Welcome at episode 209 of the GTO on 5G. It's the latest insight scoop on everything 5G. We cover
six 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 Federal Analyst Anshul Sag. But before we get started,
just an apology to our listeners and our viewers. Both Anshul and I have been road warriors. I was
in Tokyo for a week. There was travel to Palo Alto Networks, Ignite before that. We had our first
farm-wide planning session on the 15th. Where have you been Anshul? I have lost track. I think I've
been in New York, Berlin, everywhere. Austin, yeah it's been a blur to be honest with you.
And I wish it were slowing down. But I would say this is the Thanksgiving lull. I'm actually
traveling to DC for Thanksgiving and then I'm not coming home. Going straight to New York for Dell.
And then I'm coming back to California, not home for something else. And then I will finally be
home sometime in mid-December. And then I've got a little bit more travel before the end of the year.
But I can't wait for it to slow down at least a little bit for the holidays. I bet. I've only got
two more trips. I'll be with AT&T on the 3rd at their Analyst Summit at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium
there. Whatever they call that. Jerry World. And then I'll have in mid-December, HP is holding an
Analyst Summit. It's a security summit. And I'll be at that and I'll be done. But I've already
been invited to an event with Cisco on January 15th. I thought in January I'd get a break.
Typically it's January and July. I have CES. Yeah. And you've got CES, right? Yep. It's going to be
a fun one. Yeah, I bet it is. Yeah. You didn't go last year, right? Because you had the little one.
Yeah. Thankfully she wasn't born during CES. She was late five days. So she was born after CES.
I don't have to feel bad about going to CES because her birthday is afterwards, thankfully.
Let's get started. I want to start with my first topic. And I want to talk about
NTT, Dockamon, SK Telecom. And there was news this week that they have successfully conducted a pre-6G
trial. And no surprise, it involves artificial intelligence. And this is something that you and
I have been watching pretty closely. We're certainly not at any sort of 3GPP standardization for 6G.
We still have a lot of legs and a lot of work to do with 5G, especially standalone deployments. But
this is interesting. And with NVIDIA, they are very focused on bringing their AI stack to the RAN
to optimize transmission and that sort of thing. So this was a very similar test. So this was an
indoor test. The spectrum was 4.8 gigahertz. And this is obviously in Japan. And what they focused
on was using AI-based baseband transmission and reception processing. And this is a technology
developed by Nokia. So Nokia is also involved in this. And the trial demonstrated up to an 18%
improvement over sort of conventional methods of baseband. So I think it's pretty exciting.
I just spent time with NTT last week, and I learned a little bit about what they're calling their 6G
harmonized intelligence. And it's funny how these Asian companies, sometimes the translation to
English is interesting. But what NTT Docomo is focusing on are five key pillars or value
propositions for 6G that involve sustainability, efficiency, customer experience, network for AI,
and connectivity everywhere. Hey, I'm not surprised to see AI being applied to the baseband, but
what do you think? What are you hearing? This is an assumption that everyone has is that
6G will involve a lot of artificial intelligence, right? I think this really lends super well
to NVIDIA. If you remember, we were on that call where they talked about 6G quite a bit,
and a lot of the development they're doing. I can't imagine that it's a coincidence that
T-Mobile is already looking and working with NVIDIA to deploy AI in the RAN. And I think that
when you look at what's happening with the network, if there is really so much AI that's going to be
necessary to drive the network, and there can be applications that need AI at the edge, it does
make sense to have a software defined, open RAN kind of situation where you get two for one, right?
Yeah. I'm actually playing with my NVIDIA ruler here that they gave me at an event,
which is like all the capacitors, and then all the chip layouts for all the different chips they
make. Yeah, I think NVIDIA is actually really well positioned for this. I was going to ask you if
NVIDIA was involved in all in this NTD DoCoMo SK Telecom thing, because it sounds like something
that'll be right up their alley. And maybe behind the scenes, but it was really the focus on the
article, and I believe it was an RCR wireless article where I caught this news, was with Nokia,
and what they're doing. But you know what? So this investigation is not unlike what we've seen in
enterprise Wi-Fi with respect to AI ops and applying AI to do more efficient things with
traffic steering and micro segmentation and that sort of thing. So it was an inevitable circumstance
that it would come to mobile networks. There is deployment within 5G to a certain extent. You and
I have talked about that. But it's been more or less around not necessarily ran tuning, but
intelligent truck rolling and that sort of thing. Again, this is not surprising. This is what
everyone is expecting from pre-GPP whenever the 6G standard discussions occur. But hell, up to
an 18% improvement. I think that's just scratching the surface. I think there can be a lot more done
to improve performance using artificial intelligence. Because you think about it, it's going to be
continuously learning and it's going to be fed continuous data, as well as data at the network
edge. And so I think it's going to be an exciting phenomenon. And it's going to do a lot of things to
improve performance and reliability and availability. And hopefully we get to a point where absent of
bad actors hacking mobile networks, which continues to occur, it's really going to improve the
overall quality of service. And one of the pillars that NTT talks about is customer experience. And
hey, anyone that tuned in to that Mike Tyson fight knows that quality of service was lacking there.
That was an entirely different issue with Netflix and their CDN network. But I think it's all
exciting stuff. But let's go to your first topic. And you were at Qualcomm's Investor Day and this
follows Snapdragon Summit. And I know you were very actively live tweeting, live accessing,
whatever we call it these days. So what did you learn? I would say that a lot of it was review.
A lot of it was stuff that they've shown it at Summit. I think what was really demonstrated
at the event and what the focus was actually IoT and PC. So on the PC side, I was a little
surprised they still aren't talking about 5G. And I think that might just be because they know that
they will be the leader in 5G if it ever happens on the PC side at least. And I think it's in their
best interest to get the market going before they start pushing something like 5G, which has cost.
But in addition to PC, they were really talking IoT quite a bit, really talking up how they're
going to change their strategy again. They've now put IoT under Nakul, who used to run and
still runs auto. So now he has both. And yeah, I think when you look at what they're doing,
IoT is a big growth opportunity for them. I think they're also realizing that their previous
strategies just didn't work. Also, the IoT market wasn't really in a great place when they tried.
It's bad timing as well. I think I'm waiting to see what our colleague Bill thinks about Bill
Curtis, about their IoT strategy, because ultimately he's the one who has the most insights.
So we'll wait for that to see what he thinks. But I would say that it also feels like they're
very much leaning on big partners to make these things happen. And one of them is actually
a company you're going to be talking about, which is around. And in general, it seems the big
takeaways outside of IoT and auto were that they plan on having their non smartphone business,
basically equaling their smartphone business by 2030, I think, with the number. In the next five
or six years, they're going to balance out their smartphone business with IoT, which includes auto
and PC. So it's basically all the stuff that isn't mobile is technically IoT, but really it's auto and
IoT and PC versus smartphone. And the truth is smartphone is still doing great for them. They've
picked a high end of the market and they're doing really well there in margins and growth is decent,
better than it was in the last few years. And they're hammering on AI super hard. And the only
thing I would say is they also teased that they've got another Snapdragon X series chip coming at
the low end. And then they also said that they're going to have a new high end chip sometime next
year using third generation Snapdragon X elite. We're already getting ready for a refresh of the
the Snapdragon X elite series. Yeah, I learned a lot about X elite at summit and it's quite impressive
what they're doing with NPA GPU, CPU, and just in such a small form factor and such a very power
efficient package as well. And I did write a Forbes article about that. So for our viewers
and listeners, if you missed that hit my social handles, you can learn a little bit more. You
mentioned AI and obviously they're fully invested in AI and they can do some pretty amazing things
within the automotive segment. But as I started looking at just the guts of elite,
it got me thinking that, hey, they're already doing really cool stuff with like edge AI within
their most recent Wi Fi seven solution announcement. And that could cascade down into a new class of
potentially edge enabled devices, right? And bringing that compute because you've already got
Snapdragon compute power like on smart cameras that's driving computer vision applications and
that sort of thing. So I think you could see a whole host of additional edge use cases that
are unlocked with this edge AI. But no, it's pretty exciting stuff. And that is actually a great
segue to my second topic, because I do want to talk about a RAM code digital. And there are rumors
that they are considering investing up to $1 billion in Mavenir. And Tarek Amen, who you and
I know very well, he's the CEO of Aramco digital, haven't really heard a lot coming out of Aramco
and with what they're planning and what Tarek is up to. Tarek has to be his thing, right?
It has to be right because Tarek's a disruptor. That's his thing. When he was at Rakuten,
they were talking about crazy things like giving away the RIC for free and to be able to hook
mobile network operator customers. So this is actually quite interesting. Mavenir continues
to not perform well. And they're at a point where they're almost completely out of gas. So
this would be a much needed infusion of cash. It's a huge amount of money. And if it happens,
Aramco would take a minority stake in Mavenir, which it's interesting. Haven't we seen this
playbook before with Tarek at Rakuten? What do you think, buddy? I think a billion dollars is a lot.
I'm not sure Mavenir is at that point. I have a feeling that a billion dollars is very close
to 50% of the company if it's not a majority share. So I think this is one of those things where
they want to have control, but they don't want to have a controlling stake. So it'll be interesting
to see what they do. They obviously need the money, but this might buy them some more time,
which I think is what they need. Yeah, they definitely did. And I've probably not been too
kind to Mavenir in the past, but I would say you're being generous. Yeah, being generous there,
but hey, they're still viable. They're still participant in a lot of deals. They're a part
of a lot of Open RAN deployments that are finally beginning to take off. So it'll be interesting.
Again, this isn't confirmed. These are rumors, but usually they're pretty well-found rumors,
especially on the Fierce Network where I caught this particular article.
Maven, let's go to your second topic. You want to talk about CV2X and its journey to becoming
a standard. Yeah, so CV2X is a technology standard that's been around for a while,
and it's mostly been centered around FIBE. And it's supposed to replace an older technology
that failed to take off in the auto sector. That was like a direct-to-vehicle, I forget,
it was like DSD or something like that. It never took off, but it was like a 4.9 gigahertz
technology. And CV2X looks to replace that in a more standards-based way. This 5.9,
that's a 4.9, I meant 5.9. That's 5.9 gigahertz. And basically, it's already part of the 3GPP
standard. The FCC is now coalescing around CV2X and making sure that it's part of the standard
for the US. And it's been in the process since before 2020. And they basically are saying that
the FCC will allocate 30 megahertz between 5.895 and 5.925 specifically for V2X. And that's
obviously going to need a 45 megahertz guard band. So that way, Wi-Fi doesn't interfere with it
outdoors. And that's part of the reason why Wi-Fi and the five-ish, six gigahertz bands has to
listen for signal. And the FCC adopting CV2X actually works in Qualcomm's favor because they
were a big driver of the technology. And it will likely be the standard that all automotive
companies use for connecting to the 5G network and being able to connect to other devices. So
the dream here with V2X is that you can have this modem or this technology in the car. It will
communicate both with infrastructure and cellular networks and user devices. So that way, it can see
things that it can't actually have line of sight to. If there's a fire truck coming down the road,
it can slow the car down before the fire truck even comes close. It can anticipate someone's
crossing the street using sensors and wireless communications. There's a lot of really cool
features that I've talked about for a long time and I've been really excited about with V2X.
But the problem is that it just hasn't come through the standards with FCC yet. And it seems like
US Department of Transportation is also on board. So this might be the turning point for V2X. And
we might actually down the road, unfortunately, when it comes to auto things take a while, but
we could see this in three to five years, if not sooner.
Yeah, I was just going to ask you. So you think it's a three to five year time horizon once?
That's generally how the automotive industry works. Three is like the new standard for fast.
Five is the old way of doing things. But it's possible that some of those chipsets,
all in cars today already support V2X, in which case it would just be a software update.
To your point, Qualcomm has a huge footprint in automotive now, right? What's their share relative
to say? I know BlackBerry has a competing sort of mission for Qualcomm.
Qualcomm's business is predominantly a split between ADAS and digital cockpit. And the ADAS
isn't as big as digital cockpit right now, but that's growing. They see ADAS as a growth
opportunity for them. And actually, their original business in auto was telemetry. They've been doing
telemetry for auto for decades. So this is just going to be an up level for them. And they'll
probably be able to bundle it with cockpit and ADAS as a complete system. And they're even talking
about how they're going to have this flexible, they're calling it flex, where you can have
multiple chips doing both ADAS and cockpit together, as opposed to having to have them separate
systems, which can save on costs for OEMs, which then probably spins into telemetry and
5G cellular. Because the reality is, a lot of these cars are going to need 5G to just keep updating
models and keeping things up to date. Yeah, good point. Again, another more upside for
Qualcomm. And we don't often state this on our podcast, but this is for entertainment purposes.
Only we don't provide investment advice on any of the companies that we cover, but Qualcomm
continues to execute and they keep raising the bar on performance as well and low power.
And to your point, they've been in this area in automotive for quite some time, so they're very
well positioned. So I don't think we're sharing anything that the average person that's knowledgeable
about Qualcomm already knows. But hey, bud, let's go to my third topic. And I want to talk about
Nokia. And they've had two recent pretty big wins that have really helped on the financial front.
It's been a tough couple of quarters for Nokia and there's no mystery that
the RAN market has cooled off quite a bit. Most mobile network operators have deployed
the RAN infrastructure. Now they're focused on core to get to standalone. But what's interesting,
and Nokia has cited that India, sales declines in India have been a big part of why their
financials have been weak. This week, they announced a multi-billion dollar deal with
RT Airtel. And this is to help that mobile network operator in India deploy 5G advanced. And so
a big win there for them. And then this week as well, they announced some support with
switches for Microsoft Azure and what they're doing with cloud data center. And so yes,
this is great. I think they're coming towards the end of the calendar year for Nokia, but
it's been a tough year for Nokia. Hey, it just demonstrates the fact that they are still very
viable. They're very viable in the data center. They're very viable in transport. And they're
certainly very viable when you look at RAN and core infrastructure. So what do you think? Did you
catch the news? I did catch the news. I do think it's good for Nokia, especially since it seems
like T-Mobile might be moving away from them. I read that one. Yeah. I think that was good news
to balance potential bad news. And yeah, I think he has a bit of a roller coaster, but
I think they also, they rely a lot on RAN and yeah, it's just been a very ebb and flow kind of
thing. Hey, we're going to end the podcast because you like to find these controversial
topics for us to discuss, but you want to talk about RFK Jr. and he's front and center with
president elect Trump and he's got some concerns about wireless technology. Yes. So back in 2020
and in 2023, he talked about how 5G was designed to harvest human data. He also said that wifi
radiation opens up your blood brain barrier. So all these toxins are in your body can now go into
your brain. That is an direct quote. And yeah, this guy really just thinks 5G has zero to do with
giving you faster downloads. It is a completely, it is a system completely geared towards harvesting
human data. I think you would be wrong to say it's 5G. Technically 4G also does that, but the truth
is he's also talked about RF emissions being a health risk. I think we need people to be more
educated on these topics. Perhaps Mr. Brendan Carr can educate him on this topic. I'm not sure
that he will, but it's going to be very interesting if he actually does add up health and human
services. Hopefully someone can talk some sense into him, but it doesn't seem like anyone's able
to. Sounds like he's been talking to Dr. Oz. Didn't I hear that Dr. Oz was a rumor for
surgeon general or something? No, he is, I think it's the Veterans Administration. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. So we don't want to get too political on this webcast, but. Sorry, Medicare and Medicaid
services. So grandpa and grandma's. At least it's not the Doge, right? The Department of Government
Efficiency. I just, I hope that we have people who are more competent running our government.
We do. And I will say one positive thing. So during Trump's first administration, at least at
the very beginning of it, he brought together a council of technology CEOs that include Michael
Dell and I think it included at the time, probably Jeff Bezos. That's the right approach to go. So
the government needs to bring private industry into these discussions, use people with knowledge
and context as consultants, as policy is established and that sort of thing. And that's whether it's a
Republican administration or a Democratic administration. You need to bring smart people
into the discussion that have the context so that they make the right decisions. But yeah,
my concern is that we don't have an FCC that causes the same thing that happened during the FAA crisis.
Yeah. Well, you and I talked a lot about that over the last couple of years.
That was from the first Trump administration. I'm hoping we don't have something like that happen again.
At least Pi is not coming back, right? Who knows? Former FCC chairman, right? Ejet Pi.
Yeah. He's busy doing private equity stuff. Interesting. Oh, before we get too much further
into the political realm, what are you doing for Thanksgiving, my friend? We are flying to DC.
Oh, you mentioned it. I'm out for Thanksgiving with family. And then yeah, I'm not coming home.
I'm flying to New York. But honestly, New York in December is gorgeous. It's probably one of the
best times to be in New York. Oh man. Listen, I'm looking forward to spending time with the HP
security team there. I'm going to go to Rockefeller's office and I'm going to go to
Rockefeller center. I probably won't go ice skating. I want to see the jewelry. Yeah. And all of that.
It's going to be great. Hey, listen, my friend, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and I hope our
viewers and listeners do as well. I'm glad we finally were able to record this podcast after
a three week hiatus. 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 the
specific 5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Will's at Wilenton
Contact and I'm at Anshul Saag. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving weekend and please
tune in next weekend. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe.