Welcome to episode 204 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 Anshul Saad. So we are recording the Friday before Labor Day.

So we just want to wish all of our listeners and viewers a very happy Labor Day.  Actually, it doesn't sound like you're going to take a day off. You're headed to Berlin, right? 

Yes, I'll be at IFA  right before the Apple event  the following week. But I wanted to help people get in the mood of the holiday and show them the beaches, San Diego.

Maybe some people will enjoy the beaches this weekend for the last time before, the holidays are over. Vacation is over.

Yeah, it's the dog days of summer are about to end here. And I will be watching my Longhorns play their home opener in Austin against Colorado State the Rams Fort Collins is a favorite place of mine.

I have a little bit of rental property there as well, but I will definitely be voting or rooting for the Longhorns this weekend. But. Hey, let's jump into it. I wanna hit my first topic and I caught this article on the Fierce Network and it was an interview with at t's head of ai.  And he was talking about how important generative AI is to the overall strategy and it's.

It's very broad, but it got me thinking if it's too broad, is it going to, lose its value and, I have talked about what AT& T has done in the past with NVIDIA on intelligent truck roles and that sort of thing. Certainly AT& T is leaning into it for that. What I found interesting in this article, and it was written by Julia King. 

Is that they're using generative AI to even do things like understand the network life cycle tied to retiring copper, which is something that we've talked about and certainly fixed wireless access and internet air that announcement that AT& T made is intended to be a copper catch and move people off of legacy infrastructure.

But I found it interesting that beyond chatbots. Beyond the intelligent Truck Rolls that their head of AI and his name. I'm probably gonna kind of mess it up, but it's Raj Saboor actually didn't mess that one up, but but Raj is, thought process and strategy, which in AI is to be very, very wide and very pervasive with it. 

Using it not only to, again, evaluate legacy infrastructure and apply AI to understand how to move subscribers off of that, but,  hey, this whole concept of an autonomous network, and this is something that we continue to hear certainly would be very powerful when you think about a mobile network operator.

And the dependency that we all have on mobile communications,  but you know what, it's like a baseball game. Your Padres are my Astros man. It's early innings. And with generative, a lot of announcements this week around and video, I still can't believe that they just killed it with earnings.

Yeah, all the bubble bears, as I like to call them out there pause the stock to retreat. But obviously, there's a lot of promise with  what AT& T is doing is going to be very expensive. But from your perspective, is it too expensive? Can this can these things that they're doing. Like with evaluating legacy technology and driving towards more of autonomy.

Is there a value in that or is it just window dressing? 

I think it's a way for them to save on costs, to be honest. It feels like it's a cost optimization, effort. Look at the size of a company like AT& T. There's probably a lot of things that.  could be optimized that aren't just because of the size of the company.

So I think it's actually a positive thing for them. They can go out and find the things that they want to be more optimized and automated and do those, the one thing I'm noticing is Gen AI is very popular for customer service both for ingestion, but also for problem solving. And I'm sure millions of dollars would be saved just for AT& T alone.

I think there's just so many opportunities within an organization the size of AT& T that I think Gen AI, when it's properly implemented with good leadership,  it can actually be very beneficial and it's not just window dressing.  

Yeah I was a softball tee up. I feel the same that you do. I think it could be very transformative and it's still early innings, getting back to my baseball analogy.

So it'll be fun to see how this all kind of unfolds. But with that your 1st topic, you want to talk about Apple and I know that it's almost that time of the year, right? Where they reveal new iPhones and other stuff.  

Yes. Apple sent out invites earlier this week. For a September 9th event that will be at 10 a.

m. Pacific Standard Time. And it will be an iPhone 16 launch which many people expect to be a very AI focused event, which no surprise there. Expectation is that there will probably be a new A6, A18  ship, which will probably only ship in the Pro models and then all the A17  stuff will trickle down to the rest of the iPhones.

From last year and then there's probably going to be expect, expectations for new Apple watch, maybe some AirPods updates. But I think that's going to be it. I'll be surprised if they announced any new Mac books, even though the expectation is that they're going to move up Mac books as well.

Cause like with the exception of the iPhone, everything's being announced early. Even like a lot of the AI stuff. They announced it. It's already 

been rolled out. Yeah. Yeah. 

That's the thing. It's not been rolled out. A lot of it's been announced.  

In 

beta. That's what I 

mean, announced.

Exactly. But I was like, usually Apple will hold some of these things until the new device is launched. But they wanted to get them out there  during WWDC. And some of them won't even be available, like the new Siri won't be available until next year. There's a lot of everyone is trying to jockey for AI dominance and AI position.

So I think you're going to see a lot more talk of AI during this Apple launch than I think we've probably ever seen. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the competition responds, of course. But in general, I think it'll be mostly iPhone focused. We will get probably some wearable updates, and I don't think we'll get MacBooks until maybe October or November.

Yeah it's that time of year, everyone gets really excited, wondering, what's coming. So it sounds to me like,  I don't know, I just sense it in your voice that nothing too earth shattering.  Is that an accurate take? 

It almost never is with Apple. 

Yeah. All right.

Cool. I, a lot of people like to make a big deal about it, but yes, I'm an Apple user and I've got an ultra watch, hey, I like the products, but it is what it is.  Hey, let me go to my 2nd topic. I want to talk about Deutsche Telekom, and they've been talking about their plans to roll out 5G standalone for quite some time. 

They're still sticking to their guns and it's getting pretty late, man. So we're pushing into September here.  And it's interesting. Apparently what they're going to do from a strategy perspective here. So they recently announced and this was again, another article on the fierce network.

They've announced a 5G. Gaming option based on 5G standalone and network slicing, and they're partnering with also in London lab for the service. And this is a new entry for them into cloud gaming. What's interesting is that it appears.  That this is the first of potentially a series of very bespoke  service offerings  that leverage 5g standalone.

So core matching the core of the RAM.  And we've often talked, numerous podcasts that you can't get to slicing until you have on so that unlocks standalone and that telecom is not necessarily going to go just broadly deploy what they're calling 5G plus, which is their. 

Standalone solution, but rather  deploy it and bespoke service oriented fashion.  I find that an interesting number 1, the expectations for 5G have been set so high and, I've talked often about how this whole tweener with non standalone and standalone really muck things up and how 3GPP is moving away from that. 

As we look at future  iterations of G's and that sort of thing. This may actually be a positive thing in the German market, because again, expectations for 5G have been low. If you're just a sort of broadly deployed at this point. Could that create market confusion? How would you go, how would you monetize that?

And so instead, the way they're going to go monetize this is with discrete services, starting with cloud gaming and network slicing. So what do you think?  

I think it's an interesting approach. I think it's it's basically  thinking about monetization first and foremost. And how do they monetize the costs of new core?

I do wonder  whether they have the right infrastructure in place to offer a service, a paid service. Is it really in enough places? Is it robust enough? And, it doesn't really  make it seem worthwhile for whoever is paying for the service. I also wonder, is the end user paying for the service, or is it the application developer?

Who's paying for this gaming service? That's the one thing I don't quite fully understand. I did see this story. I didn't really look into it much. But I'm glad you picked it up. I had a feeling you would.  

Yeah,  reading between the lines, because it was somewhat broad, it's talking about this partnership with these 2 companies and certainly those 2 companies they have a vested interest.

And they're, I'm assuming the 2 of those companies and Deutsche Telekom are going to  split the revenue opportunity. From my perspective, this is certainly something that as a subscriber, you would pay for and we've talked about this just with, slicing in general and, services and that sort of thing that are tied to it.

But it is interesting. The whole notion of, not going broad with it, but being very, bespoke to my point and offer it as a consumable service. It's going to be very interesting. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this really, takes and I'll actually be in Europe in a couple of weeks for connected Britain.

And I'm going to spend some time with Deutsche Telekom, and I really want to get, a deeper understanding on where they're headed with that. And. Maybe I can show that on a future podcast, but 

I would love to have tried it, but I don't think they're going to launch it by the time I'm in Germany.

But yeah, I looked into it a little more. It looks like it's literally a cloud gaming service bundle, games and service, but it's not, it's additional on top of their connectivity. But yeah the pricing structure obviously has to be right to pay for the compute. Technically paying for the connectivity.

I'm sure there's a little bit of extra you're paying for the core upgrade. But yeah as a gamer cloud gaming hasn't really taken hold. And I think a big part of that is, licensing and all the intricacies of having a game run in the cloud. But there are some games that are really great for it.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out. And I wish I'd be able to test it out, but it looks like a launch a few, probably a few weeks after I leave. 

Yeah, you may have to wait a little while there on that one. But hey, let's go to your second topic. And in SIGO, wow, we haven't talked about in SIGO in quite a while.

And you want to talk about an FWA router that they've recently launched and it's got the support of all three carriers in the U S right? 

Yeah. It's a pretty cool device. I think. Obviously it's mostly for in Sigo to roll out for their customers. So right now it's exclusively available through in Sigo Ignite channel partners.

But basically this is a single device. that operates on all three major carriers. And it's an indoor FWA router. And it's certified on those all three carriers. And the cool part is it allows you to run on multiple carriers simultaneously. So you can, it has dual SIM and you can have different carriers based on like your coverage or where you are and like what your billing is and what your agreements are with those carriers and who you prefer to have a primary and who to have as a backup. And it's really cool just cause I feel like this simplifies the FWA experience for small medium businesses really make FWA way more attractive because now you can like, Oh, maybe I went over on my plan with this carrier and I can switch to the other one.

Or. Maybe I'm not really getting good speeds with this one. I'm going to switch to a different one and you don't have to change your equipment. Basically just, change the provisioning, which is easy as popping in a SIM. And it's cool cause it also has support for all kinds of security for capabilities.

Has advanced encryption, guest Wi Fi, SASE capabilities, VPN, FIPS 142, and TAA compliance. It's got all the security capabilities you would want to have in a, an enterprise grade networking device. But also, it seems really flexible, seems really easy to set up. And yeah, I just, I'm excited about it.

It seems boring for some people. The full name is the Inseego WaveMaker FX 3110. But it's cool. It's unlocked. And yeah, I just think it's,  I think it's just like a really cool device that I think will help reduce friction in a lot of environments where people might have. Some sensitivities it has a snapdragon x62 5g modem, which is not necessarily the latest but it is still pretty advanced modem. 

It has wi fi 6. I was hoping this would have wi fi 7, but maybe that's a little too advanced for this application  

Yeah, I think because it's an enterprise class router. That's why it's likely Wi Fi 6, just given device support and that sort of thing. I do really like the flexibility with supporting multi carrier.

And if you think about it, this is really ideal for a business that has potentially a lot of branch locations. And, if you think about, coverage and that sort of thing, different operators have different coverage maps, depending on where you're at. I really like that and, when I think about some of those competitors, like cradle point, and I do spend a lot of time on cradle point they tend to align.

With 1 carrier and so T Mobile has been their, their go to partner and so anyway, I do the flexibility of the multi carrier. The fact that the, the device is unlocked. It just gives customers much more flexibility. Yeah.  

Also, they have support for U. S.

cellular as well, but I guess in the press release, they didn't think it was important to mention. 

No,  I think  they're on their last leg. I know. I just thought it was hasn't seen mobile hasn't seen mobile 

See what happens. But I'll just add. This is a very simple looking device. It looks like a Yeah.

Just a normal I don't know what to call it, but it does. It looks as an external antenna attachment, so you can get better signal if you want, but it looks like a, an Apple router from, back when they made those air airport routers. But yeah, other than that, it turns out in Segoe software to manage it as well.

And it has two ethernet connections and a dual SIM connections as well. USB port for management as well. And it's, it does not look like it supports millimeter wave. It looks like it's only sub 6,  but it does have 4 by 4 MIMO pretty good for, getting decent speeds. 

Yeah, nice package there. Hey let's go hit my 3rd and final topic. And I know you're going to weigh in on this 1 man. So I want to talk about the U. S. rural 5G fund. And man, we've been talking about this for years. This dates back to the Trump administration when your favorite FCC chairman pie.

Was running things. So what's interesting is that just recently, and this was something that I caught in RCR Wireless, so Sean Kenny and team, thanks for the inspiration here, but there are plans that are underway to reignite this fund. And just for a history lesson for our viewers and listeners, this was $9 billion that was dedicated.

And it's been on pause for the last 4 years, going all the way back to 2020  and, originally the design was where the plan was the mission was to address the over 1415, 000, 000. Homes and businesses nationwide that lack access to 5G. And so this was an attempt, this was way before beats.

This is an attempt to level the playing field. You and I talked, quite frequently about, hey, it wasn't going to be enough. It just wasn't, given the the scope. But now the current FCC chairman is Jessica Rosenworcel is ready to revisit this.

And, to her point, she was quoted in this article as saying, we are ready to use every tool available to make sure that those who live, work, and travel in rural America have access to advanced 5G mobile wireless broadband services. So  I don't know if you, you caught this or you dug into it, man, but what do you think?

Can this thing really, can it be a game changer? 

I'm  not convinced, to be honest with you because we, first of all, it's been languishing  for quite some time, and they've been talking about, reigniting or resetting this fund earlier this year already. So this isn't really like that new of news, but I also don't really know what are they going to do differently?

How are they going to take advantage of this? 9 billion away that wasn't, other than the fact they weren't doing anything with it. Like how do they maximize the impact of that 9 billion? I would love to know. But I think ultimately what I believe is that allowing people to have choice and maybe even trying to help them find the rest, the best solution for what they're trying to achieve. 

Because, I actually think Starlink have overplayed their hand in terms of how applicable they believe starlink is to bridging the, this divide.  However, yeah. However, I also believe starlink should be an option for people when no other options are available. Yeah, I think that there.

I don't think everybody should be on Starlink. I also don't think nobody should be on Starlink. So I think Starlink should be one of the options and it should be like, creating a like a stack of okay, does this apply to this area? Yes or no. I just move the flow chart because I just feel like in rural America. 

It's very much the opposite of one size fits all, and it's expensive to try and do anything. So I think, thinking through this process they've already been doing that, but, nobody executed anything. I would rather that we like actually have a, an approach that makes sense. 

But the problem is like satellite technology, I think, will  be the best way to address most of this.  Especially since rural areas are way less densely populated, but we're not really there yet. We're probably 3 or 4 years until satellites mature enough. But I didn't even hear any talk about satellite for rural in this.

No, that's a good point. Yeah,  

that's just my thoughts.  

No, I think your thoughts are dead on and you're right. It's interesting. Like, where's satellite in this conversation? And, we've got AST space mobile that's about to launch its 1st tranche of commercial satellites  next month as it's expected. 

You've got Starlink that's got, direct to device, testing going on, but it's going to, it's going to take both companies. To your point, a couple of years to get enough birds in the air that, you've got a constellation that can actually do what it intends to do. Yeah, it just seems like it's a retread or a rehash.

And to your point, I think if they really want to free these funds, they need to be less prescriptive  about, demanding, the up and down  throughput performance. And more, more focused on how do you get creative and begin to use some of these funds to, to do some good and get some connectivity in there.

But anyway,  it'll be interesting to see how this thing continues to roll out. But, hey, let's hit your 3rd and final topic. And I did catch this as well. I didn't go deep into it, but I'm looking forward to getting your perspective on Huawei.  And they're just continue. They're the Energizer Bunny, man.

Their revenue continues to rebound. And you want to talk about that growth and that profitability.  

Yeah. I think when you look at Huawei, they've obviously reinvented themselves in a lot of ways. They're now an automotive company. They're working on, shipping autonomous vehicles.

They're also still doing networking and building 5G infrastructure. They seem to be really pushing 5G advanced. Quite a bit and wanting to do that in the markets where it makes sense for them. And I think they're probably, working on improving their their, revenue and also profit.

So their revenue was up 34 percent year on year, and their net profit was up 17 percent year on year. So they are they're growing for a company that was once considered dying or dead.  So they've refused to go away is the best way of putting it. 

And if you look at their smartphones they're pretty close in terms of their other Chinese competitors. I wouldn't say that they're necessarily the best. I think, Oppo, Vivo Xiaomi, they've come a long 

way. Oppo especially has come a long way, huh? 

Yeah. And I think when you look at like the Chinese market, it's the most competitive, one of the most competitive smartphone markets.

So they have challenges there just from competition, but the reality is Huawei has the most brand recognition in China. Because it's like, it's basically like the Ford or Chevy of China. 



And yeah, I think it's really interesting to see that they know there's cloud that they're still taking advantage of.

And I think they're doing a good job of growing within the footprint that they can and, last year, there were 100Billion dollar company. There's still quite a large company and they will most likely pass 100Billion dollars this year. That's still quite sizable. And yeah, I think that when you look at what they're doing in automotive. 

The Chinese automakers are growing and I think they're a real threat to American automakers and European automakers. And Huawei is one of those companies where they do phones, they do wearables, they also do cars. So I think they have the kind of supply chain that can enable them to be competitive on a global scale.

I just think that the Huawei Mate 70 Pro looks pretty good, but I don't think you're going to see it in a lot of places. They're still operating with inferior chips. I think in general they will be competitive, but they will never really get to the point where they used to be before it's before all of this. 

Yeah, all the entity, listing right has prevented them from getting access to the top, latest and greatest silicon right from the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek and others. And there have been rumors. About, they're taking their high Silicon business unit, which is not a fabricator, but just a designer and trying to, to fab it out.

But that's a huge lift, man. That's like billions of dollars, and not only billions of dollars in capex,  but The knowledge to do that and access to machinery from the likes of what's the company that has a huge presence in Austin? There's lamb and then there's I'm forgetting the name of the company, but just getting access to the actual machinery to fab, is going to be difficult for them as well.

But I was 

going to add 1 more thing. I saw this news piece. Earlier this week China is using  Huawei's older codes in its submarine data transmissions.  

What the hell? 

I saw one of my friends is a ROV guy for he's literally one of the world leading guys on ROVs. And he posted about the polar codes from Huawei.

And I'm like, dude, this was like in 5g. It never really got implemented anywhere, but This was a Huawei technology. And it was really interesting to see that Huawei technology is now in Chinese submarines. 

That's crazy. Applied Materials was the company that I was going to. Oh, 

yeah. Applied 

Materials.

Yeah, they're big in the Valley too. They're big everywhere, but yeah, they've got a big presence just right outside of Austin. Hey, my friend it was another great podcast as we enter the long Labor Day weekend. 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 5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Will is at Welltel Tech and Amit on Shell SOG. We hope you have a great weekend. Please tune in again next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.