Welcome to episode 235 of the G2 on 5G. It's
the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G. 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, and I know you're
going to have a lot to add to this as well, Anshul,
but you and I were with T -Mobile for the last
two days in Bellevue. There was an innovation
summit. There was an analyst forum and there
was a big announcement. So I want to cover that
and I want to get your perspective on things
as well. So the Innovation Summit followed on
the heels of a T -Mobile town hall. There were
some executive announcements that dropped this
week. So Ulf, and I can't even pronounce his
last name, but he replaced Neville Ray as president
of technology at T -Mobile. He announced his
retirement. And then a shock to me, Callie Field
that leads T -Mobile for business announced that
she's departing the company, had a chance to
spend some time with Callie. She's done a fantastic
job taking what the company has done from a business
perspective, from access to a set of highly differentiated
services that you and I have covered on multiple
podcasts. And we're going to talk a little bit
more about some additional insights that we gleaned
from the analyst forum that we also attended.
But from my perspective, there was one big announcement
that I thought was just, from my perspective,
very compelling, super mobile. And it's funny,
we were able to talk to executives and this was
not tied to the recent Superman movie that dropped.
But what super mobile is a set, they're bundling
basically three things. One, and this is for
enterprises. One, there's now a dedicated slice
for deterministic connectivity. for mobile users
on their business plan. So this is a smartphone
enabled solution. They are also bundling T -Satellite
because that is now in production. We're going
to talk more about T -Satellite as well. And
then finally, there are a number of security
enhancements, including a threat intelligence
integration. And the details on the security
piece were lacking. I got some feedback that
I did provide Mo Cabot, that is T -Mobile's CMO.
You and I had an opportunity to spend time with
Mo and others. But at a very high level, I really
like what T -Mobile is doing with Supermobile.
They are leaning into their nationwide standalone
network. They're doing innovative things with
slicing. They've already done T -Priority for
first responders. And what's really cool about
this is that this bubbled up from actual customer
requests. They're T -Mobile for business customers.
have seen T -Mobile, the T priority solution
and market, and they wanted something that was
focused on enterprise. And so I love that. And
that really reinforces the fact that T -Mobile
listens to its subscribers and develop solutions
that are relevant and noteworthy for for their
customers as well. So I know I covered that really
quickly. The other thing I'll add before I allow
you to provide your insights. We had time with
an executive that is leading the roadmap development
efforts for TFB. And much of that was under nondisclosure.
So unfortunately, we can't provide a lot of those
details. But from my perspective, the company
is really doubling down. They're leveraging their
investment in their network. And there are going
to be some very innovative solutions that, again,
move beyond access that are going to really address
things like customer experience, security. and
just overall business need. I didn't want to
steal any of your thunder. I probably stole a
little bit of your thunder, but what do you think
about all that? Let's start from the beginning.
I'll say Ulf's last name is Evoldson. Good. Thank
you. Thank you. He came to T -Mobile from Ericsson,
and he's being replaced by our friend John Saw.
Which I do think is, I thought it was very curious
because they have very similar skill sets. And
John was brought on from Sprint. So I've known
him back when he was at Sprint. And he comes
with a lot of really good experience and knowledge.
I worked with him on the L4S announcement. And
yeah, I think Ulf will be missed, but I think
John is a good replacement. On the Kali side
of things, I also don't really fully understand
that because she's very much loved within the
organization. But they are restructuring. how
the company is being organized. And I believe
that it is a bit of a Deutsche Telekom takeover
in a way. There are more and more executives
coming from Deutsche Telekom to lead T -Mobile,
which I don't really know how I feel about, but
that's, Deutsche Telekom is the largest shareholder
and they've had a majority stake in the company
for quite some time. I don't believe they have
a majority stake anymore, but they do. have significant
influence in the company's operations. So that
seems to be what's happening in my belief that
this is more of a bit of more of a Deutsche Telekom
influence operation. And yeah, I think overall,
I think super mobiles are really interesting
offering. And I think that it will, to your point,
it's basically T priority, but for non first
responders in a lot of ways. And I think adding
T satellite is a good way to differentiate also
the network slicing feature. That's literally
nobody else can offer that today. And I think
they're going to continue to build on their advantage
in their network to compete. They have more spectrum,
they have a more advanced network, and they're
going to try and do everything they can to stay
ahead of Verizon and AT &T. And I think that
this is generally a good thing. I mostly agree
with what you're saying, but yeah, I just want
to add a little bit color, especially considering
my next topic. I wanted to. Cheers to you because
I'm thirsty. Yeah, Rachel and I are enjoying
a cocktail. I actually got back from Bellevue
at 1 .30 in the morning. So it's been a very
long day for me. But hey, just a final comment
about Callie's departure. She's a total rock
star. She's been with the company for over two
decades. She's moved up from the ranks, like
from the very bottom of the ranks up. From my
perspective, and I'm glad you touched on the
Deutsche Telekom executive influence that's coming
into T -Mobile. From my perspective, that is
happening to better operationalize the business
and scale the business for future growth. And
so this executive that they're bringing in from
DT has a lot of experience. And I think one of
the challenges that TFB has had is that because
the consumer business is the lion's share of
the top line revenue and really drives a lot
of the strategy and the development and the investment
in the business. They wanted to better operationalize
what they're doing so that they can have independent
resources to grow the roadmap. And again, we
can't talk about the specifics because as analysts,
we're bound by NDA on that. But suffice it to
say, there are a lot of exciting things that
are coming on a number of different fronts that
I think are really going to continue to accelerate
TFB's momentum and its competitiveness against
TNT and Verizon. that have had much more mature
enterprise solution offerings over time. So at
these inflection points, she was the right leader
at the right time. She leaves a legacy of building
a very strong foundation. She leaves on very
positive terms. And I wouldn't be surprised to
see here even a higher level role, another MNO
or a company that's adjacent to the telecommunications
industry. Callie, it was great to see you and
just, I wish you all the best in your new adventure.
But with that, let's shift gears and let's talk
about another operator, AT &T. And this was pretty
big news. So you and I have talked about EchoStar
and DISH for a number of years and what we perceive
as some of the challenges with their spectrum
squatting and that sort of thing. But just recently
it was announced that AT &T has acquired considerable
amount of their low and mid band spectrum. at
a price tag of $23 billion. And so I'll let you
take it away, my friend. Sure. So this deal is
very complex for a lot of reasons. I think, one,
it does put more spectrum in AT &T's hands. Thankfully,
our friend Mike Dano actually shared what the
spectrum landscape looks after this acquisition.
And he showed, I think this was from TD Cowan,
they were demonstrating what the actual difference
would be. So you add that 50 megahertz to AT
&T. What does that look like? That actually takes
AT &T from last place in spectrum and puts them
in second place with 314 megahertz of low to
mid band spectrum. That's still below T -Mobile's
376, but. it is higher than verizon's 279 so
it gives att a bit more of a fighting chance
against t -mobile and verizon and it also gives
them a really good coverage layer bit of spectrum
because 20 megahertz is not not a joke when it
comes to these lower bands because there's not
that much frequency available yeah and that 20
megahertz will be really valuable for nationwide
coverage and it could also potentially be used
for satellite as well. There was some talk of
that online, but I also think that I don't really
believe that there's a application for satellite
that. would trump using it for terrestrial because
you always want to have terrestrial more than
you want to have satellite it's just more scalable
and viable i don't know what they will do with
it but deploying it will be expensive so there's
a possibility that actually satellite could be
a cheaper way to deploy that spectrum yeah that
said the other spectrum they got is 3 .5 45 gigahertz
which was the spectrum that AT &T bought from
the US government. And so it had DISH. So now
they're basically, they can actually deploy that
like instantaneously. That will improve their
mid -band coverage and speeds, which is pretty
big. So those two chunks of spectrum are very
valuable. That's 30 megahertz. So that's no joke.
And that will help AT &T a lot in competing with
Verizon and T -Mobile on speeds and feeds, but
also in coverage. So I think overall, this is
good for AT &T. What I will say is I don't really
appreciate the way that it was achieved because
this was very clearly a influence operation by
the FCC's chair and the Trump administration
to bully Echo Stardish to give up the spectrum.
I almost wish they had forced them to give it
up in a more traditional way, as in having there
be an auction for the spectrum, because he basically
got the spectrum without anyone ever having a
chance to bid for it. Yes. Dish and EchoStar
did make $10 billion on this spectrum. They paid
$13 billion for this and got $25 for it. They
actually made $12 billion, which is a great return
on investment. And we'll see what they do with
that money. But that's actually a ton of money
that they can use to do a lot of things. And
it also leaves them with 76 megahertz of spectrum
left in their network. But they said they will
decommission a lot of their sites with Open RAN.
So that also will... creates some consequences
for Open RAN vendors and the movement of Open
RAN as a technology for the industry. There's
a lot going on with this deal. Some things good,
some things bad. I do like AT &T being more competitive
here. I just don't think they should have gotten
it this way. And I think most people will agree
with me. I agree with you. It's unconventional,
but I do like the fact that it balances the spectrum
footprint with T -Mobile. And clearly, when you
look at the 5G deployments in the US, AT &T is
certainly in a second place position when you
look at where they're at with standalone and
what they're doing with Ericsson on leveraging
things like Open RAN, like you mentioned, and
network programmability and API and all of that.
I think it evens the playing field. But I agree
with you. It's unconventional. But hey, listen,
the second Trump administration is very unconventional.
Look at the 10 % investment in Intel. And many
could argue that Intel is too big to fail, that
Foundry needs to find customers so that we can
be competitive from a supply chain perspective
in Silicon with TSMC. But yeah, we live in very
unconventional times. And this is absolutely,
I agree with you, a very unconventional move.
But I'm hoping at the end of the day, it ultimately
benefits. It benefits subscribers and benefits
telecommunications industry in general. But with
that, let's move to my second topic. And I'm
going to be pretty quick on these two because
I know you've got a lot to talk about with your
other two topics. But news broke recently around
Ericsson joining a Swedish AI consortium. And
this is interesting. It's actually a formulation
of an AI company that's composed of all 100 %
Swedish companies. And it is intended to promote
Swedish AI. And there's no specific. sort of
references to, Hey, what are the applications?
What are the outcomes? What are the use cases?
But certainly we've talked about things like
AIRAN, certainly NVIDIA is focused on that. They're
promoting that quite a bit. And I really like
this because what Ericsson is doing, and we've
talked about this before, Ericsson formed that
JV around API and programmability. We spent time
with T -Mobile this week and learned more about
what they're doing with their APIs and their,
I think it's called DevEdge. which is their developer
set of resources that provide not only access
to their production standalone 5G network, but
they also provide resources so that developers
can more quickly and easily develop next generation
applications and take advantage of low latency
and strong throughput and massive device support
and that sort of thing. But I really like this.
So this is another representation, another example
of how Ericsson is thinking a little bit more
broadly. And joining consortiums and driving
JVs to basically foster and drive innovation.
So that's what I've got to say on it. I don't
know. Did you catch that news? Any thoughts there?
I did not. But this kind of falls in line with
a lot of what we're seeing from the European
companies in terms of sovereign AI. Yeah, good
point. And focusing on building AI within the
bounds of their... culture and their society
and what they accept, which I think makes sense
because I think Europeans are a lot more sensitive
about privacy and how AI is being used. I think
we're going to see different types of implementations
of AI, especially considering the rules that
Europeans follow when it comes to data sovereignty
and privacy. Yeah, I totally agree with you.
And I think the other opportunity here is that
Let's not mince words. NVIDIA is driving, from
a Silicon perspective, modern AI, right? And
there are, I think there's a French company,
and I'm forgetting the name, Mistral, I believe,
that has a very robust, large language model
and platform. But this, and this is, of course,
focused on Swedish companies. This allows Europe
to be a little more possibly competitive and
participate in what I deem the AI gold rush.
And I agree with you. Typically, from a privacy
standpoint, Europe tends to be very leading edge.
From a sustainability perspective, Europe tends
to be very leading edge as well. So I think one
of the big challenges with AI is power consumption
and sustainability. This could really birth a
lot of innovation and opportunity around providing
more sustainable AI infrastructure and frameworks
and that sort of thing. Excellent point, my friend,
that you pointed out there. Hey, let's go to
your second topic. And Apple invites have gone
out. There's a big announcement coming up in
September. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah,
Apple, that's finally happening. It's basically
happening at the same time that everybody would
expect it to, which is about the first two weeks
of September. And a lot of people expected it
to land at this time. So it did. And I will be
there. I got invited this year. after six years
of not attending in person. So I will be there
and I'll be covering all the announcements and
talking about all the latest 5G capabilities,
which Apple devices end up with an Apple modem,
which ones don't. The expectation is that we
still won't see it at the high end where there's
the most volume. But there's a possibility some
lower end models might get it. And next year,
we'll probably see a broader application of 5G
modems within Apple's lineup, including a potential
foldable. But I also want to talk about another
rumor, which is that Apple's watches might be
getting 5G. And I think it's actually a really
great thing if you think about it, because if
they deploy 5G. and it's standalone which might
force 18 team verizon to actually go full standalone
maybe they could do a red cap modem i'm just
going to say this could be this is a perfect
opportunity for apple d5g red cap totally because
it's actually going to a lot of people don't
know is that 5g red cap is actually lower power
than lte and in a lot of cases better throughput
you could actually get a better connected smartwatch
experience with 5g than you would with the current
4g models and i'm not the biggest fan of cellular
watches i have had mostly bad experiences with
them in the last few years but there are some
applications where it makes sense if you just
want to have your watch and nothing else and
you're outdoors because truthfully the antennas
on these things are not the greatest and as a
result Their attenuation indoors sucks. Generally,
I think these are great for fitness and outdoor
use. And I hope that we see 5G watches become
a thing because I think it will continue to push
innovation on 5G and even make watches better
at streaming or phone calls, all these kinds
of things that 5G will. automatically enhanced
by just enabling standalone over a red cap modem.
So that was my thought on the Apple event. I'm
excited to go and be there. I've never actually
been inside the Steve Jobs theater because they
built it after the pandemic or during the pandemic
and was finished at that time. But yeah, that's
my thoughts on that. I'm happy that you finally
got the invite is when you couldn't go to the
Qualcomm Snapdragon summit and I get to stand
in for you. So I got the golden ticket one year,
but. I think it's a testament, man. You've been
just a writing theme. You've been publishing
Forbes articles. You've been publishing more
insights and strategy analysts insights and research
notes. And so it's very well deserved. I have
one thing to say about the possibility of a 5G
red cap Apple watch. I want satellite on that.
You mean like the Pixel watch has? Oh, does the
Pixel watch have satellite support? So the Pixel
watch that will be, I think it's available today
or yesterday or maybe later in the month. It
was part of the big Pixel announcement. The Pixel
Watch 4 has satellite messaging. Yeah, because
I'm just thinking when I'm hiking in my place
in Colorado and encountering black bears like
I did on a trail run with my wife, it might be
nice to have that. Totally. Cool, man. Hey, I'm
going to hit my third and final topic pretty
quickly as well. And I just, I found this to
be really interesting news, but... Recently,
Nokia actually filed a lawsuit against Paramount
Skydance. Paramount Skydance is obviously the
movie studio for Paramount. And they're alleging
infringement on several patents related to video
streaming technology. And I mention this because
it blows my mind that I didn't know that Nokia
had intellectual property tied to video streaming.
I had no idea. And you're a shutterbug, so you
probably knew this already. But I just find it
fascinating that the company is a little more
diversified than I think people really understand.
When you look at, I don't think a lot of people
understand that Nokia has a huge presence in
optical and transport. In fact, they're right
up there with Cisco and Huawei. And it just makes
you think, it's like, why doesn't the company
do a better job of making all of this knowledgeable
to the market? But any thoughts before we hit
your third and final? No, Nokia has always been
a very strong IP player. If you think about the
lawsuits that they had with Qualcomm multiple
times, and they've defended their IP very rigorously
over the years. So this doesn't surprise me that
they would have something like this, especially
considering they have all of these networking
technologies. And I'm sure they've done tons
of R &D in the networking space, specifically
for media. none of this really surprises me i
didn't know that they had this ip but it's an
interesting time for the lawsuit because now
paramount is part of a larger company with much
deeper pockets and maybe they were waiting to
file this lawsuit once they were part of a bigger
entity that has more money because paramount
was pretty much broke and that's why they got
bought and that's there's a whole other thing
about how that acquisition went down but yeah
i thought it was very interesting i did not know
about that Yeah, and streaming's been big for
quite some time, but now it's becoming almost
the primary vehicle for even new releases, unless
it's a movie that Tom Cruise is starring in,
and he's very adamant about it's going to get
a theatrical release first, and then it's going
to go to streaming. But with that said, the new
Mission Impossible movie is available on streaming,
so I may be watching that this weekend over the
long three -day weekend. But I digress. But let's
hit your third and final. Do you want to talk
about the Pixel 10 launch? Yes. So there were
a lot of curious things that happened with the
Pixel 10 launch. I was not able to attend in
person, but the reviews and devices launched
yesterday. And it is the first device on T -Mobile's
network that can do picture messaging and data.
T -Mobile will be fully launching data and messaging,
not text messaging, but just regular like app
messaging. in october but this is the first device
to get that capability so you can use google
maps with satellite which is super cool dude
i love that i love that combination and i want
it now i'm actually like i'm thinking about upgrading
i'm thinking dude i'm you're gonna laugh i'm
thinking about moving from ios back to android
and i'm thinking the pixel 10 may be the product
that i mean if you do i probably recommend a
pixel 10 pro xl because it has all the features
yeah all the latest you can reuse all of your
magsafe stuff on it because it has g2 .2 and
it actually does 20 i think it does 25 watt wireless
charging too anyways getting back to the pixel
series they have the new tensor g5 which now
we know details about it's arm cpu imagination
gpu which is the same base tech that apple uses
but they've licensed it now they do have their
own stuff and then it's a samsung modem from
this last generation so they have mixed their
own ip with third -party ip and then samsung
so they ditched samsung for the processor but
they kept them for the modem which is wild and
confusing but it's google's choice and the performance
is okay it's not really as good as a snapdragon
processor but Google seems to be happy with it,
and it's giving them enough AI performance that
they can do stuff like the Pixel Pro Res Zoom,
which is a new feature where you can do 100x
zoom, and it uses an AI model on device to infer
what you're trying to take a picture of and fill
in the resolution with a better quality. And
some of the pictures, if you go online and look
at Pixel Pro Res Zoom, you'll see some crazy
results. How are you getting that kind of zoom?
It doesn't look real. but it does use an on -device
model to infer what you're trying to take a picture
of and clean it up so it doesn't look like a
bad watercolor painting and then it doesn't work
on people so you can't take pictures of people
and get that result it has to be objects and
other things because people are more complex
and you probably need a bigger database of human
faces to not make it look watercolory because
if you've done some ai stuff and you look at
it in the past it's a nightmare it actually looks
like a horror movie when these people's faces
and images are like pulled and yeah exactly so
this is they're trying to avoid that and yeah
it also has some other on -device ai capabilities
like the ability to translate people's voices
using their voice in another language this is
technology that they've pulled in from other
parts of google the xr space specifically with
beam And yeah, it's very cool. I'm hoping to
get my hands on a Pixel 10 Pro XL fairly soon.
I will be getting my hands on a Pro Fold down
the road, but that's not actually launching until
October. Right now, it's just the first three
Pixels, Pixel 10, Pixel Pro, 10 Pro, and Pro
XL, and then the Fold will come later. I'm excited
about that because I just published my Fold 7
review from Samsung, which I have a lot of good
things to say about. But there are some gaps
still. And the Pixel addresses some of them.
But then the Pixel has its own gaps. We're still
not in the place where foldables in the US are
as good as they are in China. But I'm very impressed
with what I'm seeing so far. Feel free to read
my Fold 7 review. I think it went live yesterday.
And then I'll hopefully have some Pixel reviews
down the road. Awesome, buddy. Yeah, and I was
going to ask you, like, how does... what Google's
doing with the 10 compared to, with that combination
of different SOCs compared to Snapdragon. And
your take on it is that Snapdragon is just more
performant, it sounds like. Yep. Okay, cool.
Hey, buddy, it's been a great podcast. I'm wearing
my UT burn orange. We play Ohio State. We are
number one in the nation for the first time in
our program's history. I'm not going to make
any predictions about how my longhorns are going
to do, but I'm going to be glued to the TV at
11. Central Standard Time and watching college
football all weekend. What are you going to do
this weekend on the long three -day weekend?
I'm actually going to be preparing for my trip
to the UK. I'm going to visit Arm next week.
So that'll be interesting. But I will mostly
be preparing and unpacking and cleaning and then
packing again and spending time with my family
before I leave the country. That's it. I'll also
be testing. I got a new laptop. and a new keyboard.
The laptop is a 14 inch laptop that has a rollable
display that turns into a 16 with the press of
a button or gesture. And then I have a split
keyboard that I got from Naya that I saw at CES.
I actually did a video on that on YouTube. And
it's a split keyboard with convertible buttons
and touch pads. And it's super low profile and
it folds on itself and it's magnetic and you
can take it anywhere. So I'll be taking that.
And I'm also considering taking my Vision Pro
with my MacBook. on the road so i can have a
cool super power high power setup which i'm also
publishing a review about fairly soon cool just
do me a favor don't wear your vision pro on the
airplane i saw some nerd doing this like i did
that when i first got the vision pro and i got
weird looks dude i wanted to he was in the bulkhead
and i was like a row behind him i wanted to walk
up and just knock it off his face it was so funny
anyway that's a little aggressive but With that,
buddy, it's been another great podcast. Why don't
you take us home? Absolutely. We hope our viewers
and listeners on this week's topic is interesting.
If anyone would like to reach out and provide
insights on a future 5G topic, please reach out
to us on social media. Will is at WillTownTech,
and I'm at Anshul Saag. We hope you have a great
holiday weekend, and please don't forget to rate
us and subscribe.