Welcome to episode 228 of the G2 on 5G. It's
the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G. We
cover six topics in about 20 minutes. It's brought
to you by More Insights and Strategy. I'm Will
Townsend, and joining me again this week is fellow
analyst Anshul Sag. Let's get started with my
first topic, and I want to talk about Trump Mobile
launching a gold 5G service. But the question
is, is it solid gold, my friend? We're going
to follow the rule of thumb that we don't talk
about politics. We don't weigh in with our opinion
on that or religion or sex. That's the three
things that you don't talk about at a cocktail
party. But let's examine this service. So it
was just launched. It comes with an unlimited
plan at a cost of cleverly derived $47 .45. That
represents, obviously, the fact that Trump is
the 45th and the 47th. 7th U .S. president. Now,
initially, there's no equipment, but there are
plans for a golden hue Trump T1 phone, which
is going to feature an Android 15 operating system,
a 6 .8 -inch touchscreen with 120 hertz refresh
rate at a price of $499. Now, you know, this
is an MVNO. It's being supported by all three
carriers, although the website doesn't specify
who those are. We can guess who those folks are,
AT &T, T -Mobile, and Verizon. And other than
that, they are touting that customer service
will be based in the United States. But beyond
that, there isn't a lot of substance that I see
to this. So what are your non -political tinged
thoughts about this? You're speechless, I know.
There's a thing called the Hatch Act, violating
that wildly. ignoring all the massive violations
of the law and how this is just bleeped out.
I don't know how else to say it. It's just another
grift. I don't see there being anything of any
value here for anyone outside of the Trump circle
of influence. I can't say that I would recommend
this to any consumer. To be using T -Mobile's
network to show coverage, which makes sense because
T -Mobile has the best coverage for 5G. It just,
I don't know, it just seems like a grift. Yet
another grift. The phone is a Chinese phone.
Is it really? Oh, for sure. Here's the thing.
You cannot manufacture a phone rapidly, especially
a branded one, without using a Chinese white
label OEM. I heard that they were supposedly
going to. use some other company to do the software
and the hardware in the US eventually. But the
truth is that in order to build a proper smartphone,
nine times out of 10, you are going to be building
it in China. I would say right now that this
is just another way for the Trump family to enrich
themselves to no real benefit to consumers. Yeah,
there isn't a lot of substance to this. It will
be interesting. And if it is a Chinese handset.
If it ever happens. Yeah, that would fly in the
face of the convention, I think, of what they're
trying to do here. Now, this is a Mobile World
Live article. I mean, it's been all over the
news, obviously, but it was interesting. At the
end of the article, Mobile World Live speaks
to. The fact that a financial disclosure form
filed on the 13th of January reflected that President
Trump has generated more than $600 million in
revenue and income from selling eventually this
5G service. But this includes watches. I've seen
those. Bibles, shoes, fragrances, a coffee table
book. Hunter Biden was taking advantage of dad
in office and selling finger paints for unreasonable
sums of money as well. But yeah, it's interesting.
There isn't a lot of value here. It'll be interesting
to see what handset materializes. They say it's
going to come in the next couple of months. But
yeah, I thought we had to hit it. From my perspective,
this is electroplated gold. It's not solid gold.
But hey, let's move to a more positive. topic,
your first topic, and you had an extended weekend
with your daughters and your wife, and you were
testing satellite service on Father's Day. So
I want to hear your input here because I plan
to do this with some demo equipment that I have
when I'm in Utah at the end of July doing a Ford
Performance driving school, but I'll let you
take it away. So I will tell you the beta is
over, so you're going to have to pay for the
service. Oh, shit. I managed to sneak in right
before the beta was over on T -Mobile. But yeah,
it was really interesting because I fully took
as many devices with me as I could. I don't have
a bunch of the same device. So not all of the
devices actually were satellite compatible. For
example, the Pixel device I had is a Pixel 9a.
That doesn't have satellite connectivity, but
the Pixel 9 does. That was already a fail on
my part, but also a fail on their part because
I think... There's not enough devices that support
these satellite services yet, and it's a very
small number of devices, mostly the newest flagships.
So that's something to consider with this whole
satellite discussion is that we need to have
this in all devices, not just the flagships.
Now, my T -Mobile experience was interesting
because it automatically switched to the satellite
service for me as I was driving in and out of
coverage. When I left cell coverage with T -Mobile,
it told me, hey, you're now on T -Mobile satellite.
Just enjoy messaging. And here's your service.
Interestingly enough, once I got to the campsite,
the service wasn't really working. Like I wasn't
able to send messages. I wasn't really getting
messages. Then the next morning on Father's Day,
I woke up to a bunch of text messages thanks
to the satellite messaging. But I was not sleeping
outside. I was actually in the cabin because
we went to the cabin. So it actually works indoors,
which I was really surprised by because. I was
under the impression that it needed to be outdoors
and have some kind of a view of the sky. I also
had a Verizon device with me, an iPhone 16 Pro,
which does have satellite messaging thanks to
Apple and Verizon. But that required me, one,
to be outdoors. Two, it required the cell network
to not be operational. And the problem was that
Verizon actually did have coverage there, but
it was so poor that I never got a message out.
So I struggled to get any texts out at all, whether
it was over satellite. or overseller because
I was always like edging between the 4G network
and the satellite, which was a problem. And then
I did have an AT &T device with me, but it wasn't
an AT &T certified device for satellite. But
one of my friends had an iPhone and he was able
to use it. And one, he was able to use it in
the woods, which was where we were staying, where
we were sitting. So he didn't have to find a
clearing like you have to do with the Apple service.
But also what was really interesting was he was
like, yeah, like it just worked. Like I didn't
have to align it for anything. It just worked.
So I would say AT &T T -Mobile definitely had
a good experience and it's cool to see because
actually my friend who had the AT &T service
found out through a text message he got on the
campsite that his landlord was coming by to do
some kind of inspection and he wouldn't have
known to come home earlier if he didn't have
that text message. So I wouldn't have had my
friends and family wishing me happy Father's
Day. He wouldn't have known about his landlord.
So it's really nice to have these satellite services
that aren't necessarily for emergency use cases
always. But I was also thinking if my car broke
down on these mountain roads where I have no
cells, it would have been totally like my mind
was like, this is minimum just for roadside assistance
and not like I'm pretty satisfied with the experience
that I had. There's room for improvement. I think
not all solutions are equal. More devices should
be supported. And I will have my thoughts on
this coming up pretty soon. I already typed up
an outline of what I want to say. So it'll be
probably in the next week or so. But yeah, I
think overall, great experience. Only thing that's
a big bummer is that I dropped my S25 Ultra in
the lake while I was skiing. My testing was limited
to a day of service due to my own study. You
had a lot of fun, it sounds like. You're on jet
skis. That's pretty cool. And I got a good tan.
And you got a good tan. Cool. We're going to
continue this theme with my second topic, and
I want to talk about a recent announcement between
ASC Space Mobile and Vodafone collaborating for
direct -to -device connectivity in India. And
we've talked about ASC Space Mobile numerous
times on the podcast, and it's no secret. We've
also talked about the fact that both AT &T and
Vodafone and Google have made investments in
ast space mobile as they continue to launch their
bluebird satellites and continue to build their
constellations so i just want to provide a quick
overview of what was announced so this is actually
vodafone idea which is vodafone's operating business
unit in india and to no surprise they're partnering
with ast space mobile they're leveraging what
ast space mobile is doing From their satellite
broadband platform perspective, we have talked
about that in the past. And the initial focus,
it is a huge market, right? Over 1 .1 billion
people. Companies like Reliance, Jio have done
a fantastic job using software -defined technology
with Core and RAN and Open RAN to quickly deploy
both LTE and 5G networks. Those are in major
metropolitan areas, highly densely populated
urban centers and that sort of thing. And so
there's still a rural digital divide, just like
there is in the United States. So initially,
this focus is on expanding connectivity in rural
regions. And it is definitely a partnership.
So obviously with ASC Space Mobile managing the
satellite, the integration with that infrastructure,
and then what Vodafone Idea will be doing is
obviously managing the integration with terrestrial
spectrum and that sort of thing. So nothing earth
shattering from that partnership, but this just
further demonstrates. the strength of the relationship
between both ASC Space Mobile and Vodafone Group
in expanding into supporting India in rural use
cases. There may not be much more for you to
comment on, but what are your thoughts here?
No, I think that's about it. It's great to see
more connectivity access across the world. And
I think there's always room for improvement and
satellite seems to be the right way to reach
the most people. The problem is that I think
that... There's a cap on what you can really
do today. And I want to make sure that people
don't overestimate what satellite can do. And
that satellite is not the only solution, nor
is fiber, nor is FWA. It's a combination of all
three. Copper is dead. Yeah, no, it's a good
point. I think what you shared, your experience
doing the testing over Father's Day weekend is
a good example of that. So it's still nascent.
And it's going to take time for companies like
AST Space Mobile, Starlink, what Amazon is doing
as well, and then the narrowband IoT use cases
like Satellite and others that we've talked about
as well to get the proper constellation coverage
in low Earth orbit to make all this a reality.
But it is very promising. Again, it's going to
play a critical element in bridging the digital
divide, especially in... very lower populated
parts of the world. So exciting stuff. And that's
going to unlock a lot of use cases around agriculture
technology. And you and I have talked about that
many times on this podcast. But with that said,
let's go to your second topic. And you want to
talk about T -Mobile and their partnership with
the WPGA. Yes. So there is the WPGA championship
in Frisco, Texas this weekend. It actually starts
today. yeah north texas yeah and this will leverage
this is a continuation of t -mobile's partnership
with the pga the wpga and just in general with
golf and the what they're trying to do is be
a showcase for the future of golf technology
this is a combination of all kinds of new technologies
and features that the pga wants to implement
in partnership with t -mobile and their 5g advanced
network solutions so they're doing a autonomous
driving range ball picker that uses 5g to connect
to ai and automate ball collection so you don't
have to have a person out there doing that anymore
but it was always fun to try to hit that person
with a golf ball when you're teeing off right
sure but it's cheaper it's cheaper not to have
to pay a person and safer true then you have
a real -time swing analysis that uses 5g through
Sportbox AI coaching tools. There's a mixed reality
putting simulator that connects golfers to the
putt view system through 5G to help golfers train
their short game in new ways. And then there's
an AI powered video highlight thanks to autonomous
video system from RealGolf that uses T -Mobile's
5G to connect smart cameras that capture T -degree
shots at hole 10. So there's that plus all the
broadcast stuff that they're doing to enable
smoother broadcast, lower latencies. Interesting,
it's on the 10th, 12th, and 15 holes. So it's
not on every hole, but I think that the later
holes tend to be the more challenging ones and
the ones people are more interested in. But yeah,
they're talking about how women's golf is growing
and how enabling better broadcasts in a partnership
with KPMG, who's like the big sponsor, to improve
the fan experience, but also improve the broadcast.
And I think T -Mobile is really leaning in on
golf. as a sport that they enable. And we know
Mel went to see what they're doing a few weeks
ago and wrote about that on Forbes. There's a
lot going on with T -Mobile and golf. They also
had the SailGP, which we talked about last week.
I wish, I still wish I had gone to that, but
T -Mobile was really showing how they can enable
better broadcast experiences for all kinds of
sports. Obviously they're not as closely tied
to the NFL as Verizon is. or the NHL as Verizon
is, everybody's got to pick their leagues and
their sports. And T -Mobile also has a lot of
stuff on F1. So it's really exciting to see growing
leagues and new technologies enabling that growth
with T -Mobile. Yeah, so I think they're purposely
picking things like F1 and golf, and here's why
I think they are. So when you look at the NFL
and you look at the NBA and you look at the NHL,
typically... These are in venues or Major League
Baseball. These are in venues that already have
the requisite infrastructure in place, right?
Wi -Fi, fiber, that sort of thing. But when you
contrast that with golf, with F1, with NASCAR,
what ends up happening is some of those venues
do have infrastructure. But a lot of them do
not. Like Circuit of the Americas in Austin has
fiber infrastructure. They built a private, not
a private network, but they've invested in and
ran and that sort of thing. But in a lot of like
for the WPGA and the PGA, these are at country
clubs that don't have. the requisite networking
infrastructure. And so this is where I think
5G really shines. So that's my hypothesis there.
That's why I believe T -Mobile is being selected.
But let me ask you a question. You may not have
dug deep enough into this particular announcement
to answer the question. I don't mean to put you
on the spot, but I did read in the announcement
that there were some new sort of unique broadcast
capabilities. that they're planning to showcase
in Frisco over the weekend. Did you pick up on
anything that was net near relative to what they've
already been doing with the PGA? Yeah, they said
it'll be advanced T -stats like ball speed, shot
apex, and distance in the live broadcast. They'll
have real -time data and be able to demonstrate
that on the broadcast as opposed to in the past
or as a replay, which is cool. That is cool.
Okay, cool. Yeah, I didn't catch that. So I appreciate
you clarifying that. Cool. Hey, let's go hit
my third and final topic quickly. And I want
to talk about Nokia. And they dropped an announcement
yesterday around their launch of an autonomous
network fabric and what they think it can do
to help customers accelerate network automation.
Let me back up a little bit. I've been spending
a lot of time with Nokia. I think I've spoken
about this possibly on other podcasts, but...
They commissioned the firm and myself to examine
what they're doing with their autonomous networks
platform. And so the result of that was a paper
that you can find on the More Insights and Strategy
website. There were also two follow -up analyst
insights where I went a little bit deeper. I
believe one was within what they're doing for
security, and the second, I believe, was automation.
But what I really like about their most recent
announcement is that What they're doing is they're
very focused on a fabric. And so for our viewers
and listeners that aren't familiar with what
fabrics are, typically a fabric, it's a network
layer, but then there's integration into that
layer. And primarily it's security. And you're
seeing this happen with a lot of infrastructure
providers. I was just at Cisco Live last week.
Shameless plug for my Forbes article that posted
yesterday. If you're interested in learning more
about what broke at Cisco, because there was
a ton of stuff that was announced around agentic
AI, go read that on Forbes. with respect to network
automation this is what agentic ai is all about
it's about agents so it's moving from generative
which is that natural language interface co -pilot
thing that i think everyone's been kicking the
tires on whether it's grok or it's chat gpt or
whatever it's pretty amazing right but the whole
notion of agent agents and having agents and
again this is ai using data to train agents to
work with other agents. In the future, you're
going to have super agents that are interfacing
with other agents. That opens a whole challenge
with respect to identity access management and
permissioning and that sort of thing. But there
are companies like Cisco's OutShift organization
that are focused on the Internet of Agents. Nokia
is also focused on this as well. But basically
what this does is you're integrating security
into the networking layer. That creates a fabric.
And on top of that, You start imbuing that with
agentic AI and that can drive automation at scale.
Because again, you're removing what the way that
I like to position it is you are removing humans
from the loop, but humans are on the loop. So
in other words, humans aren't managing the task.
So allow AI to do that at speed, but be on the
loop so that you can monitor that. You can ensure
that it's properly within guardrails. There are
also tools that allow you to do that as well
from a security and a connectivity standpoint.
But I really like what Nokia is doing. So they
launched their autonomous network platform. It's
been a year plus. Just yesterday, they're launching
a fabric that should, in my mind, accelerate
automation. And the final thing I'll leave our
viewers and listeners with is that. They do believe
that by 2026 that they expect, and there wasn't
a lot of detail behind this, but I guess based
on a current customer proof of concepts and early
preview and the feedback that they're getting,
they're expecting to see the adoption curve ramp
pretty significantly by 2026. Do I agree with
that statement? What I have seen over the last
several years, because I also focus on enterprise
networking infrastructure. that for the longest
time network operators have wanted to monitor
that they wanted the easy button they weren't
comfortable fully automating that sort of thing
but as ai proves itself slowly as i speak with
customers now they're they're basically deploying
automation to handle some of those highly repetitive
non -value -added tasks and so I believe that
Nokia's ambitions are reasonable. It'll be interesting
to see what really transcends here. But on a
final note, what I'll also mention too, in addition
to what I mentioned with the agents and the security
integration of the network layer, what Nokia
is also doing is focusing on cross -domain correlated
data products, telco -trained models, both large
language models. smaller language models and
machine learning. And they're also integrating
security in all this. So it's pretty exciting.
The whole promise of the Gentic AI is pretty
exciting. And again, if you want to learn a little
bit more about what I discovered at Cisco Live,
go hit my Forbes link. But with that said, what
do you think? Do you think Nokia's ambitions
are going to be too aggressive here to get to
this by 2026? I think that they probably will.
But it's a question of whether they'll get customers
or if it's mature enough. But I do think it's
interesting that everybody has some kind of a
fabric nowadays. Fabrics are sexy. Fabric is
the new hotness. I think the word fabric has
lost its meaning. But nonetheless, I do think
a lot of these networks are AI accelerated. And
it definitely seems like AI is at the core of
everything. yeah that kind of leads me into our
next topic so i'll stop there yeah no that's
great take it away my friend i've spoken too
much yeah right now we're seeing a lot of activity
on 6g and we are really getting into the point
where everybody's talking about 6g in some kind
of meaningful manner so it's a little bit less
hype now there was recently a 3gpp plenary in
prague Through its technical specification group,
TSG, that happened a week ago, and it's when
they started to actually discuss the work, the
study items, and really get into the nitty -gritty
of what 6G should be. There will be a normative
specification that will happen in 2027, and the
first 6G specification will be frozen around
December of 2028. And the expectation is that
commercial 6G launches will happen in 2029. So
we're about four years away from the launch of
6G. But there are going to be gateways along
the way and checkpoints, if you want to call
them, to understand where we're going. But I
also wanted to add some other topics. There's
a MIT just came out last week with a photonics
processor that could streamline 6G wireless process
signaling or signal processing. Sorry. And that
would allow for faster. They're saying the photonics
chip is 100 times faster than its next best digital
alternative. While converging about 95 % of accuracy
in signal classifications, this is a big thing
for much faster networks. And it'll be interesting
to see what happens there. Also, in addition
to that, the NIST, which is the National Institute
for Science and Technology, they're also talking
about 6G and how they want to see things. evolve
and the three core things that they're talking
about are propagation and spectrum metrology
open architecture security and ai and using the
network as a sensor which i think is really interesting
because you could use that for things like autonomous
robots and drones and all kinds of things that
might be able to be positioned more accurately
with the network through triangulation and really
low latency networking which leads me to an article
that I saw yesterday, which was about China leveraging
6G as a electronic warfare weapon to jam fighter
jets. This is a story that's been spreading around
the internet. I don't know why they've really
focused on the F -35, but they're claiming that
this X -band at 12 gigahertz could potentially
allow for it to create false targets to confuse
pilots. And that this, I think this is something
that might be overblown a little bit, but they're
talking about how some of these 6G capabilities
could potentially jam aircraft. And obviously
there's plenty of articles out there that are
overselling this capability, but it is interesting
that the spectrum bands that are being utilized
will probably be broader than ever, and there
will probably be more advanced capabilities in
the network. And I honestly, I don't think fighter
jets are the problem, actually. I think drones
are the problem. we've already seen and heard
ukrainians using russian cellular networks to
deliver drones to their targets i do think security
will be a big thing for 6g and i think it'll
be important that it'd be difficult for an actor
to utilize a 6G network for a drone attack. That's
where I'm at with 6G. But I wanted to ask you
and our audience, should we start to talk 6G
more than 5G since we're already past the 5G
advanced phase and most likely we'll be getting
6G based news and developments and research.
And maybe we should just transition the podcast
after five years to a 6G podcast. Yeah, we're
considering the rebranding. We're five years
into this. It seems like 6G is rapidly approaching.
And so we invite our viewers and listeners to
provide feedback directly to Anshul and I or
on the various channels where we post this. Let
me conclude with some final thoughts around your
topic, Anshul. So I totally agree. A higher level
of security beyond encryption. will likely become
part of the 6G standard. With 5G new radio, there
was enhanced encryption. If NIST is getting involved,
I'm sure they're weighing in with their desire
to see some sort of zero trust network access
or zero trust, least privilege access. imbued
in whatever security standard rolls forward.
NIST has defined what they believe to be a complete
zero -trust architecture. That's number one.
Number two, you touched on silicon photonics.
So for our viewers and listeners, if that's a
little too technical, basically that's the underlying
technology that supports optical and fiber. There
is something called co -packaged optics that
at GTC, NVIDIA, has now lit a firestorm around
with lots of investigations. NVIDIA is not the
only one in town that can do CPO. You've got
Marvell. Intel can do it as well. But basically
what co -packaged optics do is that it provides
some efficiencies in collapsing the number of
components that can be integrated. That does
a couple of things. Not only does it improve
the performance and the throughput and the latency,
but it also reduces costs. And it lowers power
consumption, which is a very important consideration,
especially when you're looking at all of these
very AI -hungry workloads. I loved your topic
this week, man. So I do expect that we're going
to see some zero -trust security goodness in
future 6G standards, as well as some evolution
of photonics to lower power, improve performance,
and lower costs at the same time. But with that
said, 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 or 6G topic for a future podcast, please reach
out to us on social media. Will is at Will .Tech,
and I'm at Anshul Saag. We hope you have a great
weekend, and please tune in again next week.