Welcome to episode 234 of the G2 on 5G. It's
the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G and
6G, and 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 Saag. Let's
get started with my first topic. I want to talk
about Deutsche Telekom, and in 2026, they are
planning to build an AI gigafactory. So this
news follows prior news around the company and
mobile network operator wanting to build an AI
cloud. And no surprise, they're working with
NVIDIA on this. And they report that testing
of AI functions are already underway. Key to
this is also a partnership model. So Deutsche
Telekom is working not only with NVIDIA and a
company called Brookfield. But there are nearly
100 applicants that want to participate in this.
And from my perspective, we've seen mobile launch
cloud services. I don't know, man, what's your
thought? Can Deutsche Telekom be successful with
this? It's interesting because Brookfield is
a big infrastructure company. So this is clearly
an infrastructure play. I believe that this will
likely be something that they try to offer to
companies to... get this AI performance on the
5G network as close as possible to the user.
And I think that's the play is CSPs, they can
only get so close to the customer. And the truth
is the mobile network operators like a Deutsche
Telekom are always going to be closer. So I think
this might be one of those plays where we're
going to play towards low latency AI applications.
That's how I see this, but those might still
be a little bit down the road, which is why.
This might be a process of a couple of years
until it actually gets rolled out and built out.
And by then there might be more demand for this
edge AI capability. Yeah. Now, hey, you make
a great observation. Edge AI, right? And that's
something that we have been talking about on
this podcast for quite some time. And there are
going to be applications that are going to take
full advantage of that when you think about manufacturing
and logistics and that sort of thing. And yeah,
great observation, my friend. Hey, let's go to
your first topic. You want to talk about Reliance.
They're launching 10 new nationwide 5G network
slices in India. I didn't catch this news, so
I'm looking very forward to hearing what you
have to say about it. Yeah, so I saw this on
RCR. And basically, it's 10 different types of
slices that run nationwide across India. They
include IoT, gaming, FWA, and mission -critical
services. They said that their fixed wireless
subscriber business, which is one of the slices,
it's called AirFiber, 7 .4 million subscribers,
making it the world's leading FWA provider, which
if you remember, we get to take credit for this.
We both said that was going to happen. We said
that Gio was going to be the one who got FWA
scale the fastest and the most. And they did.
And yeah, this is just Reliance talking about...
using their own in -house 5G ESA core and deploying
real world applications nationwide and not talking
about them as pilots or having them in certain
locations, but building it fully nationwide and
having SLA based 5G experiences that isolate
traffic for each slice that really guarantees
performance for what people need. And I am actually
hoping that I can get a gaming slice deployed
here in San Diego. for comic -con next year because
the pc gaming room that we have at comic -con
that's actually officially part of comic -con
has no internet because internet is a complete
and utter nightmare at conventions it typically
is right yeah and i'm going to try and find a
way to work with one of the providers to do that
network slices are really important in congested
environments and yeah it's this is really not
a surprise if anything i would call this a victory
lap and yeah like i think geo's just beginning,
because I think there are going to be some applications
that they are going to make possible before anybody
else. And this is the beginning of it. So let
me make sure I understood what you said. So are
they slicing for both mobility and FWA? Yep.
Wow. That's interesting because all of the discussion
and talk has been around today has been mostly
around mobility. So that is an interesting wrinkle
that they're introducing. It's similar to what
AT &T did, right? Their first standalone rollout
was a slice specifically for fixed wireless.
I remember that. And I got corrected because
they didn't want me to use the term slice. Okay.
So it's not a slice. You're talking about turbo,
right? Just the whole FWA deployment. Okay. It's
standalone, right? But I don't know if... It
sounds like turbo is not a slice, right? Not
quite. Yeah. And it's funny. I went back and
forth with a lot of folks internally on this
and wrong or indifferent. It was around the whole
net neutrality discussions as well. Turbo is
a pretty interesting offering. We've talked about
it on prior podcasts, but it's mobility, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I think it is as well. Yeah. It applies
to both, but it's really, it's it ladders into
what AT &T is doing with guarantee. And delivering,
yeah, not a hard SLA that's monetized, but really
trying to step up and provide not only the most
consistent and reliable mobility and F2BA service,
but also offer the best deal. Geo is just putting
it into a slice so they don't have to overcomplicate
it, right? Yeah, no, it's interesting. They continue
to be an innovator, a leader. They lean into
disaggregated infrastructure. They've done quite
a bit. And they've done it very cost effectively.
I looked at their most recent earnings. Super
solid. They continue to crank on the important
things there. And they're ultimately providing
lots of value to their subscribership. And they
are growing. By my estimation, they're growing
at a faster clip than their other competitors
in India. But good stuff, my friend. Let me go
hit my second topic. I want to talk about T -Mobile.
And they're working with fluid conservation systems.
And what they're doing is they're teaming up
for U .S. water utility transformation. And this
has to do with IoT and leak detection systems.
And so obviously, T -Mobile is providing its
T -IoT platform, something that you and I have
talked about on many different occasions. But
it's a really interesting use case. It's acoustic
water leak solution. It's actually using sensors
to listen acoustically to determine leak detection.
And if you think about it, this requires a lot
of technology. It's going to require ultra -low
latency. It's not your typical industrial -type
IoT use case. But I thought it was really interesting
to highlight. It's doing a lot of different things.
Basically replacing the manual hydrant -to -hydrant
inspection process, what Cellular is doing for
smart metering, where you don't have to send
the meter mate or meter man. You can do this
all electronically. In Austin, Texas, before
I moved to Bastrop, they had implemented something
like that. And again, one of the other big challenges,
and at least in older cities, and we had this
issue in Austin at my older home. central austin
a lot of the infrastructure is aging a lot of
like the connections from the water mains into
homes are not pvc they're metal in some instances
they're ceramic because some of the neighborhoods
in austin date back to the 40s and 50s and actually
in my old neighborhood it was a cotton plantation
many years ago but but but there's so there's
an environmental impact of what they're doing
here so i love it it's driving sustainability
it's driving efficiency and it's leveraging the
power of t -mobile's nationwide network so what
are your thoughts i saw this announcement yeah
i do think that this is actually a lower like
frequency connection so i don't think this needs
a very high throughput connection yeah it's i
think it's leak detection tends to be it's really
to preserve the infrastructure that could be
leaked into. Mold remediation is a huge problem.
So if you can spend $5, $10 a month at most to
save yourself thousands of dollars on the road,
it's nothing. But I do think that this is one
of those things where somebody has to connect
it somehow. Most likely there's probably some
kind of a hub that's taking the sensor data and
then transmitting it up to the cloud. And yeah,
this is just one of those things where it's like
there's so many opportunities for modernization
of infrastructure and also monitoring old infrastructure
as well. I think there's multiple avenues that
this can benefit both consumers and government
and other NGOs. And in general, I just think
that there's a lot of opportunity to modernize
and improve and save on costs. a disaster these
sensors can also be used to know which homes
are underwater which homes aren't there's all
kinds of things but the acoustic sensor is an
interesting one yeah because most of the leak
sensors that i've experienced have been a physical
sensor that sits at the bottom of your sink yeah
moisture yeah and yeah we're still detecting
for moisture but i actually had a leak happened
in my old apartment and the detector went off
it works yeah now water is a precious resource
and i think we've all experienced water leaks
in our day and as a homeowner i had an issue
moving into my new home as well and it's sometimes
very difficult to pinpoint that and this is certainly
more of a commercial to your point critical infrastructure
type deployment but it would be cool to see this
cascade down into the consumer realm but i just
thought it was a really interesting use case
and again t -mobile continues to build upon what
it's doing within enterprise services and T -Mobile
for business. And we were talking about T -Mobile
five, six years ago when they were battling to
acquire Sprint. And it's just been fun to see
the evolution of the company over time. And for
our viewers and listeners, Anshul and I will
be spending more time with the team there in
Bellevue towards the end of the month. And so
some of that will be probably under non -disclosure,
but anything that we can publicly share. We will
probably speak to you in a future podcast. But
let's go to your second topic. And we're going
to get the space mob excited about this one,
my friend. But you want to talk about AST Space
Mobile and Global S -Band Spectrum. Yes. So this
is actually quite a big deal. The details of
this deal will be disclosed on earnings on Monday.
So this is like a pre -read for earnings. And
basically they signed a deal. an agreement to
acquire S band priority rights under the ITU
and that this spectrum will be valuable for them
to essentially access at a global scale because
right now a lot of satellite providers including
them They're using terrestrial licenses. And
they're working individually with mobile network
operators. And that becomes a very segmented
process, right? Yeah. It's a pretty, it's a lot
of work, a lot of legal, a lot of wrangling and
harmonization, all kinds of things. Sure. But
they did say that it is a, in the 1980 to 2010
megahertz and 2170 to 2200 megahertz bands. And
then it's a $64 .5 million deal. $26 million
paid at closing and then deferred consideration
of $38 million. And the company expects the deal
to close in the second half of this year. So
the spectrum will be available fairly soon. So
it's clearly somebody who already owns it. They
have not disclosed who's the owner of the spectrum,
but MSS spectrum is pretty valuable because you
don't have to use terrestrial spectrum like we
mentioned earlier. And this would enable them
to power their own service and not to have to
be depending on different carriers around the
world to do. This is like a huge net positive
for the company. I think people will be very
excited about this and we'll get more details
on Monday when they report earnings. But I think
AST being able to deploy their own service would
be huge. And it would be cool to see how that
translates to smartphone compatibility and all
these other things that are. always challenging
down the road. But yeah, I don't really see this
being bad in any way, shape or form. If anything,
it shows that the company's maturing and that
they're looking to bolster their capabilities
at a global scale. Yeah, I totally agree. Now,
early on, I weighed in a few years ago and evaluated
after spending time with AST Space Mobile, their
tech stack versus Starlink. One of the things
I pointed out was that at the time, it seemed
like AST Space Mobile was going to be just satisfied
with being that middleware provider. And I pointed
out that Starlink has a competitive satellite
FWA offering, and that could create some friction.
The partnership that Starlink has with T -Mobile,
I believe it's a time -bound exclusive between
the two companies, and so that will expire eventually.
But yeah, this sort of builds upon prior news
that AST Space Mobile is absolutely focused on
creating a standalone service. But I still think
that there's an opportunity for that to coexist
with what they're doing with Vodafone, what they're
doing with AT &T for direct to sell, and what
they're doing with other MNOs around the world
because they've got 60 plus some odd MOUs with
mobile network operators. But this just gives
them additional flexibility. And the last time
that Bill and I were together, it was in Barcelona.
We were talking about a lot of different things.
And there are, I think it's no secret that there
are some applications tied to the government.
And I don't have any detail on that. And he couldn't
go into any detail on that because that is obviously
very highly confidential. But we were also talking
about, think about reimagining the experience
on aircraft, right? Because when you're flying
at 25, 30, 35 ,000 feet. When we're talking low
Earth orbit satellites, think about the distance
versus traditional geosynchronous satellite connectivity.
We all know that the performance that we have
with services like GoGo is less than desirable.
I've been a little opinionated about that, but
this is all exciting. I think it's going to provide
flexibility. It's going to provide them to look
at different areas that they can go search for
adjacency and incremental revenue opportunities.
I think it's just an exciting development in
general for NTN services. Great stuff. And I'm
glad you picked that as a topic. Had you not,
I probably would have picked it. But let me wrap
up with my third and final topic. And I had been
pre -briefed by the Salona team on this, but
this week they've launched a new architecture
called AirFlex. And I provided some insights
on both my LinkedIn and XHandles, but from my
perspective, this is pretty game -changing. And
so what it's doing, it's moving the core in the
cloud, basically. And so doing it, Solana is
going to make it just as easy as a Wi -Fi deployment.
Basically, you hang their private 5G access point,
and then there's an amount of processing on that.
I asked them what the chipset was because I knew
you would be interested in that. I didn't get
a complete answer on that, but actually I did.
Now that I think about it, it's NXP. I thought
it would be Qualcomm. They are using Qualcomm
modems, but they're using NXP SSCs for this.
But from my perspective, this reduces the friction.
This improves the viability of sort of cherry
picking different environments. If you think
about like a college campus and the student union,
that's a story under the ground. or whatever,
it's just going to provide flexibility. What
I also like about it is that Celona is able to
process secure local break on the access point.
What do you think buddy about all that? I think
it's interesting. The access point solution is
something that I'm not really familiar with.
Yeah. So I'll take your analysis at face value.
Yeah. Basically what it does is it eliminates
the need to have core infrastructure racked within
an environment. So it just provides flexibility
from a deployment perspective. And if you think
about branch locations where you have little
IT staff, you're just going to be able to deploy
their private 5G solution that much more easily.
So I'll probably be going a little bit deeper
into this in a future contributed writing piece,
but I just thought it was a pretty cool announcement
to mention. It's going to be pretty game -changing
from my perspective. Let's wrap up with your
third and final topic. And you want to talk about
D -Link and TP -Link and some new Wi -Fi 7 travel
routers. Yeah, I actually saw the TP -Link one
first when I was doing some laptop research on
Notebook Check's website. It's the TP -Link BE3600.
It's a travel router. And it's powered by USB
-C. So you can literally just plug it into anything
with a USB -C port to power it. And it can be...
It's designed to be used with a 5G modem to allow
for literally palm -sized routers. So you can
connect it via USB -C for power. And then it
has Ethernet ports and even a USB port. And yeah,
it's something you can just throw in the bag.
And it's really tiny. And it can help you connect
all of your devices to the 5G internet. I really
think it's great. I don't think it actually has
an integrated modem. So you would still need
to have some kind of a modem to drive it. But
it is Wi -Fi 7. So it's like really small and
will enable really fast Wi -Fi wherever you might
go. But there's also a device from D -Link, which
does have a built -in modem. And that one is
the, this is a horrible name. G572 5GNR BE7200
Wi -Fi 7 router. And this one's cool because
it does have a 5G modem built in. So you just
pop in a SIM card and you get Wi -Fi 7 connectivity.
And it's fairly small. It's funny because the
images on their website or on the announcement
from TP Tech Power Up, they don't really show
what it looks like, but it's actually like a
barrel shaped kind of device. It's still fairly
compact. It doesn't look like a router with antennas
and stuff like that. So it's a little bit more
portable, but I wouldn't consider that a travel
router as much. It does seem like it would be
something for a backup or if you wanted to have
Wi -Fi 7 at your business. Wi -Fi 7 is just more
secure, has better range. And yeah, I think it's
nice to see more Wi -Fi 7 5G routers out there.
It's also showing that the cost of deploying
Wi -Fi 7 and 5G together is coming down so that
people can combine the two latest and greatest
technologies. And this potentially connected
to a 5G slice could even improve connectivity
even better for business and personal use in
ways that Wi -Fi 6 with 4G wouldn't have been
able to do a few years ago. Yeah, yeah. So what
do you think, what are the ideal use cases for
this? Obviously it's portable. So it's for folks
that travel, folks that use a lot of different
devices, like including like camera. The first
device would definitely be something where you
use this connected to something that's like already
a 5G modem of some sort, like a USB modem. You
connect that to this and then you would get Wi
-Fi 7. What it does is it ensures that you get.
better coverage in the area that you're in. So
you don't have to like huddle next to the hotspot.
Like a hotspot. Yeah. Cause a hotspot doesn't
have the antenna intuition. Yeah, exactly. And
then on top of that, the other device, I would
see that as almost a backup where you have wifi
for stuff, but then you have this device kind
of sitting around idling in case your internet
goes out, you can have this as a backup. Also,
maybe I would take this to places where you normally
don't have internet. We want to have good coverage.
We have people walking around with POS devices
because most points of sale now are some kind
of handheld tablet or phone like device. And
those need to have coverage. You want to have
something with a little bit better coverage than
a hotspot or even a wifi puck. Cause the truth
is none of those antennas to your point are limited.
And so was the power that they draw. This is
something that would be a little bit more permanent.
but also doesn't have to be because as long as
you have power, these Wi -Fi 7 5G routers can
actually be pretty useful. Yeah, I imagine they're
powered via USB, I would imagine, right? When
they're plugged into a notebook or whatever.
Yeah, so the first one for sure. I couldn't get
details on the second one because their product
page isn't fully rolled out yet. But yeah, it
looks like that might be a possibility for the
second one as well. I just, I'll be honest with
you, D -Link didn't do the best job of... I went
through the product page a bunch of times and
I just didn't find anything. Meanwhile, TP -Link's
webpage is like a million times more useful and
I can actually see how useful it is compared
to TP -Link. Yeah, TP -Link does a great job.
Like I've got one of their extenders in my garage
so that when we're at the pool, the TV can get
a decent connection for Netflix and all of that.
And I use TP -Link here in my house for internet
because it's basically the fastest. Wi -Fi 7
router out there. Yeah, for sure. Hey, buddy,
it was another great podcast. 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 topic for a future podcast,
please reach out to us on social media. Will's
at WillTownTech and I'm at Anshul Saag. We hope
you have a great weekend and please tune in again
next week. And don't forget to rate and subscribe.