Welcome to episode 211 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 subtle analyst Anshul Sagh.
Let's get started with the podcast.
And my first topic this week is to talk about the mobile network operator
response to the Southern California wildfires.
This is tragic.
There are estimates that the damage could go well over 120 billion.
I have family, I have friends that live in Southern California.
I'm sure you do as well.
You're in, you're in San Diego, Anshul, right?
Yeah.
It's just super tragic what's going on in LA, but what we're going to talk
about are what the MNOs are doing to address issues.
So let's start with Verizon.
They're waiving domestic call text data usage from January 9th to the 18th,
which happens to be my birthday.
For customers that are in LA, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego,
your hometown, in Ventura, Calanies.
They're also deploying a ton of assets, over 550 mobile assets,
300 satellite-based assets as well.
They're offering residents free charging and Wi-Fi Verizon stores.
And they've also donated to the American Red Cross.
Not to be undone, AT&T obviously they operate FirstNet.
They are also waiving similar charges for customers through February 15th.
Also providing Wi-Fi and charging stations throughout LA and Pasadena.
They're also deploying generators to support power to AT&T cell sites.
AT&T has donated over a hundred thousand dollars to the Red Cross as well.
They're also making contributions to the LA Fire Department Foundation,
the California Community Foundation, and as I mentioned, the Red Cross.
And then T-Mobile, they're doing the same, providing unlimited
talk, text, and data to prepaid and precipitate customers, deploying
SAT-COLTS, SAT-CALS, very small aperture terminals.
And they've also engaged the Starlink service as well.
And I know that's something that you probably want to talk about.
Yeah.
I was going to say there's actually, it's like a twofold thing.
One, they were supposed to have started their beta.
I actually got an email, or text message from T-Mobile right as far as
they're starting that, that they, the beta is coming soon and blah, blah, blah.
And then they lit it up in Southern California.
I haven't had a chance to use it, nor if I needed to, but it
seems like that's now lit up.
And as a result of that, I think Starlink is also engaging with services and support.
I saw this on Twitter yesterday, they drove out a bunch of cyber
trucks equipped with Starlink on them.
Interesting.
They're using them as wifi hotspots for people who need connectivity.
The big three carriers are doing a lot, but also SpaceX as the tier one supplier,
or what tier one P is also offering some assistance to people in the affected areas.
And yeah, as when fires happen, they generally burn down a lot of infrastructure
and it will probably take a very long time to get the stuff back up and running.
Yeah, it will.
And it just, unfortunately, it just seems like it's disaster after disaster.
Last year was the hurricane recovery efforts and now it's the wildfire recovery efforts.
And again, just our thoughts and prayers go out to all those that are affected.
And we, we encourage our viewers and listeners who aren't affected by all of this.
Go ahead.
These, these carrier websites, because they're providing more information
almost on a daily basis.
Let's shift to your first topic.
You had the joy of spending a week in Las Vegas and CES and you want to cover some
highlights.
Yeah.
So I spent pretty much all of last week at CES and a lot of it was very PC centric.
Um, so we got some updates on their newest processors from AMD, Intel, Qualcomm,
and video.
What was interesting was started the kicked off the week.
And most of what they were talking about was very much graphics related.
So they announced the graphics cards.
They also talked about robotics and physical AI.
There wasn't much talk about 5g or connectivity.
However, there was a very common thread throughout the week that AI is likely to
be one, a driver of 5g, but also to drive 5g adoption because so many of these new
devices that are going to be AI capable will ultimately need an internet connection
to run AI, even if it's locally, because these models can only be so big to run
locally and then you'll eventually get a model too big for the local device.
You have to go to the cloud.
Hybrid AI is going to be a big driver, I believe, of 5g in the future.
And that 5g will enable a lot of interesting unique AI capabilities that
either exists on device or in the cloud and being able to transfer between the two
seamlessly will be really important.
And you'll need a low latency high network connection for that.
And I just think that when you look at what's going on with the AI realm today,
we're just seeing that there's more opportunity for 5g and AI together,
like with AI and XR.
That's for another topic, but AI is working as an accelerant, but also
the way to accelerate.
And it's just really important to understand that AI is going to be
a big part of the 5g network.
It's just really interesting because I think we can really conceptualize
what's going on in the 5g space where we're talking about AI constantly
running the network, but also like needing AI is going to be a big factor,
I think, this year.
I agree.
Just for our viewers and listeners, you mentioned the term hybrid AI.
And so that's the whole idea of running large language models and the
rise of AI as well as doing local or edge communications or with smaller
language models and rise of the AI PC, which is an area that you've covered
very exhaustively via Forbes and more insights and strategy that I believe
is going to factor heavily in the future.
And to your point, we've been talking about 5g for five, six years now.
We're on episode 211 after all.
And the improvements that 5g delivers from a throughput and a latency
perspective and device support perspective over LTE is pretty phenomenal.
For those of us that were waiting for the killer app, you and I have talked
about fixed wireless access as emerging as that killer 5g use case.
This whole-
Mindset AI.
Yeah.
It might be hybrid AI, right?
Yep.
Absolutely.
Hey, let's go to my second topic.
And this is news that broke last week.
So AT&T announced something that they're calling Guarantee and it aims to
elevate the subscriber experience.
And when I was pre-briefed on this and then I had an opportunity to speak
with Jen Robertsome that runs MassMarkets.
That's a huge part of AT&T's business.
That's the consumer wireline and mobility part of AT&T over 90 billion in revenue.
We, she and I talked about this a little bit more.
I will be publishing a Forbes article with my interview with Jen.
And go into a little more detail, but the way to think about this is it's almost
like a service level agreement for consumers and small businesses.
They're doing a couple of things with this.
Number one, they're basically putting their money where their mouth is.
And if you experience, I believe it's a fiber outage for 20 or more minutes.
Or a mobility outage for 60 or more minutes and it has to meet some criteria.
A subscriber receives a credit in form of a credit to their bill.
And also to elevate the call center experience, the company is guaranteeing
that when you call a call center, if you have an issue that within five minutes,
the phone will be picked up or you have the option to schedule a return call
at your choosing.
And then there's also a guarantee around if that issue cannot be resolved,
you know, through a call center professional, there's some guarantees with
respect to how quickly they dispatch a field service technician the following day.
And so this is the first of its kind.
There are no other activity providers, whether it's fiber or mobility that are
providing guarantees.
And I think it's something that the competition is going to pay close attention to.
And we may see companies like T-Mobile, Verizon, and others stepping up and doing
the same.
So I don't know if you caught the news, I know you're busy at CES, but what do
you think about all this?
I did catch the news.
And the reason why is because I'm an AT&T fiber customer.
There you go.
I did see the guarantee part.
I did see that outage credit component of it.
I did not know about the customer service component, which I really
interesting as well as the service guarantee.
So I do think that's really interesting.
It feels very pro consumer, to be honest with you.
Sure.
So I have a hard time seeing anything being bad about this.
I think this might be a way for AT&T to try and get back some customers they might
have lost in the past by creating these kinds of service level agreements.
Cause that's all I see these.
These are like consumer SLAs.
And I think that this is a good thing because I think it will drive other
carriers to do the same thing.
I think this will help them gain customers and retain customers.
I think it'll help with churn.
I think it'll help with net ads.
I don't see this being bad.
I will say for AT&T fiber, that stuff's been rock solid for me for years.
So for them, it's a rock solid product.
They don't really have to do much there.
They might have some more work on their other products, but I also think it's
exciting because for some customers are offering that like 5G cellular
backend backup in addition to fiber.
We've talked about that previous episodes, but I just think that I think that's a
good way for them to enable guaranteed service when there's like a little blip.
Gives them that ability to offer five nines reliability.
And yeah, I just think it's great.
I hope consumers become aware of it.
I hope they market it because it's a differentiator and I feel, you know,
carriers have not been great at customer service in the past.
And once we've reached a certain point of customer service, I felt like everybody
was like, yeah, this is low enough.
So I think it's good to raise that bar a little bit and improve the user
experience at no added costs.
No added cost.
And speaking with Jen Robertson, she views this as an opportunity to not only
minimize churn, but actually to your point, I think you made this point.
It's not only retention, but it's also potential, a customer ad engine as well.
And hey, there are carriers that give away free Netflix.
And koozies and that sort of thing.
I'm being tongue in cheek about T-Mobile, but this is, this is demonstrable value.
And from my perspective, to your point, it's been like the best effort.
And we've all gotten used to like drop calls, right.
And buffering when we're streaming something and we're on our cellular
plans and that sort of thing.
So for me, this really indicates that AT&T is very confident about the
infrastructure it's built, not only from a wire line, but a mobility perspective.
And obviously fiber feeds mobility for backhaul.
And this is the putting their money where their mouth is.
Now some subscribers may try to take advantage of this.
There's always those individuals not trying to take advantage of the situation.
But, but there are some guardrails that are sensitive around it.
So I think it's great.
I think it's a model for other carriers to follow and it'll be interesting to
see how it all comes together.
And he is promoting the heck out of it.
So unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately I'm waiting for a Super Bowl ad.
Yeah.
I, so I saw several ads while I was watching my Longhorn struggle
against the Buckeyes, unfortunately.
And Tim Tebow is in one of the ads where he throws a set of keys to the
valet and it hits a one or something.
And so they're doing some fun stuff with guarantee here, but, um, again, I
think it's very valuable and I wouldn't be surprised if some of AT&T's
competitors still shoot.
But with that, let's move to your second topic.
You want to talk about T-Mobile and an acquisition that they made.
And this is all focused on pumping up its ad business.
Yes.
I will be honest with you.
I do not know how to pronounce this company's name.
I think it's Vistar or Vistar.
Vistar.
But basically T-Mobile acquired them for $600 million.
Wow.
They are-
That's a lot of money, man.
Yeah.
600 million.
Vistar Media is a leading provider of technology solutions for
digital out of home advertisements.
So basically it's digital ads everywhere that's not in front of your TV.
And basically this is going to bolster what T-Mobile is already
doing in its ad business.
They're doing a lot of data collection and advertising to their customers,
but stuff like T-Mobile Tuesdays.
Um, and I think this is just a way for them to increase their ad
business, grow their overall ad business, and find ways to generate more revenue
outside of just regular subscribers.
It's a constantly growing business.
We see companies like Amazon and Apple growing their advertising
businesses as well, even though-
PayPal.
PayPal is, is, is focused on the same as well.
Yeah.
Especially with their acquisition of Honey, which is a different hole to go
down, a rabbit hole to go down with the recent stuff, but it's a whole different
hole to go down with the recent stuff, but generally they seem this is a way to
personalize and create more relevant ads for their customers and for companies to
reach their customers because they are now a gigantic carrier.
I think this is a good addition for them.
And I think they will be able to generate a pretty good
revenue and profit off this.
Hey, you look at companies like Facebook that generate billions upon billions
of dollars in ad revenue.
There's something too at Google as well.
Those two would not survive without ads.
No, that's what floats the boat for those two for sure.
Yeah.
Hey, let's go to my third and final topic.
And this is something that broke a little over a week ago.
It may have been a little bit longer.
It may have been just right before or right after the holidays, but Legato
networks and AST Space Mobile are teaming up and I wasn't familiar with Legato
networks, but apparently they have a lot of low band spectrum and they filed for
bankruptcy.
I'm not sure if that's chapter seven or chapter 11, if it's a reorganization or
if it's a liquidity, but what they've agreed to do is to give AST Space Mobile
usage rights and some of its L-band spectrum.
And it's up to 40 megahertz.
And this is interesting.
Legato says Legato will continue operating throughout its restructuring.
So in this chapter, I think that's chapter seven, if I'm not mistaken, they
continue to try to provide mobile satellite service to its existing customers.
But this is interesting because it begs the question, does this provide AST
Space Mobile what it needs from a spectrum perspective, you know, construct
and sell service, you know, viable.
I think there was an AT&T spokesman or spokesperson that stated like, additional
spectrum is always a good thing.
There's no intention for AST to not continue to work with AT&T.
I actually reached out to AST Space Mobile because as our loop figures and listeners
know, I spent time with the company in Midland and I'm still trying to arrange
a meeting with executives there and publish my thoughts.
So I don't have a lot to share there, but this is an interesting development
opportunity for AST Space Mobile.
What do you think, my friend?
I think it's weird.
Yeah, it's interesting.
The reason why it's weird is because almost the day before this deal was
struck, Legato Chapter 11 again.
Today?
I hadn't to catch that.
Not today, like a week ago.
Okay.
So when they announced this partnership with AST Space Mobile, they also went
out for bankruptcy Chapter 11 for a second time.
Okay.
So they like happened in concert and I believe it's because partially
Legato is also suing the US government for using their spectrum.
I've read about that.
It's the DID, right?
Yeah.
So I think what they're doing is they're striking this deal with Space Mobile
because AST Space Mobile can actually use the spectrum and they can get paid
for the use of the spectrum.
And that's why I think this deal went through what it did.
And yeah, they apparently have something to the tune of $8.6 billion in debt.
And this would reduce it down to 1.2 billion.
So there's a lot going on.
I feel like this is a, could be a problematic thing for AST Space
Mobile to engage in just because of the legal legalities around the spectrum
and what's going on with the lawsuit.
But I know about Legato.
I didn't realize they'd already gone on Chapter 11 for the second time.
I saw it.
January 5th and I was like, wait, that's literally like around the time when this
announcement happened with AST Space Mobile.
So it sounds messy, but ultimately I think AST Space Mobile needs as much
spectrum as they can get their hands on.
And I think this is just one of those things where the spectrum has already
been vetted for satellite communications of 45 megahertz is nothing too ball cap.
So I think it'll be good for them, but hopefully they are aware of what
they're getting themselves into.
Yeah.
It'll be interesting to see.
Yeah, but you're right.
The timing was very unusual for sure.
Especially it's not very often that companies file for Chapter 11 within
two years of each other.
And then announce a deal towards a tail end in a second.
So yeah, that's this might even go to court.
Yeah, it'll be interesting.
Hey, let's go to your final topic.
And we've talked about Ericsson and their design on network programmability
and APIs and we've talked about the joint venture, but I think that's
the joint venture, but sounds like there's a name to this and there's a new leader.
Yes.
So interestingly enough, I ran into Sean Kinney at CES during the Qualcomm
cocktail hour, which actually turned out to be quite the shitty cocktail hour
because somebody released a bunch of sewage at the end of the party somewhere
nearby and we all had to run out because it smelled so badly.
So literally and figuratively, it was a shitty cocktail part.
Yeah.
But Sean Kinney is always fun to talk to you.
So he...
Yeah.
So before that ended, we started talking about this joint venture and 5G
APIs with Leonard Lee as well.
Okay.
And it didn't have a name at that time yet.
It does now.
And the company is called Aduna.
A-D-U-N-A.
And the new CEO is a telecom exec with 30 years, his name is Anthony Bartolo.
Do you know him?
Cause it looks like he came from Avaya and a bunch of other companies.
He was also at Tata.
So this guy has lots of experience in network business.
And basically this is going to be the company that helps to hopefully simplify
the 5G API space and create like a unified business across all carriers.
So one company, let's say NFL can come to this Aduna company and work with them
on a 5G API to use all the 5G networks in the US simultaneously for some kind of
application.
So hopefully this will help organize things.
He will assume responsibility of the CEO of Aduna starting January 20th.
So this hasn't even actually technically begun yet, but the 5G
APIs will be based on the Kamara API.
So there's definitely some industry standardization here.
There's a good 10 global carriers that are part of this venture.
So they probably represent at least half of the world's cellular users based on
what I know, if you exclude China, just because they make up like half the world's
cellular users, but even with China, I think you're pretty close to half of the
world's cellular users.
This is interesting.
So the Vonage team isn't going to drive the bus on this.
That makes sense because it's a joint venture.
They're bringing lots of operators together.
I've written about this on numerous occasions.
In fact, if our viewers and listeners are interested, I posted an analyst
insight or a research note, I forget which it was, to the more insights and
strategy website, where I talk about network programmability.
And I talk about both Ericsson and Nokia and how both companies are driving it.
Like you said, Kamara, that's open source, GSMA has done a lot of good work with
Open Gateway to really set the table, to really slow the doors off of us.
And it's been, I think it's been, it's been a hesitant thing for a lot of MNOs,
but finally with standardization, we're starting to see some momentum and some
coalescing coming around, a set of standards here to really get driving.
And so the opportunities is huge, especially for developers to really
innovate on top of the 5G tech stack.
It takes full advantage of 5G because that really hasn't happened from my perspective.
So I think it's an interesting name, Aduna, that it probably comes from something,
probably some agent Sanskrit for that.
But I think this is good for the industry.
And I think, and I did, and I do have a misresearch, I do point to 2025, this
June year where I think we're really going to see a lot of momentum behind network APIs.
So good stuff, my friend.
This was our first live podcast.
I was a little nervous dusting off the cobwebs after the holidays.
I hope you had a great holiday.
You went straight to CES and I'm on the road next week.
So with that said, why don't you take us home?
Absolutely.
We hope our bureaus 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 Zilver for Media.
Will is at Will Town Tech and I'm at Anshul Sag.
We hope you have a great week and please tune in next week and don't forget
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