Welcome to episode 223 of the G2 on 5G. It's
the latest insights scoop on everything 5G. We
cover six topics in about 20 minutes and it's
brought to you by War Insights and Strategy.
I'm Will Townsend and joining me again this week
is federal analyst Anshul Sag. But before we
get started, so Anshul, you're in a hotel room
there. You're in New York, right? And you spent
time with Motorola. Yes. I was here for the Motorola
launch and the subsequent launch party. And I
come to you live. Over 5g. Cause I do not trust
the hotel wifi and it is over my trusty little
TCL standard. Yeah. You've talked about that
on many podcasts and I know you're going to,
you're going to get into that topic in a moment,
but I want to get started in a man it's financial
year, key one earning season for the big M and
O's in the United States. And I want to spend
a little bit of time, run through the highlights,
provide a few insights and get your take on it
as well. And so I'm going to go in alphabetical
order to be share. And I want to start with AT
&T. And I did post some insights to LinkedIn
and X when the earnings broke. Super strong performance
from AT &T. And clearly their investments in
fiber and mobility are beginning to pay off.
And I'm going to talk a little bit more about
FWA and what they're doing with Ericsson. But
at a high level, from a postpaid phone ad perspective,
AT &T added $324 ,000. Postpaid churn was well
under 1 % at 0 .83%. Mobility revenue is up 4
% to $16 .7 billion. What's really impressive
is the company's continued fiber ads. So over
a quarter of a million net fiber ads, which represents
21 consecutive quarters of 200 ,000 or more net
ads. And consequently, the broadband revenue
feeding from fiber. was over $2 billion. That's
massive, up 19 % year over year. And the company
states that more than four out of every 10 AT
&T fiber households now choose wireless. So I've
talked about convergence and what that does and
how that adds value, not only for consumers from
less friction and billing and that sort of thing,
but certainly it's also providing value to AT
&T as well. That's AT &T. Let me go here to be
an athletic order T -Mobile. What's really interesting,
their subscriber growth missed estimates, but
overall revenue was pretty solid. The stock is
somewhat down in trading, but hey, we live in
crazy times, right? There are other things that
are affecting the equity markets. And then Verizon.
Verizon reported fairly strong earnings, but
there were some subscriber loss that... And if
you remember in 4Q of last year, they ended the
year on a high note there. But basically with
the Lawsons and 1Q, that array, the net ads there
from a subscriber standpoint. Overall, a tale
of two cities. Next. What do you read between
the lines on any of this stuff from an earnings
perspective? I think the way I look at it is
the macroeconomic situation is unclear. I see
that these operators in my mind. They're like
utilities. They are technically utilities. And
because of that, they're crucial to people's
everyday life. So it's not like people are necessarily
going to forego cellular connectivity, but there
are going to be some profit engines for all these
companies that maybe are not as profitable as
they could be. Growth might not be as fast as
they anticipated. So I wouldn't be surprised
if the macroeconomic conditions persist throughout
the year, that none of these companies will hit
the targets that they're expecting to hit and
that people will gravitate towards lower cost
products, which tend to drive lower R2, which
then drives lower profits. I'm looking at the
markets today. All three carriers are down. TNT
and Verizon are both down 3 % and T -Mobile is
down 10%. So clearly T -Mobile got hit the hardest
for its earnings. But the truth is that There
are other things that are going on, like you
said, and I have T -Mobile topic for my other
topics during the podcast. So I'll hold on to
my thoughts going in that direction. Hey, like
solid insights, buddy. And the other thing that
I'll mention to you that I didn't mention at
the top of the topic was both Verizon and T -Mobile
have announced some additional tiering of subscriptions.
And from my perspective, that's likely a defensive
move, a proactive move on their part to try to
install some, instill some momentum into net
ads. And that's what I think. No announcement
from AT &T on that point, but I just thought
that was important to note. But that is a great
segue. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going
to say, I will also add that I believe I saw
both Verizon and T -Mobile offer. price guarantees
so yeah yeah clearly there's some sensitivity
towards price changes with consumers and i think
that might also be a driver of some of the decisions
these companies are making yeah i think i recall
reading something about a class action lawsuit
and i'm not sure which and then it was tied to
but obviously there's some sensitivity around
that as well so Yeah. Those pricing guarantees
like three and five years respectively, I believe
if I'm not mistaken. Yep. So it's super interesting.
They're obviously doing what they can within
their power to continue to drive momentum given
the performance with subscriber loss. But that
is a great segue to your first topic. And you
want to talk about T -Mobile. And we've talked
about what they're doing with 5G Advanced, but
they're going nationwide, right? Yeah. They've,
as far as I know. They are the first commercial
nationwide 5G advanced network in the US. I think
that might even be accurate for the entire world
because everyone's testing 5G dance. Like it's
not really like something that they're commercializing
yet. T -Mobile just loud out said it's commercial.
The reason why this is important is because it
will drive some really interesting. use cases
down the road. For example, 5G advanced, a lot
of, there are new features in there for XR specifically.
So there are going to be some opportunities for
all of these companies pushing these AR smart
glasses and being able to drive these glasses
over the 5G network through the cloud and enable
new and interesting use cases there, but also
more capabilities, more enhanced. slices for
different applications. And there will be things
like L4S, which are going to be really big for
these low latency applications. And even gaming,
which we already know some companies have deployed
as a slice, but also for safety with deep priority.
I think there's a lot of things that we'll probably
see happen as a result of 5G advanced, much like
we saw with 5G in standalone. There were some
interesting use cases that came as a result of
that. So I think that will be the next ways.
But what I do think is really interesting is
that AT &T and Verizon are very much in the early
phases of deploying standalone. Now the AT &T's
fixed wireless network is fully standalone. And
Verizon's entire network for first responders
is also a standalone network. So like they're
finally getting standalone deployed, maybe not
fully nationwide, but like a fraction of it.
And T -Mobile is now in 5G advanced world. It's
really interesting to see. that they continue
to maintain their lead in 5G network capabilities.
But at the same time, T -Mobile also needs to
continue to convince enterprises and first responders
that their network is the best network because
AT &T and Verizon have that legacy with their
customers. It's really interesting. I'm excited
to see what we actually get as a result of 5G
advanced and T -Mobile, but I'm sure that T and
Verizon are already thinking about this and how
they can deploy this sooner rather than later.
Yeah. And I think from my perspective, it's all
about the use case to your point. And so it's
been somewhat nebulous and there's been some
confusion around, okay, this whole NSA, SA thing,
and what is the real benefit, measurable benefit
from a performance coverage, latency perspective,
you name it. And I think T -Mobile has done a
decent job with T -Priority, with T -IoT. demonstrating
solutions and use cases tied to the power of
5G standalone. But I believe more needs to be
done. And what I'm personally excited about as
we get into the second half of the year and to
your point, he and Verizon do catch up and they're
doing this in ways, right? So you just can't
flip a switch and move all of your core infrastructure
to 5G. I mean, it takes some time. And the doubt,
but it'll be interesting to see in the second
half of the year when. We start getting closer
to parity among the big three. Who's going to
rise to the top? And I really do believe it's
going to be driven by use case. The most compelling
use cases from my perspective are going to be
within enterprise. So T -Mobile for business,
AT &T's vertical focus on areas like manufacturing,
retail, and that sort of thing. And then Verizon's
focus in business as well. That is where I believe
the real transformative impact. a standalone
will occur. You're going to see pockets of private
side. Gee, by the way, by all measures, private
cellular networking is now reaching that hockey
stick. It was a very long tail ramp that we're
beginning to see more and more deployments. I'm
going to talk about that. Tied to Ericsson here
is my third topic, but great insights, my friend.
Let me go to my second topic, and I want to talk
about AT &T. And they're crediting Ericsson,
specifically John Stakey, the CEO, for boosting
their 5G fixed wireless access performance. And
so I can speak personally to them. So I'm currently
doing the Pepsi challenge with 5G FWA here in
Bastrop on this podcast that we're recording
right now. I am using T -Mobile's 5G fixed wireless
access service. When I moved in two years ago,
there was no fiber. Now AT &T's fiber service
is available here. But honestly, I've been very
happy with the performance for obvious reasons,
given their network investments and that sort
of thing. But with all of that preamble, I have
now deployed an AT &T Internet Air 5G FWA solution
at my home in the Florida Keys. I will admit
it's somewhat slow. I think you and I experienced
that when we recorded our last podcast and I
had to wait for that upload to upload. But that
should improve over the time. The Florida Keys
are a very challenging area. It's a solid stretch
of coral reef and there's lots of contention.
A lot of the buildings, including my condo, were
built decades ago. And so you're contending with
metal and concrete and a lot of interference.
I'll continue to report back on my experiences
in Thin Red Air and Isla Mirada. But I say all
that to state that this was in a light reading
article, Jeff Baumgardner. And he talks about
some of the comments that John Stakey made around
how moving from Nokia to Ericsson and focusing
on the programmability of the network and that
sort of thing is actually boosting the performance
of its 5G fixed wireless access service. There
were a lot of specifics other than I was going
to say, yeah, that other than that was just that
John made, but Hey, by all measures, AT &T is
growing the stick print in one queue tied to
the earnings. They added 181 ,000 internet error
subscribers. That's a gain, a significant portion
of over 110 ,000 from the year prior. But you
have to realize that AT &T is positioning its
FWA service as a copper catch, right? And with
the investment in fiber, they are strongly moving
customers to fiber. They're pricing it so that
they can do that at least one gig symmetrical.
It does deliver the best experience. You and
I have talked about this. I've been an AT &T
customer, I believe, a fiber customer in the
past. I believe you're one now. But by all measures,
the company is growing it. They're being flexible.
They're providing it where they need it. And
by all measures, based on where they're at currently
and in the light reading article, it's anticipated
that they could support up to 7 million subs
given where they're currently at today. But obviously
that scalability, that capability will grow as
they do things like build out standalone on a
nationwide basis. I don't know if you caught
the news, but anything else to add before we
moved to your Motorola news? I did not catch
that, but it did make me realize that we are
conducting this podcast entirely over side G
your end with fixed wireless and my end with
the dongle, which is fitting for our podcast.
But I would say that what I do think is interesting
is that the Florida keys sound like the perfect
opportunity to have cyber. Because it's one long
strand and nobody's very far from the. You got
to go aerial though, because like they're doing
a water main replacement on my, my, my key called
plantation key in, in burrowing into solid coral
is a pretty expensive proposition, but here's
the catch because it's a hurricane high risk
area going aerial presents some concerns around
reliability and resilience as well. So. You're
right. It is a perfect fit, but there are some
unique challenges with respect to the Florida
Keys and running fiber. Yeah, but other than
that, I'm just glad to see AT &T continuing to
push FWA and using it as a complimentary technology
to what they're doing on fiber. Because truthfully,
as an AT &T fiber customer, I can say nothing
but positive things about the experience. I have
yet to upgrade to five gigs because I really
don't think I need it. But I want to see what
the experience is like just because I can. Well,
in the one gig symmetrical is kick ass, man.
When I had it in Austin, indeed, given all of
the gadgets and devices that you hang off of
your wifi network, I would think you would love
five gigs symmetrical, but, but in any event,
let's without further ado, like you're in New
York, you spent time with Motorola. I had a lot
of FOMO going on. You showed some amazing devices,
including a razor. That's got like real wood.
By the way, if you can ask the Motorola folks
for a demo for me of that product, I'd love it.
But why don't you talk about the launch and the
party and everything that you've learned over
the last couple of days? Yeah, this was a two
-day event, a big keynote, pre -briefing, bringing
us up to speed on what Moto is doing. The big
developments are that they've introduced a new
high -end tier, a true flagship tier for the
Moto Razr Black brand. They've been slowly rolling
out the Razer brand one product at a time since
2020, and they've been iterating it, and now
they really have a truly competitive product.
And they offer, the top end is $1 ,299, so that's
very much a flagship tier, but it has a Snapdragon
8 Elite, which is a flagship processor, has a
7 -inch screen on the inside. They've upgraded
all hinges on all three models to a new titanium
hinge that's much more... durable, four times
stronger. They've reduced the crease on the screen
by 30%. So it's almost invisible. And then they
also upgraded to a triple 50 megapixel camera.
So there's two 50 megapixel cameras on the outside
and one on the inside. Because the phone can
be left in like a tent mode like this or halfway
up or down. So you can record yourself. It's
great for people who want to create content,
but also for if you're in the kitchen and you
want to touch your phone, which leads me into.
the Moto AI capabilities where one of the features
is you put the phone on the table and it can
see that you're looking at the camera and then
you don't have to use any hot words. You can
just start talking to the phone and it knows
that you're talking to the phone because you're
looking at it. So features like that where you
can like interact with your phone, ask it questions,
tell it to do things without ever touching it.
Your hands are dirty, which happens to me all
the time while I'm cooking. There's tons of other
AI features that are also built in, which are
capable thanks to the processors on these cells.
The top end is a Snapdragon 8 Elite. Mid tier
is a Snapdragon 8S and bottom is a MediaTek Dimensity
7400X. So the top and bottom get new processors.
The middle stays the same. Battery capacities
range are a little bit consistent. They're 47,
4 ,000, 4 ,500. So battery life in general will
be quite good. They also upgraded the outside
screen on the Ultra and the Plus. It's new Gorilla
Glass Victus, so it's like really durable. And
then the bottom one is a 3 .6 inch, which is
like back from the original model. So they have
bigger screens. The inside screen is 7 inches
on the Ultra. I think it's 6 .9 on the Razer
Plus. And then there's the base model. So I like
their good, better, best strategy. And truthfully,
I want the Ultra. Also, the cool thing is the
Ultra has 68 watts wired charging, which is the
fastest of any flip phone or any foldable in
the US. You're getting the best of the best with
it. And like I said, there's tons of other Moto
AI features. They're also running Perplexity
for search. They're also running Copilot Plus.
They have Gemini capabilities. And they're also
doing stuff with Lama that's like this catch
me up feature, which is if you've had your phone
closed, you open it. You tell it to catch you
up and it gives you just like a summarized, like
very small bullet point list of what happened
while your phone was closed, what texts you got,
what emails are important, what you might want
to go back and look at. So there's some cool
stuff. There's even some XR integrations with
Meta on the Quest, having a virtual screen of
your phone in VR. So they're really moving forward.
They're really looking at ways to differentiate.
Also to your point, they also offer tons of colors
through their partnership with Pantone. And then
on the ultra side, they offer an alcantara, which
are called scarab color, which is like a deep
green. And then they've got the wood finish and
then they have the red leather. So they're offering
all kinds of different materials and colors and
doing research with Pantone to discover which
are the most trending colors that people are
most likely to want to be seen with in public.
And then on top of that, they're also using Pantone
for display color calibration. To ensure that
when you take pictures on that phone, that you're
getting very color accurate images. And that's
basically it. The launch will happen, I think,
in about a week. And then devices will be in
market a week after that. And yeah, I had a good
time. Good seeing a lot of friends and meeting
new people. And they had a musical act. Her name's
Coco Jones. And she was helping them plan the
launch, but also reach out to that younger, more
hip audience, which I would say. Moto Razr is
the one Android device that has 25 % of their
user base is coming from iOS. So they are the
one exception to the switch rule because really
people don't switch between Android and iOS very
much. But this is the one device that's really
doing that. And that's why Google is prioritizing
Moto. I forgot to mention. The top -end Ultra
has 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage. In
terms of specs, you're actually getting a lot
for $1 ,299, and it's a really powerful foldable.
One of my biggest complaints for foldables, especially
the flip ones, is they were never really as feature
-rich as a lot of the candy bar phones that we
have today. And this one just feels like it actually
has all the specs that you would want to have
in a flagship phone, but also happens to be a
foldable with tons of AI capabilities. I've got
a theory about that conversion from iOS users
to the Razr. Dude, I remember one of my most
favorite phones that I ever owned before the
Apple iPhone was ever introduced was a Razr.
And I had a couple. And so I would assume that
of that 25%, there are a lot of folks that are
over 50 that are nostalgic about the Razr. Because
I'll be honest, when T -Mobile sent us that.
Those pink Razor demos, like when was that? A
year ago or so. I had fun. I had fun carrying
it around and using it. Good stuff, buddy. Hey,
I'm going to hit my third and final topic. And
I guess my theme is Ericsson. No, they did not
sponsor this week's podcast, nor did they pay
me to mention them, but they're just in the news
cycle here. But I thought this was really interesting.
So talking about use cases, you know me, man.
When I ride, especially like on the Forbes platform,
I like to focus on business outcome and use cases.
This one's pretty cool. Ericsson's working with
Newmont. They're a company I've not heard of,
but they're a mining operator. They operate mines
across four continents. And this was an article
that was posted by our friends at RCR Wireless
News. And what they're talking about is the deployment
of private 5G across 14 mines in four different
continents. And what's really interesting, what
really caught my attention was that For each
of these deployments, they're using one Ericsson
radio for full control. And what they're doing,
and mining is sort of a poster child use case
for private cellular, private 5G in particular.
Just given the hazards that are associated with
it, depending on what kind of mining is going
on, just mining in general, there's high degrees
of work of risk and need for safety. What they're
doing here in one of the mines is actually in
South Wales, Australia. But again, they're using
a single Ericsson 5G radio to support full remote
control of a bulldozer fleet across a 2 .5 kilometer
strut. And this is above ground. So you have
different types of mining. You've got in ground,
you've got strip and above ground. So this is
an above ground deployment scenario. But I find
it really, it's a great, it's a great demonstration.
I have the power of marrying 5G core and 5G radio
to do something like autonomously pilot and navigate
bulldozers. So I don't know if you caught the
news. You may not have anything to add before
we go to your third and final topic, but I just
thought it was a cool thing you mentioned. Mining
seems to be very popular for private 5G is what
I'll say. Poster child. That's what I call it.
The poster child use case. All right, let's go
to your third and final, and you want to talk
about Verizon launching 5G networks license for
first responders. Hey, there's a theme here.
We continue to talk about this on our pod, don't
we? Yeah, so this is the Verizon Frontline Network
Slice. It is a 5G ultra -wideband virtual network
slice completely dedicated to first to public
safety of first responders that allows for the
allocation of network resources. within Verizon's
network infrastructure. They say it has dedicated
5G ultra -wideband network capacity, tailored
performance, enhanced reliability, and flexible
scalability. So this is something that they launched
nationwide in 29 cities, including San Diego.
And they are obviously trying to ham up their
experience with first responders and how they're
going to enable those first responders to have
a better, more dependable experience on the network.
And it is using 5G network slicing. So it's actually
standalone 5G. It's not quite 5G advanced, but
it will, I think, eventually become 5G advanced.
And yeah, they're not really saying much more
beyond that, that they will be offering this
service for the same cost as current 5G ultra
-wideband plans. So it's not... really going
to be something that people have to pay extra
for. And truthfully, I have a strong feeling
it'll probably save Verizon money because a lot
of these slices do over time. So I think it's
a good thing. And this was literally launched
yesterday. This is hot off the presses, much
like T -Mobile's announcement. So I would say
that this is very similar to what T -Mobile is
doing with T -Priority. I think it's no consequence
or no surprise that this is happening when it
is. I think it's great for first responders and
public safety people to have choices. And the
truth is, I think there's going to be a world
where multiple networks get used by these public
safety organizations because they can and they
should. And I think safety is always critical.
And being able to enable it at scale, I think
is great. And I hope to see more cities have
real nationwide network. 29 cities is pretty
good. And I think that's pretty close to Verizon's
initial 5g network launch, if I remember correctly.
So it's probably a lot of the same city. And
yeah, I think I'm excited to see how this evolves
over time, especially since T &T and T -Mobile
already have some kind of dedicated service like
this. Yeah. So I agree with you. This is a neat
competition thing for Verizon. They don't want
to be left out of the party with first responders.
AT &T has built FirstNet, T -Mobile has T -Priority.
And when T -Mobile first launched T -Priority,
I asked the executives there, help me understand
this because there is FirstNet. But as I thought
about it more, and as you and I have been talking
about this today, first responders need redundancy,
right? Think about it. Like they serve a critical
function. And if for whatever reason, you know,
heaven forbid, let's say they're operating on
FirstNet and there was a hiccup. Although there's
a lot of redundancy with FirstNet, it's a completely
separate air -gapped mobile network dedicated
to first responders. But to be able to have that
fallback, that redundancy is really important.
And again, I'll say it for the thousandth time,
competition breeds innovation. And so I'm expecting
now all three MNOs has laid down the gauntlet.
They're supporting first responders. Now it's
going to be really interesting to see some of
the more bespoke use cases that come out of that.
You and I have talked about really cool things
like NLAI and what T -Mobile is doing through
T -Mobile Ventures to get them off the ground,
to do really innovative things like wildfire
prediction and that sort of thing. I'm waiting
for the use cases. And I think now that all three
are clearly focused on first responders, it's
going to be really interesting to see what happens.
low earth orbit satellite is going to be important.
It's going to be an important element of that.
It's already an important element today when
you look at FirstNet and you look at Verizon
and you look at T -Mobile and how they deploy
satellite -based colts for disaster recovery
and for coverage of major events and that sort
of thing. Typically it's a traditional terrestrial
cell tower on wheels for those types of events.
But the colts with the satellite connectivity
are typically used for disaster recovery purposes.
But again, I think it's, I'm all about the use
case. And so it's going to be exciting to see
how that all rolls out. But hey, my friend, I'm
glad we were able to get this recorded before
you jump on a plane and fly back across the country.
Why don't you take us home? Absolutely. We hope
our viewers and listeners on this week's topic
is interesting. If anyone out there provides
insights on a specific topic for a future podcast.
Please reach out to us on social media. I'm at
AnchaSong. Will's at WillTownTech. And we hope
you have a great weekend. And don't forget to
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