Welcome to episode 164 of the G two 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, and joining me again this week as fellow analyst Ancho Sag. Let's get started with my topics and all three of mine are gonna be centered on Mobile World Congress, Las Vegas, and a recap.

I will be posting a Forbes article. You can catch it at Will Town Tech. Should be posting midweek on Wednesday, but let me start with my first topic and this is about T Mobile and they announced a new SIM based sassy offering that also comes with a security slice. I want to talk about that 1st, and then I'm going to talk about their developer slice in a moment.

So this is an industry 1st. If you weren't aware of the fact pre merger, Sprint was working with Versa Networks and basically it was, they were, Sprint was reselling just the standard Versa SD WAN solution. Flash forward, however many years later it's been, SASE is a big thing. Secure Access Service, EDGE, and basically what SASE is it's a Gartner coin term.

But it integrates security with SD WAN. And so T Mobile's approach is differentiated in two ways. One, they're using the inherent SIEM in every mobile device to authenticate users for identity access management. And that's pretty game changing when you think about what's typically required, there typically have to be agents that are installed to enable and security convergence.

The sun eliminates that the other benefit and using sound is that you can extend sassy to IOT devices in many IOT devices. Are headless, they're embedded and it's impossible to install any sort of agent. T Mobile is offering an agent for those devices that, want to be, part of a network, but this is pretty innovative.

And what's even more innovative is the industry's 1st security slice. And so they're taking a network slice. Off of their standalone network, and they're fine tuning certain aspects to support security workloads. And so super, super competitive, differentiated this is exactly what T Mobile needs to be doing given that they are still building an enterprise services portfolio relative to their other competitors in the U.

S. The other thing I'll mention to you is that we've talked about the developer slice. That was only available in a limited part of the country. At Mobile World Congress, T Mobile announced that the developer slice is now available nationwide. And so they're really leaning into their standalone network to deliver a very differentiated security solution and developer support.

And I know you weren't able to attend the event. I don't know if you caught this news, but, what are your thoughts, even if you didn't? 

I caught it, but I didn't get into that much detail. The one thing I was going to ask you is... With this sim based security slice. What kind of workloads are you expecting to run on this slice?

Who would deploy this 

and how? That's a good question. There weren't, a ton of details there. Obviously network slicing allows you to steer. Certain aspects like latency and throughput and device support and tune it to a particular workload or an application. So that was a little high level.

When you start thinking about security there's a lot of overhead when it comes to encryption and that sort of thing. And theoretically, a dedicated security slice could, be fine tuned to handle, encryption and decryption and that sort of thing, and within the announcement, they did also talk about what they're doing with zero trust network access and that sort of thing.

Not a lot of details there, but that's how I'm reading the tea leaves as it were 

reason why I ask is just because I feel like maybe this could be the new age of VPN where maybe you deploy this instead of a VPN. And suddenly you have a lot better performance, security, and, people don't have to overload their systems with a VPN.

I'm curious if you think that's possible. 

No you're dead on. And a lot of, there are some security companies, not a lot of, but there are some securities out there that are bemoaning the death of VPN and in lieu of zero trust network access and Zscaler is 1 of those companies.

And so you're absolutely right. 1 of the challenges though, with SASE was the economics and being able to scale it. And thank you. In, in T-Mobile delivering the SIM based solution and, basically allowing any mobile device that has a sim to to be included in in this particular SS s e offering.

It's eliminating that barrier and it's it's making the economic scalable. For SASE, traditionally SD WAN was used for traditional branch locations, branches being, offices where, employees would work and gather. And then during the pandemic, obviously the branch turned into the micro branch.

And so hundreds of branches turned into hundreds of thousands, if not millions of branches and traditional SASE solutions just didn't scale based partly on that challenge with having to have an agent. You nailed it. This is definitely a modern, VPN type replacement. And again, T Mobile is the first to offer it.

And so again, great strategy on their part to really focus on differentiation, versus going head to head with AT& T and Verizon that have much more mature business portfolios. But with that, let's go to your first topic, and we're going to get the tinfoil hats out again. And you're going to talk about an anti vaxxer conspiracy theory around phone alerts and the possibility of triggering a zombie apocalypse.

Yeah, 

so basically what this is about is there is a QAnon conspiracy theory which is based on 5G networks. And their deployment and there's a there's going to be a test going down tomorrow on Wednesday. That's going to be a nationwide alert. So that way, when we have maybe a nationwide emergency that the government can alert us.

And during that alert FEMA will be sending out that message using the emergency alert system and the wireless emergency alerts. And it'll happen around 2. 20 Eastern Time. But what's interesting is there's all kinds of conspiracy theories saying that there's going to be an outbreak, a zombie outbreak, due to a combination of vaccines, 5G poisoning, and a bat borne disease.

People have creative imaginations. Yes. This emergency broadcast system will not do that. And there's a lot of people who, are gonna look real foolish tomorrow , but I think they'll, they'll move on to the next event to conspire or I guess believe that will be cons, a conspiracy.

But once again, I, I think. I wrote a paper about the deployment of 5G and a lot of the disappointment around it. I published that on our website last week, but I do want to talk about how, some of the lack of 5G development in the U. S. has been a consequence of people not understanding what 5G is and banning it in their cities or their towns.

And then it's more difficult for operators to actually deploy, a coherent network that people can use for their services. So thankfully, that hasn't really been as big of a problem as it was initially, in 2018, 2019 because realistically a macro cell, they can't really even stop that.

Because it's already in place, , I'm sure they've really made it more difficult for some of those millimeter wave micro cells or and pico cells. But nevertheless, fun thing to talk about, but also five G related because people are still woefully undereducated on five G. 

Yeah, you and I talked about this.

I think it was like one of our very first podcast when we put on the 10 foil hats. And, my theory at the time was, millimeter wave was, new a new spectrum band for 5G and, people thought, it's like, Hey, given the fidelity could that cook your brain?

And so it's interesting. That we're sitting here, four years later and it, this still is coming out that what I liked about this one is that it combined a couple of different things that combined national infrastructure as well as 5g. So really interesting stuff, but let's move to my second topic.

And keeping with the theme of mobile world Congress, I want to talk about NTT and NTT DoCoMo each had announcements at mobile world Congress, Las Vegas. I'll start with NTT at first. So NTT announced a partnership with Qualcomm and what they're doing is focusing on delivering a new class of 5G enabled devices with, of course.

AI and using and leveraging AI to enhance data processing at the network edge. And so NTT is also planning to offer a device as a service model that's coming out of this partnership that will allow organizations that don't necessarily have the resources to traditionally capitalize.

Hardware to basically treat device as a service and treat that as an operational expense. And, be able to pay for that in a subscription, on a monthly basis and, you've seen this trend with other companies like Dell PC as a service. We're seeing network as a service, that's in any sort of consumption of infrastructure as a service, especially given, these inflationary time.

So I think it's a strong announcement and it continues to demonstrate. MTT's focus and working with some of the largest partners in the mobility space to really drive scale and just, access to technology in general, about the same time, N C T doomo, the Mobile Network Operator division of N C T announced a new open ran platform called orex.

And I didn't actually have an opportunity to meet in person with the Doomo team but Aveta a beta sign who's the general manager. Spent some time with me before I flew from New York T-Mobile Congress. We talked about Oryx and and what they're doing is they're working with 13 different partners to develop an ecosystem to address some of the integration challenges and the adoption challenges of Open RAN.

And I asked them point blank. I said, this sounds like it's a kind of a page. From what Rakuten, has been dealing with symphony and obviously, there have been changes there. We've talked about that on prior podcast, but but he seemed to be very bullish on what they're doing there with or X is a platform.

They're offering 3 packages and it spans virtualized radio based stations and wireless equipment software, enabling autonomous equipment operations and then system integration. It's Maintenance and operational support, and on the surface, it looks, really compelling from my perspective symphony and what was doing with some world was trying to accomplish the same objectives.

But as you and I have discussed on prior podcast, they hit a wall and they weren't growing the revenue base and then all of a sudden, there are all these management changes. Again, Open RAN is not easy. It's been, we've been on this path, with Open RAN for, the last few years here.

And the question only becomes, how much will Open RAN be a tangible part of 5G deployments? I think you and I have talked about, greenfield opportunities with various operators like Rakuten, Geo and in addition to U. S. and it's proving to be, a good kind of test ground for where I really think Open RAN can really make a huge impact, which will be in 6G, but we're not going to talk about 6G on this podcast.

So I don't know if you caught the news from NTT and NTT Docomo, but what are your thoughts? Gotcha, but I 

will say we shouldn't shy away from 6G but maybe not on this episode. But I do think when you look at what's happening in 5G, which once again, I talked about in paper, and I appreciate you helping me with that section.

I really think private 5G is going to be a huge enabler for stuff like Open RAN and Edge Enable, and without private 5G, I think there's just not enough room to fit it in. A lot of the net, a lot of the networks are already built out. There's going to be some core replacements but that's not Open RAN, right?

I think when we start getting new applications for 5G that are Greenfield, like you said there's going to be lots of room for Open RAN, and I think it's going to be to save money, but also to be configurable and adjustable to what the demands are of the new applications. I do think there's going to be a place for Open RAN, and to your point, I think it's going to be very bolt on.

With 5G, but with 6G, I think we might actually see it be a lot more front and center. And I think a lot of the issues with Open RAN will probably be addressed in 5G so that they're, ready to go 

with 6G. Yeah I agree and there's been a lot of work. There, there's the Open RAN Policy Coalition, there's the O RAN Alliance, there's TIP.

There's now, NTT and DoCoMo, what they're doing with Oryx. There's a lot of lessons learned from Rakuten and Symfony. And getting all that out of the way and, in a 5G world, I think bodes really well for, it's, it's more widespread application within 6G.

But let's go to your second topic. And you want to talk about NATO and their use of 5G mesh networks. Yeah, so 

they are they conducted a test in Portugal. This is from a defense article and basically in late September, they did they this thing called dynamic messenger, which is a organized messaging message.

Yeah? NATO Allied Command Transformation and Allied Maritime Command working together to basically interoperate between 16 allies and one partner nation, and they're basically also Taking, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea into this too, as observer nations but basically what they're doing is they're trying to figure out like unmanned drones, unmanned submersibles and like, how do they get everything to work together and interoperate across nations, but also across different types of vehicles.

And Lockheed Martin was one of the initial companies to provide. This open system that's interoperable and configurable infrastructure for the Marine Corps. But this OSIRIS is a 5G communications network, and they were using it to basically create a mesh network between different types of submersibles and drones and other unmanned vehicles.

It's really interesting because it really seems like that this is like an open platform that they're using 

for, 

Defense applications specifically, but it's cool because it's expanding 5G's applications beyond what we understand it to be. And I think that's really interesting because it lends credibility to the whole 5G needs to be secure if we're going to use it.

And there, this is obviously going to be a very different type of deployment than a traditional 5G network, but it's going to be very much like a private mesh. But they did use 5G mesh networks to pass information between these submersibles. And I, obviously to also control them when possible.

So it's really cool. Because it's a defense application, we're not going to get very many details on it. But it's cool. And it's yet another application of 5g as infrastructure to enable new applications. And, we're seeing more and more of these unmanned submersibles in war as we've seen Ukraine using them to ship to sink the Moskva destroyer, which is the biggest ship in the Russian fleet.

And yeah there's going to be a lot more of these unmanned vehicles and having that communication protocol be rock solid between them. And also to be able to control them remotely without 

interference is really important. Yeah, the military applications are, if you think about the low latency and, the throughput.

Military applications are incredible. Yeah, and I've been at a few shows where I've actually seen these portable, like, all in one solutions where, you can take this potentially into a theater of war and, set up, a base station and core networking infrastructure.

Very quickly. And, you mentioned, the war between Ukraine and Russia. There's a lot of aerial, drones and I'm not talking about, the drones that are flown from a bunker that are the size of airplanes. Yeah. Actual like DGI drones that are being controlled, and 5g could help extend, the flight path, I know you're a big drone.

Aficionado as well. The technology is incredible, isn't it? Yeah, 

The range of them keeps getting better and better, but most of those drones still use Wi Fi. It'll be interesting to see how 5G gets utilized in those ways. But the Ukrainian drones are interesting because they're flying into Russia.

And, that's a different cellular network and, it's probably a lot easier to operate those drones on their home networks than it is to try and operate them remotely on another country's networks. But, clearly war is changing and it's becoming much, much more automated and unmanned.

Yeah, and hey, listen, right or wrong or indifferent, 5G could have a huge impact there. But let's go to my 3rd and final topic, sticking with the Mobile World Congress Las Vegas theme, and I want to talk about Samsung. And there were a couple of announcements at the event. The 1st happened right before the show started, and it's an announcement with AMD, and basically, what's occurring is that there's a new Epic CPU that's been launched. And that is, I'm looking, it's the Epic 8004 processor line. And so what AMD and Samsung are doing is they're collaborating together. Samsung is providing the necessary VRAN software. And what they're aiming to do is reduce power consumption and improve performance.

For telco edge applications and RAN deployment. Just another kind of proof point in Samsung's growing momentum and leadership within VRAN. Hey, man, 5 years ago in a 4G world, Samsung networks wasn't even on the RAN radar map. And, a military term there. But but today they've really become a leader and working with AMD is pretty impressive.

And what's even more impressive was an announcement at the event during the event with KDDI, they are an operator and in South Korea that we've spoken about before, and Samsung and KDDI announced what they're calling And The 5G Global Network Slice Alliance. And the two companies have come together.

I'm assuming they're going to try to attract other companies to come join them. But what they're trying to do is together create new 5G network slicing services. And I think this is great because we're in the very early days of network slicing. There are only, a handful of operators, that have deployed standalone public networks.

And, anytime Infrastructure and operators come together. I think that's a great recipe for innovation. And so I'm expecting big things from this partnership. I wouldn't be surprised to see other infrastructure providers and mobile network operators join them. So don't know if you caught that news, but what are your thoughts?

I was surprised to see that Samsung is now using AMD. But I do think it gives their customers choice. Intel has been like the only choice in town. And the only thing I would say is a correction that KDDI is actually Japanese 

operator. Oh, you're right. 

But I, not everybody has every operator in the world memorized like I do.

I should know that man. And I can't blame the jet lag because I've been back from London for 2 weeks, but thanks for the correction. I knew better than that. With that, let's go to your 3rd and final topic. And you want to talk about the writer cup and I was actually invited to attend the writer cup.

Extended that invitation, but I had many travel conflicts. 

I've had to turn down recently. That was equally awesome. So I understand. 

Yeah, but you want to talk about the fact that they are leaning into private 5G as well as Wi Fi 6, right? 

Yeah. I'm reading, I read an article about private 5G and using Wi Fi and basically.

It's, it, they call it the traveling circus because it's, there's thousands of people that are attending this event. It's a real big moving thing. It's not like the Ryder Cup happens in the same place every time. They always have to set up a new location and this time, the Ryder Cup ended up being played, I think, in Italy.

And 

you're right. It was in Rome because I was invited and I couldn't go. Yeah. 

So what's interesting is the spectrum that they use was 3. 8 gigahertz, but they had to get a like a waiver from the Italian government to use that. And they were obviously using very little spectrum, but they were using spectrum.

And they were combining that wifi with wifi six E. And they were doing that with a lot of HP Aruba equipment. And they deployed something like 800 access points. And they were basically powering the entire event with that setup. Yeah. But what was really cool, 'cause the Ryder Cup, c t o basically talked about how, private five G provides the backhaul and then they're using solar powered wifi access points.

Wow. More report, remote port, remote parts of the golf course. Which are also HPE equipment. So this was a really big win for HPE. And then they also, had security, they had bandwidth and they were able to build this without really having to, run fiber and tear up the golf course and, they could deploy things and then tear it back down and it would no be the wiser.

It seemed to work really well for everything that they were using it for. And everyone would seem to be very happy with how it came out. And, it was a a really big success and a lot of people were talking about it. Have you ever been to a PGA 

tournament? 

I have not. I am slowly getting into golf.

But I, I'm 34. So I'm not really that much of a golfer yet, but I'm working my way up and I'm taking some lessons and I want to get good at it, but I can appreciate the difficulty of actually being a good golfer. And Sometimes I'll watch golf, but I have not yet gone to a PGA tour event, even though there's one in San Diego every year.



I just 

I'm not sure it's really the the headache of getting to and from the event that I really don't enjoy. So if I can find a way to, to attend without having to deal with too much traffic, it's probably 

my idea. I have I lived in Houston for a number of years, so show up and was really big.

And I actually had the opportunity in 2012 to attend the masters, a friend of mine, his family's had tickets for many years. And I don't say that to brag, but I say that because. When I attended those events, you would not believe the amount of cable that was stretched everywhere on the ground, laying on the ground.

It, it's a monumental effort to lay all that out. And 5G can do that all without wires. And so it's super compelling and, and, when people ask me, it's like think of 5G wireless fiber service. When you look at the speeds and the throughput and this is a game changer, especially for the PGA where, to your point it's mobile and they're moving all over the world.

Much F1 much, like NASCAR is NASCAR travels. And so the ability to be able to do this all wirelessly is pretty it's pretty compelling. But with that, it's other than my calling KDDI, a Korean operator, it's been a great podcast. Why don't you take us home? 

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners found this tactics interesting.

If anyone out there would like to provide insights on a specific strategy topic for future podcasts, please reach out to us on social media. Will is at WhaleTown Tech and I'm at Onshell SOG. We hope you have a great week and please don't forget to rate and subscribe and tune in later this week with our next episode.