Welcome to episode 236 of the G2 on 5G. It's
the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G and
6G as well. Lately, 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. And I
want to talk about Reliance and their readying
of a massive IPO in 2026. Anshul, I wasn't aware
of this, but I caught the news. It's been long
awaited. We've probably talked about it in the
past, but it's actually happening early next
year, is what news indicates. They're aiming
to raise about $6 billion. And if they're successful
in doing that, it's going to place the valuation
near $112 billion. So we've talked about Reliance
quite a bit, their disaggregated deployment of
infrastructure, their huge subscriber base as
well. And as I read through this article on RCR
Wireless, it speaks to the fact that Reliance
wants to use these funds to further expand its
4G network, focus on digital services and position
itself for global scale value creation, also
focusing on enterprise services. What's really
interesting within the article as well, it talks
about how A lot of analysts, including you and
I, have had concerns that they're not monetizing
what they're doing from a network perspective
beyond access. And hey, listen, you can't fault
them. This is a quandary for many mobile network
operators. But this is a massive, this is going
to be a massive IPO. And it's predicted to be
one of the largest, if not the largest IPOs in
India. What do you think? Do they need to be
doing this to further their network infrastructure?
It's not going to necessarily unlock enterprise
use cases. They're going to have to focus on
that discreetly. But what are your thoughts,
buddy? I don't really think they need the money.
I really think this is more of an exit for some
of the people who invested. in Reliance Geo platforms.
If you remember, there were a lot of companies
that were making investments maybe a year or
two ago. We've made a lot of announcements, whether
it was Google or just tons of companies are investing
in Geo platforms. So I think that this is really
an exit for those companies, first and foremost.
This might also put more pressure on Geo platforms
to be profitable or more profitable. I think
that's really... all this is i don't really know
if they need they can they i don't know how to
put this i feel like they can get their hands
on six billion dollars without having the ipo
this is an exit for their investors first and
foremost and yeah i think i think that we're
in a place where they have a next phase of their
company and part of that is going public but
again this is still part of the reliance family
of companies right so it's not like it's a standalone
startup that doesn't have pretty big backing
behind it. I think this is more of a financial
mechanism for investors to get their exit more
than anything. Yeah, no, I think it's a great
insight. When you look at the subscriber base,
I talked about it being massive. It's 500 million,
right? And from a growth perspective, I believe
that they would be better focused on developing
things like enterprise solutions. applications.
We've seen SK Telecom and other Korean operators
be really innovative with respect to moving beyond
access and really focusing on use cases. And
there's an AI component to this as well. And
I'm going to talk about that in my second topic.
But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it
all rolls out. There have been a lot of starts
and stops here. So they've put this off. And
so now it appears to be coming to fruition. So
it'll be interesting to see as we get into next
year, if there's another delay, they push it
out further. Hey, with that, you spent some time
with Apple this week. They had their big event.
They launched a few things. And when I let you
get through this topic, I'll share with you.
I did buy something that was announced, and I
want to talk to you about that as well. But why
don't you take it away? All right. I'm going
to be real fast because there's a lot to go through.
Four new iPhones. It's the iPhone 17 series,
the base model iPhone 17, as well as all other
iPhone 17s. They're all 5G. The iPhone Air. is
a replacement for the iphone plus it is 5 .6
millimeters thin but it has the pro processor
that's in the pro series which is the pro and
the pro max it also only has one main camera
that's 48 megapixels all the other cameras are
48 megapixels and the pro camera has now three
48 megapixel cameras in addition to that the
watch all versions of the watch now have 5g cellular
And I got confirmation that they are REDCap modems.
So that's going to be how they save power, but
also deliver better performance than the 4G modems
did. Additionally, the Apple Watch Ultra will
now have satellite connectivity, which is great
for people who only take their watch out with
them, don't have a phone. Then they also announced
the AirPods Pro 3, which now have double the
noise canceling. arguably way better fit in your
ear like the snuggest i've ever felt an airpod
in my ears and a built -in heart rate sensor
so you'll be able to track your fitness without
having to wear a smartwatch if that's something
you want to do In addition to all of that, the
iPhone Air is the first chip or first phone from
Apple that has an A19 SoC, a C1X modem, which
is a new upgraded version of the C1 modem that
they claim is twice as fast and 30 % more efficient,
and the N1 wireless chip, which is Wi -Fi, Bluetooth,
and thread combo chip. So that is the most Apple
silicon iPhone that's out there. I believe that
the other iPhones... still use qualcomm modem
but that is the quick of it i was there got to
experience all the devices iphone air is really
truly very premium feeling and looking device
there are some questions about battery life especially
since they were promoting an air magsafe battery
attachment for it at the launch so there's clearly
some sensitivity to its battery life otherwise
they've really refreshed the whole lineup and
They added a new camera across all the new iPhones
called Center Stage, which is actually a square
sensor. So most sensors are a 4 -3 aspect ratio,
but this is a perfectly square sensor. So that
way you can get both landscape and portrait images
on the same sensor without having to turn the
phone. And that way it uses AI to detect faces
and determine if you need landscape or portrait
based on what people are in the shot and how
they're being framed. So that's a pretty cool
feature. I actually think that will be the most
popular feature. across all the new iPhones.
Yeah, for sure. There wasn't a lot of depth on
Apple intelligence, was there? No, the only depth
was they announced the new translation feature
for the AirPods. Then the facial recognition
for center stage. And that's it. Interesting.
Yeah, the product that I bought, I'm going back
to the AirPod Pro 3. The reason why I really
liked it, I think the sensor is great. for the
health measurement and that sort of thing. But
the real -time translation feature, I felt was
going to be, it's pretty cool. And in the beginning,
there are lots of inexpensive earbuds out there
that do this sort of thing. But that's what sort
of sold me in order to pair. But what was interesting,
I don't know if you caught this news, Apple is
disabling that feature for customers in the European
Union based on some sort of like compliance thing
or privacy thing. Are you aware of that? I did
see that. I forgot that they had done that. because
it was announced after the launch. I'm not surprised.
Meta has had to restrict certain AI features
in Europe as well. And I think this will just
be a continuance of regulatory structures and
requirements delaying certain features until
the companies can get them approved. Yeah, it's
interesting. So I'll still be able to use that
feature when I travel to Europe. I'll be in London
and Riga and possibly Barcelona in December for
HPE Discover EMEA. But yeah, as long as your
Apple account is not registered in the European
Union, you'll be able to travel with them and
be able to use that feature. Hey, I speak a little
bit of Spanish, but when it comes to everything
else, man, I need some help. And it's going to
be a lot easier than just holding the phone up
when you get lost somewhere. Agreed. But hey,
buddy, I want to hit my second topic this week.
And I want to talk about Ericsson. And this is
their enterprise wireless group, formerly Cradlepoint.
They're claiming the first 5G agentic AI framework
that is designed to streamline enterprise network
operations. Again, they're claiming it as a first.
They've had something called their NetCloud Assistant
or ANA, but what this is going to do, it's not
just necessarily a chatbot. So it's going to
be a set of orchestration agent or agents and
task agents that are focused on automating workflows,
fault issue resolution. There's some network
assurance that comes along with this. It's going
to be a staggered approach. So you're going to
see them release these agents over time. And
we're beginning to see this when you look at
just traditional enterprise networks with companies
such as Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
But they're claiming this is the first. agentic
framework that's that's based on 5g i think this
is this is going to be something that we're going
to see others follow they are claiming that they
feel like that they are ahead of hewlett packard
enterprise when you look at what they're doing
with private wireless and out the net you know
as their acquired core infrastructure And even
made a bold statement that they feel like that
they have an advantage over Cisco when it comes
to service provider network. I got to believe
that we'll see HPE and Cisco follow suit quickly.
But you got to realize also that Cradlepoint's
been at this a little bit longer when you just
look at private wireless and that sort of thing.
So I think it's pretty compelling. What do you
think? Is there an advantage for them to have
FirstMover with respect to this capability? Yeah,
I think FirstMover is definitely a good. place
to have but it doesn't really guarantee success
right i think there's a lot more factors other
than first mover good to show leadership in the
space especially considering erickson and cradle
points history but i don't really know is this
really changing the way people are operating
their networks yeah i don't know Yeah, it makes
you wonder how easy is it to port an agentic
framework over a mobile network versus an enterprise
network that's Ethernet based and you've got
routing and switching infrastructure attached
to that as well. It'll be interesting to see
how this all rolls out and if they can command
a true leadership position. And at the end of
the day, leadership basically is defined by.
How much addressable market can you capture?
How much top line revenue can you drive? And
how much profitability can you realize from all
of that? So it'll be something that I'll be keeping
my eyes on over the coming months. But hey, let's
go to your second topic. And this is pretty big
news. So I think we've talked about AT &T and
how they, probably on our last podcast, how they
purchased quite a bit of Spectrum from Echo Star
as DISH is beginning their ambitions to be the
fourth. Major M &O in the U .S. is fading pretty
quickly, but SpaceX purchased just a boatload
of Spectrum, and you want to talk about that
and the implications. Yeah, this was a $17 billion
transaction, and it was an acquisition of the
company's AWS 4 and HBlock Spectrum licenses,
which pretty much makes up all of their Spectrum,
or most of it. Most of what's left, let's put
it that way. And that's $8 .5 billion in cash
and $8 .5 billion in SpaceX stock. Ironically,
this makes Echo Star's stock the easiest way
to publicly purchase an investment in SpaceX.
Really? Because they now hold $8 .5 billion in
SpaceX stock. And there's no other way to easily
acquire or invest in SpaceX stock. Because they're
not a publicly traded company, right? yeah correct
yes and echo star is and a lot of their valuation
will now probably be tied to spacex so that's
an interesting situation there's i'm reading
through the echo star release because that's
like the most clear -cut thing what it says is
that in connection with the transaction spacex
and echo star will enter in a long -term commercial
agreement which will enable echo stars boost
mobile subscribers through its cloud native 5g
core to access spacex's next generation starlink
to direct to cell service so now echo start customers
with boost will also be able to use starlink
satellite director hey hold on i thought t -mobile
had an exclusive arrangement with starlink i
guess that has a run out interesting keep in
mind there's no specific date for when this is
available so okay there's a chance that might
happen next year. If there's an exclusivity time
-bound agreement with T -Mobile, right? Yes.
And in addition to that, Echosar specifically
states in their release that they anticipate
this transaction with SpaceX, along with the
previously announced Spectrum sale, will resolve
the FCC inquiries. So again, the FCC is the motivating
factor in these transactions and has pushed them
on Echosar. And we all now know that the FCC
has said that they are no longer pursuing Echo
Star for what they were criticizing them for.
Which was spectrum squatting and not using the
spectrum for years. Yes. And then, yeah, this
gives them more money, more resources, and it
will be very interesting to see what they will
do with that. Some people have claimed that they
might launch their own direct -to -sell service.
That would seem odd, since now they own $8 .5
billion of their direct competitions stock. They
would most likely be in their best interest to
dump it if they choose to go down that path.
But in general, this is a big win for SpaceX.
I'm not surprised that SpaceX managed to get
this deal, considering how close Elon has been
with the Trump administration. biggest vocal
critics of EchoStar and the whole Dish business,
including their 5G network. So this is not a
huge surprise, but it does put a nail in the
coffin of Dish being the fourth carrier and pretty
much makes them a very clear MVNO now. Yeah,
yeah, it looks like it's just it's mainly going
to be booze. Yeah, it's really interesting to
dig a little bit just on that mobile first strategy.
John Stanky at AT &T was asked if he had any
concern that he thought that SpaceX would be
pursuing this mobile first strategy given they
own all of this spectrum now. And he doesn't
think it's going to be an issue. And from his
perspective, terrestrial is that's obviously
the lion's share for mobile connectivity. satellite
is great for gap fill and for rural and that
sort of thing. But this is all really interesting.
And it's not surprising to me that the FCC is
no longer pursuing EchoStar and DISH because
now, I mean, they've all, to your point, all
but have divested all their spectrum. Clearly,
TNT has a demonstrated track record of using
its spectrum, right, and not squatting on it.
Yeah, I tell you what, you and I have been following
this for years, and it's just what DISH embarked
on was very aggressive. We've talked about Reliance
and how successful they've been with a cloud
-native, cloudified core, highly disaggregated
network topology, leveraging things like elements
of Open RAN. But at the end of the day, DISH
has had a lot of challenges. And I think maybe
part of it is that there were a lot of cooks
in the kitchen. At one point, like every infrastructure
provider was claiming that they were working
with DISH to roll this out. Everyone was super
excited because it was a modern network, but
they clearly haven't executed as well as Reliance
has. So yeah, super interesting, man. But it'll
be interesting to watch this and see how it all
unfolds over time. But with that, I'm going to
hit my third and final topic, and you and I are
both going to close with T -Mobile. From my perspective,
I want to talk about, and I may have alluded
to this after you and I attended the technology
summit in Bellevue last month and in the analyst
event, but T -Mobile is clearly moving past CBRS
spectrum, in particular for neutral hosts. And
it's really interesting because there have been
companies like Celona and others that are focused
on neutral hosts. CBRS being the spectrum that's
leveraged. You and I have talked about some of
the challenges with CBRS, just the amount of
spectrum that's available. And also there's general
access licensing. There is licensing where people
have actually purchased PAL licenses to deploy
it. In that scenario, it's been mainly enterprises
that are trying to do things like provide connectivity
to areas that are underserved by traditional
infrastructure. from a cellular perspective but
this from my perspective this is a big blow to
the whole notion of cbrs and like i've been following
cbrs for years on go i thought it was amazing
how they were democratizing access to license
spectrum because typically it was it's been very
expensive and the mnos gobble it up this is an
interesting development because they're obviously
they're a major mno And I think part of it may
be that they've seen some success with their
advanced network solutions, which for our viewers
and listeners that aren't familiar with ANS at
T -Mobile. So this is T -Mobile for businesses,
hybrid, public, you know, slicing the public
network and private network deployment. And it's
really, I think, become a model because it provides
flexibility. from not only a deployment perspective,
but from a CapEx and an OpEx perspective to get
private networks out in the wild. And as a result,
this year we have seen, and I think we've talked
about this on prior podcasts, we have seen an
uptick in the adoption of private networking.
So it's been like, it's not been a hockey stick.
It's been a very long tail, but we're beginning
to see T -Mobile with ANS wins. We're seeing
Solana with private WANs. We're seeing HPE build
its capabilities with private. Cisco has always
been focused there as well. Dell, to a lesser
extent, Dell has been very focused on telecom
and driving OPEX and CAPEX efficiencies within
the telecom space. But any thoughts on this?
Is this a surprise to you? I don't think so.
I think they made the effort, but the truth is
they have a lot of spectrum. Right, they did.
A lot of 2 .5. I think it would have made a lot
more sense if they were in a place where they
didn't have the spectrum and CBRS gave them a
little bit more of that freedom. That said, I
think they did make an effort and it didn't go
well for them. So I think they moved on. Yeah.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. They're not in
a spectrum deficit like some of the other MNOs
were when they were deploying their 5G networks.
And that's one of the reasons. why they're just
one or two steps ahead, first to standalone nationwide,
first to their definition of what they envision
to be 5G advanced, and they're using low latency,
low loss to really fine -tune. what they're doing
from a slice perspective, they've launched T
priority, they've launched super mobile. So yeah,
it's, it's probably something that's basically
they've gotten to a point now where they've gotten
so much momentum that even for like neutral host
applications, it's not necessary for them. But
with that, we're going to hit your final topic
and you're going to close us out with a T -Mobile
update as well. Yes. This one is also fairly
new. This is actually an announcement that T
-Mobile for business. will be providing 5G connectivity
and telecommunication services for the LA 2028
Olympics. This is a broad coverage agreement
where T -Mobile for Business will provide connectivity
and data services from more than 110 locations
in more than 40 venues across Southern California.
I did some research. And I found out that there's
actually two venues for the LA 28 Olympics that
are in Oklahoma City. Do not ask me why. I have
no idea. But for some reason, that happened for
softball and some whitewater sports. Everything
else is in Southern California. The venues come
as far south as the border of San Diego and Orange
County at Trestles State Beach for surfing, all
the way up to the... northernly parts of la for
a multitude of things most things are happening
at stadiums but they go really far east they
go really far north like as far as the rose bowl
there's some aquatics in the in pasadena lots
of things happening at the port of la and at
long beach downtown la so it's literally all
over la county and beyond right trestles is in
the most southerly port of arts most southerly
part of orange county which is very much not
la and they're going to do tennis at carson and
swimming at the whatchamacallit oh the stadium
who will not be named because none of the stadiums
that have names are actually given their names
on the la 28 olympics so like crypto arena is
just called downtown la arena it's very and bmo
park where the where la plays they call exposition
park stadium so they won't give any of those
sponsors their naming rights for the olympics
unless they pay for it but yeah it's really interesting
because connectivity is a huge thing and it's
going to be super necessary for the olympics
t -mobile says they're going to deploy 5g ans
which is their advanced network solutions just
they will connect more than 15 000 staff with
push -to -talk services so they'll be using super
mobile In addition to that, they're going to
have reliable high bandwidth and highly secure
connectivity for point of sale systems and event
ticketing, which means they'll be using network
slicing. And then there will also be a secure
low latency connection between the International
Broadcast Center for all the broadcast operations
and all the competition venues. T -Mobile will
be supporting over 100 broadcasters from around
the world to cover the games. And they will also
use the games as a... showcase for all of their
use cases for sports and beyond. Our friends
at the Game Time Tech might want to cover this
because T -Mobile is going to be one of the driving
forces behind the LA 28 Olympics. And it's also
for the Paralympics as well. It's going to be
really interesting to see what kinds of experiences
we get out of it and hopefully more 4K transmissions.
Because I like watching things in 4K and I feel
like we're not getting enough 4K. Yeah, I hear
you. So for our viewers and listeners, Game Time
Tech Pod is done by two of our colleagues, Mel
Brew and Robert Kramer. Go hit the More Insights
and Strategy website if you want to learn more
about that and subscribe to that. The final thing
that I'll add, Anshul, to your topic is that
this really demonstrates the power of a fiber
-like connectivity. from a throughput and from
a latency perspective. So given the diversity,
given just the distance, even beyond like you
were mentioning, beyond the confines of Los Angeles
proper, using 5G to be able to broadcast from
all of these different venues within Southern
California. just really demonstrates the flexibility
and the capability of what 5G brings. Again,
a wireless but wire -like capability that supports
broadcast. And we've talked about broadcast use
cases numerous times on our podcast as well.
So this is going to be fun. It's a few years
out, but it's going to be exciting to see just
how performant this connectivity is with T -Mobile
powering the LA Olympics in 2028. But hey, my
friend, it's been 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 is at will .tech and I am at Anshul
Saad. We hope you have a great weekend and please
don't forget to rate us and subscribe.