Welcome to episode 179 of the G2 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 is fellow analyst Anshul Sag. Let's jump into my first topic, and I want to talk about DISH, and could they be close to bankruptcy? And this is a subject that you and I, my friend, have talked about on podcasts in the past, but there was an article published by Fierce Wireless on the 6th. That dies a little bit deeper into the possibility. And, what really, I think started this investigation was around a lot of the announcements and that were coming out in January that indicated a reorganization of assets. And certainly that's not a determinate as to a bankruptcy, proceeding, but it's. It's a hint that, something could be in store and there's no secret and we've talked about it. That dish is pretty cash for, and this whole merger with Echostar was designed to strengthen and boost the company. I don't know if you caught the article this week, but what do you think? I did catch it only because of you. Somehow I didn't see the whole thing about bankruptcy, but I delved a little more deeply into it. And there's actually a whole Wall Street Journal article about the fact that they scrapped their swap deal to push their debt maturity out. So it feels or sounds like they weren't able to secure that mechanism and because that mechanism is no longer available to them, I think a lot of their debt is coming fairly soon, the, they're going to have to pay that debt somehow. And if they can't, they have to file for bankruptcy. And I have a feeling that this. story on January 30th may have been the one to push the bankruptcy theory that if they can't, much have this I think it was a 4Billion dollars or something like that. They can't, get that 4Billion dollars out to 2030. It's going to be do pretty soon and that's not easy to pay when your business is struggling and to your point when your cash for. Yeah, the other thing to mention as well is that, they're under a deadline to cover have 75 percent coverage of the U. S. population by mid June of 2025. so the runway is. Fairly long for them, but yeah, this is this is quite interesting sort of reading the tea leaves here. And it's something that you and I have speculated on. We certainly don't want to take any joy in that happening because. I'd like to see a very viable dish. I'd like to see them, focus on some unique service delivery and that sort of thing to differentiate themselves from the other really large mobile network operators in the U. S. But it is interesting something to definitely keep tabs on. But let's go to your 1st topic. And you want to talk about China mobile and their claim around launching its 1st 6 G test satellite. Is that right? Am I reading that? Yes. China Daily, which is the, It's a Chinese government newspaper they published a story that said that China Mobile is the world's largest telecom carrier by mobile subscribers. And they have successfully launched their first satellite to test 6G architecture, making a milestone in its efforts to explore integrated space and ground communication technology. And they said that this was jointly developed with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Innovation Academy. From microsatellites. They said that the system utilizing domestic software and hardware. That is very clear statement. In orbit software reconstruction, flexible deployment of core network functions and automated management, enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the in orbit operation of the satellite core network. They said that the sat, the orbit height is 500 kilometers, and that these experimental satellites, not singular, multiple, Offer advantages such as low latency, high data transfer rates compared to with or high orbit satellites. So clearly, this is low Earth orbit and they go into more detail saying that they consider this to be a crucial platform for future integrated spacing ground communications of LEL satellites. And China Mobile plans to conduct more in orbit experience based on these test satellites. But they didn't say what spectrum or why it's six G. Yeah. They say it's a six G test. Satellite hosts a distributed autonomous architecture for six G. All I know is, the, this is a Chinese, known government publication, quoting China Mobile and talking 6G, but there really isn't much meat here in terms of actual 6G, so I picked this because it was like a a dig at this, attempt to claim leadership. Because realistically, there's no 6G standard. We have no idea what's going to be 6G. Yeah, I'd love to hear your take. Yeah, no, the 1st thought that I had was, hey, 3GPP hasn't even published. Standards, so how China can make this sort of claim is interesting or how China mobile can make this claim is interesting. And I think you've mentioned, um, this type of satellite as far as, it's distance and in orbit, and it's considerably shorter distance than even conventional low earth orbit satellites. Yeah, this is a 500 kilometers. Yeah. It's not even is that the stratosphere? I'm not a. Aeronautics expert, but, yeah, it's just so that's interesting. The much lower orbit number 1 and number 2, the fact that 3 hasn't published any 60 standards and. And we all know what was going on while when 5g began to get its legs and, all the way back to 2017, 2018. And there were a lot of bold claims by China. And, we've reported some of these claims as well as deploying the most 5g base stations and that sort of thing. And so it just, it sounds to me like, it's, they're beating their chest but there isn't a lot of substance behind it. Yeah, by the way, that's just Had to. I'm just going to add NASA defines LEO as anything under 2000 kilometers. Oh, okay. All right. So it's within the envelope. Interesting. I learned something new from you. That's awesome. Hey, let's go to my second topic, and I want to talk about Rakuten Symphony. And we've talked about The company on prior podcasts and their attempt to take their learnings and deploying highly disaggregated network infrastructure to support LTE and 5g. And then spin that into a business to help other mobile network operators do the same. And as we've reported in the past they've stumbled. There's been a lot of management changes and shuffles. There was actually an, it was another fierce wireless article that I caught this week. And it talks about. An executive that's coming back to the company, and his name is Raul Atree, and he's leading the OSS business unit, which is the operational software service layer, which is responsible for OSS and BSS, not to get too techie, but it it manages the automation and orchestration that's needed and really any network. And but he's coming back, He's focused on that business unit, but it seems like his remit's a little bit broader because in this article he talks about the power of AI. No surprise in what uniquely positions Rakuten is that they had the foresight to put everything in 1 huge data lake. And so that could potentially give them an advantage. And deploying workloads and doing some really interesting things from a telecommunications perspective. And, I've talked about in the past how companies like AT& T are working with NVIDIA and deploying AI for more intelligent truck roles and certainly I can do a lot of things from a self healing. Perspective to ensure the right levels of quality of service and that sort of thing. But I thought it was interesting. There's a lot of whitewashing going on with AI and it seems like Rakuten maybe trying to lean into that to bring some Lester back to what they're doing and actually grow their footprint with that business. So don't know if you caught the article, but any thoughts? I didn't catch the article, but I did see his him joining the company. Not completely out of the mix, but. Yeah, I do think that they do need some kind of spark. Maybe the AIs, maybe AIs are opportunity. It just, it seems, I don't want to call it lazy, but everyone's pointing to AI what it's going to do to transform, digital experiences and that sort of thing, but it'll be interesting. Again, there's, he was with the company before went to tech Mahindra for 2 years, I believe. And now he is back. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see certainly there are other companies that are trying to do this. We've spoken about and or X, and what they're doing with open around to enable that ecosystem. And again, there are another example of the mobile network operator that's trying to provide. Blueprints and solutions to ease this whole notion of deploying disaggregated infrastructure. But let's go to your 2nd topic and you want to talk about Verizon and speaking of Iran a claim that they have made around their radio access network infrastructure. Yeah basically, they're saying that they have 130, 000 around capable radios, which include massive MIMO radios as part of their previously announced 15, 000 compliant. Virtualized cell sites with O ran compliant baseband units. And they're really pushing hard on O ran. I think this is maybe a response to at and t's announcement. You bet it is . You bet it is. But I think in general, this is a good thing for the industry and yeah, I just think that it's a positive development and they've been, working on vRAN and they say that this is evolution as they, moved. From Iran to Iran and make sense to me. I, I've seen this evolution, but it's just it's good to see Verizon is on this train as well, And from my perspective, some of the motivation behind this may be the federal government Verizon does quite a bit of business with the federal government as does AT& T. And actually, when the news broke around the AT& T and Ericsson deal I had a chance to speak with executives AT& T and I asked the question. It's is there with the Egalibas, I asked him straight up. Is there any, motivation to do this to comply with, federal government and hey, the whole notion around O RAN. Is an attempt to domesticate the 5G supply chain. When you look at the radio access network part of the infrastructure here. Yeah, I think it's a great thing. Oran does promise to bring certain CapEx and OpEx benefits. Agility, I think the biggest I think the biggest impact of Oran is just the flexibility for mobile network operators. To deploy infrastructure quickly and provide new service delivery, much more quickly as well. All right with that, let's head to my 3rd and final topic. I want to talk about Ericsson and Qualcomm working with mobile network operator Elisa to demo some pretty blazingly fast, uplink speeds and 5G standalone. This involves a Qualcomm Snapdragon X75 5G modem RF system, which I'm sure you're very intimately familiar with because you talk about Qualcomm quite a bit on these podcasts, my friend, but in the trial, all 3 partners achieved, this is a pretty incredible upload speed, 230 megabits per second in a live 5G network. Now, this leveraged uplink carrier aggregation and specifically. The company's combined 25 megahertz, 2. 6 gigahertz block with a 100 megahertz, 3. 5 gigahertz block running on a mobile test device powered by a Snapdragon again, X 75, 5g modem. That's pretty incredible, man. From an uplink perspective. Yeah. What was that? What was the throughput? What is the throughput? Why can't I find the throughput in this article that was posted RCR wireless? That's a good question. I may have to come back to you on that. Yeah, because I, It's like to know what the, what that full aggregation enables. Yeah, I was just impressed, with, with that uplink speed, but yeah I'm looking for it in the article and it's not jumping out at me right now, but 230 megabits isn't bad. Yeah, yeah, that was a combination of what which bands again? 2. 6, 2. 6 and 3. 5. Okay, so it's mostly mid band. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's still pretty good. There was mention of another trial that Elisa did in 2022 with Nokia and Qualcomm where they got, uplink, they got to uplink speeds of 2. 1 gigabits per second. But that, that obviously was millimeter wave, but yeah. Yeah. For, yeah, for mid band spectrum that's decent, man. Funny because it's about a 10th in terms of speed. Yeah. But anyway any final thoughts there before we move on to your third and final? No, at least is definitely one of the meeting partners for Ericsson and Qualcomm for a lot of these, cutting edge network speeds. I think they've also done some downlink millimeter wave stuff. There's not that many operators and you're using millimeter wave. They're probably 1 of the few out there. That's actually able to have it out in a commercial network. And in this case, this is a mid band upload but yeah, I would kill for 230 megabits. Yeah, I definitely would here in my home. Not quite there. I'm still in the country and hopefully fiber is going to come to master up 1 of these days. But hey, man, let's move to your 3rd and final topic. And you want to talk about, there's some concern, I think, that's been raised by other mobile network operators around T Mobile's additional purchase of some 2. 5 gigahertz spectrum. Yeah, so this is an ongoing story. The spectrum auction occurred in 2022, and there were a lot of things that prevented the spectrum from being released to T Mobile. they were the, they bid 90% of the spectrum that was available. So there wasn't, there weren't really operators who competed with them for the spectrum. So they got it probably fairly ch, fairly cheaply. But because the FCC lost their authorization to release a spectrum due to a dysfunctional government , they weren't able to release a spectrum. There had to be a separate act passed through Congress called the SAIL Act known as the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement Act, which was passed and that was to require the FCC to issue that auction 108 spectrum license by March 18, 2024. So they have about a month to release this spectrum. But in the meantime someone like AT& T has raised concerns. But there are excessive levels of spectrum concentration and they said that in two of Hawaii's five counties, T Mobile would hold almost half of all spectrum suitable and available for the provision of mobile telephony and broadband services in Honolulu County, and T Mobile would hold more than half I think this is an interesting situation because it's, T Mobile bid for this. AT& T could have bid for it. They chose not to. They didn't have any interest in the spectrum. And they, honestly, the problem I think is I think there is some valid concerns with T Mobile necessarily having too much spectrum and maybe being overly positioned, but if AT& T was serious about the spectrum they would have bid on it and they didn't and the reason why they didn't bid on it because they were never interested in it because T Mobile already owns vast majority of 2. 5 gigahertz, so it's not in their best interest to buy it because they're not going to be able to deploy it nationwide it doesn't make sense for them. This is something that it's Should have been addressed a long time ago wasn't and at this point they see as a competitive disadvantage. So they're just trying to block T Mobile from getting it, and now the FCC says they're going to review this Spectrum release, but I don't even know if they have the authority to review it. Yeah, if the, if Congress has explicitly stated that the Spectrum has to be released because the auction closed 2 years ago. It's ridiculous. Yeah, and that's not a trivial amount of money to park for, a year and a half plus, right? Yeah, the truth is it was a 300 million auction and yeah, I just think that there's this is the problem with this is a lot of this spectrum is going to actually help to build out T Mobile's network for rural areas. A lot of the spectrum isn't in that populated of areas. That's why this was a secondary 2. 5 gigahertz auction. I think this is a good auction for T Mobile. They should have the spectrum. If AT& T doesn't like it, it's way too late to complain about it. And it's not like they're going to go and deploy these licenses themselves. And they didn't bid on it. And that's the thing is I don't understand if they bid in one licenses and they felt like they didn't get enough licenses or something, but they weren't participating in it. So it's just I don't know. I don't feel bad. Yeah it's, it is interesting. But it's also interesting that the FCC is going to review the release. Geez, crazy, man, but I'm not really sure they can block it. Yeah, exactly. So what's the point in reviewing? It's interesting. Yeah, we could go on and on about the federal government, but with that it's been another great podcast. We had a few little technical glitches here, but why don't you take us home? I 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 will. tech, and I'm at Ashraf Saad. We hope you have a great weekend, and please tune in again next week, and don't forget to rate and subscribe.