Welcome to episode 159 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, a very jet lagged poncho sag. Hey, so how was your trip to Malaysia last week?

That's why we're recording a little bit late. 

It was good. It was a long flight, obviously. The longest flight, actually I took the longest flight in the world. And yes, I am jet lagged and I'm also sick with something. So this has been an uphill battle to get this done. But I appreciate you being flexible and our audience for tolerating lack of timeliness.

No, no worries, man. That, that's a long trip, man. It's been many years since I've flown to Malaysia and I just remember making, multiple connections and I just felt like it was the longest flight of my life. But it's good to have you back and let's jump into it. My first topic is around VMware and explorer occurred last week.

There were a lot of networking and security announcements, but one that caught my, in particular was their announcement of a private five G managed service that they're partnering with a number of different folks on, but federated Wireless. So Federated Wireless is gonna provide the ran integration.

And if you're not familiar with VMware, I mean they've got quite a presence in telecommunications. They have a converged four G five G core, and they have orchestration capabilities as well. So they're bringing that together with Federated to provide a managed service. And this is something that the company has been piloting for the last year.

But at Explore last week, they officially took the the wraps off of it. And so on the surface it seems fairly compelling. Federated is a great partner. They're very deep and they're very experienced, from an integration standpoint. But, it makes me wonder, are they late to the party?

Because certainly you could argue Cradlepoint, Nokia. Ericsson Cisco. They've been at, the whole private five G and four G thing for quite a bit longer. So I know you're just coming back from another part of the world, but what are your thoughts about this? Do you think they can be competitive?

Yeah, I think so. Especially when you consider how they are well positioned in the software space. They're a big player. They may have to be more aggressive to catch up. 

I totally agree. And and I think they're gonna have to do something that's a little differentiated as well to demonstrate their capabilities and certainly there was a lot that they spoke to with respect to other parts of their portfolio to explore NEX Plus, so a new version of their integrated networking and security.

Solution that's really aimed at, the enterprise and, and so the private thing was definitely separate from that and notable. But yeah, it'll be interesting. Like I always say, competition breeds innovation and certainly VMware has a lot of depth with respect to telecommunications in general.

But let's move to your first topic this week and big news breaking, right? Global Star acquiring EXCOM Labs. 

This was a unexpected announcement. EXCOM Labs is like a wireless communications, research organization. They, go out and figure out some wireless problems and then patent them.

Some of their stuff was XR related, but they also had a lot of five G ip. And some of that was in the In the open ran space. It was really interesting to see, where they were going with it. But they were still very much a startup and it looks like they may have had some challenges raising money.

But basically they entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Globalstar. And as a consequence of that GLO license agreement, They also acquired a bunch of excom executives, including the C E O Paul Jacobs, who is now c e o of Globalstar. Replacing a retiring c e o. So Paul Jacobs is formerly the c e o of Qualcomm and one of the children of the founder of Qualcomm.

And also part owner of the Sacramento Kings. He's a pretty well known guy. Across the industry. And he also brought along his C T O as well as a couple other executives. So it really seems like EXCOM is gonna be significantly smaller company. And will, maybe exist to satisfy its investors with this licensing deal?

I don't really know. Maybe the XR side continues. But it very su sudden and abrupt and unexpected because there was like a share swap that I saw where they Globalstar agrees to issue 60 million shares of common stock two excom as a licensing fee. Right now Globalstar shares are around a buck 30 it's around $60 million for the licensing fee.

But I've never seen an example where a company signs a business agreement with another company and then acquires a bunch of its employees, but doesn't actually acquire the company. It's very confusing. But. I do think that he will be able to help Globalstar in its new era as the provider of Apple's satellite service.

I don't think Globalstar is going anywhere and having someone like Paul Jacobs, I think will help them be more aggressive and will be an interesting next phase in the company's future, especially with everybody jockeying for satellite tech. 

It is interesting, and very late breaking, and I agree with you.

It's a very unconventional business arrangement. Somewhat similar to what at t did when they divested some human, resource capital and some licensing and transferred that to Azure and then, landed on, Azure's, cloud core. As part of their future network deployment, and infrastructure scenario.

But it certainly it's not nearly as unique as this transaction, so this is pretty late breaking, so it'll be interesting to see how things wind out, I'm sure. We'll probably come back to this and weigh in a little bit more on it. But lemme move to my second topic this week.

And this was an R c r wireless news piece that came out last week around South Korea launching its own open ran alliance. And it gets me thinking, is this good or bad? Because, You've got so many different coalitions, that are focused on O Ran. You've got the O Ran Alliance, you have the Open Ran Policy Coalition and then you had for a while, the telecom infra project trying to harmonize a lot of that activity because you get a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

Hey, and a lot of this happened in the early days where the CapEx and opex benefits seemed super impressive. The ability to domesticate your five G supply chain and not be so reliant on foreign companies. Even friendly, companies that, that are foreign. As I read into this in the article, so it's the open ran industry Alliance, Oria, O R I A.

What's interesting the initial members are who you would think from an operator standpoint in South Korea, SK Telecom, kt, LG plus, Samsung, obviously Hometown, hero, LG, Nokia, no Wireless and a couple of research institutions as well. And what they're stating is this is not, they want focus on domesticating the supply chain around, around our end.

They're also welcoming, companies from outside South Korea to help them do this. And hey, you know what, more power to, South Korea, they've certainly been a leader with respect to five G and real tangible use cases. You and I have talked about that on numerous occasions, but I'm just wondering I'll pose this question to you.

Do you think that. Creating another open ran alliance that this is gonna put more cooks in the kitchen and potentially slow innovation and slow deployment. Within green, well within Greenfield, number one, I. Brownfield has been hit or miss because, many of the mobile network operator ran plans were locked many years ago, 20 18, 20 19.

But what are your thoughts? Is this a good thing or is it gonna convolute things? 

I actually think it's good. Okay. And the reason why I think it's good is because so many of the companies that are already part of many of the other open ran alliances are part of this as well. The way I see it is maybe this is a a consolidation of priorities and maybe we get more of an agreement on what these Korean companies want for their market and how they want OAN to work in their market.

Which can then be more, more consistent and less fragmented than say if they all were just part of a different alliance. It would also give them more power as a unified organization. That's what I think it might be. 

Yeah. And if you look at where we're at in this baseball game of a five G deployment where.

We're early to mid game and it makes me wonder, they're just forming this now is, and there isn't a lot of greenfield activity in that market. It's all brownfield. Unless I'm missing something. Is this maybe laying the groundwork for six G? Could be. Yeah, it could be. My opinion is I'll wait and see.

But you make a very good point that there are, a lot of the members of this new OAN coalition are participating in the others that I aforementioned. Yeah, so I think, again, it's early, it's late breaking. Time will tell. But hey, let's go to your second topic, and I'm gonna talk about f w A to wrap up as well, but you wanna talk about Verizon's new gateway?

Yeah. So Verizon launched a new gateway. It's made by a Taiwanese company called W N C. Basically this is very similar to what's going on with T-Mobile. They also have their own gateway that they have a O D M build. This one adds wifi six e Trib band. So it actually, adds a new six gigahertz band to the device, which it can use either as backhaul or as an actual network.

The reason why six gigahertz is so interesting is because just recently Qualcomm got permission to run six gigahertz in a f c, which basically means that they can increase power. The six gigahertz band, as long as there's no interference. That's been a big challenge for the six gigahertz wifi band.

Yeah. So the timing of this is really good. And it will enhance the overall wifi experience for, fixed wireless customers. I haven't seen any official statement that this is a Qualcomm based solution, but I saw Qualcomm promoting it and I don't think they'd be promoting a media tech solution.

That no price, but. I think it's, assumed to be thrown in with the monthly plans. And they also offer setup for a hundred bucks if you don't want to do it yourself. And yeah, it's, it's really exciting, and I haven't added this as a topic, but Verizon and T-Mobile continue to add fixed wireless subs outpacing the actual fixed copper businesses.

Clearly fixed wireless is a continuing trend. Yeah. I think last quarter they both together almost added an additional million customers. So I think that tees you up pretty well for your topic, but do you have any thoughts? 

Yeah. Yeah, my thoughts are, just in general, when you look at the transition from wifi five to wifi six and you know now six e it's long tail, right?

And you're still, I. You're still not seeing enterprises making that transition yet. So I think it's interesting that they're bringing this to a consumer device. Certainly the performance is tremendously improved. You're gonna get better. I. Consistency and, better, better range and, better performance.

But but you did set me up very nicely for my third and final topic. We've talked about five G fixed wireless access on numerous podcasts, and I think you and I would agree that it's probably the first killer consumer application of five G. And I think as we get into standalone, That's really gonna, blow the doors out with what we're gonna see from, additional consumer applications.

But really where I think the lion's share of the disruption is gonna be in the enterprise. But with all of that said, 18 T finally launched it's consumer fixed wireless access service, and it's called at t Internet Air. Some people are under the impression that this is AT&T's first foray into f w A.

It is certainly not. They've had a fixed wireless access product for. It's business customers for quite some time. And this is new for for at and t and I was contacted by several journalists just to get my opinion. And I think the resounding question I was asked was, Hey, do you feel like that they're late to the party?

And from my perspective, I don't think they are, number one They have some differentiation with this solution. They have a really cool and you'll love this it's an AR placement tool. You also have something on the actual C p E device itself that indicates the the connectivity straight So that's really interesting.

So you have that on the device itself, and then you can use a companion app for placement, because again, this is a self-provision service. You're told to put it in a window but often consumers they ignore that, they put them on the floor, they try to hide them. And you know what I also like about it?

Not only does it have this great placement tool, the industrial design is very interesting. It's almost like a, an org or a globe. And so it, it looks like a piece of modern art. And so I think, it'll blend well into people's homes and that sort of thing. The other thing I like is AT&T's emphasis on security.

They certainly have depth and strength there. I would argue that at t has the strongest position with security relative to its competitors, and that's just evidenced by its cybersecurity portfolio and its acquisitions over the year, over the years. And it's active armor product that they brand for their devices.

And so they're bringing that into the F W A. Category as well. And, and what that means for consumers is safer online shopping experiences and the, the peace of mind in knowing that your personal information is safeguarded. And then I'll finally conclude with from a pricing standpoint.

They are very competitive. They're pricing this at $55 a month. It is available in limited markets and. That is by design. They're focusing on markets where they don't have strong fiber. And obviously at t is a very fiber first oriented company. They've invested, millions and millions of dollars in that franchise.

And and honestly, when you look at the pricing, when you look at just, the kind of the low end of the fiber service that's pricing almost on top. Of this F W A service. With fiber that does involve a truck roll. It does require installation in the home. Some people aren't comfortable with that.

Some people would just like to have a product that they can self-provision, put in a window. And, but the trade off is you don't get the same upload and download speeds and that sort of thing. I also like the fact that at and t is not gonna cap this as well. And I believe when you look at competing services there's some cap of service and that sort of thing.

So all in all, I think it's a very competitive solution. I think it's good that at t has stepped into the mix. Also, you were talking about copper. This is a great way for for at and t to pull a lot of customers off of their legacy infrastructure and move them on to a five G F W A service.

And then I think once they get. The taste for that, that upload and download speed, the ability to be able to connect all of these devices in your home, TVs and smart cameras and that sort of thing. I think people will see the value of it. So I don't believe that's a long way to say, I don't believe they relate to the party, but but what do you think on the surface?

Does it sound compelling? 

Yeah, I think it does. What's really interesting is I think first of all, it looks good. I. Yeah, I think it does look very, it reminds me of a lot of Google's home stuff. I think, I don't know if you noticed there's an extender for it as well, so 

I did mention that they do offer extenders.

Yep. This is very much like a mesh home networking thing which is I think, how most consumers should experience wifi from five G. I do think that all carriers will eventually do away with unlimited versions of this service. Whether it's Verizon, T-Mobile, or at and t. Yeah, so I think for as long as these services are unlimited take advantage of it.

'cause I think those days are numbered. But yeah it's interesting. I do think that it makes sense that they wouldn't launch this in places where they have lots of fiber because. Why not launch in places where they're the most growth potential? Exactly. Yeah. Obviously we'll see probably this become nationwide eventually.

But yeah, I think it's good. I do think they're late, but I also think they're not that late in the sense that they're still, I think our customers for them to acquire. And having a third competitor in the space does, just make the market more competitive. For consumers that said their rollout is somewhat limited, they're in la, they're in Chicago, they're in Vegas, so it's not like they're launching in tiny little cities.

And they're, they're launching in like Seattle, Tacoma, metro area. So it's a pretty big metro. So it's like not a tiny launch, but it's also not nationwide. So may not necessarily. Offer, the same kind of competition that it could have a year ago or two, especially if it was nationwide.

But I do think they're gonna be able to offer pretty good speeds, especially when you consider how much spectrum they have access to now that all their C-band is available, as well as the 3.45 and then all the low band stuff. So I think they have a pretty good offering in terms of spectrum. And people should get pretty good speeds.

55 bucks a month, expected pricing. I think that's the standard right now. Yeah. And they are also offering lower cost service with the affordable connectivity program. I think this is good. And it looks pretty polished, so I like more competition and hopefully we'll see what people think of it pretty soon.

Yeah. I'll, once it's available in our markets, we'll do the Pepsi Challenge on it. I'll put it right next to the T-Mobile device that I have here in Bastrop. But let's go to your third and final topic and you wanna talk about the continued battle for T-Mobile's 800 megahertz five G Spectrum?

Yeah. So as we've reported before and gave our thoughts on the 800 megahertz spectrum that T-Mobile has was supposed to go to Dish. Dish had the option to purchase it. But Dish has allowed that to lapse in terms of contractual timing. But they went to court asking for more time and they were able to basically go to court.

And T-Mobile eventually said, no, we don't want to sell this to you. We don't want to give you more time. Because Tmobile does get paid $72 million for this failed deal. Because I don't think Dish has the money, to be honest with you. No. And Dish is a mess right now. This is not really entirely surprising.

But what is interesting is a third player has entered the chat and basically there's a large engineering consulting firm called Burns and McDonald that wants to get the spectrum and to use it. For utilities for iot applications. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea.

But I do think that if they do want the spectrum, they should probably pay what it's worth. And I think the value may have increased since the original agreement with dish. So we'll see what actually happens there. I don't really know if T-Mobile needs that spectrum, we'll see.

'cause they were forced to sell it. If that sale didn't go through I don't know. I feel like maybe selling it to a different third party might still make sense. What do you think? 

Yeah, it's interesting. I, I wasn't aware of that, that company stepping in and wanting to possibly leverage it for iot.

I could see the applicability. One of five G superpowers is just massive device support, right? And if you've got sensors that are a little bit beefier than what, say, like a architecture, supports for low, for low kind of narrow band it could be quite interesting.

And honestly, I believe the Justice Department, they're gonna. They're gonna hold T-mobile to that divestiture and and ask them to seek, another suitor for it. The, T-Mobile may be able to pass on dish because Dish has been dog paddling on this, but they may still be forced to, to find a new home for it.

But yeah, I think, and I don't think they need it either, quite honestly, based on where they're at. Lots of blogs coming from the executives when you were over in Asia around network slighting slicing and T-Mobile is really, beating the drum, on that. And that's really more of a mid band play.

But I. Yeah, it's, it's interesting and I agree with you. Boy Dish they're not in a good position right now. They're gonna have to find, a way to pull themselves out of it. But it's not looking very bueno to me, but, hey, I know, man. It's been probably a long podcast for you because you're still jet lagged, but it was great to, to catch up.

It's good to see you. And why don't you take us home? 

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topics interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide insights on a specific five G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Will is at Will Totec and I'm at On Shell sog.

We hope you have a great week and please tune again later this week and we'll have a second episode. And don't forget to rate and subscribe.