Welcome to episode 218 of the GTO on 5G. It's
the latest in Skype 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 fellow analyst Anshul Saag. Let's get started
with our Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2025
wrap up. And before I get started, I'm just gonna
preface to our viewers and listeners. While I
was in Barcelona towards the end of the week,
I did come down with a little something. And
so my voice quality isn't the best, but I am
on lots of medication and feeling good. And this
should be a very interesting podcast. So with
that, let me start on with my first topic. And
I want to talk about AST Space Mobile. At the
event, they announced a joint venture with Vodafone
group called Satco. And I actually had an opportunity
to meet with Abel towards the end of the week.
But at a very high level, what Satco is a joint
venture that's designed to support the highly
fragmented nature of mobile network operators
in the United States. And what I mean by that,
when you look at the US, we have three major
carriers, right? For the most part, there's a
fourth that's been trying to get in there. But
when you look at Europe, you've got three to
four MNOs per country. And even in small countries
like Latvia, you've got three as well. And so
this is an effort to more efficiently service
just the vast number of MNOs in Europe. It aims
to provide a turnkey solution supported by a
fully managed networking stack and operations
that address the need for digital sovereignty
within the European Union. um and and again i
got to spend some time with abel i am going to
be writing a forbes article that includes some
of that conversation that i can share that's
not under non -disclosure as well as some other
insights from the event. But at a very high level,
he and I talked about a number of different things.
The applicability of what they are doing support
true broadband and not just text messaging. That's
evidenced by the video call demonstrations that
you and I have talked about that have occurred
recently with Verizon and with AT &T in the U
.S. But he and I also talked about a host of
other use cases just beyond gap coverage. such
as providing better, more highly performance
service on aircraft, as well as supporting use
cases like autonomous driving and that sort of
thing, where you need decent latency profiles
and decent throughput profiles to support all
of that. So this is more than just edge network
gap coverage. AST SpaceMobile truly wants to
be a broadband solution provider. I'll also mention,
and I knew this, but As AST Space Mole launches
more of its satellites into space, the actual
physical size of them are growing as well. And
Abel showed me a picture of one of the antenna
arrays. And let's just say it's significantly
larger than what I saw when I was able to do
that tour and be the first press analyst person
allowed to tour their facility in Midland. And
so I'm hoping to get back there. We talked about
the possibility of my coming back in the April
timeframe. But again, I'll be providing deeper
insights and more details around the conversation
I had with him. But it's super exciting. And
I'll end on this note. I did mention to him what
his thoughts were about the big Super Bowl ad
that T -Mobile and Starlink did. The price tag
on that was $8 million, quite significant. And
honestly, his response was he was happy. It's
free advertising. It's good for the industry.
And it really demonstrates the power of low Earth
orbit satellite and how it can augment terrestrial
networks. With all that said, what are your thoughts,
my friend? I think that in general, the partnership
with Vodafone is a big one, especially for the
European market. I also think that there's more
opportunities for competition with AST and SpaceX,
Global Star, and many others. And I just think
that we're going to continue to see this grow.
I do think we're still in an early phase of this
market in terms of... Its capabilities still
can be very message based, especially until bandwidth
and the actual spectrum available increases because
these are pretty small slots of spectrum. So
I think it'll be interesting to see how this
progresses, especially with smartphones and devices
adding capabilities for faster, more capable
versions of satellite communications. So I think
we're at the infancy of this technology, and
I think there's an opportunity for it to. uh
move into the mainstream in a few years especially
with the right place pieces in place but yeah
i know this was a big one and i think you've
mentioned that this made the stock pop quite
a bit stocks are also quite down today but that's
a different discussion and yeah i just think
satellite is going to be i'm going to continue
to toot the horn that i think satellite will
become a mandatory safety feature in all smartphones
in the next five to ten years Yeah, I agree.
No, it's super exciting. I agree with you. Innovation
is usually driven by competition. That's one
of my famous catchphrases. And yeah, so for our
viewers and listeners, stay tuned. I'll be sharing
more insights in that Forbes wrap up, probably
coming towards the latter part of this week,
if not early next week. But with that, let's
move to your first topic. And I caught some of
this news as well. Qualcomm and MediaTek both
announced new 5G modems at MWC. You want to talk
a little bit more about that? Yes. So Qualcomm
introduced their new X85 modem and MediaTek introduced
their new M90. And basically when Qualcomm is
called the X85, it's no longer called the Snapdragon
X85 because they've... introduced a new product
called dragon wing which we talked about last
week and that's like a branding for a lot of
their infrastructure stuff but moving forward
modems gpus and other cross business unit technologies
will drop snapdragon and not have dragon wing
either and instead have the qualcomm branding
on them so this is a qualcomm x85 modem what's
cool is that this ups the ante again it is now
a 12 gig modem so it's capable of up to 12 gigabits
per second of throughput actually they say 12
.5 specifically mediatek also ups the ante to
12 so both were 10 gig modems in previous generation
now they're 12 gig modems and the x85 also adds
the ability for 400 megahertz of bandwidth which
is a lot in the sub six. And then it also allows
for 3 .7 gigabits per second with four carrier
aggregation in the uplink. So that's a lot of
uplink. And that's going to be really good for
broadcast applications. They also added support
for FRMCS, which is a European railway standard
for 5G to ensure better 5G connectivity on a
moving railway. And then they added more capabilities
in the X85 for... 5G TSN, which is time sensitive
networking and 5G ethernet. So both industrial
applications for X85. They're also introducing
the first DA, which is dual SIM, dual active
with three carrier plus one carrier. So they're
able to aggregate those. And then they also talk
more about their AI powered data traffic engine,
which. to me looks very similar to what they're
doing on the wifi side with AI kind of using
AI to control and improve the quality of the
service, which inherently results in better performance
and battery life. And then MediaTek also with
their M90, they focus very much on power. And
they said that they were able to actually don't
see in the release, but I went through the materials
pretty deeply, but they're able to. boost uplink
performance by up to 20%. They're also able to
improve power and they also boost data throughput
with 24 % with their AI enhanced accelerator.
I think this is also their second generation
of their modem accelerated AI or AI accelerated
modem. And then they also said that their new
UltraSafe 4 .0 reduces average power consumption
by 18%. compared to the last generation. So lots
of power savings, lots of performance. They also
made a quick series of achievements where they
said that they were able to do five GNR, FR1
plus FR2 connectivity at 11 .6 gigabit per second
with Keysight. And they showed six carrier with
getting 5 .5 gigabits per second with just, I
think it was just sub six. And then they were
also able to show 10 gigabits per second on a
live network with Telstra and Ericsson. So M90
is really powerful. It is also a millimeter wave.
Right now, Qualcomm and MediaTek are the only
ones in town with millimeter wave support on
their modems. As we know, the Apple C1 does not
support millimeter wave. And it's quite clear
that MediaTek and Qualcomm are way far ahead
of where Apple is. And it will be interesting
to see how Apple follows Qualcomm and MediaTek
in the modem business. I would expect that the
majority of these modems will be paired with
the company's SoCs on mobile. But it will be
interesting to see where these modems end up
outside of smartphones. And yeah, both these
modems have NTN, satellite connectivity capabilities,
both for IoT and NR. so it'll be really interesting
to see how devices will come out with this probably
late this year that's in the phases like november
december is when we'll see modem these modems
and devices um and that means is mostly going
to be a 26 story that means in 2026 most flagship
phones will have full ntn capability Yeah. It's
impressive how Qualcomm continues to drive improved
performance in lower power. And to your point,
Apple is just getting started. It's taken them
five plus years to get where they're at today,
testing the waters. We talked about that. It's
interesting also to see Qualcomm really branding
as well. I guess you're getting a delivery. Morty's
excited. But no, it's all good stuff, my friend.
I tell you what, we're just having a heck of
a time this week with the podcast, but it's all
good. But with that, I'm going to go to my second
topic as Anshul answers the door. And I want
to talk about AMD, Cisco, Nokia, and Reliance.
Jaya launching the Open Telecom AI platform at
Mobile World Congress 2025. So I had an opportunity
actually to attend this briefing. It was... It
was a very closed door affair. There were only
a few analysts that were invited. I was lucky
enough to be included. And what I learned was
that Matthew Uman, who's the CEO of Reliance
Jio, was really the person that drove this and
brought AMD together, brought Cisco together
and Nokia together to do this. The desire on
Reliance's part is to democratize the access
to modern AI and do that through its effective,
highly disaggregated networking infrastructure.
And Anshul, you and I have talked about Reliance
in the past. They are an innovator. They were
able to build their 5G network from the ground
up, Greenfield, within 11 months. And from my
perspective, I have little doubt that Reliance
can be a catalyst to make this initiative successful,
just given their modern approach to network deployment.
And an amazing stat is that Reliance has nearly
500 million subscribers. And so the opportunity
to leverage this and really drive it widely is
pretty exciting. And there weren't a lot of details
about applications and use cases, but suffice
it to say, it's going to be very telecom focused.
And so it'll be interesting to see how everything
winds out over time. With that, I'm still waiting
on Anshul. There he is. I was tap dancing. It's
way worse than you think. It's actually, they
shut off the gas in our entire complex because
somebody left one of the gas grills on. And they
now have to go from every single apartment and
check all of the gas stoves. And then also...
re -ignite all of the water heaters. So it's
way worse than you think. It's not a package.
I wish it was. No, I think it's really cool to
see that all of these big titans in the industry
are working together to launch something like
the Open Telecom AI platform. And I think a lot
of the industry is just realizing that they need
to work together to be successful and achieve
the full potential of what the industry needs
to do on AI. And I think there's lots of room.
for growth. But I also think that we've had a
lot of these different partnerships happen in
the past on different topics. So it doesn't necessarily
mean there will be success. But I think when
you look at who's involved, Reliance to Geo is
a huge player in the space. And it's in their
best interest to have something that's open and
standardized. And I think that we will continue
to move in that direction regardless of who's
involved. And this only enables more companies
to join the effort if they stay open. Yeah, I
agree. Very good insight there, my friend. Hey,
let's go to your second topic and hopefully the
door doesn't ring again. You want to talk about
Ericsson partnering with T -Mobile and Qualcomm
for 5GXR trials. Qualcomm using a 5G device,
like a smartphone, tethered to AR glasses. And
they're using HoloLite as the XR streaming service.
And they're basically able to use network slicing,
which included uplink configured grant, low latency,
and L4S, as well as other advanced schedulers
to enhance the streaming quality from the cloud
into the glasses through the smartphone device
that was tethered to the glasses. And I think
just... What it's cool is it's showing that T
-Mobile's standalone 5G network is ready for
this, but also that Qualcomm already has the
capability and that T -Mobile's network is ready
to go to do this. So it's sending a signal, I
think, to the market that the groundwork is there
and that even commercial companies like T -Mobile
and HoloLite are partnering in making this possible.
So it's not just Ericsson, Qualcomm. and T -Mobile
in a lab, right? It's very different from doing
it in a lab. Personally, I want to see this in
person. I live in San Diego where this is being
tested, so I'm going to do my best to reach out
to Qualcomm and get a chance to try this out
for myself. But until then, it's just exciting
to see T -Mobile, Ericsson and Qualcomm working
together to do something on a commercial network
for future use cases. Hey, let me ask you, because
I didn't catch this news, the payload was so
immense at the event. And by the way, it was
a record attendee. It was, I think, over 109
,000 folks attended MWC. But I'm assuming that
these trials, were they focused on enterprise
use cases or were they consumer use cases or
both? So they didn't say what kind of use cases
they were trialing. It specifically said. These
were XR 5G trials for AI and AR and the feasibility
of using a slim four factor goggles, like really
thin and light goggles and testing the 5G infrastructure
and the smartphones to enable low latency opportunities
and applications through these super light glasses.
Because right now, one of the biggest problems
for thin and light AR glasses is. Where does
the compute come from? Does it come from the
phone? Does it come from the edge? Does it come
from the cloud? The reality is that like right
now, there isn't enough edge compute in place
to power those glasses. So you have to have some
kind of compute, whether it's a puck or a smartphone,
connecting to the 5G network and then pulling
in more compute from the edge or from the cloud.
And I think that's really what they're testing
out is like, how viable is this? How does this
work? Because truthfully, we can't have super
thin like AR glasses without. distributed compute
in other places and getting that latency low
enough where we can actually distribute the compute
between the phone, between the glasses and between
the edge and maybe even pull deeper into the
cloud if necessary. So I think that's what this
is really showing off, that this is feasible
and this is viable because people want thin and
light glasses. They don't want to wear helmets.
Yeah, because it got me thinking. I remember
very early on in 2018, I think you and I were
in the same meetings with Qualcomm and they were
showing us these. these sort of mixed reality
use cases, like for first responders and firefighters
and that sort of thing. So I think the other
challenge too is with thin and light, you've
got a smaller battery as well, right? And some
of these workloads and some of these applications
can be, that are very compute intensive, can
really draw the battery life. We were just talking
about Qualcomm and how amazing their engineering
team is with respect to power management and
performance and that sort of thing. there's the
whole nature of physics as well. Yes. It all
kind of factors together. But hey, let's hit
my third and final topic. And I want to talk
about security. And this is an area I think that
the telecom industry continues to struggle with.
And I'm not going to fault what they have to
deal with given the vast number of devices that
operate on their networks. It's just amazing.
It creates a threat surface that's just unbelievably
big that's easily attacked by bad actors. And
more and more improvements have been pumped into
the industry to address this. There's a lot of
focus on zero trust and least privilege access
and that sort of thing. 5G new radio does improve
encryption significantly over 4G LTE, but more
is needed. And so I got to sit down with Palo
Alto Networks while they were at Mobile World
Congress. I actually was able to record a 6 .5
media video. So we'll include the link to that
for our viewers and listeners if you're interested
in learning more. But what Palo Alto Networks
announced was their Prisma SASE 5G solution.
SASE is SD -WAN that is imbued with security
features. And what I really like about the offering
is that it provides, again, another layer level
of security protection. beyond just 5G new radio
encryption, but it also at the same time provides
a very innovative solution for service providers
to monetize. And why I think this is different
than other mobile network operators have offered
SASE services for quite some time, but typically
that's just been a white label. Versa has been
really big in this. They work with mobile network
operators. They can repackage their solution
and resell it. But there's really nothing there
that's necessarily tuned to 5G. So Palo Alto
Networks has focused on 5G, the whole notion
of mobility and providing a platform that allows
an enterprise to manage this over wired and wireless
networks. And again, it presents a very unique
monetization opportunity for mobile network operators
as well. So I'll leave it at that. I go a little
bit deeper with an executive in that 6 .5 Media
video. But at a high level, I think we're going
to start hearing more and more about purpose
-built security when it comes to mobile networks,
and especially given the momentum that we're
seeing behind industrial IoT. and the need to
secure not thousands of devices, but hundreds
of thousands of devices at scale. I don't know
if you caught that news, if you caught my video,
but any thoughts there before we move to your
third topic? No, I definitely did not catch that.
It's also been quite a busy week for me, even
though I wasn't at MWC having to cover all of
it. A lot going on, but I will go back and watch
the video to educate myself and have our audience
does as well. But I'll move on to my last and
final topic with MWC device wrap up is the best
way of putting it. There were a lot of devices.
One, I'm going to go fast. Xiaomi announced the
Buds Pro 5, which actually utilized Wi -Fi for
lossless audio. It uses this new technology from
Qualcomm called X -Pan, which has actually been
around for a while, but nobody's implemented
in earbuds. Basically, you could just walk around
your whole house and your earbuds will never
disconnect from your phone. And then there was
the Xiaomi Concept Phone. which is a Xiaomi 15
that has an attachable micro four thirds lens
that magnetizes to your phone and uses a fiber
optic connection to your phone. So your phone
thinks it's just another camera lens. It's not
an accessory. Then we had real me do something
similar with an interchangeable lens as well
with an even bigger sensor. Then we had the Lenovo
think book flip, which was a, it's a regular
14 inch laptop that then. and it becomes an 18
-inch. So there's a second screen hiding behind
the main screen. Oh, dude, I want to demo that.
What you want is the roll, which is what they
had at CES where it rolls into a 16 -inch. That's
actually a commercial laptop coming out in June.
Then there was this Arzen Flip, which is a tri
-fold projector that fits in your pocket. It
literally folds into nothing, like a puck that
fits in your hand. And then there was a Lenovo
Solar laptop. That one is the solar PC concept.
And I saw a video of it. Basically, it's like
charges about three watts. So you can basically
like use a laptop and when you close it, just
leave it in the sun and it will charge back up.
It's not really enough power to charge it like
all day or to use it in that scenario. But like
you can use it like sporadically. And like for
me, as someone who doesn't use a laptop very
often, unless they're traveling, just leave it
out there and it will charge passively. And then
there was Lenovo announced the new. actual real
product thinkpad x13 and then infinix also has
a solar powered phone and then realme nothing
phone 3a and 3a pro were announced which is like
a more of a budget phone. And there was Techno
Spark who did the Slim, which is yet another
ultra slim phone. That's going to be a very common
trend this year than phones. Samsung's going
to have one. Techno's going to have one. Apple's
going to have one. I think it's a silly thing
because people put cases on their phones. And
on top of that, you give up a lot of features
in most of these scenarios. I don't really think
it's a great idea, but I think it's a good engineering
exercise to help build thinner foldables so that
when the phones... fold up then you get a phone
that's as thin as a regular phone which is exactly
what the opel find n5 is which was announced
a few weeks ago and then other than that lenovo
also showed off a concept called magic bay which
has different capabilities but there's one that
allows you to attach a an attachment in the back
of the laptop and it gives you two more displays
on the sides you get like a three display laptop
It's nothing necessarily new, but it's the first
time an actual laptop OEM has introduced something
like that, as opposed to some random third party
that makes you plug in all these weird cables.
And then Samsung had a ton of different foldable
concepts. They had one that was like. A dual
fold concept where it folds at different parts
of the phone, not in the middle, but like at
the top and the bottom, which I don't think anybody
needs. But then they also showed a handheld gaming
device that folds in half, which I thought was
cool. And yeah, that's my rapid fire from what
I remember seeing. But yeah, there was a lot
going on. Lots of thin phones, lots of camera
mods. And yeah, I think I... Oh, there was also
a briefcase. that Samsung was showing off where
you open the briefcase and you get a full size
screen that kind of opens on the top and bottom
and you can use it as like a portable display
that just pops open. Sounds like CES, man. That's
the sort of stuff that you typically see at CES,
right? So they were holding this stuff back.
I would say a lot of these things probably should
have been shown at CES, but probably didn't make
the cut for January. That has been the case for
a lot of things, but I would say some of these
mobile stuff. very much MWC. But some of these
things are just prototypes. And I think there
were maybe prototypes didn't make the cut for
CES. Yeah. Cool, man. Hey, it's been another
great podcast. I was having to meet a lot as
I'm getting through this call, but I'm glad we
were able to get it done. And let's take it home.
Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners
found this week's talk was interesting. We hope
if you have any insights for a specific 5G topic
for a future podcast, please reach out to us
on social media. Will's at Will .Tech, and I'm
at EntreSag. We hope you have a great rest of
your week, and please tune in again, hopefully
later this week, and don't forget to rate us
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