Well, Anshul, it's been a while since you and
I've done a 5G podcast, our standalone edition.
And I'm excited. We've got Shahid Ahmed, leads
NTT Private 5G. But Shahid, I love your title,
New Ventures and Innovation. Before we get started,
can you talk a little bit about that? Because
that sounds like it's a lot more expansive than
just private 5G, right? That is true. That is
true. Thanks. And great to see both. Yeah, look,
the world is shifting as well, even with AI in
pretty much everything we do. Much like that
in corporate setting, we have to have flexible
titling. One of the advantages of working in
a large company is to be able to get one of those.
But joking aside, I think it's... This is mostly
because I'm responsible for coming up with new
ideas, new offerings that we can take to the
market. As markets are shifting regularly on
a daily, hourly basis, and we got to keep up.
And market fit is a very important part of our
overall roadmap, and we got to continuously...
Build new things, new offerings that manage and
fit to our customers' requirements and needs.
Yeah, I've gotten to know you over the years.
I've gotten to know NTT as a company as well.
I've spent time at R &D Forum in Tokyo. I've
been to a few upgrades in San Francisco. And
I'm really impressed with what the company is
doing, not only from a data center perspective,
but with private 5G. And I really, when I look
at 2025, and this is a subject that Anshul and
I have talked about. on our podcast and like
we're about to celebrate our fifth year and it's
crazy to think that he and i have been doing
this for five years now but really from my perspective
2025 is really becoming the year of private cellular
and private 5g that hockey stick is finally taking
off and He and I have talked about, and I think
you and I have talked about as well, Shahed,
some of the challenges, different paths to get
to 5G and that sort of thing. But I'd love it
if you could spend a little bit of time and discuss
from your perspective, what's really driving
the momentum behind private 5G in 2025 and beyond.
Yeah, you're right. We're also seeing that little
uptick. And you and I had spoken about our private
5G offering when we first launched, like almost
three and a half, almost four years ago. Yeah.
Things were very... rough and fresh and new to
a lot of constituents, whether it's the suppliers
or the customers or the other ecosystem players
like device manufacturers. It was new and we
kept at it. And now we're beginning to see and
reap the investments we made earlier on in private
5G. So yeah, absolutely beginning to see that
uptick effect. I think that's been going on for
the last six months. And so why is that? And
we've looked into that quite deeply ourselves
because we're sold out and we're trying to figure
out where to shift our resources so we can manage
this uptick in demand. And we see three major
forces that are driving this new demand, if you
will. One, I think devices are finally beginning
to make it. to the overall ecosystem. In the
beginning, we didn't see natively supported 5G
devices for enterprises. And it was a major problem,
to be frank with you. And that kind of impeded
a lot of the progress. Many of our customers
wanted 5G. There simply weren't enough devices
or the variety of devices we needed to support
those use cases. And so it was like always a
chicken and egg situation. And that really slowed
down a lot of deployments. In fact, to the extent
even customers that had the budgets, had the
SOW signed with us, wanted to delay it just because
they're like, we don't want to start with the
wrong foot forward. And let's wait till the devices
make it to the market and then we'll get going.
So I think that was one. One area that we thought
has really matured and we're beginning to see
a plethora of devices out there today. So that
was a big tailwind behind our backs. The second
one, I think, was just the availability of spectrum.
I think that is something not just U .S., but
outside of U .S., we were challenged with many
regulators. not really fully getting on board
and allocating Spectrum to enterprises directly.
And in fact, even as recent as six, eight months
ago, we had to work with Ofcom to see if they
could figure out a way to allocate Spectrum directly
to an enterprise. And there was a lot of process,
a lot of red tape. But I think... By and large,
we're beginning to see a lot of these regulators
now get on board. I think that has been very
helpful as well. Because without spectrum, you
can't run a cellular network. And that is a fundamental
requirement. Yeah. And CBRS has been an important
part of democratizing access in the U .S. But
I think to your point. It varies by geography,
right? Europe is a whole different ball of wax,
European Commission, and how individual countries
manage spectrum as well. So you got to democratize
that spectrum because that's how this all works,
right? Wi -Fi is unlicensed spectrum. So, yeah.
And we should talk about what's happening with
CBRs in the US. There's some political headwinds
around that. Sure. We're recently coming across.
But I think spectrum, that was... Again, a big
impediment, and I think that's by and large solved
in most geographies. There's still a lot of geographies,
especially in particular in Asia, in some of
the countries, Southeast Asia, they still haven't
really specifically allocated spectrum to the
enterprises. But I think they're slowly moving
forward with that strategy. The third one we're
beginning to see is just the idea of... economics
behind private 5g you and i have talked about
that quite a bit in the past right yeah yeah
and we always said that private 5g has to have
wi -fi economics and what i mean by that is look
it it cannot be telco -centric architecture that
naturally drives a very hefty capex and opex
bill of material for you, right? And so it has
to come down to a point where it's not even an
economic decision whether to pick Wi -Fi or 5G.
It's just so easy in terms of making a decision
that, yes, we'll do. We'll do 5G in the warehouse.
We'll do 5G in the parking lot where thousands
of cars are waiting to get shipped out to the
rest of the world for an auto manufacturing companies.
The economics, I think it became much more clearer
in terms of what is the ROI. And it wasn't really
the price points that we were worried about.
Yes, indeed, it did drop over the last three
years. And the way we sold it became much more
articulate in terms of what are we selling as
opposed to what is the bill of material in terms
of CapEx and OpEx. And what happened was a lot
of these pilots start to show the clear and clear
ROI for private 5G systems. And I'll give you
an example. There was an auto manufacturer. that
we worked with and we did a pilot for almost
a year and a half with them and what happened
was they said look we're going to try to do wi
-fi at the same time just to see if the two things
add up and compare with one another the result
was netnet was that the wiring and cabling needed
to do all those wi -fi access points and i'm
talking about For north of a 1 million square
feet of area, you need to put a lot of Wi -Fi
access points. I don't care if you have Wi -Fi
7, 8, 9, 10, you pick any of those. It's a lot,
okay? And one of the big cost items was just
the blue CAT 7 cables going to these access points.
Very expensive. Not only just getting the power
there, but just the cabling there. And you can
get away with power by putting PoE systems, but
it is very expensive. Very expensive. Now, you
compare that to a 5G system, same area, same
outdoor coverage, putting in five, six, maybe
seven at top at most versus thousands. of Wi
-Fi access points. And so not only from a cost
perspective, you've got security ingress issues
where you've got so many ingress points coming
in versus five ingress points. So it became abundantly
clear for many of our customers that, look, this
makes sense. And we're talking use cases like
we want to auto flash all cars. all at the same
time. I need bandwidth. I need coverage. I need
reliability. You get all of those attributes
come in into a 5G network. It made so much sense
for them to do this. Yeah. Yeah. The economics
are compelling because you get to a point, right,
when you were also dealing with outdoor, indoor,
massive spaces where the economics just make
more sense to your point. to have five or six
radios and you've got your core infrastructure
in place. And then the security, like I didn't
really, you brought this point up and it's something
that I didn't really think about, but securing
that as well is a heck of a lot easier when you've
got five or six radios versus thousands of APs.
But I know Anshul's dying to ask you a question
about, about edge, because there's a lot of focus
on modern AI going hybrid and moving to network
edges. He and I have speculated that you need
the 5G low latency and high throughput to make
that all a reality. But Anshul, I'll let you
fire away. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about Edge
AI, how compute is moving closer to the edge,
but also how agentic AI paired with Edge AI is
driving 5G networks and private 5G applications
and what you're seeing. Yeah, Anshul, so we launched
Edge AI just almost eight months ago now. The
whole idea, let's take a step back. What is Edge
AI? And so we're all familiar with ChatGPT. You've
got OpenAI. You've got Gemini. You've got all
from France. You've got a bunch of very large
language models out there today that are, not
to get too technical, but that are huge in terms
of parameters, its supports, and its neural networks.
So to give you some sense, ChatGPT 4 .0. uses
north of 100 billion parameters in its neural
network. So that's all the tokens you need to
parse through a decision tree, right? So essentially,
that's what a neural network is. If then else,
most of the time, it's a probabilistic heuristic
model where it literally guesses what, based
on probabilities, what the next word might be.
You don't need that for a edge. type use case
in a manufacturing setting. So if you think about
a robotic arm that uses a lot of kinematic decision
trees, so it has to decide several different
permutations of moving an arm between different
parts of the conveyor belt. It doesn't require
100 billion parameters. It requires, you know,
maybe a hundred thousand parameters. and tokens
to build a neural network to be able to support
the use cases for that robotic arm. And more
importantly, latency has to be almost zero. Very
ultra low latency is the major requirement, right?
So you don't have the luxury of going to the
cloud where the massive large language model
is and be able to decide on a particular decision.
It has to be very quick. It uses linear programming
models that are mathematical -based as opposed
to language -based. So it's solving for maximizing
a set of parameters and equations as opposed
to figuring out what the next word might be.
So it's fundamentally very different. And so
that's the idea behind edge AI versus a, say,
large language model. Now, in comes agentic AI.
Agentic AI is mainly related to the workflows.
And so what we're talking about, you may have
a workflow around procurement, right, where you
have to approve a set of POs or invoices, right?
And so an agent. could essentially learn all
of those particular business processes. And based
on some rules, it will approve that PO or invoice
to get through. So it's a very IT -centric model
as opposed to edge AI. Again, think of edge AI
as something that might be useful for a drone.
And I was in Japan recently, looked at our chip
set that we just recently came out. That is AI
chipset, but that's not a GPU. It's a regular
old CPU. You can run some of our edge AI models
actually in a Raspberry Pi. Yeah. That's how
small we're talking about. Yeah, you can inference
on an x86. Intel's all about that, right? Yeah.
100%. You can inference a lot of these things
as long as they're small and mathematical -based
as opposed to language -based because that requires
massive processing. Right. And think of a drone,
like an autonomous drone going inside a building
where inferno burning, right? It's burning. It
has to go from point A to point B and come back
to point A. It has to know how to navigate through
and learn. on the fly, no pun intended, as it's
going through and being able to tackle smoke,
fire, other debris, and be able to come back
and report in real time what's happening inside.
And so that requires an AI model. It's got to
fly the plane, right? That's learning and flying
at the same time. That's the mindset or the overall.
architecture we're talking about when we talk
about edge AI. And I think to me, that is still
a market and a technology yet to be completely
understood. I think there's some progress being
made. We're making some good progress with lighting
these up for some of our same P5G customers.
But I think the likes of the big guys like...
OpenAI, Microsoft, I think once they get into
this will blow up, much like Agentech AI has
over the last few months. It's just going to
take time and proof of concepts have to get out
into the wild. And you've got to drive awareness
for that. And I know, Shai, that NTT is focused
on this concept of factory of the future. where
you're taking what you're doing with Edge AI,
you're utilizing private 5G, right? And you're
working with some of the largest companies on
the planet. I've spent time with you and the
team at a Schneider facility, Schneider Electric
facility in Barcelona a few years ago at Mobile
World Congress. Lionel Basil, which is, I believe
they manufacture trains, right? Can you speak
to maybe Schneider and what you're doing there
to enable this whole notion of factory of the
future? Yeah, yeah. No, what is a factory of
the future? And we've been hearing that quite
a bit lately, especially here in the US where
the administration is trying to get all the manufacturing
back in the US. And yet we don't have the labor
workforce to work on it. And so if you think
about that, what does that factory look like?
I think these are mostly dark factories where
you'll have most of the work. done will be done
through robots. And automation is going to be
critical. And actually, if you want to take a
peek of what that world will look like, you just
have to go to China. And there's a lot of movement
and progress being made in terms of what that
factory of the future looks like. A lot of dark
factories, a lot of robotic arms, a lot of automation.
It's amazing. If you have an opportunity, well,
check it out. Actually, you can even go to Taiwan
or Philippines, and they also have been doing
that. If China is not an easy place to get to
these days. If you think about what that world
looks like, connectivity becomes a paramount
capability. And I don't mean this like... just
a private 5G network, but it's the whole fabric
there from the wired infrastructure to the wireless
infrastructure. It is so important that without
it, nothing happens. You could potentially have
the whole factory shut down just because of a
routing table that wasn't properly configured.
And that's something... we are very focused on.
We think as manufacturing moves to the US or
other parts of the world, where they double down
on manufacturing capabilities, where labor workforce
is becoming, they're aging out and re -skilling
them becomes a very challenging proposition.
And so retooling is where we think industrial
companies, manufacturing companies will look
at. Yeah, I think Anshul's got a final question
for you around just access to all this technology,
right? Because it's a high bar. And to your point,
a lot of what's driving. private cellular and
private 5G is moving manufacturing offshore back
into the U .S., right? There are huge investments
in semiconductor production now. Intel's opening
a big fab. They're launching a foundry business,
right? TSMC is investing in the United States
as well and in places like Arizona and others.
But it comes down to democratization. Yeah, this
is a twofer. I wanted to see if you could maybe...
Tell us a little bit about the convergence of
a lot of these wireless technologies and how
that's driving future applications, but also
real -time computing that takes advantage of
the convergence of these for secure communications.
Yeah, that's a great question, Anshul. Actually,
one of the most interesting things we're seeing
is where 5G and Wi -Fi coexist on the same radio.
And I don't mean just two different radios, but
they're actually integrated. To me, that convergence
of 5G, private 5G cellular and Wi -Fi, think
about that in a warehouse setting or factory
setting or even a hospital setting. You can roam,
if you will, or ping pong between the two networks,
depending on how you have configured it. I think
to me, that's going to be very powerful. And
I'm really looking forward to that convergence.
And we're beginning to see some of the OEMs now
really start to launch those kinds of capabilities
and products. Stay tuned for that. And more broadly
speaking, I think from a security standpoint,
we are working with many of our customers. 5G
for us, private 5G for us is a tip of the spear.
As we go to our large, very large customers,
it opens up all kinds of other opportunities
for us. So when we walk in there, typically we
go with private 5G, we end up with transforming
their whole network architecture. And a lot of
it has to do with security. But because as you
start to increase your automation, there's a
lot more security challenges associated with
that, right? You open up OT devices that have
never been opened up or haven't been opened up
in decades. Now you're opening that up too. And
so, yeah, I think where security is going to
be a big part of this, a lot of our A lot of
our network architecture work that we do starts
with that. And it's just, I don't think anybody
has the magic wand to just fix that in one shot.
I think this is an ongoing challenge that's always
going to be around. Yeah, I upgrade this year.
I learned that NTT is the third largest provider
of data center services. So your point around
P5G being the tip of the spear. And I have to
educate a lot of people that NTT is not just
an integrator as well. You've got this bevy of
solutions. You're very deep. You're very broad.
You're working with companies like Cisco. and
others. And it's been really interesting to see
the evolution of the company. And there's been
some consolidation as well. I think there was
the recent news around the operating company
and some consolidation there, which I think has
driven a little bit of, I don't want to say confusion,
but misunderstanding of what NTT does on a global
basis as well. As we wrap things up, do you want
to comment on that point? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Let me first comment on Cisco. We're a longstanding
partner. We're one of the largest partners we
have. In fact, one of the most important things
we did recently with them was embedded our eSIM,
Transatel eSIM, into their Moroccan Catalyst
boxes. So that if you're familiar with Transatel,
it's one of the largest MBNOs in the world. We
have connectivity in 200 different countries.
Think about it. We put that eSIM in every catalyst,
every Meraki box, enabling the enterprises to
be able to provision, configure very quickly.
You open up the Meraki router, right? And you
go to Meraki .com. Immediately, you're connected
without figuring out, hey, I need to have connectivity.
So you can download the configuration and be
done. in like less than five minutes. Powerful,
yeah. Very powerful. And I think you think about
a deployment where you have thousands of Meraki
or Catalyst devices, very easy to provision.
Once you're done with that, and we're giving
away that for first 60 days, be able to connect
right away as a bootstrap. And then after that,
the customer can sign up for a longer term as
a backup solution. Yeah, we... We do a lot of
things. We've got a lot of stuff. And so, yeah,
I think bringing all of our companies together
as one, I think that made so much sense. Yeah.
And I think hopefully we simplify for our customers
all of our offerings all in one. Yeah. Ashad,
you're a busy guy. Thank you for taking the time
to speak with Anshul and I about what NTT is
doing, the innovation that you're driving, not
only with private 5G, but even beyond that, the
data center and that sort of thing. And it's
been a while since we've done a standalone edition
of our podcast. So thanks again for being on.
We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. And
thanks for having me today. Appreciate it. Thanks
a lot. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Take care.