Welcome to episode 160 of G t O on five G. It's the latest inside 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, and joining me again this week is Federal Analyst Ancho Sag for our second podcast of the week.

So my first topic, I wanna talk about Vodafone UK and how they're gonna lean into open, ran for their Huawei rip and replace program. It's no mystery that Vodafone in general is embracing open round in many different ways. And so this news comes on the heels of that strategy. And what they're starting to do is there are over 2,500 sites in Wales and other parts of England that they're beginning to deploy, open run to remove Huawei gear.

And this doesn't surprise me, number one, Vodafone in Europe has Been the mobile network operator that has embraced open, ran the most aggressively. And this is something that I've pointed to in the past too. Open rans flexibility and it's it's CapEx is significantly lower than traditional ran infrastructure from the the traditional providers there.

I think it's a great strategy for them to do that. Now, one of the challenges will be integration, and I didn't really di dive into those details to understand that, but it doesn't come without its challenges. And you and I have talked about, recently Rakuten and tx departure and how symphony and Rakuten have had, challenges, keeping that business stable and more importantly growing that business.

I don't know if you caught the news, but what do you think? I 

did I did catch the news. I thought it was a pretty big win. Yeah. Are they using Samsung for this or was that a They 

are, so I'm glad you asked. Samsung and Intel, obviously from a compute standpoint, Dell Technologies, Capgemini and Wind River.

So it's a number of different companies that are coming together. I expect Capgemini will probably, focus on the integration of all of this. 

I thought I, the reason why I saw this announcement was because Samsung was attached to it, and I thought that was a pretty big deal for Samsung Open ran in general.

I think it's a big deal. I definitely think this might be one of the biggest real wins for Open ran from a, tier one carrier globally. 

Yeah, no, I agree. And it, it proves. Open ran can play in both Greenfield and Brownfield network deployment. Yeah, it'll be interesting to, to keep our eyes on this and report back as things develop.

Let's move to your first topic and you wanna talk about Fairphone five. What is that all about? 

If you're not familiar, Fairphone is like the ethical Smartphone brand. I put air quotes just because, ethical is, very subjective. Sure. But as far as ethics go, they're all about having you use your phone for as long as you can.

They have a five-year warranty on the fairphone five, for example, and they have 10 years of software updates. So you literally can use the phone as long as you want and you can hand it down to somebody and they can continue to use it. This new Fairphone five has a five G modem in it. They're actually able to do that because, They found a Qualcomm iot chip set, which iot chip sets, as have longer support cycles for software and updates and firmware.

Yeah. What they're able to do is take this chip set that's for IOT and use it in a phone. And I think it's actually a brilliant idea 'cause it gets them 10 years of software updates. I think here they're saying it will get oss. Software and security updates for eight years, which is still really good.

Okay. Yeah. And then also it's repairable. So you can like actually take out the camera modules. You can take out the battery, you can swap things out and upgrade things. And that's really a big deal of this. And then also on top of that, 70, first they say it's more than 70% fair focus materials.

Which means that they're using like recycled or really transparent supply chains. They also say that they're like paying people a, a global living wage of $2 63 with bonuses. They're actually trying to really focus on sustainability and, paying attention to people's concerns around the smartphone industry.

And they're growing as a company. I see them, improving their marketing and more people using their phones. Honestly if I hear people talk about, living conditions and blah, blah, blah about smartphone factories and things like that, if you really truly care, this is the brand that, that really addresses those concerns.

'cause they also manufacture all their phones in 100, using 100% renewable energy. Oh they really put a lot of thought into how they do this. Yeah, dual sim phone has, wide angle camera and a pretty high-end, 50 meg pixel main camera. You can actually get good photos out of this thing and you can really use it like a intentional smartphone.

And yeah, it's, the processor in it is very similar to Snapdragon 7 78 G, so it's not like it's a really old processor, but it's also not necessarily a flagship count either. But it has an OLED screen, Android 13. It's really an impressive phone. 6.45 inch screen, 90 hertz refresh rate. Corning Gorilla Glass five.

It's got a front facing camera. Yeah, shoots four K video. So it's pretty much everything you would expect. It also has a Micros dsla that supports up to two terabytes. All this comes for about a 700 Euro price. Has, wifi I don't think they claim, which I think it does have wifi six.

And the battery's a 4,200 milliamp hour battery that you can swap out which is the part of the replace replaceable part that makes it last longer. Nothing on water resistance but it says it's IP 55 and it's eight 10 h and what else? Has N F C. Yeah. Which phones that don't, think about these things.

And it does fast charging with a 30 watt charger. Wow. Honestly I think this is a great phone for people who are really conscious about the environment and I think it's better than, iPhone for that kind of thing. 

Yeah. I'm not familiar with the company or the devices.

You're our device guru, but and certainly apple and, Samsung and OnePlus and these other vendors, they're using recyclable material, and their devices. But, it really sounds to me that. Fairphone is taking it to the next level. I like the removable battery.

I like the memory card so that you just you can extend the life right out of this device. And and truly with those types of features, you can get a lot more, out of it longer term. One of the issues that I'm constantly faced with is just running outta storage on my iPhone.

I'm an iPhone user, and and then you have to upgrade, to get 

care by SD card for 20 bucks. 

Yeah, I know. It's crazy. I love it. Yeah I, I learned something new today 'cause I wasn't familiar with the company, but, Let's go to my second topic and I wanna talk about Nokia, and, pardon me, I'm dying from allergies this week.

It's been pretty bad. But I wanna talk about Nokia and they're launching a drone network solution to compliment its private five G offering. And I think this is really innovative on Nokia's part. They certainly have been a leader and very, they're. Likely the earliest intro into, offering private five G.

And so I think this helps continue their momentum there. And so what this is all about, it's an industrial drone solution, and you'll get a kick out of this. So it's not, a manufacturer that you'd be familiar with. It's Nokia. So Nokia is gonna build these themselves and it's called Nokia Drone Networks.

And it's designed to run beyond line of sight, off of private networks. And if you think about it, There are a lot of industrial use cases for this, inspection, in multiple different industries. I could see applicability and ports, which tend to be a poster child use case for five g deployment.

And so I like it, this gives Nokia a little bit of differentiation. Certainly there are other drone solutions out there that leverage, next generation five G networks, but I think it's pretty cool. What do you think? 

I think we've seen something similar from companies like Verizon.

They acquired like a drone network solution that kind of did services, and they wanted to layer that on top, but I haven't really heard much from them about it. So I, I wonder how how much business there really is for this today. But I do agree that with a properly deployed private five G network you could really see some really interesting use cases like drones.

And I think drones are becoming a more possible application with the right type of five g deployment. Which kind of leads me to my topic. 

Yeah, that's a great segue. And I'll have some things to say about about this one as well, but you wanna talk about NATO testing five G and Latvia with virtual reality and drones?

Yeah, so this news percolated through this the news cycle quite a bit. Basically NATO is using Latvia as like a test ground. For its tactical five G bubble. And basically they want to use virtual reality, unmanned vehicles augmented reality and drones to give the five G network a good test for real applications.

And a lot of these Baltic states are where NATO is doing a lot of its early testing. First of all, because, they want to see how it works close to Russia. But also these are countries that are more willing to take these kinds of tests and have more modern networks. And it's not just about Russia, it's also about China.

And it's just like evaluating how these technologies work better on five G versus how they worked on four G and whether or not they're actually, prime ready for prime time. 

Yeah, the military, we've talked about military applications with five G and drones, would play a big part of that.

I'm very familiar with Lavia. I've been traveling there for the last several years for an event called Five Gatory and I'll be attending again in October. And likely sharing some of my insights in October after I return. There are three mobile network operators in Latvia, and I've spent a lot of time with L M T Lavia Mobile Telephone, and they have been focused on drone applications for the last, two or three years.

I think you'll hear more about this and actually, I should learn more while I'm at five G atory in October. But I think.  This is a fantastic sort of demonstration or use case and demonstrates the power that five G could bring to military applications.

And to your point, for our viewers and listeners that are not familiar with the Northern European geography, the Baltics border Russia, right? So the Baltic states are Lavia, Estonia and Lithuania. And so yeah, I think it's it's and given you. The geopolitical environment and, in, in some of these countries and others joining nato.

Finally given the Russian threat it'll be interesting to see this this play out. But let's move to my third and final topic, and I wanna talk about Avenir and I've been a little critical of the company and I think rightly There've been a lot of, missteps.

There was an I P O that was pulled. There've been these several large reductions in staffing based on maybe the company being a little too aggressive with its growth prospects and that sort of thing. Actually our friend Mike Dano at Light Reading pen, an article this week and he's talking about how Avenir his headline was, Avenir mobile core business hits the skids.

And what he's meaning by that is that which, if you look back at 2020, Avenir was considered a top five supplier. And you've got companies like, Cisco that provide a converged mobile core. Now you have h p E with its acquisition of ANet that'll be out there front and center and some certainly Nokia and Ericsson and even Wale.

And basically what's happened is Avenir has dropped out of the top five, although Mike talks about how their c e o is somewhat defensive of that and, is stating that they still believe that they're in the top five. But, regardless of all of that they've lost share and it makes me wonder is.

What they're experiencing in other parts of their business with private and ran and orchestration are those missteps now filtering down into mobile core and are, mobile network operators and even enterprises that wanna deploy. These solutions, are they losing faith in Avenir based on their financial health?

And, I don't think it takes a, a rocket scientist to figure that one. I'm out. I think that is the case. And Avenir is gonna really have to do something pretty dramatic to, to pull this ship around. So I don't know if you caught the news or not, but any thoughts before we move to your third and final?

I did not catch 

the news, but I do have some thoughts. Yeah. It feels like they're in a downward spiral which is not a good thing. I also think denying that you're in a downward spiral doesn't really fix the problem. So I think they, to your point, they have to do something drastic.

Yeah. And, I don't really know what's going on there, but I've definitely seen their presence and prominence start to wane. In the last couple years. And it'll be interesting to see what they do to try and turn that around. Because I think the area that they play in is not necessarily been the best market to be in the last couple years.

Yeah. But I also think things are improving and there's a chance that they're just not taking advantage of those, moves. 

From my perspective, and then, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but it's execution. And they've got a strong portfolio. I've spent time with the company in, years prior, and so it's not strength of portfolio.

I think it's execution. And I think you alluded, you were alluding to this, and I'll just state the obvious. Core is where it's at, right? As we move from non standalone to standalone five G deployments and ran, which has traditionally been one of their stronger suits. And portfolio pieces that's on the down on, on the down slope because, these mobile network operators have pretty much fully deployed their RAN infrastructure and now they're gonna start deploying five G core and the fact that they're not participating, To the degree that they were two or three years ago.

The timing is just, it's the worst timing, it's the flip of what it should be for them. But with that said, let's move to your third and final and you wanna talk about if a this year and I've never been have you been 

I have been to if a, it's it's usually this time of year, like the first week of September.

Last week of August. Yeah. I've gone once. It's a very cool show. You'll see lots of interesting things that you've never probably ever seen. Lots of appliances, I will say, right? But there's also lots of other consumer technology like phones, right? And there were a ton of phone announcements, like there usually are.

Usually what happens is OEMs, smartphone OEMs will announce devices for China earlier in the year. And if they don't find time, they eventually end up launching their global version there at efa. Huawei used to do lots of phone launches there and so did honor and unsurprisingly they did again this year.

Huawei made 60 Pro launched this week. I don't think they had an official launch at efa, but they launched it during the week of efa, so I don't think that's a mistake. And it's the, it's supposedly it's gonna have a five G modem. And I, it's also going to have a satellite capability, which is something that they've been talking about for a while.

But they won't actually officially confirm either of those things. And part of that is because the expecta, the understanding is that they are manufacturing these chips themselves in secret factories that they've been supplying under shell companies. Inside of China. China with the help of the Chinese government to the tune of 20 to 30 billion.

That sounds pretty, man. Whole crazy semiconductor story behind that. Oh gosh. The other crazy semiconductor story behind that is I was in Malaysia last week and I held a mate 60 Pro, and I didn't realize it hadn't even launched yet. So color me. Surprised. I wish I had gone in and figured out what s o C was in there.

I was not feeling well. Yeah, but nonetheless, interesting thing on top of that honor, which used to be part of Huawei, it's now his own company, launched the Magic V two globally, which it only originally had launched in China. It's the thinnest foldable that's out there today. And that's their claim to fame.

And then they also launched a purse prototype, which looks a lot like a mate 30 Pro or mate x. Two, which is a Huawe phone. So I don't know what's going on there, but it looks very similar. If you look that up, it's like a concept that you can wear it like a purse. I don't really know. But on top of that interesting techno announced or showed a rollable phone concept.

Techno is like a budget phone brand in Africa. And they have a lot of interesting phones that they try to do something different with. And it looks like they're taking the T C l banner and trying to create really interesting budget phones that still have a lot of cool features.

Yeah. And they have one of the most affordable foldables that are out there. And then Sony Xperia. Launched their xperia five, mark five, just, same phone kind of series. They updated the specs like they usually do better cameras as per usual. Nothing really that exciting there, but it's a new phone.

And that's the roundup from EFA 2023. Nothing really surprising other than, what might be going on with the M 60 Pro. Yeah. But yeah I definitely haven't been to EFA in a few years. Definitely haven't been since the pandemic, but yeah, it's a very European focused show and that's really where a lot of these OEMs are trying to launch these phones. 

I, I'm surprised that Sony is still making that phone. I remember that phone being around years ago and it doesn't really, it doesn't have a lot of volume behind it, does it? No, 

they don't have a lot of volume, but they're able to price them and spec 'em for the type of consumer that they know will buy them.

Yeah. So they are producing them in low volume, but charging a price that is profitable. 

Okay. Interesting. Yeah, and I wonder if that Huawei mate, 60 Pro. Fell off a truck along with some fake Louis Vuitton bags and some fake Rolexes. When you were in Malaysia, because I know I've been, 

it's been many years.

I was in a, I wasn't a, an official Huawei phone store. I wasn't like a Oh really? A third party brand. Like in Asia when you travel a lot of brands have their own stores. So I went to an OCO store, I went to a vivo store. The Huawei d j i Xmi, I, for me, I haven't been to China in four years now.

Malaysia has a lot of close connections with China yeah. Yeah. It was really cool for me to actually go into a Western mall. It was very Western and style with lots of Western brands, but then also all the cool Chinese smartphone brands. So I had a time and I poked around and looked at the price of things and decided if the discount was worth it.

I, I was a little too tightly packed, so there wasn't much for me to buy. Yeah, I 

hear you. Yeah. Qual and poor is a beautiful place. It feels like you're Indiana Jones when you fly into that airport and it's just a canopy of trees and it's probably been 15 years since I've been, so I was a little lends when you told me you were heading over there, but really cool man.

Hey it's another great podcast. I'm excited for this week and I don't know what you're doing, but. I'm wearing my ut Longhorn baseball cap because it's our home opener against rice. So hook him. Horns. What are you doing? 

A lot of nothing. Okay. That's good. Mostly 'cause I've been traveling like crazy for the last month.

Yeah, that's good. Probably be benchmarking all the new GPUs I just got. And playing Starfield, which just came out yesterday. Early released yesterday, but comes out next week. And yeah, just spending time with my wife and dog. Cool. Padres are awful this year. I'll probably go to the game on Monday, but that's the extent of what I'll do.

I they got brutally. Yesterday Ugh. Yeah. Yeah. I went home and had some drinks downstairs at the bar. That was the extent of my baseball adventures yesterday. Yeah. 

When my two daughters were, were younger and, I lived in Houston when I worked for Compact.

We'd go to a lot of Astros games and, the best product there was the cotton candy and the popcorn and not the play. So I feel your pain and I hope that Padres, they find a way to pull it around because man they had a great season last season, so I 

don't think it's happening 

this season.

Yeah. And the Astros are hanging in there. The a l Ss is tight, right? We've got, we've got three teams, neck and neck, the Rangers and another team that I'll, I will not mention, but hey buddy, it was another great podcast. Why don't you take us home?

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners from this week's topic's interesting. If anyone out there provides insights on a specific five G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Wills at Will Town Tech, and I'm at On Shell sog. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune again next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.