Welcome to episode 229 of the G two on 5G. Soon to be six G. It's the latest insights scoop on everything five and six G. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes, and it's brought to you by more insights and strategy. I'm Will Townsend, and joining me again this week is fellow analyst, an.

Let's get started with my first topic and anal. I just got back from HPE Discover Las Vegas and there were a lot of announcements. In fact, I'm working on a Forbes article. That should be dropping early next week. But I do wanna highlight one aspect of the announcement payload. And it was around HPE Aruba Networking and they're rolling out of a partner program to accelerate its private 5G offering.

So for our viewers and listeners that aren't familiar with what HPE is doing,  they acquired ANet. Two years ago, ANet is a core infrastructure provider and HPE is delivering through its Aruba unit a turnkey solution that includes not only HPE Core. But HPE branded radio access network infrastructure as well in addition to the necessary orchestration and automation software that comes along with that.

And and so what this is all about, it's a competency program for its partners and it's designed to not only accelerate the adoption of HPE solutions, but also to train channel partners. On the nuances of cellular technology because as you and I both know, it's much different than wifi. It involves license spectrum and there are a host of other differences between IT and wifi.

So I like it. Again, I'll be going a little bit deeper in that Forbes article dropping next week. But from my perspective where HPE is really focusing its effort with private cellular is within operational technology environments to do things like we have spoken about on many occasions, manufacturing, automation, logistics, and so on and so forth.

So what do you think about that? I think it's, I don't really know HPEs. Position in the market that well. Yeah. But I do listen to what you have to say. I will say it was impressive that they were at the sphere. Yeah. But in general, I think I think that there's a lot of opportunities for new markets that haven't adopted 5G.

And I think that's where a lot of their business opportunity is. Sure. And yeah, I just think that HPE is well positioned to capture some of that. But I also think that I haven't really heard much from them about six G. Yeah. And I would be interested to see what their thoughts are on that.

'cause, they're obviously still very focused on what's available today and, what's shippable in the next five years. But I would be curious to see what their thoughts are on six G and how they fit into it. Yeah. Certainly, we've been talking about the future of six G.

It's gonna decidedly be AI infused and that was a big theme this year at HPE, discover Las Vegas. A lot of focus on agentic AI and what Aruba networking is doing from an enterprise perspective to drive that. What I like about what they're doing with private 5G is that it's a natural extension from a sales perspective.

With respect to what it's already doing with wifi number one. And the company a few years ago also basically exited its focus on supporting the larger mobile network operators and and sold some of its assets there and really down on enterprise as it's as it's focus and it's smart.

That's why it, a company acquired ANet.  And Dell still with their telecom focus. Dell is still really focusing on the mobile network operators and Dell is not focusing on necessarily enabling private 5G within the enterprise. So it's a different go to market for Dell. Dell's focus is very partner oriented, and again, Dell doesn't necessarily have a private 5G offering that could change in the future.

But but I do really like what HPE is doing. And again, if you wanna learn more, that Forbes article should be dropping hopefully early next week. But with that, let's go to your first topic. You wanna talk about 3G PP release 20 and what that means for 5G Advanced and the future of six G. Yeah, so we touched on this last week a little bit with the meeting in Prague.

But really what 3G PP release 20 is it's like the primer for release 21. And release 21 is the first release of six G. And what we'll see in release 20 is a lot of kind of, additions to 5G Advanced. That will prepare us for six G like wireless ai improving coverage improving mobility with low layer mobility.

There's also gonna be more MIO evolutions. More adjustments to NTN, both for NR and IT there's also gonna be ways to improve how NTN improves for geo as well. Sure. Not just LDO. Yeah. And then there's also like ambient iot, more XR stuff. More power improvements and AI and ran protocol enhancements for XR to lower latency.

And then there's also some integrated sensing, which is again, stuff that we're talking about with six G. Yeah. And yeah it's a whole host of things. Better coverage. I think I mentioned that. And then, yeah. Even some, self-organizing network stuff as well. A lot of things that are setting the stage for six G but also incremental improvements over the current release 18 and release 19 5G Advance.

For people who don't remember 5G Advance is five and a half G. On the way to six G. So it starts with 18, 19, and 20. And then 21 becomes six G. That's where we're at today. And this meeting happened weeks ago, but more and more companies and people are talking about what came out of that meeting and what are some of the important things.

Because what it does is release 20 also re launches out of the six G technical study items. Yeah. And sets the stage for what needs to be worked on. 60 radio as a new technology platform. And then focusing on performance, but also talking about spectrum and making sure that all of those things are getting set up in advance for release 21 so that when release 21 comes out, it's already been worked on for quite some time.

Yeah. And the timing is about right because if you remember when we were talking about, when we started really talking about 5G was about five years beforehand. Yeah. And that was when we really had like meaningful things to talk about. How to move forward from 4G to 5G. And now we're talking about from moving from 5G to six G, which is why I think, in the coming weeks or months, we'll probably transition this to being a six G podcast that also talks about 5G.

Yeah. We we teed up with our viewers and listeners, we didn't get a lot of responses on.  On the rebranding there, but what I'm gonna be very interested in is to see how two things shake out. One, the integration of ai, generative and agent. I posted something on LinkedIn a few weeks ago about the transformative potential of AI infused, ran obvious Nvidia is driving a lot of this discussion, but there are others.

Op Pena Networks that you and I have spoken to in the past that are doing that as well. So it'll be interesting to see like what gets, codified from a modern AI perspective. And then the other piece, 'cause you and I have speculated on this one for quite some time what is that spectrum profile gonna look like?

Is it gonna be terahertz likely? But it'll all be really interesting. I don't know from my perspective. I agree with you. We're on a similar track that we saw with 5G, but I feel like we're a little ahead of the curve. Would you agree with that? As far as early investigations and videos involvement?

Would you agree with that?  I would say that the, here's the thing. I think we're actually on the same path.  Yeah, I think companies are just being more open about what research they've been doing. On six G compared to 5G. Yeah. I think there was a lot more careful exploration with 5G behind closed doors.

Sure. And I think because 5G was so competitive that a lot of people are hopping on the six G. Messaging bandwagon a little earlier than they did with 5G. Yeah. And maybe even a little prematurely in some scenarios. Sure. But yeah, I think I think we're very much on the same trajectory.

Okay. But I think there's been a little bit more openness on that sense.  Okay. That's fair assessment.  Hey, so let's go to my second topic. I wanna talk about T-Mobile and they had a big announcement on Monday. So I was able to catch this before I got involved with with all of the goings on with HPE at Discover. 

But what I wanna talk about, there are several sort of aspects to this launch, but I wanna talk about T Satellite. T-Mobile officially unveiled their direct to device service.  And it's been in beta for some time, you were able to test it, you talked about that on a prior podcast.

I didn't realize that the fuse was about to go out. Because I'm gonna be in Alaska next month and Utah at the end of this month. And we're at the end of July. I'll I'll probably have to pay for the service there, but. It was a livestream event, T-Mobile, they're just, the, they're just so good at, packaging things and, their CEO, Mike Seavert was and Olf was there as well talking about what they're doing here.

But the big headline is that t Satellite with starlink is set to be commercially available on July 23rd. And at launch we'll include SMS texting. MMS picture messaging and short audio clip support. And then additionally, the company shared that on October 1st, T satellite will launch a data service to allow application experiences on the satellite network.

So this is big news. I'm gonna talk about a ST space mobile with as my third topic to balance this out. I know that you were able to tune in as well, I believe. What was your take on that and maybe what was your take on some of the other stuff that T-Mobile talked about? Yeah, so that's technically my second topic, so I'll roll in.

There you go.  Let's do, so one, I was really surprised that they were gonna launch data in October. Yeah. I, what you did miss was the free emergency 9 1 1 for anyone. So anyone on any network can utilize satellite for emergency messaging or emergency calls. And then on top of that, what I do think is a big deal.

Is they are doing database services and they're already working with AccuWeather, all trails, apple, Google, WhatsApp, and Twitter. So those are the early developers who are already engaging with them. So that way they can do like low data rate communications. Yeah. Which I think would be really dope.

I would love to be able to do like tweets from my phone over satellite. For sure. That'd be very annoying too. But the other stuff that they talked about was free dash pass. All T-Mobile customers get free DoorDash dash pass for a year. Which is a 20 value. They also launched like an easy upgrade plan for people who are leaving other networks.

But really the big stuff for me was. They were able to get okla to certify that they are the best network in America. And then as a follow on to that, OpenSignal also gave them nine awards for having a good, or one of the best, if not the best 5G network. Clearly they are leading with advanced features.

Capabilities on satellite and on 5G. Remember that their satellite network is technically a 4G LTE network, right? And yeah, it, I mean I used it. I was pretty satisfied with it. I wish I hadn't dropped my phone in the lake. I will say my one plus that I have today, this is not compatible with satellite services.

I would love to see more phones added to the.  Repertoire of devices supported. I did just get the new Moto Razor 2025 Ultra, which has 16 gigs of ram and one terabyte of storage. Damn. That's crazy. And I feel like that has to support satellite, but I haven't looked into that one yet. But yeah I think they really rolled out the carpet on Monday.

Yeah. But I do think more people should know about the emergency 9 1 1 texting for any mobile customer on any network with a compatible device. Yeah, that is something I think everyone should know. I also think that like you should probably sign up for the service if you're gonna be in places without service.

I can tell you it gave me a little bit more of a sense of comfort Sure. Knowing that I could reach someone if I needed help. Yeah. And, especially with a, a rental car and a kid in the back, all, just adds more stress to the situation. So having at least that taken care of makes you feel a little bit better.

I agree. And I think eventually that's gonna become, that's gonna become table stakes. And I do believe that it's just gonna take some time, but even, value price pointed equipment. We'll have that capability and that feature as well. And, not that we need the federal government to mandate that, but there could be you're first.

Yeah. But hey man let me hit my third and final topic. And so I'm gonna balance out the space race here and. I'm sure our fans with the space model will appreciate this, but I wanna talk about a ST space mobile and they're claiming the first NTN defense communications proof of concept.

I did, this was all over the news, but Mobile World Live did a great writeup on it. Now they're collaborating with a privately held company called Fairwinds Technologies. And so what this is all about is. A field test use case, including real-time connectivity to a tactical assault kit, attack over A VPN for obvious reasons, because this is defense communications and secure multi-party video calls all completed on a standard unmodified smartphone. 

So you and I have talked about the military sort of aspects of integrating low earth orate satellite into terrestrial networks. And this is pretty exciting. The specifics were it was  conducted near space Mobile's Gateway facility in Oahu, Hawaii. And I think they've used the same facility for some other firsts, right?

The video, the first video call and the first text message and that sort of thing. But Fairwinds is basically, I believe, a military contractor and so that, that's why they were involved here. And but anyway, I think, at a very high level, it's just demonstrating the use cases.

And I've, I've had, time with Abel, the CEO, and he couldn't go into a lot of details be because of obviously confidentiality and that sort of thing. But but there are definitely military sort of aspects and opportunities that are tied to what what he's architecting with with a ST space mobile.

So what do you think, man, I'm sure you're not surprised to hear this.  No, defense contractors are extremely important to most technology companies, especially communications. Yeah. Pretty much every major communications company of some sort or another that works with defense in some capacity.

Providing coverage and access to service in places where it doesn't exist. Yeah. I think that's generally a good thing to have accessible to defense. And yeah, and then that also ratchets up the type of security that you need for your network. And what kind of protocols you have to have in place to ensure Yeah.

Defense, grade security. Yeah. And I've, yeah. And you've gotta, you've gotta encrypt this stuff and not just rely on the, the basic encryption. That's found in LTE and 5G. Now, there are, there are solutions. Ericsson and Nokia have demonstrated solutions.

These backpack, a complete net, cellular network in a backpack, not in a box. But from my perspective, what a ST space mobile is demonstrating here provides a lot of scalability. And from my perspective can compliment what others are doing with, these solutions in a backpack or solutions in a box.

But hey man. With that, we're gonna get your third and final topic. You wanna talk about EchoStar and they keep asking for more time, right? When it comes to bankruptcy,  they bought themselves more time. Yeah. They made $500 million in debt interest payments, I. According to their eight k filing this happened today which means that they are now electing to not make a payment for their July 1st due date, which gives them a 30 day grace period until they're in delinquency.

So it'll be interesting to see what this is. This seems like a very. High stakes game of chicken, which actually is what exactly fierce Network said. And I agree with that. It really sounds like that they're like, oh, we're not gonna make a payment. We're gonna make a payment and then we're not gonna make a payment.

We're gonna make a payment. This is if I am a EchoStar shareholder, I'm pretty pissed. Oh, do you? It's ridiculous man. And it's it's, but I also think like throwing good money after bad, don't you think? I also think it's insane that the FCC chairman is wielding the amount of power that he is.

Yeah. And this all started when Carr sent a letter to Eric in questioning whether EchoStar is living up to its 5G network build out obligations. And how much of its spectrum it's actually using. And that just happens to be a band that Elon Musk wants access to for starlink.

I really question the transparency of this and whether or not this is really a problem. But I also don't really think it's the greatest idea for a company to be playing chicken like this. Yeah. And, I don't know. I think stuff like Trump bubble is also influencing.

Some of the ways these things are being done we shouldn't even have something like that. But, that's how I felt about last week's podcast. Yeah. And he claims that he'd found out about Trump Mobile through the press release, but I don't buy that. Yeah. 'cause I know for a fact that they would've at least asked him something about.

Cellular networks since he's the chairman of the SEC. And APA had a much closer relationship with the Trump administration and that guy wasn't even remotely as much of a pro-Trump guy as KA is. So I don't buy that. But yeah, I just think it's weird that there's conversations that Carr's having with Trump and Ergen at the White House.

I don't really know what they're trying to achieve, but I just think that they're trying to strong arm an American company Yeah. That has been around for a long time and maybe they've fallen out of favor in certain ways and, we both have criticized this company for spectrum squatting among other things, but I also think it's wild that this is even happening.

And I just think that EchoStar should not be part of this Trump mobile thing. But I feel like there's gonna be something, or 'cause it sounds like they wanna strike a deal of some sort and I don't understand what deal needs to be struck, so I know. Yeah. Yeah. I'm frustrated with it.

I think a lot of people are. Yeah. But the idea that they're going bankrupt or micro bankrupt because of this whole thing is also crazy. And  I just want it to be resolved so we can stop talking about it. Yeah, just stop talking about them and hey, I'm a former dish, subscriber customer.

It's been many years I had that, that satellite dish, on a couple of houses over the years, but like from my perspective, they just really haven't, changed with the times. They went about, acquiring all of the spectrum. You and I have been critical about, the squatting on that.

And it's just been a slow roll. I. And, three, four years ago it looked like, Hey, they might really pull it off. They were working with Rakuten, their, symphony. They were working with Cisco, and it seemed like everyone on the planet had a vested interest in wanting them to succeed.

And if you remember, if our viewers and listeners remember, T-Mobile had to divest, a lot of stuff to, to provide an even playing field for them to compete. And despite all of that.  They just haven't, they haven't delivered. So anyway, yeah, I'm with you. Like I just hope this thing gets resolved so that we don't have to keep beating this dead horse but with that, my friend, why don't you take us home?

Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topic's interesting. If anyone out there would like to provide insights specific for a specific 5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out to us on social media. Wills at Will  and I'm at.  We hope you have a great weekend, and please tune it again next week.