It is episode 220 of the GTO on 5G. It's the
latest inside scoop on everything 5G and sometimes
6G. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes and
it's brought to you by More Insights and Strategy.
I'm Will Townsend and as you can tell by my background,
I am not in Bastrop. I'm on the road. I'm in
Manhattan. We've got a few other team members
here as well for an IBM infrastructure day, but
I'm here to spend some time with Palo Alto Networks
tomorrow. But joining me again this week is Federal
Analyst Anshul Sag. Before we get started, Anshul,
are you traveling this week at all? No, I'm traveling
next week. I'll be at Intel Vision Global in
Vegas. So we will be hearing from Intel's new
CEO, amongst other things. Awesome. I can't wait
to hear your insights from that event, my friend.
But let's jump into my first topic. I want to
talk about Verizon. And you and I have spoken
about them in the past on other podcasts. I felt
like they were a little late to the AI game relative
to their competitors. News broke this week, and
this is actually an article that I found on RCR
Wireless News, that they've actually launched
an AI assistant for small businesses. And this
is really interesting. I don't know if this is
something that they're necessarily monetizing.
It may be something that they're doing. to provide
some stickiness with their small business customers.
But at a very high level, what the Verizon Business
Assistant is intended to do is support text messaging
and allowing small businesses to automate customer
interactions and improve engagement with this.
It's basically a text chatbot. But yeah, within
the press release, it speaks to an example. of
a customer texting a bakery about gluten -free
options and how the AI assistant can provide
an instant answer with context and that sort
of thing. And from Verizon's perspective, Iris
Meyer, who's the chief product and marketing
officer for Verizon Business stated that typically
small business owners are constantly juggling
multiple responsibilities. And this is another
opportunity to provide support for them. And
a lot of small businesses take advantage of SaaS
-based security solutions and those sort of things
because they don't have security operations teams.
They don't have network teams. So they tend to
go for services that provide a turnkey type of
solution. So I think it's interesting. Nothing
from my perspective, super innovative about it,
but what are your thoughts, my friend? Yeah,
I think it's really interesting because small
businesses are actually some of the best applications
for these kinds of AI assistants because they're
force multipliers. And I see that there are definitely
applications where if I want to call or text
the business off hours, there should be like
an AI assistant that can manage that and then
provide a summary to the business owner when
they wake up in the morning of what calls and
texts they missed, if there were any important
ones. And even maybe if it's really complicated
or really sophisticated, what business leads
or what business it generated. I think there's
a lot of opportunity there for small businesses,
especially. My most curious thing is, is this
something that they're tacking on to like phone
service? So that way, like if you're a Verizon
mobile customer as a business, like I'm trying
to understand how they attach it. I assume it's
got to be with a cellular connection because
they don't have that many small businesses running
internet connections. But yeah, I could see this
being something that they offer for broadband
customers, for mobile customers. But yeah, like
in my mind, it's okay. I'm going home at 5 p
.m. as a lot of small business owners you end
up having to answer hours after hours called
but it'd be great if you could maybe use ai to
handle that and so when people call they don't
get a voicemail box they get an ai assistant
that can guide them and answer questions for
you so you can spend more time with your family
because i grew up in a household of two small
business owners i know that yeah i'm very familiar
with the overflow of small business ownership
into weekends and evenings and i used to go home
with my mom in her salon we'd go from school
to my mom's salon and then go home at eight o
'clock when she was done so or sometimes when
she got to get off at five but it's small business
owners only have 24 hours in a day so I think
AI tools like this are actually really useful.
And maybe this is a great way for AI to get access
to people more with less friction. So I think
this is a good idea. I wonder if we'll see others
follow suit. Yeah, no, I like your perspective
on it because I know you and I have talked about
you come from a family of entrepreneurs. And
so maybe I'm being a little too hard on. on Verizon.
There's definitely value here. To try to answer
your point around how they're bundling this,
not abundantly clear to me. And again, not abundantly
clear to me that this is going to necessarily
be a big kind of monetization opportunity for
Verizon, but I see it as sort of a retention
mechanism, something that will keep small business
customers sticky, potentially with Verizon. And
yeah, and what's also interesting when you look
at a lot of what The mobile network operators
are dealing with the AI. Initially, it's been
around customer support. So a very similar use
case just coming from the MNO. We've talked about
T -Mobile and its Intent CX platform, which intends
to take modern AI, generative and eventually
agentic, and really transform. their customer
support operational staff yeah it'll be super
interesting to see into your point will others
at t and vodafone and you name it will they come
out with similar offerings as well but with that
let's go to your first topic you want to talk
about satellite in a recent funding i guess it's
a grant from the spanish government and actually
i didn't i don't know if i mentioned this on
our mobile world congress wrap -up but i got
to meet with the ceo and i got to see the size
of the actual leo satellites that they're putting
in space and dude they're super tiny they're
like a little bit bigger than a shoebox but anyway
what's this news about the spanish government
and the 15 million yeah so I like to call these
briefcase satellites. Okay. And they remind me
of the satellites Sony sent up for space photography.
But these, yeah, this was a $15 million round
of funding from the Spanish Society for Technological
Transformation, also known as SET. And this follows
a $30 million loan they got from the European
Union's investment arm. And it's basically just
more funding to allow them to continue towards
their goal of operating 250 satellites. And as
we know, this is a primarily IOT, very small
data application. And I think when you consider
what's going on in the market right now, satellite
tends to be the best way to get to monetization
quickly. And if you consider that satellite has
been around for a while, they're already They
already have contracts representing 270 million
euros in annual recurring revenue across 400
customers in 50 countries. They're operational.
Let's say it that way. And I actually was invited
to one of their events. I think it was last year
or the year before. And unfortunately, I had
to turn them down. But I definitely would love
to meet with them. I'm glad you were able to.
Is there anything that you learned at MWC that
might shed light on? this investment, right?
Yeah, I did. And what's really interesting, like
number one, again, I was amazed at the size of
the satellites, right? AST SpaceMobile and the
Bluebirds, they keep growing bigger and bigger,
right? And so it's about the antenna arrays with
what Abel and his team are doing in Midland.
And then you look at Starlink and they're not
shoeboxes, but they're not huge as well. So what
I found interesting when I talked to the CEO,
they're only going to need like less than a dozen
of these very small satellites to completely
support their global connectivity of their narrow
band IoT offering. I think that's amazing. And
I haven't researched the intellectual property
that resides underneath what he and his team
have done in Barcelona there. But I think that's
pretty mind blowing, right? You know, Abel with
AST Space Mobile, I think they're going to need
45. or 50 of those larger lights for in and what
they intend to do let's be honest is broadband
connectivity and i talked about this in my forbes
article what what starlink is doing with these
smaller satellites but it's going to require
thousands of those is really it's text messaging
It'll be interesting to see how they can extend
the broadband up and down. But it's primarily
text, emergency text messaging. And then you've
got this, with Satellite, you've got a full complement
with narrowband IoT. So it's really interesting
to see each of these companies, these three companies
we're talking about right now, and what they're
doing with the physical size of the satellites.
Totally different approaches, totally different
modernization approaches as well. And it's super
fascinating. But I think there's room for all
of these folks to play, carve out a niche for
themselves. That's my take on it, my sense of
it. Yeah, I was also going to add that from what
I saw. it seemed like this 15 million dollars
or 13 million 13 .8 million euros was mostly
being used to help them accelerate to 100 satellites
but also they still have a ways to go i think
they're also looking for other funding opportunities
to continue that growth Yeah. And the number
that I'm quoting there are less than a dozen
of that. That might be based on one particular
narrow band use case globally. But that was my
understanding is that they didn't need hundreds
of birds to accomplish what they're doing. But
anyway, really fascinating stuff. But hey, let
me go to my second topic. And I know you were
at GTC. You were on the ground. You were live
tweeting. You were with Patrick Moorhead, our
fearless leader. You were with Matt Kimball.
I was literally probably across the street or
across the highway with Synopsys in Santa Clara
at their executive forum. It was a great event.
I got to do some panel moderation there. But
there was a lot of news, obviously, out of GTC.
I recorded the Data Center podcast with Kimball
and with Paul earlier this week. And I talked
a little bit about the co -package optics and
the silicon photonic switches and what NVIDIA
is claiming it can drive from a performance and
a power efficiency perspective. to provide connectivity
for what's expected to be thousands, if not millions,
of AI factories down the road. But this is our
5G podcast, our slash 6G podcast. So I want to
talk about AI RAN. And NVIDIA continues to push
this very heavily. At GTC, there was an announcement
with T -Mobile and with Cisco on how they're
fostering an AI -native approach. to set the
stage for what 6G could be. What's really interesting,
Anshul, about this is that 3GPP drives the standards,
but NVIDIA, they are driving the bus on modern
AI, right? It appears to me that they want to
drive the bus on 6G. And I do think everyone
agrees that there is going to be an AI integration.
within the 6G standard, but we just don't know
what that's going to look like until we get to
3GPP. But hey, man, you were on the ground. What
was your perspective tied to this news? I'd love
to hear that. It was very clear that this is
a strong intention from these three partners
to establish an early... group of companies that
are trying to push the standard towards ai i
think cisco's become increasingly tied to nvidia
especially with the new networking stuff and
t -mobile is pretty pretty closely tied to nvidia
as well t -mobile is also a very leading carrier
when it comes to implementing 3gpp standards
yeah i think that them being part of this and
i think This will go up to Deutsche Telekom as
well, not just T -Mobile US. There's going to
be a lot of influence on how the standards are
set and what features get implemented, especially
if NVIDIA wants to be that primary vendor and
supplier for equipment. And I think this is one
of those things where a vendor sets themselves
up for the next G five, 10 years ahead of it.
And this seems like this is NVIDIA trying to
set up themselves as the default. for 6G, I actually
posed a question to the NVIDIA telecoms team
during our session about 6G specifically, because
we haven't set the standard yet. And I was trying
to get an answer on what are you guys doing to
influence the standards and get these things
done? And I got a nebulous answer, to be honest
with you. But truthfully, I think what NVIDIA
is doing is leading on research. working with
different vendors like Ericsson, like T -Mobile,
like Cisco. And I think a lot of it truthfully
is going to end up on how well do they deploy
5G and how well do they play with the existing
networks? Because true, the 6G networks will
be standalone, but there will still need to be
a lot of interoperability and acceleration and
open software. I think NVIDIA's... wants to set
themselves up for success down the road. I think
their current roadmap is pretty good, but they
did say we're already doing a lot of the things
in 5G that we want to do in 6G. I think the T
-Mobile and Verizon partnerships with NVIDIA
are the first steps in that direction. Yeah,
no, I totally agree. And I'm not faulting NVIDIA.
They're being aggressive. They should be, because
like I said, everyone agrees that they're driving
the bus with respect to modern AI. And Silicon
and software and all of that. And hey, look at
Qualcomm, right? With early and NTN, they made
some bets. They tried some similar things that
didn't quite pan out. Remember? And hey. Qualcomm
continues to be a successful company. NVIDIA
continues to be successful. And sometimes you
got to be bold, right? And you've got to be willing
to get out there and lead and see where it goes.
So I think it's interesting. But let's hit your
second topic. And we want to continue to talk
about T -Mobile here. And I saw this. They're
pretty close to some agreements with their competitors
on swapping spectrum. Yeah, so this is a... 800
megahertz spectrum deal. It's actually with Grain
Management LLC, which is actually a private investment
firm specifically focused on digital infrastructure
and solutions and broadband. So basically what's
happening is they are going to sell their 800
megahertz spectrum to this firm with a combination
of cash and 600 megahertz spectrum. So Grain
has 600 megahertz spectrum. T -Mobile. has cash,
T -Mobile is giving them this 800 megahertz spectrum
and getting cash in 600 megahertz spectrum that
they were already leasing. It's like a swap.
It's a swap. We don't know how much cash is being
changed hands, but basically what this does is
it bolsters T -Mobile 600 megahertz coverage
and spectrum, which they already had, and it
helps them with coverage. And then that gives
away the 800 megahertz spectrum. that someone
did not use. I wonder who that was. And yeah,
basically what I'm hearing is that this will
most likely be used for utility companies because
800 megahertz is still a very low band spectrum
and it could be used for IoT applications that
would be nationwide. And yeah, it just seems
like it's a good deal because T -Mobile gets
spectrum that they needed. They don't need the
800 because they have the 600. And 600 has better
propagation anyways. And the 800 megahertz blocks
are going to be about the same as 600 megahertz
blocks. So getting more 600 megahertz where they
already have a lot is the best approach for them
anyways. Yeah. I agree. No, it makes sense. They've
invested in 600 megahertz and to be consistent
with that, I think is important. And you're right.
It propagates much better. This all goes back
to T -Mobile's initial objective, right? With
5G, which was they wanted to get the most coverage
out there. And they were very aggressive with
that. They've invested in rural. You can argue
that AT &T is invested in rural as well, especially
when you look at fiber buildouts and places like
Evansville that didn't have the same proliferation
of fiber as more densely populated areas. No,
I think it's a smart move and T -Mobile continues
to refine things and sharpen the checkbook. And
it's interesting to watch, man. I still remember
when the whole Sprint deal was teetering, you
and I, we had spent time with executives. We
understood the fundamentals. You and I put our
reputations on the line and we said, this deal
is going to get done and watch what happens with
T -Mobile. I got to tell you, man, let's take
that victory lap again. And I'm not throwing
shade on Verizon. They've had their challenges.
I'm not throwing shade on AT &T, but it was really
interesting to see basically the third place
player emerge with what's arguably the strongest
5G network on the planet right now. So anyway,
I thought I'd just bring that up so we could
take that victory lap. I'll just add before we
start talking about SoftBank, that merger was
the perfect example. of an actual merger that
benefited the entire industry and consumers.
T -Mobile and Sprint were both kind of capped
in growth and not really being successful together
or separately. And the combination of the two
just, it boosted competitiveness from AT &T and
Verizon. It catapulted them to first place. And
I think it accelerated 5G deployments in the
country. Yeah, no, I agree. Competition breeds
innovation. I'm going to say it for the millionth
time again. So totally agree with you. We're
going to close out the podcast this week and
with a SoftBank super topic. So SoftBank has
been on a tear. It's funny, man. You and I have
talked about them, the ebb and flow over the
years. But lately, it's clear to me that they
are doubling down when it comes to just AI in
general. You're going to talk about Ampere. big
acquisition there actually matt kimball weighed
in on that in a forbes article and i would encourage
our viewers and listeners to check that out but
before you you get to ampere i want to talk about
their announcement of a telco large language
model that their positioning is foundational
for telecom during the ai application so What
they're calling their LLM is the large telecom
model. I like that, the LTM. And it's built on
SoftBank's own network and operational data.
So remember, SoftBank, it does operate a mobile
network in Japan, but they also have this vision
fund. They also invest in a lot of technology
and they acquire companies and that sort of thing.
So they've designed their LTM, their large telecom
model, based on their own network and operational
data. They've been supposedly fine -tuning this.
And in particular, they cite a recent example
how it was configured for a base station optimization.
And they found that it reduced task times from
days to minutes. And this is huge. And when you
talk about what NVIDIA wants to do with AI in
the RAN, a lot of that comes down to base station
optimization, right? So this is precursor to
potentially what NVIDIA wants to drive forward
with what it's doing with silicon and curating
large language models and small language models
and that sort of thing. I think it's interesting,
and I think the timing with it as well, the fact
that SoftBank is a founding member of the Global
Teleco AI Alliance, but also the timing around
its announced intent to acquire Ampere. And I'm
going to let you take it from there because there
is a correlation between these two. Yeah, so
Ampere is an interesting company because they're
one of the few... arm server vendors that are
out there arguably one of the most high performance
arms from server vendors out there and it's interesting
because softbank through arm already owned eight
percent of ampere so this was like them buying
themselves out yeah or just increasing their
share of the company but yeah ampere has succeeded
where others have failed in terms of arm server
availability and products. I wouldn't say that
they've necessarily been gangbusters, but they
were founded by a former Intel exec, Rene James,
who was pretty familiar with the space. And I
think that this was very much SoftBank leaning
into their AI ambitions, also their telecom infrastructure
plans, and also making sure that ARM servers
continue to grow in relevance. whether that's
in telecom or in the data center or for ai yeah
while this wasn't necessarily the full eight
billion dollar valuation that this company had
two or three years ago it is still 6 .5 billion
so quite a bit of money and i think that this
will also enable softbank to make arm chips without
having arm be the company who makes them yeah
and then what this obviously sets up is SoftBank
wants to make a run at modern AI. And now they've
got large language models that are foundational.
They've got purpose -built silicon. They're putting
all the pieces together. At the end of the day,
there's really, I would say that AMD is a close
second to really competing with NVIDIA, but NVIDIA
clearly has a, they're out in front of all of
these competitors quite a bit. But I see this
as an opportunity for SoftBank. So they're doubling
the ring on AI. Yeah. All right, my friend, it's
been another 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 future podcasts, please
reach out to us on social media. Will is at WillTownTech
and I'm at Anshul Saag. We hope you have a great
week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.