All right welcome to Episode 205 of the G2 on 5G. It's the latest Insights Scoop on everything 5G. We typically cover six topics in about 20 minutes, but as you can see, Anshel and I are traveling together. We're in the beautiful city of San Francisco. We just attended the T Mobile Capital Markets Day. That is going to be one of our topics, but we're going to have an abbreviated format this week for topics. It is also brought to you by More Insights and Strategy. Anchal, good to see you here in San Francisco, buddy. Thanks I just barely made it. Yep, you did. Let's start with our first topic. And this is big news. AST Space Mobile finally launched its first swath of commercial satellites. These are Bluebirds. We've talked about this on a number of podcasts. With SpaceX, they put five birds into orbit. What do you think about all that? I think it's a big deal. They're serving AT& T and Verizon and a bunch of other carriers. Yeah. And it proves that they are very real. And I believe that those satellites were deployed successfully. They were. It'll be really interesting to see how this plays out. And their stock has soared as a result of this. Yeah, it's up to nearly 30 bucks a share, right? And, yeah, I think they're just executing on what they promised they would do. And, they have a pretty rabid fan base. But yeah, I think it's been it's good and, Starlink needs some competition. Yeah. And, Starlink is still in the testing phase of what they're doing there. And like I always say, competition breeds innovation. So this is great. And and actually you and I have an opportunity to spend some time with AT& T and AST Space Mobile. We're still finalizing those plans, so we don't want to share any dates or times with with our viewers and listeners, but we are hoping to to have a conversation with both AT& T and AST SpaceMobile, so stay tuned for that. So let's talk about the second topic du jour this week, and there was big news around mobile network programmability, and Ericsson announced a joint venture with a lot of mobile network operators where they really want to drive. Finally, a mobile network program ability into reality. So why don't you start off with your thoughts there? Yeah, I think it was something that it seems like the industry. Actually agreed upon something that's rare in the provider space and I think it was just a realization that everybody was trying to do their own thing and it wasn't working. And I guess Ericsson approached a lot of the carriers cause that's what I heard. And Ericsson approached the carriers to make this happen. And it sounded like it actually happened pretty quickly. Maybe because I think everybody wanted to realize their, monetize their 5G networks a little faster than, they maybe had hoped. And I think that, it happened really quickly from what I've heard from a lot of carriers And it seems like just because they agreed that Ericsson seems like a happy, intermediary between all the different carriers and this way the carriers are all invested in this it's 50 50 carriers 50 50 ericsson and Yeah, I just think it's going to be a net positive for Ericsson too because, it's going to be running on their equipment. And they want that to be successful. And yeah, I just think it's really about monetization first and foremost. But also I just think that this is a net positive because if you're an application developer or like a big enterprise, you can now build to one spec and have it at global scale. Yeah, and the GSMA has done a lot here setting standards and that sort of thing. You could argue that Ericsson was a little in front of their skis with the Vonage acquisition. You and I have talked about the fact that basically Ericsson has written off all of that 6 billion acquisition. And so they really needed to chart a new course. And the telecommunications industry, like many what I call old school industries, sometimes they're resistant to change. Your point around developer speeding the developer journey, I think, is super important. What this is all about is exposing network API's to more easily leverage. The inherent, greatness of what 5G will deliver from a latency and throughput and device support standpoint. I will mention that prior to this announcement, I did publish an analyst insight on the more insights and strategy website. I remember that. Yep. So for our viewers and listeners, if you want to learn more about what I wrote, go hit our website. But I talked about Vonage and I talked about Ericsson, but I also talked about Nokia. So it's also important to mention that Nokia launched its network as code. platform about a year ago. And again, competition breeds innovation. And even though this particular announcement is very focused on Ericsson and the JV with all these mobile network operators, I do think there's a lot of value and Nokia has done a lot to move things along as well. So I, I really think my conclusion in that analyst insight was that I think finally we're at a point where network programmability from a mobile standpoint has finally found its rhythm. It'll be interesting to see how this all kind of plays out, but I think it's very positive for the industry. But let's move to our third topic. And you actually caught this one. So Verizon recently had a pretty big reduction in force, right? Yeah, it's a 5000 person layoff. Yeah, which is out of how many employees? 100, 000. Okay, so it's, it's relatively, it's not that big, but it's still 5%. It's still 5%. And they've also had some other layoffs that were like voluntary separation programs. For managerial positions. Yeah. It seems like Verizon's trying to cut costs here. They say this is gonna cost 'em $2 billion to do wow. They're probably gonna end up saving a few billion dollars after you consider the $2 billion. But the truth is this is really a. An admission of they need to improve their profitability and that their network is not generating the types of revenue and profits that I think they would have hoped. And I think it's because they just lost too many customers and I think they lost a lot of mindshare and I think they're going to struggle to recover that. But I would say that I'm actually pretty confident that Verizon's network is much better today than it was say three years ago. Sure. However. They have lost a lot of customers the sentiments no longer there and to be honest I don't think that their mid band network is anywhere near as good as T Mobile's I'm pretty happy with the ultra capacity that I have on my iPhone. Yeah it's good I'm sorry, they call it ultra wideband But their ultra wideband network is still spotty in a lot of places. And that's partially because of the, C band is just not that doesn't propagate that well. But I think with time it will be robust. But yeah, I think they're just going to have a hard time catching T Mobile and also a hard time recapturing that leadership position that they had for so long. We've talked about Verizon quite a bit and certainly when you look at, 5G from a deployment standpoint they've really been in. And, in last place there to your point, they've made up some ground. They've built out, the very expensive C band spectrum assets that that they purchased an auction. And and I think a lot of their turn has been on the consumer side. And really, it's been an opportunity for T Mobile to really capture a lot of that consumer, Subscribership given how far ahead T Mobile has been with building out, those mid band spectrum assets that they acquired through the Sprint acquisition. I do see light at the end of the tunnel. I've seen several announcements within the enterprise space where they're making some progress with private network deployments and that sort of thing. Enabling stadiums with millimeter wave connectivity, which NHL with private five G. So there's some bright spots there. Don't count them out. But it's gonna take them some time to catch up. And I think, this recent layoff, it's just, it's part of, getting re leveled. And and getting a little more nimbler as they move forward. Yeah, interesting stuff. But the whole T Mobile setup, that's a great segue to our fourth and final topic this week. You and I were here in San Francisco this morning, and we spent four hours with the T Mobile executive management team. There were 15 industry analysts, including you and I, that were invited. And how many financial analysts? Probably 50 or 100? I don't know. A lot. There were a lot. But it was great. So it's been about three years since T Mobile has conducted something like this, in 21, it was virtual because we were in the midst of the pandemic. So it's great to get together, spend some time with executives. We got to see Callie Field that leads T Mobile for business, Mishka Dagan that leads some of the business development activities, including the SASE offering. But man, there was a lot that was announced and so maybe let's start with OpenAI and Sam Altman and we got to see Sam and Seaver talk about a collaboration on. CX platform that T Mobile plans to roll out in 25. So why don't you start there? Yeah. So they're branding it intent CX, right? So the whole purpose is basically to improve the customer success, customer experience. On T Mobile. The thing is that we don't have that many details right now. But, the way I perceive it, it seems like it's going to be like a top layer on top of everything that they're already doing. And kind of help to quarterback where in the organization the customer support needs to happen and how. And identify what they say, is identify pain points effectively. And then automate remediation and fixes. It's like anticipating an issue before it happens, and then solving it, And using customer data, existing customer data to train the models, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then, it also seems there's this, it's like a platform that they've co developed with OpenAI. That's not clear, and in fact, Patrick Moorhead, our founder and chief analyst, has Was wanting you and I to get clarity on that. And we plan to we met with the AR team and we plan to get some clarity, but it does look very collaborative because if you read through the press release, there's a lot of discussion on how open AI and T Mobile are going to collaborate together as they and it sounds like, they're putting a stake in the ground and things are a little squishy right now, but that there's going to be some effort to really put some meat on the bone. It also sounds like it's been going on for a while. Yeah. And it sounds it might be the first of its kind in the industry. Yeah. Yeah. So as a result, I think it's going to be, we're going to be light on details until we actually get, real rubber hitting the road. For sure. Hey, and by the way, for our viewers and listeners Anshul and I, we were, live tweeting or livexing or whatever we call it now. So we provided a lot of insights, over the last four hours, but let's jump into the second area, which I found really interesting and it's it's a dedicated network slice for first responders. And clearly T Mobile is putting AT& T FirstNet network in its sights. And, from my perspective, you and I had the same question initially. It's okay, like, how will this compete with FirstNet? Because there's been a lot of effort, focused there. But as we heard from executives, and we heard from Callie Field in particular, On this T priority initiative, where it could be really interesting is like in rural areas where maybe first net doesn't have kind of the depth of coverage and that sort of thing. And they also announced that they're actually going to implement this within the city of New York. Now, I don't know what borough that's going to be. And I think it's the whole city. Is it the whole city? Yeah. And so basically, it's taking the public network. It's slicing it to drive deterministic support for critical communications that involve voice and video. If you think about, the cameras, the, the best cameras that, that police officers use, firefighters, the, the, these sort of first responders. It's quite interesting, right? What's your take on this? Can it be complementary to what AT& FirstNet? I think it's different. I think they're definitely going at FirstNet with this. It feels like they were talking about how they have a lot more capacity. The first net does. I think 5G standalone network. Yeah. Just the fact that it's part of their commercial network, but it's a slice and they're going to be able to guarantee lower latency. They're going to be able to guarantee much more bandwidth. So I think my end up happening is you might have, basic level communications and basic level interactions happening on first net and then in applications where you need more data. Yeah. Maybe you do use T Mobile. I think it's called T Priority. T Priority, yeah. And use T Priority if you're gonna send somebody a big file, You maybe won't be able to do that over FirstNet very quickly, but if you have T Priority for data transfer, You can just send that file real quickly. You might even be able to just stream it live. I think there are gonna be applications where T Priority might be a better application. I think they need to, Convince, police departments, fire departments, emergency response on why they're better other than just giving numbers, showing how they're better. But I think having New York city being their number one customer will help them prove that out because it's such a big city with so many problems happening in real time. And I feel like I think I even heard that FirstNet was originally proven out in New York City as well. So this might be them following FirstNet's model and also trying to improve upon it. Yeah, and it could be a layered approach. It could be, I don't want to call it a redundancy, but it could be a fallback. Because one of the things that that Callie Field spoke to was, even within a first net scenario, which is a dedicated network for first responders. If you think about a natural disaster like, hurricane in the florida keys where I have a home or Some, you know an earthquake in california, even a dedicated network can experience congestion police fire Exactly with all of these people trying to communicate on it national guard. They're all in the same band, right? Yeah you know theoretically having a network slice that would guarantee for critical communication, could be of advantage, right? So it's going to be interesting to see how this all pans out, and we will certainly monitor very closely what happens in New York, and you and I are going to have an opportunity to follow up with many of these executives that we met with today. But the final thing I want to talk about, tied to the T Mobile Capital markets today is is AI RAN. And we had another rockstar join Mike Sievert on stage Jensen Wong from NVIDIA. He's wearing the Fonzie jacket making the rounds, right? I think it was just down the street at Salesforce. Probably at the Salesforce at the Dreamforce event. But he did duck in. And this is really interesting. So it's the whole notion of using AI to optimize what you do in the radio access network and the advantages there that you can extend, improve coverage and performance. And if you think about it, you can do it on a very dynamic basis because with AI and the algorithms, you can be constantly evaluating the environment, right? And environments are going to differ whether you're in a rural setting or you're in an urban setting, right? And certainly, in a rural setting, it's going to be wide open. In an urban setting, you're going to have contention, you're going to have, line of sight issues and that sort of thing. So the whole notion is taking what NVIDIA has developed with the CUDA platform, integrating that with with a new compute piece of infrastructure, right? And then with AI to, to supercharge Loran and, and I, and this is something that NVIDIA talked about at GTC earlier this year but the details were pretty fuzzy. So this is a result of what came out of GTC and it's a, in it's interesting, T Mobile has been, very innovative, and they've been a disruptor in, in, in many aspects, and I think, T Mobile's a great partner for NVIDIA to take this to market, but what do you think about all that? The one thing I was going to ask you, and this was something I just thought of as you were talking. Yeah. Has T Mobile really embraced Open RAN at all? That's interesting because this did come up, during the sessions today, and no, they really haven't. Honestly, AT& T has been much more involved. So this is them basically saying, we're going to do Open RAN. They're going to jump into the Open RAN. Because this is like a stealth Open RAN announcement, right? Yeah, AI. Sure. The only reason why I'm saying this is because, I felt like that was that lead was dropped. Yeah, it didn't really get brought up But like you can only do this if you do open ran So I thought that was really interesting. It was no, that's a great observation. Yeah. Yeah so we could probably go on and on about about what happened today but again, it was three and a half hours of a lot of content and A great Q& A and I'm sure you and I'll be writing this up either informally in blogs or maybe we You I think we have to collab on an article. I think we have to do it as well. But I was going to say, I just want to inject a quick rapid fire three topics that I wanted to talk about. Okay, go for it. And I wish I brought a telephone book because I feel like I'm in the little kid's seat, and you're in the adult's seat. For this episode, we also want to talk about T Mobile testing emergency notifications via satellite with SpaceX. Okay. For Starlink, that's the first time they've ever done that. Let's be balanced with our treatment of AST and Starlink. Yeah. And that, that went through and, it's potentially going to actually be available not just for T Mobile, but for like, All carriers, which is going to be huge. So you can send an emergency notification to the entire country if you need to, regardless of cell coverage. And then the NCAA has approved AT& T's 5g helmet which we've talked about before for deaf football players. And I'm hoping that I'm going to, I'm talking to AT& T about maybe getting a demo of that because there was a press release. So shout out to AT& T on that. And then finally. Huawei released their new mate, XT Trifold, which is a actually a bifold. It has two hinges on it. I saw that. It's crazy. And it folds into three screens, but it's actually just one big screen, but it's three grand. It's 10 inches. It's, yes, it's three grand, but it's already sold out. It's sold out everywhere. Yeah. And it's a 10 inch screen when it's unfolded, and it's a 6.3 inch screen when it's folded up. And it's about the same thickness as a Thickish smartphone, but you really wouldn't notice. I just wanted to throw those out there because I didn't want those to die on the vine. No, sweet Yeah, you know I saw a side by side comparison. I think it was with the samsung That's 24. That's 24. Yeah. Oh, no, you're right. It was the fold. Yeah, I think it was a fault It was very close and it was very close. But yeah the price point 2800 2900. And it's 600 bucks if you break the screen But let me ask you though because like you're our device expert in the firm. I mean You How usable is that going to be for every day? I watched the videos. It looks like they're using the screen pretty well. Are there like, I have a foldable in hand. Yeah. This is the pixel nine fold. I'll be writing a review pretty soon. I could totally see myself using a better 16, nine aspect ratio or something close to it. There's a lot of bars here. So I think it could work. Huawei. Came out of nowhere with this one and people are very excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a gadget guy So maybe you can give me a review unit as well. We'll try. All right, buddy we made it fast and furious here and the city of San Francisco great podcast. 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 WillTownTech and I'm at anshelsag. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.