A warm welcome to our viewers and listeners for tuning into another more insights and strategy standalone version of the G2 on 5g.

Where we take a break from hot takes on 5G news and we invite industry leaders to the discussion. And today, I'm super excited to be speaking with Chris Sambar. He's the President of Networks for AT& T and Abel Avillian, he's the AST Space Mobile Chief Executive. Gentlemen, how's it going? 

Hey, how are you?

Doing 

well? Yeah, it's good to talk, Chris. It's good to talk, Abel.  And boy, I tell you what, the launch on the 12th, both of y'all were up pretty early in the morning, right? Unfortunately, I had a business trip in London and I couldn't be there at Cape Canaveral. I was so jealous. But Chris, I heard you were pretty awestruck with all of that.

What were your impressions?  

Sorry we missed you, Will. I was absolutely awestruck. I, as I told Abel, I, this is the first time I had the opportunity to see a rocket launch like this. And, as a kid growing up in the generation of the space shuttles and never getting to see one of them launch other than on TV, it was really cool.

And probably, the technology part of it and the launch was great. But what I'll tell you was, it was awesome.  Even better was the enthusiasm of the AST investor base that was there. Yeah. Hundreds, I think maybe over a thousand people about, I don't know if you know the count, but oh my gosh, they're so excited about the technology and what Abell and team are doing.

It was great. Just great to see them. 

I've gotten to know them, Chris, on my social media channels, especially on Twitter. They've done some memes, it's it it's funny. So I've I'm famous now, I guess I've had two memes produced there, but  Abel, this is an incredibly important milestone for the company.

You've been the first out there.  testing. You've been testing for quite some time, and and now you've got five bluebirds in orbit. And so from your perspective, what should we expect from a coverage standpoint? Because you and I have spoken quite a bit. I know this is just the first of a number of series of launches, but There's been a lot of hype here.

What should we expect from this first launch?  

Yeah. No, thank you, Will. So listen, as this is the culmination of years of work and we partners like AT& T and in particular for United States with AT& T. And what we will get out of these satellites is we will have nationwide coverage.

But not all the time. So this we will be able to have, we will have enough capacity And in all footprint with this five satellite to cover 5,600 low band sales in the in, in the premium, a 50 megahertz band. But obviously will not be all the time. So it will be in, in intermittent connectivity.

But what that will allow us to do is to set up the infrastructure connecting to the core network. And basically we have already planning distributing thousands of initial test users around the country  to then move into Into the full service, which it will be similar to what we will get out of these 5 satellites, but then all the time.

So what we will be able when the satellites are visible to the user, they will get a similar experience that they will get when we have more satellites, but for a. For a few, for a limited amount of time and for that, we, we're working on 70 more satellites that we're building as we speak.

We have, we are preparing to launch more and we need around 45 satellites to, to have full continuous service in the U. S. 

And I think that's impressive when you think about your, one of your competitors,  That's going to take, five or 10 times the number of satellites to accomplish what you're going to accomplish.

And, in, in Midland, you and I spent some time and you showed me how like these arrays fold up and how compact they were. And I was super impressed to see the five bluebirds. On a truck headed to Cape Canaveral that they could all fit on one track.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the design element that's gone into the Bluebird?  

Yeah. When I first met with Chris and Christine, one of the things that, that we, we always talk about, this has to be completely compatible with the phone that exists today. And it has to be broadband.

And And you need to think about that five, six years ago, where this was a complete dream. And and where people don't even knew if even basic SOS or text was possible. But we set the power bar very high. We just want, we wanted to make sure that this is a true complement to the, to our partners infrastructure.

AT& T at that time provided us the spectrum that that we needed to set up the system and tested and. Integrated to their core. Yeah. And so what we're expecting is a system that allows broadband connectivity. Of course that depends on the amount of spectrum that is allocated to this to, to each of the sales that that we have.

But that's, that is what we expecting. So that's the reason why you saw a large satellite? Yeah, and that's, we need few of them. That's another big difference. This is a true broadband completely agnostic to the phone and to the e also. That the phone is at so from 2G to 5G and in the future, when 6G come available, we will be transparent to that, uh, and for that, we build a very large satellite.

I always tend to remind people, each of these satellites is the largest structure ever put into LEO. So we have six now. Each one of them have had a record of, on size, and the only thing bigger than us is the ISS.  Collectively, we're actually bigger than the ISS. But and that's the principal part of our invention, how to do broadband.

Yeah.  Directly to anybody's cell phone,  using large satellites. That's why we have so many patents and patent pending claims. And we have done this. Together with the leadership of partners like AT& T, in this case, Chris and Chris team to to make it happen. But we designed from the very beginning how this needed to be together with the with our network partners.

You bet. And everything is bigger in Texas, right? And I think  living in Medellin Bay. Hey, Chris, you recently were appointed to AST, Space Mobiles, Board of Directors, and AT& T has made a significant financial investment in the company as well. So what should AT& T customers expect from the partnership?

If you go back you don't have to go back that far, five, six years ago, that there was a significant competitive Advantage on the part of wireless carriers, just based on the part the square miles of the geography of the United States, he covered, and there was a race going on to really cover the people and some of the connectors in between the cities and towns, the roads that connect the cities and towns, for example, and  If you fast forward to today, at least AT& T and almost their Verizon we're pretty well covered with the population.

We've covered a lot of those connectors,  but we're at the point in our network builds where to put cell sites. And continue to put them in really  rural and desolate areas in many cases where there aren't any people, these are just roads connecting two towns or we're up in the mountains or on a valleys or there's cows in a pasture.

It doesn't make economic sense to put cell sites out there. And that's where we are as an industry today. And so it rather than put cell sites out there that are challenging because there's an ongoing cost of maintaining those cell sites. so much. This opportunity with AST to provide, as Abel said, this isn't basic texting service or basic texting with a little bit of voice.

This is true broadband service to cover the entire US, all of those places that are not economical for us to continue to put cell sites out.  By basically putting the cell sites up in space, which is what we're doing, but it's so much more elegant and dynamic because these are in low earth orbit. They're massive satellites.

They have a phenomenal technology in them. So we're really excited about it. That's why we put our shoulder into it with the large investment that we made. I'm honored to be on the board. So thank you again, Abel for that and be part of this, the exciting solution that we're building. So I think our AT& T customer base, And I hear from them, relatively frequently about how excited they are about the solution that's coming. 

Yeah, and I continue, Chris, to be impressed with what you and the team are doing. To really over invest in rural, especially with your fiber assets and that sort of thing. And fiber is so mission critical to support backhaul for 5G mobile services. And, and I know about you and I have talked on numerous occasions, and you're very passionate about the digital divide, but I've also been really impressed.

I, I've been to visit you a couple of times and I've seen your clean room. I see what you're doing from a manufacturing process perspective, vertical integration. I have spoken about how you had some challenges with consistency and, the things that you needed to put these satellites together, but you're also bringing high tech manufacturing jobs to West Texas that has traditionally been Very energy and oil field related.

In fact, my daughter works for Alliburton. That's what brought me out initially to see you about. But can you speak further on some of these points? And in particular, I think the job creation opportunity that A. S. T. Mobile is supporting in West Texas is just amazing.  

Yeah, no, listen, we are very proud American company.

And it's an amazing, it's amazing what we can do in this country. And and you said it, we like big in Texas and that's and that's one of the reasons why we selected to be there. Believe it or not, we were, we had access to big buildings, to bigger space per meeting was very fast. 

And and as a result of that, we, we have to inform a lot of people that were knowledgeable in machinery, mechanics, tooling that came from oil and gas, and now they're working in space. They're super happy. They're working on a clean environment. They're working on high tech.

And this is a great great evolution of what people can do in these regions. And so that's but listen, we have  the  In order to solve this problem, we needed to invest in so many aspects of space technology. We have what we believe is the most advanced or one of the most advanced chipsets in order to provide broadband.

So we have one on ASICs.  We literally start with with aluminum and composite to build the satellites out of that. We are very close to 95 percent vertically integrated. So we really start with raw components and build very sophisticated and large satellites and that's all done in America.

And I believe the partnering with AT& T, Verizon and others, but with AT& T leadership to help us to put together this together, I think we will be able to do something that, that will be first. In the developed world that is, is basically to assure everybody have 5G access regardless of where they live and work  and while we're creating a lot of employment.

, we're also at the same time are creating a knowledge base of how to master space-based connectivity in a way that nobody else had done it before. Yeah,  

and you spoke, I think just you touched on your patent portfolio. You're an inventor as well. You have several patents that have been issued and lots are pending.

And, I don't think patent counting is necessarily a sign of innovation, but certainly. You've got a pretty formidable portfolio and what you're doing is, from my perspective, licensable  and it's differentiated. And even I love when you and I last spoke in Midland and you talked about how you figured out, you basically sent a phone into space right during the test phase.

And I found that, that was pretty amazing, but. To move to Chris, I think you follow me on social media, and I certainly Chris follow you as well in Forbes is a platform that I use. And, I've been publishing some updates here and I made an early call.

I spent some time with Starlink and I spent some time with Bell and his team.  And I guess I'll take my victory lap now,  because I pointed to, AST space mobile potentially, really being out in front. Not only based on its, highly patented architecture, but the fact that it's a very non competitive business model, right?

So the company is not marketing like a satellite fixed wireless access service, like one of their competitors is. But I know, Chris, you and I spoke, this was probably last year. This was a pretty closely guarded secret, right? When you started working with them, I think. At one point even Mr.

Stanky wasn't aware of what was going on. So I'm not revealing too much there but I'm curious. What was it about a bell on the team that really, demonstrated the potential to be where the two companies are today.  

Yeah, I don't mind telling the story because it because looking back, it's pretty funny.

So it was about six years ago, give or take. And a bell came and he'll, he says he 18th, he was the first company he came to, and I was the first executive he came to, I was responsible for the first net program at the time.  And First that was still relatively new. So we were getting a lot of, vendors coming, wanting to sell us stuff to make the first net network more attractive to first responders.

And Abel comes in and I didn't know him personally, but I had multiple people referred him and said, you got to meet with this guy,  really sure 

he knows this stuff, really 

smart guy. And by the way, today I will say, and I've said it before. I believe a bell to be one of the great inventors of our time.

And he's way too humble to. Acknowledge or admit that himself. But I think that's true. And he's just much less flashy than a lot of other adventures. But anyways,  he was referred to me. So I met with them and he, and first thing is, Hey, Chris, we've got a plan to bring connectivity to.  100 percent of the U S geography, regardless of whether you have a cell site there or not, we're going to put cell sites up in space.

He took me through it, explained it all to me. I thought, man that, I don't know. I don't know a lot about satellite technology but I know a little bit about phones and that seems really difficult to do, but  he's got good credentials, so let's do it. And important note is that he,  from the beginning, he was building a purpose built solution. 

To communicate directly with devices. This is six plus years ago. He wasn't taking as one of his competitors is doing. He wasn't taking a solution that was for a different purpose, to communicate with a panel on the ground and provide fixed broadband and then retrofitting it. With antennas and now causing problems with FCC out of band emission limits, et cetera, et cetera, that they're trying to work through.

He didn't do any of that. He and his team was maniacally focused on let's figure out how to provide true broadband service direct to a device unmodified device from any manufacturer. Yeah, that, that went on probably four and a half, four years. There was about maybe a dozen of us inside of AT& T that knew about us, me and our old CTO.

And we didn't really tell people about it because it was skunk works and let's see if this works. And I don't know, he puts a phone in space and we thought that's different. People don't usually do that. And then he launched, Blue Walker three back in September 22. And, at that time there was another announcement coming out.

And so finally I walked in sheepishly to our CEO and COO. And I said, Hey, we've had this thing going on with this guy. He's really smart. Let me tell you about it. He said, why did you tell about this? Tell us about this sooner. It's going to be great. And now, fast forward. Holy cow.

What did we accomplish? Blue Walker 3 worked spectacularly. We were getting 20 plus megabit download speeds on unmodified devices from rural, Hana in Hawaii, where there's absolutely no coverage. There's a total black hole of coverage. It's working tremendously. Now he's got five more satellites.

So  we are incredibly excited about it. And he's just, he's doing what his original vision was. And he never strayed from that. So I'm pretty excited. 

It is, and all those milestones, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G calls that the demo that you're talking about, Chris from Hawaii, that was just mind blowing for me and really demonstrates the power of what a bell and his vision is all about.

And Bill, I want to come back to that passion that you have about bridging the digital divide. And it's something that I'm very passionate about as well.  My father grew up in Brazil on the banks of the Amazon River in a Ford Motor Company town. You go back there today in the Amazonian region, and there's still a lack of connectivity, and that area hasn't progressed in decades. 

It required my father moving to the States, getting an education to be able to, to have an opportunity. And that's just not fair. I, connectivity should be a human right. I believe that's your thought as well, but what drives this passion about, that you have about bridging the digital divide? 

Yeah, no, listen, it's, it is that, it's precisely that. I do believe that everybody, regardless where they live or work, should have the same economic opportunities. And and it is simply not fair that if you live in rural America you are in a remote place. You will have less economic opportunities that you would have if you live in New York, in Los Angeles, in Miami.

So I, I believe this equalize the opportunity to be part of the economic ecosystem. I believe in democratizing the access to knowledge and information to everybody. And I do believe the right conduit for that is your cell phone. I now of course I had a lot of people that helped me and in, in what I do every day, but I just travel with my phone.

I I, it's very few things that I can just not do on my phone. And when you also, when you take into consideration the power of the cell phone, the power to basically do whatever you need to do, regardless of where you are.  It's really amazing. And then as in United States, we had access to smartphone, expensive phones they're really a sophisticated computer that you can connect to the internet or do whatever you can do at your office, you can do you're moving in your cell phone, but if you also think about of these in emerging countries where people have a disposable income that is, 1 20th or less of what our disposable income is here in the United States, where they need to have a low cost form. 

And they don't have even sophisticated or very, big electricity system to connect it. And when you are talking about a village somewhere in Africa or in South America, or even in Asia, in some places, the power that any phone, even a local phone, 20 or less phone  will bring when we can connect anybody with wherever they are.

I think that's, transformational. When I met Chris and I was, I did exit my previous business very successfully. I did what  somebody could consider, I had done everything what I wanted to do. But this time I wanted to do something that will last for generations that would have an impact in hopefully hundreds of million, probably billion peoples over time and something that,  that that really changed the world for a little bit. 

better world more, more fair world. And I think technology, this technology has that that, that feature. It is difficult. It has been a road, a long journey locally.  I have been able to partner with incredible people like Chris and others in the industry especially in the mobile  ecosystem, which they have been embracing what we're doing together.

At the end of the day, I always say this is a project that only can be done in partnership with the operators. That's they own the customers, they own the spectrum, they own the, they have been doing this for decades. For 25 years. They understand the ecosystem better than anybody else. So it's a partnership, but I think it's a partnership that really will make the difference for people's lives at this stage of the career and after being successful previously with my previous companies this is really what I wanted to do this time.

Yeah it's amazing and what you're doing scales globally. Are you up to 50 or so, I believe memos of understanding and commercial agreements with the likes of at and t, right? Yeah. And so what you're doing is scaling, and I think it's also important to note that you're working with companies like Nokia as well.

Like you, you've taken sort of their air scale platform and you've really souped it up to, to meet the needs of what you're doing there. And, Chris, I, I think as we begin to wrap the conversation. I see AT& T making an equal investment in bridging the digital divide with what you're doing with fiber. 

So last year I spent time with John on a fiber tour. We were in Indiana and in a rural area and talking about what AT& T was doing to, to almost over invest in fiber. But, and the importance of doing that and the job creation that it drives as well. What you're doing with tribal nations as well.

What you're doing with digital learning centers because it's one thing to provide connectivity to people that haven't had it, but then teaching them how to use it right so do you want to spend a little bit of time on what you're doing there with fiber and mobility and. In, in kind of digital training for AT& T support.

Sure. It's one of the core values of our company and we're, we believe that we're really well positioned as the largest fiber provider in the U. S. and we're also the fastest growing fiber provider in the U. S.,  but it's very difficult in today's economy. To get by to get ahead. Just to function in society if you don't have a solid broadband connection.

And so it's very important to us. We feel it's incumbent on us to be able to provide that connection for people. And we always say, it's a three legged stool is the way I like to characterize it. The broadband connectivity is just One leg of the stool. So you need an actual connection, then you need the applications, whatever the applications are.

If it's a student, you need the application to be able to access it. The learning material that you're trying to learn, and then you need the training and the know how to be able to use it, that's the third leg of the stool. And so we're working on not just providing the broadband connectivity, but the other two legs helping with the applications, developing the ecosystem for application developers, and then the training, as you said, with the connected learning center.

This initiative with the bell is right in our wheelhouse and that's why we're so engaged and excited about it. He told me down in Cape Canaveral, he said, Chris, you guys did a great thing with FirstNet. And we were connecting, police, fire, emergency, medical, and a lot of others.

We've created this ecosystem of really solid connectivity that goes above and beyond what they could previously get from connectivity providers. And he says, we're going to do something just like that. With AST space mobile, we're going to connect the unconnected, not just in the U S but globally.

So he's got a huge vision. He's got a proven track record. And he's like I said, one of the great inventors of our time. So we couldn't be more excited to be partnering with him on this. Yeah. 

I couldn't ask for a better way to close Chris the discussion. I think he very eloquently summed it up, but I want to thank both you and Abel again.

I always enjoy speaking with you. I learn something new every time and I hope our viewers and listeners found this episode out of this world. Sorry, guys, I had to go with that. But. I'm bummed that my colleague Anshel Sag couldn't join us. He had a prior commitment, but for anyone out there that would like to provide he and I insight on a future 5G topic for for a podcast, you can hit us up on X I'm at willtowntech and you can find Anshel at Anshel Sag, and I just want to thank everyone again for tuning in, viewing, listening, and don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to our podcast.