. How I'm seeing a lot of these companies respond and I want to give an extra kudos to T-Mobile for giving nearly daily updates on what the state of things are and how they're helping out the people of Maui.

Yeah. 

It's tragic, and in times of natural disasters and, I've not personally gone through it, but, I have a home in, in I Islam, in the Florida Keys, and, Irma did a lot of devastation there and. It's just it's heartening to see, these folks that are competitors, at t, Verizon and T-Mobile almost I wouldn't say they're coordinating together, but I.

Really stepping up to do what's right. I dug into like at t's response and certainly it's its FirstNet network is supporting first responders on the ground. They're leveraging that infrastructure, that mobile, that, portable mobile infrastructure to do drone surveys and that sort of thing of the various areas that have been devastated.

And yeah, and you go into that in the article. So I really would encourage our viewers and listeners to, to dig into Ansel's article because he did speak with all three of the big mobile network operators and provide some great insights there. But let's go to my second topic this week and I wanna talk about Rakuten.

Another executive has exited for Telus. TELUS is a Canadian mobile network operator. And the question in my mind is, should there be cause for concern here? And so the executive actually that left. Is gonna join talu and basically manage the Canadian operator's entire ran strategy.

And this was a light reading article that was published by by Ian Morris on the 16th. And Ian points out what's interesting is that, Prior to this happening Rakuten and Telus had signed a partnership agreement and so they were already working together on the Rand strategy, but now this executive at Rakuten has moved over and so it it is interesting, it's you and I alluded to this when we talked about TerraX departure. There is a little bit of tribal in paradise there and, disaggregated infrastructure, especially in, a greenfield deployment does not come without challenges. And we've seen dish, stumble a little bit here too.

But this may not be the end of the executive departures. And I wouldn't be surprised if, Tarek pops up somewhere else and, some of these folks that were underneath him are working for him. And there have been rumors about, where Tarek might land. But, I don't want to speculate on any of that other than it seems like it's time for Rakuten.

Maybe to take a step back. What do 

you think? Yeah, I saw this news. I was, I forgot that it had happened. I think it was il, is that the person? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really interesting 'cause your, to your point, first of all, the CEO's departure was not expected. No. And I think him leaving may have been a trigger for other people to leave.

But realistically, people don't just hop carriers overnight or hop between companies. This was probably a process that was, gonna happen inevitably. And yeah it's, something's not right in, in the world of Rakuten. But I don't know what the solution is because Tarek is the kind of person you would hire to fix the problem.

So I'm really curious to see how they're going to approach this. But ultimately, symphony needs to have customers and I think one in one may have moved away from Rakuten as a partner in terms of deploying its infrastructure. I think they went with an M V N O instead of those, our network.

Things don't look great to your point. I do think there's still tons of opportunities in open ran. I just think that we are in a rocky patch. I think when companies don't let CEOs and other management kind of weather the storm this, it feels like this might be one of those scenarios where Rakuten might end up putting a Japanese guy in charge who's from, Rakuten network itself and the politics of all that.

And it will not bode well for the company's long-term future, or at least in, in this segment. But yeah. Maybe somebody else carries the flag, I don't know. But you never know. Sometimes, companies they grow, they fail, and then all the people who work there end up scattering without the, within the industry and actually making the industry a better place because those ideas spread much more widely. Someone going to tell us this might be a good sign actually for the industry. So we'll see what happens. 

Yeah, I had a really interesting conversation recently with Dennis Hoffman. He's the general manager for Dell's Telecom business group, and we talked about this and I'm gonna say those insights for a Forbes article that I'll be publishing in the next several weeks with with Dennis and, his view on open telecom and, open ran in general.

But let's move your second topic. And I caught this news prior week. Around Dish, finally, coming around to buying T-Mobile's low Band Spectrum. And if you recall, I'm sure you do, this was based on one of the requirements that the Federal Trade Commission placed on T-Mobile and its acquisition acquisition of Sprint.

Yes. So you wanna talk about that and you also wanna talk about some new devices from 

T-Mobile. So yeah, so this is like a T-Mobile news roundup because I didn't wanna miss the device side of things. Quickly the 800 megahertz is Sprints network. That was their low band because they had the 2.5 gig Ktz High band or mid band.

And basically they had to offer it to Dish as part of their divestiture of spectrum. 'cause otherwise people were worried they had too much spectrum and people we know being at t and Verizon. And basically the deadline went and. Has passed since Dish can buy the spectrum, but Dish has actually requested more time to acquire the spectrum.

Interestingly enough, it's supposed to be worth 3.6 billion. I have a feeling that price is. Negotiated. But it also seems like Dish is trying to come up with the money. In the last three days I've gone, I've read articles that say Dish is going to buy a hundred megahertz spectrum.

Dish is asking more time to fund the spectrum. Filing ex an extension to buy the spectrum. Yeah. It sounds like they want to get it, it sounds like they need more time to get the money. That's not really a surprise considering how much money they've burned through, but it sounds like they actually want to buy it.

So that might be a good thing for Dish Network which is currently struggling, I think in a lot of ways. And having 600 megahertz, 800 megahertz together will probably be very good for its coverage and its speeds. 'cause they really do need to find a way to compete and at the same time have coverage.

But yeah, it, I don't think T-Mobile really needs this spectrum, but the interesting thing is if they don't buy it, they have to pay T-Mobile $72 million for walking away from it. 

Yeah. The penalty. You know what's interesting when they were when Dish was providing their rationale for this 10 month delay, it was around, Interest rates and how interest rates have risen.

And it's now, it's made it, unaffordable in the short term. But I think it points more to your point their cash flow situation, and their balance sheet situation. And this was the subject of, they, Charlie, we talked about Charlie and another exec on, on C N B C.

And they were being asked some pretty hard questions around hey, do you have the capital? To actually build out, assets against this spectrum. And there was a lot of him and hawing. I don't think the 

merger's helping 

either. No, it's not, it's distracting 'em, but hey, but we'll put a, we'll we won't beat a dead horse there anymore, but I saw this as well.

T-Mobile announced some new handsets and 

you wanna talk about that? Yes. I'll make that quick as well. T-Mobile announced a bunch of new five G phones and they're basically, All running the new-ish media tech, dimen City 700 processor. And then that T-Mobile also launched their first Ravel five G tablet.

So two new phones and a tablet. So three new devices. These are basically the kinds of devices where you are buying these to get them for someone who doesn't care about smartphones that just wants to have a cheap phone. And the rebel phones have been pretty solid in the past.

T-Mobile has done a pretty good job of making sure that they have the right specs and, in general run pretty well. But these are definitely cheap phones. And they're designed to be given away for free with us, with, two year contract or whatever, but this is just a T-Mobile branded, T-mobile branded device, and it'll be exciting to see how these move for T-Mobile in, in the fall when people are, looking to upgrade.

Yeah. And like you, 

you mentioned it's media tech, right? 

It is media tech. They are all gonna be basically the same processor. So you're basically just paying for a bigger screen between the models. And then the tablet is also a media tech chip, which is interesting 'cause usually they use the companion branding for their tablets, but they use some weird product naming when it was, if you look at that, it's literally just a renaming of the deity 700 chip.

They're all the same chip on all three devices. 

Hey, and we've talked about media tech's, ability to provide five G enabled devices, at the value end of the spectrum. And this certainly leans into that. So it's. It's good for the market. It's offering, a spectrum of devices from super high end to mid-range to to value price points.

All good stuff. Hey, let's move to my third and final topic. I wanna talk about Schneider Electric, and they're launching a managed security service for I O T. Specifically five G iot enabled devices and operational tech technology deployment. So Schneider Electric is an industrial manufacturer and they are basically recognizing the fact that iot in general tends to expand threat services.

A lot of these sensors are headless. Difficult to manage. And when you do that, it just makes a network more porous and what they're identifying, which is no surprise I've talked about this, is that with five five G and its ability to support a massive number of devices, multiple times that of l t E in particular, Putting that many devices on a network is gonna create some security challenges.

And so this managed services pinpointed directly at helping companies manage these massive iot deployments. This is gonna be a big part of manufacturing automation's, a lot of the reshoring of manufacturing that's coming from China and other parts of the world back to us with the construction of a lot of new semiconductor fabs.

Samsung in Austin, Intel and Ohio, T S M C, they continue to build their footprint out in the Phoenix area. I believe this is gonna be become more and more important. And so I like the fact that Schneider, that I call them old school because they're an industrial, device, company.

That they recognize this need because there are companies such as Palo Alto Networks that are already talking about how they're approaching securing. Iot deployments and verticals like manufacturing and healthcare and retail and that sort of thing. I think this is a good thing and I think this is gonna help shore up, security challenges with respect to industrial use cases and applications.

But I know this is super boring, dry, and it's not in your in your lane. But any insights before we move to your third and final? Not 

really. I think when you think about what Schneider's powering and the size of Schneider, I don't think a lot of people really fully appreciate how big Schneider is and like how much of, building infrastructure is based on Schneider.

I think it's really important for them to have these kinds of five G iot deployments with security in mind. And I think more companies should be going down this route. Especially if they want to be able to, monitor and maintain equipment. I live in a downtown area and I see all kinds of different infrastructure, technology deployed, but it's amazing how much of it's still pretty dumb and like someone has to call someone when something breaks instead of the company being aware that it's broken and just coming and fixing themselves.

We've got a long way to go. I think in terms of. Improving infrastructure and making sure it's secure at the same time. 

Yep. I would agree. Let's move to your third topic and you talked about early clearing. I recall last week. Yes. But you wanna provide an update on. Verizon at t c-band deployments and how they're benefiting from that.

Yeah, so last week was SS c s networks. This week was Intelsat and both of them cleared their spectrum. There was $9 billion around for early clearing. So this was like an incentive payment to the satellite companies to clear early. 'cause they actually didn't need to clear until December. So they're getting at and t, Verizon and T-Mobile are getting access to this spectrum months earlier than they were expecting to almost four months early.

As a result of that both Verizon and at t have already lit up that spectrum 'cause they paid for it. They paid 45 billion, 23 billion respectively for it. And Verizon has said that they now have anywhere between 140 and 200 megahertz available on all networks or in all areas.

They have something like an average of 161 megahertz nationwide. That's a lot of spectrum. Which is gonna help them a lot with fixed wireless, but also just, having solid mid band performance where millimeter wave isn't available. At t said that their spectrum is about 80 megahertz in each market.

They now have a minimum of a hundred megahertz in mid band spectrum continuous, and an average of one 20 nationwide. So obviously at t has that 3.45 spectrum that they bought. Combining that with what they have on C-band, which is what they're doing on the rollout. And it's really interesting to see because Verizon went from 60 megahertz of C-band to one 60, so they's a lot more spectrum now.

And yeah it's gonna be great to see how that improves speeds. Just because there's more spectrum available. And I think I'm going to revisit network conditions by the end of this year. But the interesting thing is that T-Mobile also bought some spectrum, but it doesn't sound like that they really need it right now.

And I think they're gonna deploy it maybe later this year. But right now, T-Mobile's obviously very focused on deploying their 2.5 gigahertz, which they have a lot of, and they bought even more just to fill their gaps. It'll be really interesting to see how all this kind of manifests itself by the end of this year.

And I'll hopefully do a a roundup of network performance based on the different devices I have. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on all the same devices so I can give everybody a fair shake. 

I think that's great and I think it's great for Verizon. I've poked Verizon over the years and certainly.

They've, been in, in last place among its incumbent competitors. But this should really help them. They needed this four month, jumpstart to your point. And I think, we should expect to see Verizon's performance improve. Historically they've been a leader in that regard.

They've. 

Rolled out the spectrum prior to this week. They had a certain amount, 60 megahertz, but I think they plateaued with that 60 megahertz and now I think they're gonna have a lot more opportunity. And you know what? Competition is great. And if we see Verizon's speeds start to catch up to T-Mobile's, I'll be thrilled.

But I will tell you I'm getting up to 1.6 gigabits per second on T-Mobile now, and that's gonna be real hard to beat. It's getting, I've seen somebody do two gigabits per second on mid band. So I'm like, how do you beat that? That's crazy. With mid band is cha basically millimeter wave speeds.

But nevertheless, I hope everybody has fast speeds and finally starts deploying their, their core network with standalone, because standalone combined with these kinds of speeds, I think is gonna be a game changer next 

year. Yeah, it just unlocks a true promise of five G and expectations have probably not been, fully met.

But it's I always like to remind, anyone that I've discussed, state of five G. It's a journey. It's not a light 

sweater. So I also was gonna say, I wrote my five g, blog slash paper. It's very long, but it's detailed. I have to edit it now because this happened.

Yeah, go back. This is the problem. If you don't get something out quickly. Things constantly change in the five G space, and this is a perfect example of that. So I'm gonna have to add these details in, and then it'll be more up to date. 

Awesome. Sounds good my friend. It's been another great podcast this week.

Why don't you take us home? 

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners on this week's topic's interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide us insights on a specific five G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Wills at Whale Town Tech and I'm at onal, so we hope you can have a great weekend and please tune again next week.

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