Welcome to episode 198 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. We want to apologize to our viewers and listeners.

I was caught up on vacation and had roof construction at my home in the Florida Keys.  So that's why we're delaying things, but I did have a great 4th. I spent 2 weeks down there and what did you do for the 4th? 

I stayed home,  but did 

you go to a baseball game? 

No. 

Okay. Sometimes staying at home and as being a new dad is a good thing.

Yep.  Cool. Let me jump into my 1st topic and I want to talk about hurricane barrel and the disaster communication efforts by AT& T Mobile and Verizon to bring  connectivity to South Texas. This was a devastating hurricane. I'm always on the lookout because as I mentioned, I have a home in the Florida Keys, but this was the earliest hurricane on record and it was a monster.

It was a cat 5 and as it hit the Gulf, it picked up steam and it hit Houston and many parts of Houston. I'm told are still out of power. There's a lot of pandemonium that's going on with that people that are very frustrated.  Not having electricity for obvious reasons, 1st and foremost,  air conditioning, lack of air conditioning, but connectivity becomes a really important factor in not only search and rescue, but also in just giving people that needed connectivity to be able to reach loved ones.

And that's where they, unfortunately there were 14 deaths. And but I do applaud AT& T Mobile and Verizon for stepping up and providing connectivity  and just a great example of how mobile network operators can mobilize and leverage technology to get connectivity, at least temporary connectivity back into these areas.

And so with AT& T. They use actually flying cell on wheels. So they use drone technology to be able to get basically radio towers up in the air to establish temporary connectivity. I don't believe this was for 1st responders. It was more for their subscribership. And that was very effective and breaching or addressing the breach and communications there.

I read that T Mobile actually, and I'm not sure if you caught this my friend, but T Mobile use satellite cells on trucks, so Colts, and and also satellite based cows. And I'm assuming. There may have been some space X, involvement with that effort. But, 2 great examples of of using, the latest technology like drones and satellite to provide connectivity when it's needed Verizon, I dug into Verizon.

I'm sure they did some of this, the same things, but what they really talked about was ensuring that all of their backup systems and their,  their kind of corporate locations and their switch locations and that sort of thing. We're up and running and that's something that Verizon has been very focused on historically.

They've always bragged about having the nation's most reliable network.  And and I've spent time with them as well, and I've spent time with their.  Professionals in their in Bedminster in on the East coast, they have a an operation center. They're a network operation center. So all 3 mobile network operators really stepping up to the task.

Again, it's just a great example of how these companies are leveraging things like low Earth orbit and and drone technology to to support connectivity. And I'm sure you were following the news because it was big news. And it, as the hurricane moved from Texas, it moved up the East coast. And certainly you're in California, so you weren't affected by that.

But do you have any insights into the response from the 3 operators? 

Yeah, they did their jobs. I think that's really the core of it. I was almost affected by it cause I was in New York city. New York didn't actually get the remnants of the storm, like it was supposed to. I was expecting to have rain all week in New York when I was there and it actually didn't rain at all.

That was probably a good thing. Cause New York city is a very big city. And the last few times I've been there, they've gotten hurricane remnants and it flooded the city. I think we as a nation are not properly prepared for a lot of these natural storms, but I will say that the carriers have gotten their acts together and they are mostly prepared for these things, but they are going to continue to get worse more frequent.

And that is just a reality.  

Yeah, for sure. And my thoughts and prayers are going out to the residents of Houston, Matagorda County, south of Houston. I lived there for 10 years. Both my daughters were born there and we went through a lot of tropical storms and a lot of power outages and there are still widespread power outages all over the city of Houston and people are getting a little restless and they're doing  what I'm hearing some pretty idiotic things with these line workers.

Just, or for our viewers and listeners, get the word out. CenterPoint Energy is working super hard in South Texas to get things restored. So let's all be a little more patient there, but hey that that reference to New York is a great setup for your 1st topic this week. And you are at Galaxy Unpacked, right?

The Samsung event.  

Yeah, I was actually at a satellite event.  In New York. The actual event was in Paris. So a lot of people were in Paris for that. I was not I was in New York for that event, but I was there also for two other events the same week I think actually some of our colleagues were also at an aws event the same week in new york as well so if there was a potential I could have actually been there for four events, but but that would have been insane but yeah, basically galaxy impact.

That's samsung's big smartphone reveal they do two of those a year usually. They do one early in the year for the S series,  and then they do another one later for the Z series, which are their foldables. It used to be that they did it for the Note series, but now the Note has been integrated into the S series, so it is now just for foldables.

Generally, it's not this early in the year it's usually in August or in September, but now it's moved up to July. That said, the S series used to be a February, March thing, and now it's a January thing. So Samsung's moving up their timeframes. And basically this new Galaxy Z series also came with some new wearables.

We got the new Z Fold 6, the Z Fold or Z Flip 6. So the Fold is the one that opens like a book, and the Flip is the one that closes in half. And then on top of those two we also got a new Samsung Galaxy Watch  Ultra and a Galaxy Watch 7. Those two are based on the same new three nanometer processor from Samsung.

The Z Flip series and Z Fold series use the same Snapdragon 8103 globally, so there's no Samsung chips in those. And then they also announced the Galaxy Ring. They announced three new wearables. Oh, they also announced Buds 3 and Buds 3 Pro. They announced three new, four new wearables and two new phones.

It was a very jam packed announcement. I think most people were really anticipating the folds and the flips and the ring. And I actually wear an R ring, so I'm excited to use the the new ring. Some reviewers already have them but they should be available in the next few days. I think all of the phones and all the wearables are available on the 24th.

So pre orders are still open and there's some still some pre order deals available. But yeah, I think the ring is actually quite good. It's really thin and light, much thinner and lighter than the the Aura ring, and it doesn't require a subscription, but it only works on Android phones. And yeah, I think the galaxy watch ultra is interesting.

But it's like a wannabe Apple watch ultra. It's got a bigger battery, bigger screen, but that's about it. And even better water immersion capabilities, but in terms of the phones they're all 5g. I really liked the flip because it's. More upgraded, better sensors.

Bigger battery. It just seems like they tried harder. Bigger screen. So I just think if there's a phone to go for out of these in this announcement, the flip is it. The Fold is very incremental improvement. In fact, the Fold is, the Fold 6 has almost the same camera as the Fold 3. So they've really dropped the ball on the camera capabilities, which is weird because A lot of the other foldables out there have great cameras now.

Yeah, I think Samsung could do better. I think they need more competition and we might see something from Google in the next few weeks. They're going to be having a made by Google event in August on the 13th. That's less than a month away and I will be there. So I will give you guys my thoughts on that when that happens.

So it sounds like you're going to get a demo of the ring. Are you going to be doing a, like a Forbes write up or a research note from the firm on that? Oh, wow. Okay. I'm impressed. Just 

waiting for our editor to to give me my feedback.  

Cool. Yeah. So for our viewers and listeners, they stay on the lookout for articles article that's coming up there.

Hey, let me go to my 2nd topic. And I want to talk about Germany and the rip and replace of Chinese infrastructure. This is something that, I have talked about on numerous podcasts, but there are a couple of articles that I caught. 1 was on mobile world live and another 1 may have been on the fierce network.

But it makes you wonder if Germany is dragging its feet with their effort to rip and replace. It's no surprise that a good majority of the RAN infrastructure in Germany is Huawei. It's By, by several accounts it's up to 50% of the RAN infrastructure is Huawei.

And initially  Germany committed to replacing all of that hardware by the end of 2026, I believe. But now some new news is coming out around a wrinkle into that plan and what, the German government, is saying is that by 2029, they're more concerned about the management layer software.

The automation and the orchestration and that sort of thing, and that they are setting a timeline for phasing that out by the end of 2029. That. That's 3 years after any sort of infrastructure removal, but it just seems if you read between the lines here that that Germany is somewhat dragging its feet.

Now if it's the, if it's true that, and I can't verify this, and there's probably a way for you and I to verify it but if half of their ran infrastructure is ZTE, that's a heavy lift man to to replace all that equipment. Even. If you're going disaggregated and you're using things like VRAN and OpenRAN.

What do you think? Did you catch any of these news articles? Do you have any thoughts about, about Germany? Are they dragging their feet? Usually you and I do this point counterpoint and sometimes we agree and sometimes we don't, but what do you think? 

I think that Germany gobbled up Huawei too quickly.

They just, they saw a route too quick. And cheap deployment and this is the consequence of that. I believe that, 50 percent is quite an undertaking. But I think it's also on them to acknowledge their mistake. I think what it is fundamentally, I don't think the carriers.

Believes that the government is justified and their edict. So they're not really feeling like they need to do this. Or want to do this. So because of that, I think you're seeing them drag their feet. I think you even use that term. Just think that there needs to be a little bit more fire under their butts.

And I think they just, I don't think they ever wanted this. Unless the government mandates it in a way that makes them move faster. It's going to, it's expensive lift. And I'm sure that the Nokia's and the Ericsson's and Samson's of the world would love to see them, have to make changes quickly, especially considering our future topics for this week.

Yeah, for sure. And, what's interesting Germany is a very technology forward country relative to others in Europe.  What's also interesting is that Europe is, the European Union is much different than the U. S. and that each individual country. And we've talked about this numerous times on our podcast, they make the decisions around, regulation and spectrum auctions and that sort of thing.

So it's likely the European commission that and it's a parallel to the FCC in the United States. It's likely the European commission that is putting this pressure on Germany. And to your point. This is, this is, something that likely, Germany in particular is pushing back on,  but it'll be really interesting to see how this all plays out.

Certainly when you think about infrastructure deployment for the sake of infrastructure without the management layer, it's just a bunch of stuff. It's just a bunch of servers and, antennas and that sort of thing. But. But what the concern really, and from my perspective, I've talked about this before, when I've spoken with journalists, the concern really is around  the software management layer, the, the orchestration, the B.

S. the O. S.  and if it's if you're using something that is Chinese. Then there's potentially, back doors that are built into that are designed for spying and control and that sort of thing. And zombie some vacation  of operation. It's interesting that they're pushing back and they're stating that.

Okay we're focused on the management layer. The hardware is a hardware, but that the timeline is 3 years after the sort of the hardware rip and replace. I think I don't know. This is newly developing and it's going to be really interesting to continue to monitor this.

And I'm sure we'll be talking about this on future podcasts, but let's move to your second topic. And you want to talk about boost mobile and a reset for for that prepaid service. 

Yes. So the carrier known as boost is now a part of dish. That carrier was once part of sprint. It was called, if you remember boost mobile phone, where you at?

I was like their whole shtick so they've done some rebranding they've changed the logo and they've also introduced new plans And pricing so now you can get in to boost and I believe the price is 25 Is the entry price? Let's see here. I have the breakdown of all the prices.

Basically 25 and it's if you sign up initially with auto pay, it's  30 gigs of a month for 25, 30 gigs for 25 a month for life. They're saying you get unlocked, you get locked in. And then the 50 plan gives you hotspot and 40 gigs with global talk and text. And then there's a 60 tier with a bunch of 50 gigs and all those other features as well.

And then a another one called infinite access, which is a 65 plan, which includes an annual device upgrade. So this is definitely a more affordable plan. This is sits way below where our ATT Verizon team of war today. So it'll be interesting to see how this how this matches up because they're claiming 99 percent coverage.

Thanks to their own network, but also, sharing agreements. I have already requested a SIM to try it out myself. But I do not have one yet, so I cannot give you an assessment, but I'm really excited and interested to see how this works out because, I think price competition is always important.

And what's the real dish needs. Subscribers. So if there's no network works, coverage is there that's ultimately what people care about.  

Yeah, but at that subscription price, like, how competitive is that with with NetMobile? T Mobile acquired NetMobile. I'm seeing lots of ads for, 15 a month.

I'm assuming that the data throttle and the data limit is lower. Any insight there? 

Yeah, so there's no specifics on throughput. But what they do say is that. You get a certain  amount of data and the thing is that when you look at something like Mint Mobile they have an interesting structure because it depends on, what your size of bucket is because Mint Mobile actually goes down to five gigs.

So you can get five gigs of data for 15 a month. And there's an upfront, prepaid fee associated with that. You can get an unlimited plan with them as well. But I have a feeling that even their unlimited plans are actually probably capped at a certain gigabyte capacity because they're biggest.

Plan is 20 gigs and that's 15 to 35, depending on the length of a deal. So none of these are actually really on a month to month basis anymore. They're all month plans at the minimum. Not really sure how these compare. Cause I don't really think they do. But I think closely, there, there's some similarities.

And I think that  from what I can tell it really seems like boost wants to keep things simple for people. And I do think that, that's a reasonably good price for entry. Cause it's not 15, but or 20 for that matter, you're starting at 30 gigs of data.

So you're already starting at a higher bucket than what Mint is offering. So I think it's pretty competitive cause the cheapest plan from mint at 20 or the cheapest  at 25, sorry, the 25 plan, which is comparable to what boost is offering is 20 gigs. So you're actually getting less data on mint.

So I think it's competitive and I think it will be interesting to see how they shape up. There are limits, like you said, on mint, and we'll see if there are limits on boost. Yeah.  

Yeah,  interesting. You had all the facts. I appreciate you clarifying that for both me and our viewers listeners.

Hey, I'm gonna hit my 3rd topic pretty quickly. I want to talk about Erickson and  there was a recent earnings call with their CEO and.  He admitted that, they've not executed in the short term with their Vonage acquisition and their API strategy. And so it makes me wonder, is there still long term potential?

So on this earnings call, and this was actually an article that Dan Meyer, who I know well at SDX Central wrote up, but  earlier this month, Erickson wrote off another, what was the amount? 1. 1 billion impairment charge. To its acquisition of Vonage. So if you add that to the initial write off, it's getting pretty close to writing off the entire 6.

2 billion dollar investment that the company made in Vonage, but but apparently, in this article on STX central, and we can provide the link when we post the podcast the CEO, his name's Borja Elkholm.  He spoke about, that they're still very bullish on API and given the programmability and the ability to bring developers in very early to innovate on top of the investment that m and os make and these next generation 5G networks and so his words were like, don't you know, but hold your breath before you assess the overall transaction.

But apparently Erickson still bullish that long term. That that this could be a positive thing for the company. It just sounds like it's taking longer for the whole API thing to catch on. And I think certainly AT& T sees the value in it, obviously, and partnering with Ericsson and moving a lot of the AT& T network to disaggregated infrastructure, but also taking advantage of the programmability that comes along with that.

So I just think maybe Erickson was just a little ahead of itself and maybe didn't set the right expectation for how quickly  could be a creative and really drive this whole API ecosystem. I will add that, nicholas and I'm forgetting his last name. You could remind me if I, if you know it, but he was formerly the Erickson president of North America.

He's now running the bondage business.  Patrick more had our founder has spent a lot of time with him and Patrick seems to be very bullish on. What Nicholas has shared with him, but it just seems like this is taking a little bit longer, for Erickson to realize the value. So I know you've got an opinion on this.

I'll let you fire away. 

Yeah, here's the thing. This reminds me a lot of Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia, which was a full write down. This basically in my book is a full write down. So when you fully write something down, you effectively acknowledge it's not  valuable. It has lost its value. I hate to say it, but regardless of how successful this ends up being it's a loss.

It's a total loss. So I'm not, you're, I think you're being a bit optimistic.  Okay, I think you're being a bit optimistic. If this generates some kind of revenue in the future, it will have been so marginally insignificant. To the total spend of how much Vonage cost them. What was the total cost of Vonage at this point that they paid? 

Six, 6. 1 or 6. 2 billion. So they're going to have to monetize the hell out of it over the next five years to your point.  No, 

even if they captured almost every customer in the world.  That could potentially be a customer. They maybe would recover 6 billion. So I just think it's it was a bad acquisition.

I think somebody at Vonage. Did a great job of selling  the company to them. But yeah, I think it was a mistake. And this is basically an acknowledgement that there is nothing left to realize.  

Yeah there you have it. Our viewers and listeners point counterpoint. That's why I love doing these with and we've been doing them for.

Man, 5th year next year coming up here, but hey, so let's keep the theme of Nordic. Infrastructure, cellular infrastructure provider's going and you wanna close this week's podcast with Nokia's earnings. And I did catch this. I'm gonna let you take it and then I'm gonna provide some color as well. 

This was a pretty big one.

This happened yesterday. Nokia basically reported a huge decline in profit. It huge, it declined down to 423 million euros. Down nearly a third from 600 million euros in the same period a year ago. And they said that most of the impact was the challenging year ago comparison period, which saw the peak of India's rapid 5g deployment in India, accounting for three quarters of the decline.

So basically India kept them afloat last year. And this year, India has petered out, so they aren't really realizing as much profit. And I think that's just like a that's a cyclical thing, but I also have to say that Nokia hasn't really been having great quarters for a while now.

If anything, the quarter a year ago was saved by India, and now there's no India to save it. Also, they did lay off 14, 000 people last year. And they're probably still laying those people off. Cause you can't just lay off 14, 000 people in the blink of an eye. So there's, and that was due to a huge plunge in third quarter earnings.

I feel like we keep talking about Nokia being in a place where things aren't great. It feels like there are some bright spots like in private networking, but they aren't really realizing themselves fast enough or big enough to save, Nokia's earnings. That said, they are still a profitable company but their stock was down 8%.

I'm actually a a believer that like, they're in a tough spot in terms of the market itself. And I think that they will if they keep on with their strategy, I think they will be successful. Their net sales were down 18%. It's a tough place.

And it said that this was their lowest level of revenue since the fourth quarter of 2015. So  this is definitely, I think, them kind of reaching the end of 5G's growth in terms of RAM. And maybe private networking just hasn't picked up early enough for them to potentially find that growth opportunity for profits.

But that's my thoughts. I think private networking is gonna save them eventually. It's just not happening fast enough. 

Yeah. And we've talked, I've talked about this on prior podcasts, the the adoption curve has not been the hockey stick that a lot of people would've thought.

With private 5G networking we're beginning to see more pockets. I will point out that I recorded the game time tech podcasts with Mel Brew and Robert Kramer, two analysts in our firm, and we talked about the Paris Olympics, how Cisco is partnering with Orange. But to deploy a standalone 5G network.

With 60 IP sites to facilitate production and and streaming of content around the world.  And and also, obviously that private standalone network is going to support fan activations and concessions and the mobility that's needed so that you don't have to run, tons of cables along the sun river and that sort of thing.

I do believe that, Nokia has got to, I think, bright spots from my perspective, one around optical they're right up there with Cisco and even Huawei is pretty big in optical transport networks and the private networking thing. So I think. As we see further adoption I think that could be a bright spot for them.

I also believe that security could be a bright spot for Nokia as well. Just given their investment with labs and their labs efforts and those sort of things. And that's actually something that I'm beginning to spend more time with the Nokia team to understand their their security strategy.

And I hope to be able to share more in the coming months around that.  But yeah, it just seems like with Nokia, it's been this ebb and flow. It's they were, I just remember 2 mobile world congresses ago. They relaunched their strategy and they had a new brand mark and they had a.

A reinvigorated focus on enterprise services,  and it just seemed they were moving down the right track. And then we see the slowdown and ran spend right? Because all the ran and non standalone got built out. And then people started turning to. Where mobile network operators started turning to core network infrastructure, and they just, they got caught in that because they've been a big leader in Iran space.

So I think there's a perfect storm going on around them. I'm optimistic that because I'm a glasses half full guy. I'm optimistic that they've got the right assets to turn things around, but to your point. The reduction in force is a little bit troubling when times are tough, and it's like this higher and fire mentality that I experienced a little bit of that when I was in corporate America, and that's been 10 plus years since I've been in corporate America.

But that's not productive. In fact, I, a very good friend of mine who was, who had left Cisco to join Nokia as president of North America. He was caught up in that as well. And he's landed and he's doing quite well. But, you got to move beyond this fire and fire mentality and invest in the long haul and and see it through and really focus on what you're good at.

Anyway it'll be interesting to see how things roll. But with that, it's been another great podcast again, our apologies to our viewers and listeners for skipping a week, but it's been crazy for Angela and I with personal and professional travel. But my friend, I'm gonna let you take us home.

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners found this topic interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide insights on a future project, future topic for a future podcast please reach out to us on social media. Will is at Wheel Town Tech and I'm at On Shell Sun. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week and don't forget to rate us and subscribe.