Welcome to episode 184 of the G2 on 5G. It's the latest insight scoop on everything 5G. We cover 6 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 Anshel Sag and let's get started with my 1st topic. And I want to talk about the 5G fund. This is something that you and I have spoke about in the past, but there's some new discussions circulating around Open RAN. And the question I have is can Open RAN benefit from, it's about a 9 billion target for rural deployments and the United States. I think it can, certainly Open RAN is very disruptive from a CapEx perspective. Time will tell from an OPEX perspective, although with AT& T and Erickson's announcement last year, AT& T is very bullish on the agility that will flow through it. I think really what has come into focus for for this topic is around. Making Open RAN a requirement within the 5G fund, most operators like AT& T are stating it should not be a requirement, but then it's interesting DISH, on the other hand, for whatever reason, is throwing its support for making it mandatory. Now, certainly DISH is leaning very heavily into Open RAN and disaggregation as it rolls out its greenfield network. But. I have an opinion here, but I want to get your opinion first. Do you think Open RAN should be a requirement within the 5g fund? Oh, that's a good one. I think there is a I think yes. Only because what other purposes there for the 5g fund to exist. Yeah. I just, yeah, I don't think you're going to get homegrown. Infrastructure without it And here's here. Here are my thoughts. When you look at the amount of Chinese infrastructure, that's been deployed in the United States. The majority of that is within rural. For the obvious reason that a lot of these vendors like Huawei and ZTE wanted to establish a footprint and in rural, you've got the challenge of subscriber density and that sort of thing. And so there's goodness from the perspective of. Open RAN does help domesticate the 5G supply chain. That, that was one of the early sort of emphasis on its deployment from the federal government. And you can't argue that if you use common off the shelf compute obviously it has to be NIP certified go through all those the stages, but there CapEx benefits as well on the front end. It sounds like, you're on the side of the fence. It says it should be a requirement. I'm going to state that. I think it should be, highly recommended, but I don't think necessarily that it should be mandatory. But I think at the end of the day. What will come down to is, it's going to be a reverse auction is my understanding on a lot of this. And the infrastructure providers are going to have to be competitive with respect to winning these these types of deployments. And I think Open RAN will factor into that. And I've spoken about how, Open RAN, was initially going to be leveraged in Greenfield deployments. And that has come to fruition, but we're going to begin to see it in Brownfield as well with AT& T and Ericsson. A coin flip here between the 2 of us, but I think it's a good thing. It'll be interesting to see how this winds up, but this discussion has been going on for about a year now. But with that, let's go to your 1st topic. And I caught this as well. This should be a, this should be pretty interesting from a discussion standpoint, but there's some new down and upload definition speeds for broadband and you want to talk about what that could potentially mean for 5G fixed wireless access. Yeah, so the FCC has upped. What it considers to be broadband now a lot of people don't understand is what the term broadband actually has actual stipulations tied to it. So like lots of funding is tied to broadband. And there's, certain rules that are tied to broadband. So unless you fit that definition, you're not eligible for broadband funds and broadband regulation. And the thing, the problem is that This benchmark of 25 megabits down and three megabits up was set in 2015, nine years ago. And since then, demand for internet services has only increased considerably. And when you look at things like the bead program and the USF programs, Those are all dependent on the definition of what broadband is. So we need to make sure as a country that we should be updating our definition of what broadband is with the speed of internet and user demands and applications and things like that. 25 down three up is not a great experience for anyone nowadays. And truthfully, it wasn't back then either. Because I joined the firm in 2015, actually. And I recall where I was living at the time and I was already, getting 300 down and up which is really not great in my opinion, but that was what was available over cable. And now this is a 100 down 20 up. And I actually like that. They're increasing the up requirement more than they're increasing the down of requirement. Because. Truthfully, 100 megabits does get a lot of things done pretty well I think as a base level for sure, but 20 up also really make sure that video calling is possible, stable, right? Because three is not enough. And also being able to just upload files quickly, like three megabits is just, they're going to sit there all day. As somebody who lives on a one gig symmetrical fiber connection I couldn't imagine having to go down to 120 or 100 slash 20. But I do think it's really to Jessica Rosenworcel's statement over too. And yeah, I think this was something that probably should have been done five years ago. Because I just think that it was necessary. What's interesting is that there is some talk about maybe moving to 100, 100. But I think the Comcasts and the charters of the world will fight that, with every lobbying dollar they have because, Let's be real. DOCSIS just doesn't do upload very well over, over cable. And there's a very slim chance that they'll offer a hundred megabits up with their, multi gig service. I think that, a hundred, one hundred would basically be requiring fiber everywhere, which I would not be opposed to even like T Mobile and Verizon's fixed wireless might not be able to pull a hundred up. That's something to consider as well. And that might be the reason why I would push back on a hundred as a definition for broadband moving forward. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think 120 is the right reset for now. When you look at the performance that you're seeing with Verizon and T Mobile's fixed wireless access service, it's anchored and low band and, it's. I can tell you in Bastrop, I am using the T Mobile service and, I, I'm lucky on a given day if I can get 60, 70 up. And it's, 200 plus down. I think it's the right place to reset the bar and and, the 5G fixed wireless access service is only going to get better as, verizon and AT& T and T Mobile continue to build out their mid band spectrum assets as well. But, I think from my perspective, this puts fixed wireless access, straight, firmly. In the middle here with respect to, delivering the right level of broadband, because it's certainly, it's much more, it's proven to be much more capable than anything that the cable operators have provided any final thoughts before we close that one out? No, I think there's a, there's going to be a lot of conversation about this in the future. I think it's going to be mostly positive. Honestly, if you look at the reactions of most people, they're all very positive about it. I think the only people who might be pissed about it. Are the service providers who aren't reaching this bar and truthfully they should be discontinuing those services and offering something That at least meets 120. So yeah, hopefully this pushes them in the right direction yeah, welcome. Welcome to the new decade and the world that we live in with streaming and video conferencing for sure. Let's go to my 2nd topic and this news broke last week. So T Mobile and Dialpad announced an extension of their partnership and the companies are focused on delivering AI enabled business communications. And as I read through the article, it was interesting. Certainly T Mobile has been very busy building its business service capability. Dialpad has been a great focus for the company there. T Mobile is the sort of the exclusive communication service partner of Dialpads. Within the latest announcement, there was discussion around a new a new capability called AI Recaps, which summarizes business meetings I think you and I have experienced this, even with some of the Google suite stuff, there's this AI, summarization, but what I also find interesting is that not only dial pad, but Google and Webex which is delivered by Cisco and zoom have been working with T Mobile with that network slicing beta right to deliver better quality of service and more deterministic capabilities for or video collaboration in general. 1 of the thoughts I have, and it's as I read through the announcement, there was a reference to 5G, but there was nothing around voner as well, and so I'm wondering, I'd like to get your take on this. Do you think donor could provide additional headroom and capabilities for this kind of this tie up between T Mobile and dial pad? I do think so. I'm just thinking about, owner yesterday. Because I am a cellular technology nerd. I was thinking about it while I was walking my dog. I was on the phone with my sister on Verizon and I hung up and I looked at my phone. I was like, Oh, I'm on LTE. I'm on LTE here. I should have, a ultra wide band. I I was in most parts of San Diego. So wait, Oh yeah. I have to use LTE for calls cause they don't have owner. Yeah, I think boners like just super important because if you're making phone calls regularly, you're going to be falling back to LTE regardless of what carrier you're on today, unless you're on T Mobile in a few certain cities. In general, I think, voters should become the standard for all carriers, including T Mobile. Because otherwise you're, if you're making phone calls regularly, you're going to be falling back to LTE a lot, which means that your apps are going to be falling back to LTE as well. And that's something I think that's something a lot of people forget is yeah, having standalone apps is cool and being able to take advantage of standalone capabilities, but. You have to keep falling back to LTE for phone calls. That's not good. Good point. I agree with you. 100 percent and there, there wasn't really any discussion around donor in that press release, but I do expect because of T Mobile's lead and just getting standalone deployed relative to its competitors that we'll hear more about that. Hey, but let's go to your 2nd topic and the FCC recently ratified some new rules around direct to device 5G and services and you want to provide some insights there. Yes this is something that has been in discussion for a while now. The FCC has been talking about what are they going to do for supplemental coverage from space, which they call S. C. S. But it's essentially utilizing NTN capabilities. And basically, they're setting up these SCS rules where there is no need for, to wait for new spectrum or a new generation of devices. That saddle operators and carrier collaborators can use terrestrial spectrum that is already in the market to bring these services to the phones that we have today. And then Rosenworcel continues. This was a quote from her. Even better, we can accomplish all this while protecting existing networks from harmful interference by ensuring the new supplemental satellite operations are secondary to mobile network operations and requiring that one or more carriers hold all co channel licenses throughout defined geography, through a defined geographically independent area. It sounds like they don't, they want people who. Own those licenses to have enough spectrum to guard around it in case there's some emissions and it seems like right now the slices are pretty thin so that's possible but maybe when the slices become wider in terms of how much spectrum they're using because I think right now it's five megahertz. It's pretty narrow Yeah But it's good to fcc actually has rules in place and that Operators can actually things up in space and have them Working within the rules that we have commercial deployments fairly quickly. I do think this sets us up for commercial deployments this year. Maybe a very few of them, but this might really set us up for next year, but I'd love to hear your take. I do think it gets us to commercial deployments this year and I published a Forbes article to that to that extent about a month ago. The big concern here is around interference, right? And there's been a lot of, petitioning and I know there was, I think you and I talked about this on a prior podcast. There was, concern around what, Starlink was doing with T Mobile and there weren't a lot of details there. And so I think there was concern around, interference, with terrestrial communications and that sort of thing. We gotta remember, we can't put the cart before the horse here. We've gotta make sure that that our public mobile networks are bulletproof, right? We have seen some outage concerns here. One, one most recently I won't name that particular company because we talked about that on a prior podcast, but, we need to make sure that, We keep the entirety of these terrestrial networks intact and then layer it on in a very measured from a very measured point of view. That's my hot take on it. Wrong or indifferent, but let's go to my 3rd topic. I want to talk about Nokia and they're teaming with Euro fiber to deliver private 5G networks and they got me thinking, could this serve as a model for other fiber service providers? Xeo and that sort of thing. So at a high level Euro fiber provides fiber based service and they've decided to partner with Nokia to leverage Nokia's private. It's both LTE and 5G, but, what I like about this is that Eurofiber will use its fiber footprint for the backhaul, and they're partnering with Nokia, and it's the Nokia modular private wireless or the MPW and radio access solutions that they will be deploying. I think this could serve as a fantastic model for other fiber service companies. When you start to think about, expanding their, the addressable market for communication services and that sort of thing. Partnering with someone like Nokia is smart. I'm wondering if you caught the news and if you have any additional thoughts. I did not catch the news. However, I do think it's interesting because I think it helps Nokia maybe grow. It's private networking business, but also actual. Networking business as well because. They do, they, I don't know if they still do, but they had a pretty sizable fiber business before. And I feel like this could help them maybe accelerate growth there. Cause I feel like a lot of their businesses have become somewhat stagnant recently. And I think, they did a big diversification push last year. To maybe change what Nokia does as a company. I'll be honest with you. I don't really feel like I've seen a huge change in the last year. I don't know if you were M. W. C. Maybe you did see it. Big indifference. But to me, it still feels like they're very much in their legacy businesses, and they haven't really gotten much traction outside of those. Yeah, no I would agree with you study Eddie there you bring up a good point. Nokia's got significant capabilities and depth and portfolio from an optical and transport network perspective. And I suspect. Although I didn't do the research, I probably should have that Eurofiber could be using some of Nokia's optical gear here, but I just like the route to market. I think it gives Nokia another method to promote what it's doing within private networks and the company really needs that, given some, short term. Hurdles that they're having to to, surmount and, get over. But yeah but with that, let's wrap things up. You want to talk about Vodafone and they continue their diversification strategy and they recently had a huge sale to a a mobile network operator in Europe. Yeah, so this is actually their second divestiture of a considerable business unit. A lot of people don't know, but Vodafone is like a very large group with many subsidiaries. But their main subsidiaries are Vodafone Germany, Vodafone UK, Vodafone Italy. And then they have a bunch of other smaller subsidiaries. What's interesting is. Last year, they sold Vodafone Spain to a Spanish operator. I forget that was like 3 billion or something like that. And now they're selling Vodafone Italy, which is one of their larger holdings for 8 billion euros. It seems like they're ruining some of their business units in different regions. Which to me feels like they might be trying to acquire someone. Because usually when you start selling off. Large business units. You're trying to fund something. So I'm not really sure what Vodafone is trying to fund. Have a big presence globally. They have Vodafone idea in India. They have Vodafone in Africa, South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt. So they have, massive operations globally. So it's really interesting that they're divesting from one of their older businesses, which is in Italy. I'm not sure what they're going to be doing with this 8 billion euros. But I have a strong feeling they're not going to just let that cash sit around. And Vodafone isn't really necessarily like a U. S. company where their goal is to return cash to shareholders immediately. So I think that there's probably a large acquisition that they're trying to tee up because it seems very suspicious that they would divest from two fairly large markets within a year of each other. Yeah, oh, I totally agree with you. I think, there's something to be read in the tea leaves here. It is interesting. So this is a continuation of a diversification strategy that has been in play for some time. In places like. You did not mention Australia where they operated a wholly owned franchise subsidiary. And over time they, they moved that down to a 50, 50 partnership with another company with, within Australia. So it's been a sort of this diversification strategy. And I totally agree with you. The Spain transaction last year was big. This transaction with Swisscom. Is huge and you're absolutely right. I agree with you. They wouldn't be, divesting these regional parts of their business unless they, didn't have something else, cooking and it would be really interesting to see what they potentially have cooking up. Yeah, podcast. We were a little late this week, just given some hectic. for having me. Travel that you and I have had. How are things going at home? How's that? How's your daughter doing? She's doing great. She got her a 2 month vaccines this week. All right, I feel a lot better about traveling now. And having people come over basically, it's just been grandparents. Now everybody gets to see this little chubby face. And I've actually got travel tomorrow. I'm going to Intel vision, or sorry, that's not that's the, that's in a few weeks. That's coming up this week. This week is Nvidia GTC. So I will be tracking all of the 5g announcements coming out of that show, but it will also be covering all the AI stuff and all of the, actual GPU technology which includes XR and. All the other stuff that related to gaming. So GTC is a big show for NVIDIA. Now that NVIDIA is considered one of the hottest companies in tech everybody's going to want to pay attention and yeah, I'll be there starting Sunday and I'll be there till Tuesday, but the show goes through Thursday. Yeah, it should be a big event. I'll be covering it remotely to covering the networking aspects of it. So for our viewers and listeners be hitting our and my Twitter handles for live event updates next week. But it's been a great podcast. My friend, 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 insights on a specific topic for a future podcast. Please reach out to us on social media. Will's at whale contact and I'm at on shell SOG. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week. And don't forget to rate us and subscribe.