Welcome to episode 173 of the G two 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 more insights and strategy. I'm Will Townsend, and joining me again this week as fellow analyst Ancho sag. Before we get started, just an apology to our viewers and listeners.

I was in Ireland last week. I spent some time with Druid software and I also extended a few days.  My lovely wife came with me to Ireland. We spent the weekend in  Dublin and we went to Temple Bar a few times, so I'm a little jet lagged today, but how was your week last week, my friend?  

Also quite busy. Just wrapping up travel for the year.

I also had COVID last week from  travel from the week prior. But as you can see, I'm already wearing some Christmas themed gear. My friends over at OnePlus.  This came over yesterday. Lots of journalists and press had them, and I'm lucky enough to have one.  And I will be talking more about them in some of my articles, specifically around the OnePlus. 

They're foldable, but yeah, it's a cool sweater. I don't know if I'll ever wear it in public, but  it's like a walking  Christmas advertisement for OnePlus.  

I love it, man. Yeah, I was going to do ugly Christmas sweaters with my adult daughters this year and my wife waited to the last minute to do that.

But I will be on the lookout next year. I think I want to find 1 with elf. I love that. Maybe it is awesome, but let's start off with my 1st topic. And I want to talk about dish and they recently lobbied the FCC  around spectrum holding policy and. The first question that came to my mind or thought that came to my mind is this hypocritical?

We've talked about dish in the past. They are the worst offenders when it comes to hoarding spectrum, but this was really targeted at low band spectrum.  And specifically dishes concerns around T Mobile amassing too much low band and the concern that could be detrimental to competitors and regional carriers.

And I just, I find this really just hypocritical and ironic that dishes, lobbying the FCC around this and there's also some discussion around the DNO and, it's no secret, dish, Initially was going to pursue an IOT network, and that was something that I predicted that they should do so that they weren't going head to head with, the more established incumbents like Verizon and AT& T, but that got scrapped.

You and I have chronicled just the hit and miss with them even on very recent podcasts as well. I'm sure you caught the news here, but I'd love to get your, input on, what you think is going on here with DISH.  

I think Dish wants to maintain  more or gain more control of low band spectrum.

Yeah. Because they already, as far as I know dish  is the second largest older of 600 megahertz spectrum. It seems really weird for them to be the ones who complain about it. Yeah. I also think when you look at their whole deal with the 800 megahertz spectrum with T Mobile I feel like this is payback for that, and the whole dispute for that it just,  my problem with this is, let's say there's a spectrum auction today.

They can't afford it. They can't, they cannot afford to buy any spectrum. They can't 

afford it. They can't afford to deploy it, let alone purchase it. So 

they have fallen into the same trap that many other carriers had fallen into, which is either you do not have enough spectrum or you have too much spectrum and not enough assets to deploy it. 

I think they've fallen into the ladder rather than the former. And, T Mobile and Sprint were both in that camp as well. But when they merged, they became like a, a super entity, which was able to compete with AT& T and Verizon, which nobody else had been able to do.  So I think this should be focused on capital acquisition and building out its network and less about what other competitors are doing with their spectrum.

I 

agree. Stop the whining and put your money, we'll. Probably not money where your mouth is, but, deploy what you've got and, quit the whining from my perspective. I just, it just continues to be just this it's just like cry baby,  back and forth with them.

But anyway, I don't want to make this, an overly, with, with the horse here, the dish horse, but yeah it's a little ridiculous, but I'm glad to hear that you've got the same similar perspective on things like I do, but with that, let's go to your first topic.

And I did not catch this. So you're going to have to educate me a little bit, but Verizon and Lockheed Martin have entered a partnership around spatial computing, utilizing 5g. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah, 

so this came out a few days ago. It was announced by Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks, which is like their their leading edge engineering organization.

They do a lot of work for the U. S. government. A lot of the stuff they do there is.  Extremely highly top secret. And interestingly enough their logo is a skunk. But they partnered with Verizon on 5g streaming for what they call real time visualization content on edge computing devices.

And it's interesting cause they're calling it I think the actual terminology is sustainment applications.  And they're doing 5G streaming and basically the three core application or areas are 5G at the edge for latency, critical interactions with complex visualization applications such as AR, VR or XR  and streaming of real time complex 3D visualization content, which is like on a 3D tablet, like from layer and then streaming to edge compute devices, including tablets, mobile and head mounted displays and more.

So Basically, this is just an extension of getting compute further to the edge and using 5G to stream as much content as possible to the user, whether they have a headset or not. And a lot of this was originally like targeted for HoloLens which, now is a little bit less. Relevant as they as that seems to wind down there are still some opportunities, but this also coincides with what Verizon is trying to do with 5G.

mil, which is part of Lockheed Martin and then also they utilized HoloLite's streaming platform with Verizon's 5G Edge and AWS's Wavelength over 5G's network. Verizon 5G network to accomplish this. So there's a lot of little pieces and components here that are already commercial  commercial ready in use in other places around the world.

But these are all companies that are already doing this stuff. In other ways, and it's quite clear that this is a very close to being ready solution. The question is what software will run on top of the HoloLite solution? But HoloLite is one of the companies out there that's very well known for doing this kind of streaming of high quality.

3D visualization content.  

Like I mentioned, I didn't catch this news because I was probably flying back on a very long flight from Ireland. But obviously, like companies like Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas and others, these defense contractors, they're using mixed reality in in constructing, right?

A lot of aircraft and that sort of thing. Yeah. Is this sort of for their internal deployment, or it sounds like this is a platform that could be used and, various different industries. Was there any color on, on the news around that?  No, it 

sounds like they're specifically talking about this for military sustainment  applications.

Okay. So this is for the D. O. D. But it's, it's talking about augmented reality experience across multiple geolocations, streaming a large 3D CAD airspace engine in real time. There's very much what you're saying is 1 of the applications, but it sounds like that's not the only 1 and that they want to be able to service. 

Use these for service and training within the Department of Defense and do it in a way that's secure and safe, but also technologically advanced.  Okay,  

yeah, that, we've talked about the military applications with 5G and certainly training and that sort of thing could be 1 and there could be some, theater, applications as well.

And theaters of war and that sort of thing. Really interesting that I'll have to look, look that up and read up on that a little bit more. But. Let's go to my second topic, and it's somewhat related to mixed reality, but it's taking things to the next level. And this is quite interesting.

And I learned a little bit about this when I was in Tokyo, however long ago that was, I think it was about a month ago. And I actually visited NTT DoCoMo and learned a little bit about what they're doing with what they call their human augmentation platform. But today actually DoCoMo issued a press release around  An announcement of the world's 1st technology that utilizes human augmentation for sharing taste perceptions between people.

I think on 1 podcast, I talked about how I saw in a sort of a blind scenario where sensors that were connected with cellular connectivity. 1 person was able to actually articulation of another person through sensors. And so this is taking it to the next level with taste.

And so I just, I had to talk about this and it just, it gets me thinking what could the applications look like with respect to doing this? The whole notion is, and again this is a sort of a joint venture between a lab of mathematical sciences in Tokyo and a company called H2L  incorporated.

And basically, what it does is, I'm just going to paraphrase the press release.  It basically comprises a sensing device that detects data on a person's perception of taste, leverages this human augmentation platform that shares that taste. By taking into account individual differences and sensitivity, and then there's a driving device component to this that reproduces the taste for others that are connected.

This is wild and they did talk about how this could take the metaverse to another level. And again, a lot of that is just visual, but, with taste It sounds pretty bizarre. You are the resident expert on mixed reality for our firm. What do you think?

What could be the possible applications be for this? And why is Docomo even involved 

in this?  I Think if you look at what's going on in the market today it's pretty stale in terms of what's possible. It's a lot of the same stuff. So I think people are looking for ways. To add immersion when it comes to mixed reality technologies, whether it's V.

R. A. R. or X. R. or M. R. Any of the ours, right? I think that the key here is smell has already been done, right? Site is fundamental to the headset.  Hearing is built in also. So I think when you look at hearing smell, and we're able to track your face, right?  I feel like taste is definitely one of the things that you would like to be able to add because  let's say you want to train somebody how to cook something. 

What if you can tell them what it tastes like so when they make it,  they know what it's supposed to taste like. What if you watch a cooking show and you can actually taste what the people Are making on the show,  I think it's an idea of trying to create more immersion and maybe create the opportunity to have more people experience, the restaurant experience maybe there's a, maybe there's a sushi chef in Japan that wants people to know what his sushi tastes like,  so he can do a video of how he makes sushi and then he hands it to you and you taste it. 

Yeah, yeah, and if you think so, you just got me thinking. And I'm jet lag, but I'm still thinking I'm thinking about retail applications. What if you're on a mobile device and you're in a retail location and there's, I don't know, a new chocolate or something like that. And you're able to taste.

1 of the chocolates and it's accurate. It would have to be very accurate. But that could be an activation that a retailer could use to drive sales. 

Yeah. And if you consider haptic feedback is already a thing, it's just it's that 1 sense that we don't really have control over.

Out of all of our senses with when it comes to mixed reality or VR. So I feel like it's something that people are exploring. I think it's probably very far off in terms of actual accuracy, if you give people a sample, maybe they want to buy the whole product. 

Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah. I just, it just it just came to me  in the haze of my jet lag, but. 

Let's let's move to your 2nd topic and you want to talk about China mobile shipments and the performance in October.  Yeah. 

1  of the things that's been happening.  Is that the smartphone market really struggled big time. This year. And 1 of the biggest  bad  parts of the market was actually the Chinese market.

If you look in terms of market data, the US and Europe had rebounded from their dip but China had not because economically, China was not doing very well earlier this year. And now we're seeing that that there's a, there was an increase of 20 percent year over year in October which kicked.

Total mobile shipments from January to October by 4. 2 percent compared to last year. So it actually helped improve device shipment numbers for the full year a good amount. And this is reported by the Chinese ministry of industry and information technology. So it's. You know an internal china number.

It's not like someone it's just guessing and throwing out a number based on their mark, you know what they have access to data wise but again, it is china and the chinese government. So you have to you know, take it with A grain of salt in terms of data. I think we might see Q4 numbers, though, for the smartphone industry rebound in a real meaningful way,  especially since Q4 tends to be a pretty good quarter for mobile shipments and we have some new stuff coming in January already, and then a bunch of new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 devices.

OnePlus has the OnePlus 12 coming this month. They already launched in China, and it's going to be Available in the U. S. next month. So the wheels there are turning and it looks like China might have finally be a bright spot again, which it will be good for the whole industry. And maybe we'll see a pretty healthy Q4, maybe even a healthier 2024. 

Yeah, China, they're a barometer. Just given the population there, right? And, and this is, you're also our device expert mobile device expert within the firm and, typically we see, we see the new announcements from Apple and Samsung and 1 plus and others. 

And, in the October, November timeframe typically, right? When is, when does Apple always do their big announcement? Is it September? When I do the new,  

usually you can't get the device until the end of the month. So yeah, over November, December. So Q4 is really the only time that matters. Yeah.

And the new iPhone 15 is really good. I have the pro max MKB HD Marques Brownlee said is his favorite phone of the year. It's easily in my top five. So they have a really good phone there and, Huawei is starting to ship more units to I, I think there's a lot of.

Positivity for the industry,  and we'll probably see it in some companies earnings. 

Yeah, for sure. Cool. Let's go to my third and final topic. I want to talk about SK Telecom. They're a mobile network operator in Korea that we've talked about quite extensively over the year. And we've written about them as well, but they're partnered with, I always mispronounce this French company Thales or Thales.

Yeah. See, I didn't say Thales, right? Thales. And they actually, they when I was with Druid Software at their demo day on the 15th of Thales also presented, and I'm actually quite impressed with what they're doing because I've always thought of them as just the GPS company. But they do a lot more than that.

They do a lot of networking. They do a lot of cellular. They do a lot of security. And so this this announcement, this partnership is around boosting 5G security with quantum encryption and hey, and this has to do with standalone networks as well. And the whole thought around this is to better protect subscribers identity and privacy.

And Hey, man, that is something that is needed because we have seen tons of breaches all around the world where subscriber, personal identifiable information is basically thwarted. It's hacked. It's stolen. It's held for ransomware.  I don't want to recalculate, the specific, mobile network operators that have experiences, but it's a huge issue.

And and so what was interesting as I dug into this this announcement the company go into detail about how, taking, quantum cryptography and integrating that into some communication network,  authentication can actually improve the encryption schemes and the decryption schemes that are tied to subscribers.

And they can do it in such a way that it protects user privacy from future quantum threats. And quantum networking, quantum computing that's something that is, is developing very rapidly alongside generative AI. And hey, listen, as new technologies come out, it's typically a double edged sword.

It can improve resiliency and security, but at the same time, bad actors can use it to do just the opposite there. And hey, what? I think this is this is pretty compelling stuff. There's, there's no doubt that, 5G introduces some improved encryption over LTE, but more is going to be needed here because.

As especially as 5G really births very large IOT networks, with sensors and automation and that sort of thing. These networks are going to become, expanded. They're going to become more porous and more is going to be needed to basically harden these networks.

So not sure if you caught the news, but any thoughts before we move to your third and final? I 

did not catch the news.  But I do know Tala's and I do know that they're a defense contractor in Europe and they do a lot of interesting stuff like GPS and they do all kinds of other things. Yeah, I'm not really surprised they're involved here.

But yeah they're pretty global and I find them to be more of like a communications company for sure. But yeah it's definitely a very interesting, especially to see more and more companies moving towards. Quantum encryption. 

Yeah, and I've known them as a GPS company. They did a lot of the mapping the very early mapping for a lot of consumer devices.

And so I was quite impressed to learn more about them. Like I mentioned, and Bray, when I was with Druid and now with this announcement. So they're a company that I'm going to dig into a little bit further.  They're a perfect fit for my coverage areas as an analyst with our firm, because I cover both networking and security.

Someone to keep an eye on from my perspective, but let's move to your 3rd and final. And I did catch this news. And so I'll tell you what, man the satellite space race continues.  We've talked on prior podcasts about what T Mobile and Starlink are doing.  And SpaceMobile are doing, but now Rogers in Canada is partnering up with Link and they have achieved a milestone that you want to talk about. 

Yeah. 

So they are partnered together. I think some companies we've SpaceMobile they've been pretty active in the space. Link mobile has been a little bit more on the sidelines compared to let's say a SpaceX. With Starlink, the good thing is that with link they are a  3GPP compliant partner.

So they're from the beginning, they've been focused on being release 17 focused. And what's really interesting is that they're also going public through a SPAC with Alex Rodriguez. They are, they're busy and it's going to be interesting to see how they partner with companies like Rogers so Rogers is a Canadian operator and they're basically operating in Canada exclusively.

And the reason why this is relevant, because Canada is enormous and they're most of the people in Canada live along the U. S. Canadian border. Yeah,  the vast majority, I think, live within 100 miles of that border. So because of that, the rest of the country is essentially empty and has no service. 

And I think also, just to add to that I believe 80 percent of the population of Canada are clustered. In the 7 or 8 cities along the US border as well, right? So they're like, these just the great white north. It's just wide open and it just doesn't make sense to invest in. In towers and that sort of thing to provide the necessary infrastructure to make mobile communications.

Rogers is a Canadian operator, so it's in their best interest to be able to provide services to customers outside the most populous area. So we're partnering with with link mobile to provide 9, 9, 1, 1 and wireless services. The phone call that they did as a test was on a Samsung s 22. And it was done with links, low Earth orbit satellites and Rogers national wireless spectrum.

So using Rogers spectrum for this, it was a phone call between the premier of Newfoundland.  And Labrador province and a member of Newfoundland and Labrador Search and Rescue Association. It was a an actual call that was done successfully. And they Roger said that they'll also launch satellite to mobile as a technology in 2024, starting with SMS, texting, mass notifications and machine to machine AI applications.

And then we'll expand towards voice and data services in the future. But what's interesting is this is a another competitor in the space offering this service. And the thing is that Rogers is if not the biggest carrier in Canada, it's one of the biggest. And it merged with. 

Shaw, which is one of the biggest ones as well. There's that. I don't even know if that merger has been finalized yet, but this is a big deal for coverage and capabilities. And this would be, like a Verizon or AT& T in the U. S. signing with. With link. So I know link is still, searching for partners and looking to sign deals.

Obviously, we know Verizon is already partnered with Amazon and project weeper. And then we have AT& T with ASDC base mobile and T Mobile with SpaceX. So there's a lot of diversity out there. I think we're going to see a lot of consolidation. But I do think, stuff like ball comms, snapdragon satellite, it just doesn't really fit into this market space with.

With companies like link offering, these very compliant solutions that pretty much just work out of the box on most smartphones.  

Yeah, that's the way to go leverage industry standards and 3GPP is the standard in cellular communication. And I do find it's interesting. So there's this, the regions are aligning and doing these individual partnerships, but, I will mention AST space mobile, they have over, I think, last count, Almost close to 40 with mobile network operators around the world.

So it's interesting. They're all these smaller companies that are getting into the space. They're going to have to put birds in the air and so it's interesting how we're seeing some, some sort of regional bifurcation going on here. But, it's exciting times and, 1 of the things I'm expecting when I attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year is to spend a lot of time with a lot of these these low earth orbit, satellite middleware providers and service providers to really understand how they're going to be competitive because.

The space is growing pretty quickly, and there's gonna have to be clearly some differentiation. Some are very focused discreetly on iot narrowband iot, and you and I have talked about that on prior podcast, but it's gonna be really interesting. So I'm looking forward to getting there. I know that you're not gonna be there this year, so I'll have to do double duty for us.

But but it's exciting, it's an exciting time and, satellite, it's gonna become a critical element from my perspective. Among others and helping to bridge the digital divide. But my friend, it was a great podcast this week. I got through it even with my amazing jet lag. We do want to let our viewers and listeners know that you and I plan to record our end of year podcast  before the end of the year and we're going to do a look back. 

On, the big news of 2023, and then do a look forward on, what we expect 2024  to to unfold with. But with that, why don't you take us home? 

Absolutely. I look forward to both the recap as well as the the ability to. Talk about the future because I am, I'm more excited about the future, the past, and we can learn from it, but I don't want to dwell too much, but yes, I do agree, and I'm excited for next week.

I'm also dying in this sweater. It's very hot. We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topics interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide insights on a specific 5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Will is at WhaleTownTech, and I'm at On Shell Sock.

We hope you have a great weekend. Also a Merry Christmas. anD we'll see you again next week. Don't forget to rate and subscribe and we'll be back before the new year So  see you guys soon.