Welcome to episode 161 of the GT on 5G. It's the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes, and it's brought to you by Moore Insights and Strategy. I'm Will Townsend, and joining me again this week is fellow analyst Anshel Sag. Let's get started with my first topic.

And I want to talk about a research paper that I recently published. And this is around the Multifier Alliance, or as they call themselves these days, The alliance for private networking, and it's interesting, so I've spent the better part of a year. This paper took some time coming together, but we finally we're able to get it published.

And 1 of the things I was reminded about as I was finishing this, and we were publishing the paper was just again, the challenges that are associated with private networking deployment. And you and I have talked about this on prior podcast. There's so many different routes to go. Where do organizations start?

What sort of resources can they find? And really the Alliance for Private Networks has done a great job in curating a lot of this. They've done a lot of blueprinting. A lot of the activity has been focused on LTE, but they do have 5G blueprints as well. All of that is contained in the paper that, that I published.

And if you hit my my Twitter, my ex handle at willtowntech. You can learn a little bit more, but I think there, there needs to be more of similar activities like what the MFA has done and commissioning this paper with our firm to really help simplify the journey to private networking. I'm sure you've got an opinion on this as well.

Yeah, I've been following the MFA multi fire alliance, private networking alliance since its inception. Yeah, I remember when it started, it was originally for LTE and unlicensed. 

That's right. Yeah, it was really the focus was really. Unlicensed, right? And, Nokia was, the company that sort of developed this whole, this multi fire type, 

but it wasn't because it was actually an initiative pushed by Qualcomm initially.

Oh, I didn't know that. A 

lot of the people that were involved with the multi fire alliance were actually Qualcomm people. Because Qualcomm was pushing LTE over unlicensed very hard and Nokia was one of their partners that kind of brought, they came together with it. So it's interesting to see who has pushed into that organization more and just seeing how it's evolved, right?

Because it was really an LTE technology first and foremost trying to take advantage of unlicensed. In a lot of, enterprise applications, which has transformed into a private 5g technology. 

Yeah, that's a good point. Now that I recall, I remember having a discussion in Barcelona with someone that actually their day job was working at Qualcomm.

I'm glad you reminded me of that. I had to dust off the cobwebs there 

from, I'm an elephant when it comes to things that are. 

You do have a good memory, man. And like your technical knowledge and savvy is pretty impressive. But 

I can't remember what I had for breakfast. 

Sign of genius, right?

Hey let's go to your first topic. And you want to talk about a recent FCC nominee and it's pretty historic. 

Yeah. First and foremost we now have. A confirmed member, fifth member of the FCC's board in order for the FCC to pass anything, there needs to be a majority. And if you only have four people, it's very easy to get deadlocked, especially when it's two Democrats and two Republicans.

So this has actually been something that's been developing for years. Biden was elected and became president in 2021. So we've been waiting, basically two years. For someone to be the fifth member of the FCC and the previous person Gigi Sohn was a controversial candidate, which I wholeheartedly disagree with.

I knew Gigi, she was a very helpful insightful person that would have been a great FCC commissioner. But unfortunately the politics got involved and I don't know how many people hated. personally or for political reasons, but she was retracted as a nominee. And Ana Gomez was placed in her place and the Senate confirmed Ana Gomez as the fifth commissioner.

And she's actually the first Latina to sit on the FCC's board in over two decades. So she will help to break. A lot of the deadlocks that existed before on the FCC's board making things, I think things will actually happen faster as a result of this. Either they'll be passed or, shot down quickly.

But I think the other thing that's really important is that Congress needs to re certify the FCC's authority to dole out Spectrum because they lost that authority and it was basically it lapsed. Like most things in Congress, they need to be re certified or re approved by Congress and it was not.

Companies like T Mobile who paid for Spectrum, like 2. 5 gigahertz auction do not have access to that Spectrum because FCC doesn't have the authority to give it to them. That's something that still needs to be worked on. Hopefully that happens soon. This was a huge deadlock that needed to be solved.

I think we might potentially see this next issue be addressed. Relatively soon. 

Yeah, it's good news. And I know that we've talked about this off and on over the last, 3 years, but at the end of the day, why did it take so long to get this 5th wheel, on the board and so that we can start breaking some of these deadlocks because it's been, it's completely just, thrown a monkey wrench, into.

Yeah. Spectrum allocation and farming and whatnot. Do you have a theory on why it took so long? Was it political? Politics. 

Yeah people, people, this was the Republican side not allowing Democrats to move anyone forward. And that was really what it was. They were just not, they were, there was a deadlock.

So they pulled their candidate and found someone who had a lower profile. That still has a lot of experience in this sector and has, serve for the government as well. I think they found someone in Anna and hopefully Anna works well with the rest of the FCC board to, get things done quickly and maybe make up for some lost time.

Yeah, no, it's great. 

And it's great to see that, someone of Latin descent is is on the FCC board. We need diversity everywhere, right? Not just, ethnic, but, we need more women and these positions as well. Great, and it seems like, she she's, fit to to make an impact.

So I can't wait to see what happens there. But let me move to my 2nd topic. I want to take a light hearted approach with 1 of my topics this week. And, there's no secret that I love college football. I'm a University of Texas, Longhorn grad. We're going to be playing Alabama this weekend and Tuscaloosa.

It's going to be a tough game. Fingers are crossed, but. As I sat at DKR Memorial Stadium last Saturday in 104 degree heat, I had a moment of Zen, and I'm trying to remember what TV show was the moment of Zen at the very end. Was it the Daily Show? I'm, yes, it was a Daily Show. Okay, cool. Okay, so it was at the end.

Zen, right? So I had my moment of zen when I was roasting, in my in my seats that I've had for 15 plus seasons, and was just started thinking about, as I was, snapping pictures and I was, uploading to social media and I was having challenges, it got me thinking just, not necessarily about.

The fact that, DKR could use a private network, but just in general, what could 5G do in general once standalone is deployed to alleviate some of these issues. And for me, it was like capacity, right? One of 5G superpowers is just supporting a massive number of devices. And this could be for fan experiences.

Fan activations, both in the collision professional sporting levels as well as just, back office operations and that sort of thing. And, and maybe it came to mind because I did spend time at Q2 stadium, which is where. The FC Austin soccer franchise plays its matches and I did get a tour about a year ago to see what T Mobile is doing with a private, 5G standalone deployment there to support exactly the same use cases that I mentioned.

Yeah, it just got me thinking, the hype cycle and 5G has been high but it's, it's a journey. It's not a light switch. And, once we get to stand alone, we're going to, we're going to eventually take this for granted, but just, the capacity, the throughput, the latency that 5G deploy, offers just on a public network is going to be quite compelling.

And I'm also wearing my asterisk hat today that, by the way, the asterisk player Padres. I'll be watching that as well. 

My damaged team. 

Hey, listen, there's always next season as well. But, the application of, of 5g and professional sports, is super compelling.

I actually wrote a Forbes article about this several months ago. And it was like it was a, it was an individual that stood up basically a private 5G network during the World Series. I think we talked about that and was delivering better performance than Verizon within Menomade Park. So it's, hey, you know what?

I'm a nerd. I love 5G. My friends like to tease me about 5G, but it's going to make a real impact, especially in things that you and I love professional baseball and college football. But hey, with that said, let's go to your 2nd topic. And you want to talk about Qualcomm and Samsung Networks and a milestone that they've hit.

Yes, 

so this was an interesting 1 because they Qualcomm work with Samsung. So welcome on the device side, Samsung on the network side. They took a Snapdragon X 75 based modem device. And we're able to achieve simultaneously 200 megabits of uplink and 1. 3 gigabits of downlink using only about 100 megahertz total of spectrum.

They were able to do the 200 megabits with 35 megahertz of spectrum up and about one point Three gigabits with 75 megahertz of 5g spectrum down all using FDD bands. So no TDD combinations with FDD. And as FDD spectrum is much more rare and difficult to obtain, so they're able to do four carriers on downlink and two carriers on the uplink.

And this kind of shows the capabilities of both Samsung and Qualcomm's modems to maximize the spectrum that's available because we're going to have a lot of, spectrum that's going to be fragmented, right? We have bands all over the place. This was a showcase of both companies abilities to deliver this carrier aggregation without needing any PDD spectrum.

And doing it with a fairly low amount of spectrum in total. There's a whole video on Qualcomm's website. And they will show you a video basically of how they did this uplink and downlink aggregation across different carriers. But this is a good thing because the X75 is, next, next generation modem.

It's not actually in any devices yet, but it will probably be in devices coming later this year and next year. The X75 is going to definitely be an important modem for a lot of users. But I will save my talk about modems for another topic as we do have some more to talk about later.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this announcement, 

I think it's impressive and we were talking about, Samsung networks and its involvement with Vodafone and, driving, open around and virtualized around and that sort of thing. And, I just, again, I continue to be impressed with what.

Samsung networks in particular is demonstrating, right? They, for quite a while, they were second fiddle, even to Huawei, in the ran. And so they're really stepping up and they're really proving themselves and, to be very viable, relative to folks like Nokia and Ericsson.

So I guess that's my observation is that that continue to be impressed with their approach and, and their growth. For sure, but let's move to my 3rd and final topic. And I actually just caught this just this morning, but yeah, it was our friend Mike Dana with light reading and he read an article.

I guess it was published on the 6th, so it was 2 days ago, but I just caught it, but apparently T Mobile conducted a an investor meeting and it was actually. A Goldman Sachs investment analyst that straight up asked Mike Sievert, the CEO, would T Mobile consider buying U. S. Cellular? And Mike's response was maybe.

And so this is really interesting. So as you unpack that maybe and understand, what T Mobile has been focused on and where U. S. Cellular has been trying to focus on. So U. S. Cellular's subscriber bedrock is rural. And it's no secret that T Mobile has been very focused on rural, when Neville, our buddy Neville, who I miss, I miss tremendously when he was driving, the technology, for T Mobile.

His strategy was coverage first, right? So that was building out its low band spectrum to get 5G into the hands of as many people as possible. They've, and they also, in addition to doing that had and still have a very discreet focus on rural, they are very big in Bastrop where I recently moved.

I'm in Austin today, but they've invested tremendously in Bastrop, which is a high growth rural area. That's completely underserved by fiber and the closest fiber. Ironically, it is in a little town called Smith bill about 13 miles east of a backdrop, but, it would be an interesting proposition.

Certainly it would be scrutinized very closely by the and the

cuff comment from Mr. but it's interesting because. If you think about it, if any of the kind of tier one mobile network operators were to consider acquiring US Cellular, T Mobile would probably be in my mind, the optimal suitor, just based on what they've been doing to invest in rural, where they're at with their their spectrum position and their ability to be able to support US Cellular subscriber base.

But I've talked way too long and I know you want to weigh in on this. 

Yeah, I have thoughts. I actually think US cellular is getting acquired one way or another. Yeah, whether it's T Mobile or not. I just think that US cellular, first of all, they have a lot of spectrum. And to your point, they do help cover a lot of rural areas.

I'm not sure, what the DOJ would allow or the FTC, if that matter, FTC has not had a good track record as of late in terms of blocking, acquisitions. I don't know I feel like US cellular just isn't big enough to compete anymore. Yeah. And I think that they're they need to be acquired down the road.

Whether that's T Mobile or not. I don't know. But I do think that U. S. Cellular is an acquisition target now. And yeah, I think T Mobile is a good fit, but I also think that Verizon and AT& T could also be good fits because I think all of them would benefit from this, from the rural coverage improvement.

Ultimately, what I want to see is more competition. So if. U. S. Cellular's number 1 competitor is T Mobile. Maybe I don't want T Mobile to acquire them. Yeah, I would rather see someone else compete. I just think that when the carriers compete, everybody wins. And that's really what I'm, I would be most interested in.

And pushing for, 

yeah, I don't think that suitor will be dish. They're having their own challenges. I think 1 of the, it's just my hypothesis. 1 of U. S. Cellular's challenges is. Is, CapEx, right? Taking that spectrum and then deploying that spectrum and the, the billions of dollars that's required to do that.

And that's 1 of the challenges that dish is faced with right now. 

I actually think like a foreign operator would be an interesting play to gobble ups both dish and us cellular and 1 entity. I think them combined would be a much better spectrum solution and maybe even a better footprint.

But I think it would require, considerable investment, something along the lines of what SoftBank was trying to do with Sprint. To do, but I think there is some potential there. I just don't know which, international carrier that would be top of mind would be a Vodafone, but they, they basically help Verizon build their network.

I don't know. I just think that, the way I look at dish and the way I look at to a seller. They're second fiddle. And I think combined together, they would be a very interesting fourth carrier. That would, that could potentially actually compete with the likes of Verizon, AT& T, and T Mobile.

But we'll see. I just think that right now Dishon and US Cellular are too small to really be the GTF 

5g on chills. Potential prediction that dish and us cellular could come together, but Hey, man, let's go to your 3rd and final topic. And you alluded to this earlier, but you want to talk about media tech and apple 5G modems.

Yeah, so they're separate announcements, but they're both chip related. So I bundled them together. Yeah, makes sense. Earlier this week media tech announced that they developed their 1st chip using TSMC's 3 nanometer process. Which is set for volume production in 2024. This is a not entirely surprising announcement considering that TSMC is One of MediaTek's biggest partners.

And in fact, I think MediaTek exclusively uses TSMC. And in terms of volume MediaTek is one of its, I think, top five customers, if not top three. So obviously it's a big deal. Apple was originally the first to announce 3nm which doesn't surprise anyone either because they're the number one customer for TSMC.

But 3nm is a big deal just because that is a very advanced process node. And we were very likely to see this, this chip be a Dimensity. I think they said it's a flagship Dimensity. I can't say which one it'll be, probably a 9300 series. Whatever that comes out.

I'll be at the media tech summit when that happens. Maybe they'll announce, that chip there. But in general, it's really interesting because they're talking about how the 3 nanometer process offers as much as an 18 percent speed improvement on same power or a 32 percent power reduction at the same speed.

As well as an approximately 60 percent increase in logic density. So there's going to be a lot of really great benefits that come with three nanometer and yeah, I, not surprising media tech is going to take advantage of those and we might even see those trickle down into things like automotive other IOT businesses.

This might also be like the first three nanometer modem as well. It'll be interesting to see how this kind of pans out later in the year and obviously into next year when those products start to ship. And then the other half it was a rumor, so I'm not going to give it as much credibility, but this is a rumor coming from Ming Chi Kuo, who's like the Apple supply chain god I don't know how else to put it, but people, somehow this guy's usually right about what's going on with Apple's products and he said that the new time frame is actually going to be 2025 for apples modems.

Which is really interesting because they've been in development since 2019. So that will mean it will have taken them 6 years to develop and launch their modem, which is actually beyond my expectations. I, when I, when this originally happened, I actually did a lot of press and I wrote a lot of articles about it, but basically I thought that it would take Apple about 4 to 5 years because they weren't starting from ground zero.

They had a lot of IP from Intel that they had acquired. So they weren't really starting from scratch but it sounds like they might have because six years is a pretty long time for anything to come to market, especially semiconductors. There was usually take three to four years at most.

So this was a, my original expectation was four to five years. And the initial rumors were about four to five years. The expectation was originally 2023, I think. But now we're hearing 2024 25. There was a time when it was saying 2024. So we're seeing slippage. So I wouldn't necessarily say this date is concrete either, but this is the latest date that we've heard as far as rumors go and usually, Ming Chi is pretty accurate.

So I think an Apple 5G modem is more likely in 2025 now. Which means that Apple will have to exercise its extension of the Qualcomm agreement for licensing and chip supply. So obviously that's great for Qualcomm's bottom line. I guarantee you it'll probably cause their stock to pop because that means Apple's got to start, continue to spend with them for the next year and a half.

But yeah we'll see what happens. But that's the the semiconductor update. 

Yeah, it's interesting, but it's not surprising to me because companies like Apple and Tesla have this sort of, it's either designed here, it's not used at all. And so that doesn't necessarily surprise me and, for our viewers and listeners, this whole saga between Apple and Qualcomm, in fact, Our, our chief analyst and CEO Patrick more had wrote an article about it and likened it to a clown show all, all the back and forth that we don't have time to get into it.

But it's just, it's interesting. And I'm sure. I'm sure apple is just sitting there just oh, shit. We're going to have to, we're going to have to license Qualcomm for another iPhone cycle, another, iPad cycle. 

That's a lot of money, right? Because in my opinion, this is all about the bottom line.

Yeah. Every time Apple has to push it out, I'm sure, a puppy somewhere dies. 

You know what I'm telling you, man? I love that. It's a terrible analogy but yeah, think about it. So they purchased that modem business from Intel, there was costs there for the last several years, they've had engineers morning, noon and night working on it.

There's costs there, then now they're having to extend this licensing thing with Qualcomm. There's tremendous costs there. This is a big enchilada, for Apple to consume. But anyway, Hey buddy, it's been another great podcast. Go Padres, go Astros, but 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 us insights on a specific 5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Will is at Willtown Tech and I'm at Onshell SOG. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.