And we are live. Welcome to episode 233. Boy,
that's a lot of episodes, Anshul. Of the G2 on
5G. It's the latest Insight Scoop on everything
5G and 6G. We cover six topics in about 20 minutes
and it's brought to you by More Insights and
Strategy. I'm Will Townsend and joining me again
this week is fellow analyst Anshul Sag. Let's
get started with my first topic. I'm talking
about a lot of infrastructure because that's
my coverage area. I want to talk about Telefonica
and no surprise. They are phasing out Huawei
in Spain and Germany, but not Brazil. This is
very interesting. Most mobile network operators
are selling wholesale across the board with the
rip and replace of Chinese infrastructure. Obviously,
in the EU and in Spain and Germany, that is a
requirement. Telefonica is heeding that requirement.
But Brazil doesn't have those same stipulations,
and so they're keeping Huawei infrastructure
in place. So I find this really interesting from
my perspective. And I haven't spoken with Telefonica
management, but they're obviously not concerned
about Huawei using its infrastructure in Brazil
for spy activity and nefarious other sorts of
things there. So I just, I find it really interesting
that they're one of the few European operators
that are cherry picking what they do regionally.
And obviously there's significant expense in
ripping and replacing this infrastructure. One
of the ways that ZTE and Huawei did get their
foothold in places like Europe and places like
the African continent was that they came in with
just incredibly low cost core infrastructure
and rent infrastructure and transport infrastructure
to do that. So what do you think about this whole
cherry pick scenario with Telefonica? The way
I describe it is peachy. I think that when you
look at what they do, it's very much about cost.
and regulatory environment, and the regulators
don't have a policy in place, why wreck and replace?
Why subject yourself to the cost? But apparently
they're not concerned in Brazil about any sort
of concerns around spying and sweeping and that
sort of thing. I think every carrier, whether
they're a multinational or a single national,
they have different strategies based on the countries
that they operate in. Yeah, based on ARPU, right?
Some country, it's going to be the average revenue
per user is going to be lower, right? Yeah, and
not just that, but also the regulatory environment.
AT &T operates differently in the U .S. than
they do in Mexico. And, you know, I'm sure Vodafone
operates differently in every single region that
they're in. So I think that's part of it, is
like Telefónica is actually quite large. And
they are... following the lead of what the regular
regulators have pushed them. No, that's a good
point. It's a cost balance. It's a regulatory
balance. Yeah. And it's interesting because we've
been talking about this for many years. It's
one of those situations where, you know, when
the U .S. government first brought this up and
the concern, it was we have grave concerns, but
we can't share those concerns. It's one of those
situations where they could tell us they'd have
to kill us. One of those, you first buy. type
scenarios. So we, you know, we may never know
the extent. Bottom line, I'm not going to defend
Wale, but the infrastructure providers don't
manage the daily operation of infrastructure.
It's mobile network operators that do that. And
there are tons of tools, observability tools,
monitoring tools that allow them to monitor anomalous
activity. And there's also a huge scrutiny on
cybersecurity controls as well within mobile
networks because They're just so massive and
there's so many devices and they are difficult
to secure. You and I recently, we spent time
with Zscaler on our standalone episode and we
were talking about what they're doing with a
secure SIM. But yeah, it's all super interesting.
You want to go to your first topic and I did
catch some news on this and also caught some
news from the FCC, but once again, EchoStar and
DISH are avoiding default. Yeah, so. I'm going
to use the term that our friends at FierceNet
did, which is Echo Star Dish Boost Mobile. And
yes, they made a payment that was originally
due on July 1st, which avoids default because
it's within 30 days. This was yesterday. Truly,
if I were someone giving debt or financing debt,
I would not be dealing with them. But their stock
did pop 8 % yesterday. as a result of an 8K filing
that said that Dish was the entity that made
the scheduled interest payment that was originally
due on July 1st. And they also said that they're
still negotiating with the FCC related to the
Chairman Carr's concern. And I see this as a
negotiating tactic and as a stalling tactic.
And it's quite clear that they are negotiating
because... Kars mentioned his discussions with
Dish and Charlie Ergen, but also it might be
that the Trump administration sees Dish as an
opportunity to free up more spectrum for auctions.
It's really unclear what will happen here because
a lot of people are saying that the AK filing
is pretty vague, but I think we're really in
a place, I think the company as a whole is in
limbo. We've even talked how they might even
be considering merging their mobile business.
with Mobile X and MVNO. So we'll see what actually
ends up happening. But I think there's a reality
where they get some kind of capital infusion
to stave off the FCC. But truthfully, it feels
like the FCC wants to take Spectrum from them
regardless of what they do. I think they might
give away some Spectrum that they're not using
because they do have a lot of it. Maybe that
850 that they had already. They obviously didn't
buy the 850 that they were supposed to get from
T -Mobile. So I don't really know. It's not like
they hoarded that spectrum. They just let it
go. So I'm in a weird place because I don't really
like the FCC belaying anyone. But I really just
feel like the FCC is belaying them at this point.
But again, they have a track record of being
a spectrum squire. I don't think either party
is really in the right here. And I'm not really
sure if Dish is no longer a competitive carrier
that will be good for consumers. Yeah, I'm pretty
divided on this too. They have been sitting on
Spectrum for quite some time. I don't think the
tactics, because I did read a statement from
Carr. They're trying to put pressure on Dish.
And Carr is stating, it's like, hey, we need
to claw back the Spectrum. And hey, it's super
valuable. This could be a reaction to your point
in additional, potentially billions of dollars
could be put back into U .S. government's bank
account here. The whole notion of DISH and what
Teamable had to do to invest itself and provide
them sort of a level playing field was a good
thing. It was going to be a good thing to have
a fourth competitive MNO, but DISH is clearly
not executed at all. And there's clearly a financial
issue here. And you and I have been talking about
this for how many years, Ron? Almost as long
as the whole... Apple modem thing. And that finally
happened after switch, right? Yeah. It'll be
a shitload of happening squad. Ray, let me go
to my second topic. I want to talk about Nokia
and they've scored multiple subsea cable deals
recently. They're two. The most recent one is
to power a connection between Jakarta and Singapore
in this supporting surge. And surge is an Indonesian
digital infrastructure provider. And a few weeks
ago, Or actually, no, a few days ago, Nokia announced
that they would be used in the Medusa submarine
cable system, which is going to connect North
Africa and Europe. And that's expected to be
fully operational by the early part of next year.
I'm not surprised to see this from Nokia. And
I think I've mentioned this on prior podcasts.
They have considerable strength in optical. And
you can also include Huawei. We were just talking
about Huawei. They've got strength in optical
as well as Cisco. But I think this is a great
deal for Nokia because we've been talking about
how both Nokia and Ericsson need to find new
ways to expand the revenue base. The RAND piece
for 5G has wound itself out. And now the standalone
network are getting deployed with core infrastructure
deployment. So I think this is super strong.
I caught this recent article about the Jakarta
-Singapore undersea cable and light reading.
I don't really see numbers here and what this
deal is going to be worth to Nokia. But it's
significant because there's another kind of thing
percolating. And we were just talking about the
rip and replace of cellular infrastructure with
Teleplanica, with Huawei in Spain and Germany.
But there are also concerns about Chinese infrastructure
that's tied to subsea cables. And that could
trigger a rip and replace. That would be pretty
considerably expensive when you think about the
leap. of these undersea cables and what's involved
in laying them and that sort of thing. Time will
tell if you will see, you know, the rip -remove
place of Chinese infrastructure there. But on
a high level, I think this is a great news for
Nokia. It'll be interesting to see how this rings
the cash register for them. But what are your
thoughts before we go to your second topic? Do
you know how big this business is for Nokia already?
So optical is a huge business for Nokia. And
so this is obviously a part of their optical
business. And again, it plays to one of their
ranks in optical. So it's significant. It's significant.
It's potentially significant from a revenue standpoint,
although I don't see the numbers there. But again,
it does play to their strength and their capabilities.
So it's very easy to coin your term that you
just used a second ago. I do think optical cables,
specifically deep -sea cables, are super important.
Because I think if we were to another global
war of any sort, that might be one of the first
things that countries start to nip -snip. It's
been happening. But those are like warning shots.
So I think it's important to have these kinds
of things with backups in place, is what I'm
saying. More deep sea cables are, I think Key
West could probably use a good deep sea cable.
So there's going to be more demand for this kind
of work and both Nokia is at the forefront of
it. Yeah, for sure. And this is supporting the
whole notion of connecting AI data centers as
well. And I agree with you. I think we're going
to see more and I think we could see some activity.
A lot of this is in the Atlantic and obviously
when we're talking about Indonesia, we're talking
about Southeast Asia. But I think there are opportunities
for undersea cables in the Pacific as well. But
what I like about this particular deployment
is that it's going to help bridge connectivity
for Indonesia, which has challenges just like
we do in rural parts of America and rural parts
of Europe and the rest of the world. But hey,
let's go to your second topic. And you want to
talk about Wi -Fi 8. So the spec details have
been released. And so what's Wi -Fi 8 all about?
Actually, there's a lot of discourse about this.
It's known as 80211BN, which is the IEEE designation.
Kind of like 80211AC, AGN, all letters AY, AD,
et cetera, right? So these are all the IEEE standards.
And this is going to be next generation. There's
more of a focus on quality. over peak throughput.
This is like what we with wave two AC, if you
remember that, which is Wi -Fi 6. Wi -Fi 6 had
two waves and then we got 6D. So this is what
they're calling this for a high reliability.
This is about using Wi -Fi for more applications
than consumer and building Wi -Fi to be more
robust for robotics. AGVs, drones, and automobiles.
So that there's more anticipation that this is
going to be used for enterprise use cases. This
will actually have a great, I think, opportunity
for growth in enterprise. They're saying that
it will have at least 25 % higher throughput
in challenging signal conditions, which is pretty
much everywhere. It will have 25 % lower latency
at the 95th percentile of latency distribution.
lower latency, and 25 % fewer drop packets, especially
when roaming between access points, which is
again an enterprise use case. If you think about
anybody who has a mesh in their home, that's
going to help them too. But also people who have
enterprise deployments, these will all translate
to better real -world performance numbers. So
I think the focus is on reliability and taking
advantage of... the existing radio in a better
way. And there's also talk about using it for
AR glasses, health monitors, other wearables,
low latency, peer -to -peer links. So then you
also think about AI and like how does AI want
to use Wi -Fi? You also want it to be more reliable
and have better real world performance. The timeframe
for this is we got draft 1 .0, which is what
we got. Then the Wi -Fi Alliance will start certification
in January of 2022. Oh, it's pretty far off.
Yes, there's still quite a job to be had for
Wi -Fi 8, but we're going to be with Wi -Fi 7
for quite some time. If you remember the Wi -Fi
7 journey, it wasn't really perfect. We already
had hardware in place a year before the certification.
Yeah, there was a lot of pre -cert. So most likely
we're going to start getting hardware in 2027.
Early 27, maybe even late 2026. And we'll start
getting hardware in place and then the certifications
will come after. I believe that's how it happened
with Wi -Fi 7. Wi -Fi 7 is a great standard.
I also think a lot of people haven't made the
transition to it yet. I think long -term Wi -Fi
7 will be really good for a lot of reasons. But
what's interesting is we're not really seeing
talk of the unification of millimeter wave Wi
-Fi and sub -6 Wi -Fi, which is... what we've
had for a long time. No talk about introduction
of new bands either, but those might come down
the road. But yeah, I was really expecting Wi
-Fi 8 to incorporate both millimeter waves and
sub -6 Wi -Fi, and we're not seeing that here.
Anyways, lots of interesting stuff to talk about.
He actually has a really long blog that kind
of details all the things that are coming in
with Wi -Fi 8, and I think it's actually a pretty
good read. It's not too technical, but it's technical
enough that you can understand what's going to
be the benefit there. They're very clearly showing
it as an enterprise and industrial, connected
home, public space and venue benefit. And truthfully,
let's be honest, Wi -Fi has a lot of room for
improvement when it comes to high density and
roaming experiences. Yeah, no, I totally agree.
So I had a couple of questions for you because
you're always on. the bleeding edge of all these
standards, whether it's cellular or Wi -Fi. So
is there any sort of mention around improving
the number of devices and security? Because I
agree with you, what it seems to be is very oriented
towards a lot of enterprise use cases. I think
one of the challenges, even in Wi -Fi 7, is that
the encryption is pretty basic. So is there any
mention of improving not only the overall number
of devices per channel? but also the security,
the encryption tied to it? I did not see anything
related to security. Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah, but I think that might also be how different
Wi -Fi vendors differentiate. But you can actually
go to the IEEE Sanders Association's website
and read the entire 802 .11 in Wi -Fi and what
they're doing with EN. It's like a four -year
journey for them. And they started this journey
in 2022 and in parallel with Wi -Fi 7 worked
on Wi -Fi 8. There was already a lot of talk
about Wi -Fi 8 before Wi -Fi 7 even came out.
But that's also anticipating the needs of enterprises.
And I think a lot of people weren't really too
impressed with Wi -Fi 6E. So I think maybe we'll...
I think we did get some security enhancements
with Wi -Fi 7, but to your point, like maybe
not enough. And yeah, I didn't really see anything
about security, but I do think that's probably
where we'll see the vendors differentiate. Yeah,
I agree. Yeah, and Wi -Fi 6E was for Twitter,
especially in enterprise environments, you've
got to validate these solutions, right? And so
I think there were a lot of folks that went through
that process with the generation before. Skip
6E and went straight to 7. So it'll be interesting.
This is going to be a long, it's like a long
runway for 8. But I like it. You heard it first,
our viewers and listeners. Anshul is always on
top of the standards when they pray. But hey,
buddy, let me hit my third and final topic. And
I want to talk about AT &T and Ericsson. And
they've reached an open RAN milestone. I was
unaware that they were working on that. So it's
called our app. Little R, big A, PP. And so AT
&T is claiming to be the first communication
service provider globally to deploy third -party
R app to optimize its live production network.
And so what an R app is basically is it's an
open standard open RAN application. And the reason
why AT &T and Ericsson are pointing to this and
excited about this. is that it marks a significant
advancement in the potential for multi -vendor
programmability. We've talked about AT &T and
Ericsson many times on our podcast, how AT &T
is embracing a fully programmable autonomous
network. I spent time recently with Igalibes,
that is the AT &T Network CTO. It is actually
in support of EM Forum and what they are doing
on a number of different projects, but driving
the whole notion of autonomous networks. Yeah,
they're claiming the first, you know, in this.
And when you look at Open RAN, it's been a start
and stop effort. And the whole notion and the
whole idea around Open RAN was, number one, domesticate
the supply chain, right? Wean ourselves off of
Chinese infrastructure. But also, ironically,
Ericsson and Nokia, at least in the United States.
But in the whole idea was to have this multi
-vendor opportunity. But the reality today. has
been single vendor open ring. And this is interesting.
So I'm wondering if this demonstration may lead
other M &Os to work with, whether it's Ericsson
or Nokia or Samsung or even Huawei in those parts
of the world where Huawei still has a footprint
and see if something like this really gets us
to a true sort of multi -hander open ring. Because
from my perspective, it's been single vendor.
And hey, in AT &T and Ericsson are single vendor.
But what's interesting, you know, as I've spoken
with Egal and he and I met in person at the AT
&T analyst day last December. He and I met at
a mobile world Congress and I'll probably see
him at some point in a lot too distant future.
But to really, from my perspective, to realize
that the true promise with open rights, it's
got to be multi -vendor. And I know you've got
an opinion on this as well. So what's your opinion?
I think we are in a place where we should have
multi -vendor. Because it's open RAN. It seems
like the MNOs haven't really taken a risk on
vendors that they don't really have trust in.
I think that's the challenge. And obviously there's
also a huge software environment as well. They
obviously want some kind of open RAN deployment
that's still going to be compatible with their
existing infrastructure, which I think causes
them to gravitate to the same vendors. Which
is funny because... We're not really seeing this
diversity of vendors in this open rents that
we were supposed to get. Maybe that changes with
XG and with what NVIDIA is doing. But truthfully,
it feels like we're just working with the same
companies, even though we're supposedly in this
open rent. It's just this diversity. I think
we may eventually get there. It's a multi -vendor,
but obviously they're significant. development
resources that have to be put in place to work
with an infrastructure provider. So with respect
to AT &T data, and we talked about that Nokia
was supplying infrastructure to AT &T, but AT
&T, a lot of people thought they doubled down
on just exclusively Ericsson or the CapEx piece
of it. But there's development that has to go
with it. And if you talk to AT &T executives,
they are very transparent and open in saying
that, hey, we're driving towards an ecosystem.
There may be other infrastructure players like
coming in the full down the road, but we needed
to focus with one partner. And so that decision
was made right, wrong, or indifferent. But the
final thing I'll say before we move to your final
topic is that what I really like about OpenRAN,
it's just the whole notion of software defined.
And it's not just ending up hardware. There's
always a software component to deploy an infrastructure,
but truly what like AT &T and Ericsson are doing.
is truly software -defined, and it's going to
make that network programmable. And there's also
a focus on just the whole notion of exposing
API to bring additional vendors and to drive
innovation on top of the network. Because traditionally,
that's where the MNOs have not done a great job.
They've done a great job spending billions of
dollars on Spectrum, billions of dollars on Core
and RAN, and then it's just access. And then
the over -the -top players come in and they ride
on that investment and they monetize what they're
doing. So I do think there is a lot of promise
with the whole notion of Open RAN and how software
-defined it is and how there's a focus on API,
closing APIs. And this is something that Ericsson's
been talking about for quite some time, as well
as Nokia with their autonomous networks and Samsung
to a lesser extent. But with that, Samsung is
a great segue to your third and final topic.
You want to talk about the Fold 7 and Flip 7,
and apparently they're selling like hot cake.
Yes, I have my Fold 7 right here. You can tell
it's actually a foldable. Case on it, but it's
the fittest foldable I have ever used. And truthfully,
I will have my review pretty soon, but I already
published my thoughts on the initial announcement.
It's really just an incredible, fantastic phone,
and so is the Flip 7. But what Samsung reported
is pre -orders, which... They have pretty generous
pre -orders. Pre -orders don't really change
that much from generation to generation. They're
all pretty much free memory upgrades and decent
trade -ins. I would say the trade -ins this year
are not as generous as they have been in the
past. And even so, they said that they saw a
25 % increase in total pre -orders across both
devices. And they said that their carrier partners
saw a nearly 60 % increase in pre -orders for
the Z Fold 7. The one that I was just holding.
And truthfully, it is a generational upgrade
from the Fold 6, the Fold 7. Any Fold that predates
it. It's just so much thinner. The camera is
so much better. Battery life is quite good. It's
not as good as it could be. It's still pretty
good. They also said that the Fold 7 is outpacing
its previous model by nearly 50%. Availability
opened on July 23rd. So it's not even been a
week. And they're already just blowing past.
All of their sales numbers. And that's what they
were seeing in Korea as well. That the Fold 7
was, in some cases, outselling the Flip. That's
how big of a jump the Fold is. And I haven't
had a foldable for maybe six months now. And
I miss it. And I love it. And I love having dual
screen. And you can have up to three apps running
side by side. I usually use two. But like my
number one use is just email and calendar. Side
by side. It's so simple, but there's so many
of them. They have a restaurant and then you
open while you're ordering or look for restaurants,
but also look at the menus at the same time.
And then also my wife and daughter both like
this a lot. I take pictures. They can see a preview
of themselves on the screen before they chose
pose themselves properly. And then there's the
whole thing where you can set it down on a table
and take a video and record things without having
to need a tripod. Those are not new features.
What is new is this thing is absurdly thin. It's
as thin as my regular smartphones. Essentially,
it's folded, and then unfolded, it's even thinner.
You know, I've had people react. I was at a soccer
game taking pictures with my foldable open, and
the guy behind me was losing his mind. Right.
I don't want my iPhone anymore. I want one of
those. It's too grand. It's not cheap. You can
trade your phone in. If you're on a three -year
plan, it's probably not that expensive. But yeah,
in general, things are going really well for
Samsung with these new foldables. And that's
just in time for Apple to potentially release
their new foldable next year. I read that. What's
your take on that? Will I see it during the regular
sort of Apple kind of case? Yeah, so I think
we'll see it next fall. And it'll probably be
very similar to the Fold 7 in terms of thickness
and form factor. Because the truth is, you know,
both Apple and Samsung worries they're super
thin. Well, Apple hasn't released a thin iPhone
yet. They will. Both of these super thin phones
are just a technical engineering exercise in
making super thin phones that you can then make
a super thin foldable. And the truth is, like,
some people have gone out and measured, and there's
a lot of claims about thinness on this, and some
people have gone out and actually measured the
thickness, and the Samsung is the thinnest, and
it's thickest. It's like, ignoring the camera
bump, which is a super thick part of the phone,
at its thinnest, like, 8 .8 millimeters combined.
When it's folded. So that's basically the same
thing that says like a regular phone. And yeah,
I still have the S 25 ultra. I love that camera.
The camera on the fold is not as good as S 25
ultra. Like my biggest complaint is that the
camera still has room for improvement, but I
will say with the exception of zoom, most of
the camera capabilities in the phone are quite
good. I feel like I'm choked off not having.
Yeah. People love thin, right. And it would make
sense. I just speculated about Apple that I was.
They would do like an iPhone Air or whatever
they're going to call it first and then follow
that up with a foldable. I think you were posting
some insights. I think it was last week when
I was traveling. I think I replied to one of
your posts and I said, Apple, take my money because
I've been waiting for an Apple foldable. I had
an Android for a while, and I love it. I've got
lots of Samsung hardware, and I test it and all
that, but I'm an Apple ecosystem guy. I'll be
waiting, you know, with my wallet in hand when
that drops and probably get my order in. But
hey, buddy, it's been another great podcast this
week. Why don't we take it home? We hope our
viewers and listeners found this week's talk
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
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