Welcome to episode 244 of the 6G podcast. It's
the latest inside scoop on everything 6G. We
cover about six topics in about 30 minutes, and
it's brought to you by More Insights and Strategy.
I'm Anshul Sog, and joining me again this week
is fellow analyst Mike Dano from Ookla. And I
just got back from GTC 2026 in San Jose, which
was... quite the whirlwind. Mike, were you anywhere
this week or did you get a break from travel?
No, I got, yeah, I got a break. I was here all
the whole time, but I was actually watching all
the NVIDIA stuff with great interest and had
several conversations about it because I think
all eyes are on GTC this week. That is ground
zero for all the interesting stuff. Yeah. And
tell me what you saw. I'm actually quite curious
to hear it, to hear what you have to say. Yeah.
So I think in terms of telecom stuff, I think
the biggest announcement. that wasn't already
announced at MWC was the Grid AI or AI Grid announcement,
or however you want to call it. This is not to
be confused with Nvidia's already existing Grid
technology product, which is specifically for
streaming games. They moved away from the Grid
name and turned it into GeForce Now, which is
a cloud gaming streaming service. And they've
repurposed Grid for telecom uses. And this is
a kind of like a mesh computing distributed network
of compute, of course, utilizing NVIDIA GPUs.
And for AI acceleration, this is not to be confused
with what they're doing in their AI RAM, because
the partners that they're working with are actually,
some of them don't even have a RAM, like Comcast
and Spectrum, but they are also partnering with
AT &T Mobile. And they're also... Cisco's involved
in this as well as a networking partner. And
they're part of the AT &T AI grid application.
The AT &T application seems to be more IoT focused,
while Comcast is a little bit more generalized
and actually mentions GeForce Now, which is funny
because they do some GeForce Now optimizations
with L4S, which is a whole other thing. It's
a codec slash thing that allows... the end point
to communicate backward to the cloud and anticipate
lag and reorganize packets. But not to get distracted,
companies like Akamai are also involved. So it's
a really big announcement. I think the one thing
that's really interesting is that there's just,
it's, it feels like it's very broad in the sense
that it's not just one, one way of doing things.
And it's almost nebulous in a way, because I
think it allows people to add more compute at
different layers of the network. AI -RAN is a
very specific area of the network. This feels
like it's a layer above that, somewhere either
in the core network or somewhere in the cloud
edge, or even all the way up in the cloud. It
feels like it's more flexible. And what I think
is interesting is a lot of the announcements
that were talked about in this, or the types
of products that were utilized in these announcements,
where the Nvidia RTX pro 6 ,000 cards, which
are not really like edge AI. They're more like,
like multi -purpose compute, which is there's
a graphics capability to them as well. So it's
not just for AI. It could also be for graphics.
And I think that would be really interesting
for stuff like AI or sorry for AR and VR at the
edge, because then you could supplement that
compute with those graphics cards that are maybe
not at the brand. level right at the very edge
but they're just a little further back which
gives you a little bit more power right because
you're not going to run these three to six hundred
watt gpus on the ram like you would a much smaller
one so i think this is an interesting announcement
because it it creates a new layer i think of
the network where compute can exist but there's
still a lot of ai ran i think that kind of bolts
onto this And what's interesting is I didn't
really get the sense that there was much talk
of 6G in the talk about this grid, and that it
was more about AI and enabling AI compute in
different parts of the network. And I rambled
quite a bit, so I'm going to let you respond.
No, I'm very interested to hear that. I was watching
it from afar. That is what I got. It really does
sound to me like NVIDIA is using AI to resurrect
edge computing. Because I feel like a lot of
this kind of stuff has already been covered in
the years before AI, sort of circa 2019, by companies
like Ericsson had Edge Gravity. There was Mobile
Edge X that was eventually acquired by Google.
There was a lot of startups like Edge Micro and
Vapor .io. And then companies like AT &T made
deals with Microsoft for edge computing. And
Verizon had a huge deal with AWS. For edge computing
and even on the Verizon coverage map, you could
see the edge, the mechs, the mobile edge compute
locations that Verizon had started up. And I
heard you talk about edge computing fabrics and
these sort of federations of edge computing.
And boy, this sounds very similar to that. Very
similar. It's just you throw the dash the AI
on top. What's really funny is I think you're
right. In fact, somebody mentioned the word mech
and then pulled it back very quickly when they
said that. I think you're right there. But I
think what's interesting is Mac's biggest problem
was it didn't have a killer app, right? It didn't
have this, why do we need all this compute? Now,
if you add AI to that, I think if AI had grown
at the time when we had Mac, I think it would
have been fine. I think Mac would have survived.
So I do think having an application for this
compute does help. And I think having other applications
for this compute will also help, which is why
I think it's really interesting that they're
using the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwells because they're
multipurpose, right? You can use them for graphics
and you can use them for AI. So you could do
that. You could accelerate some video workloads
if you wanted to, because this GPU is that capable.
It is expensive. It is power hungry, but it gives
you flexibility and it doesn't have to only be
AI applications, even though that's probably
what it's going to pay for. 90 % of these deployments.
I feel like in this age of AI, all previous assumptions
are being thrown out the window. You just cannot
anticipate what this AI wave is going to do.
And so, yeah, my natural setting is skeptical,
especially because I feel like we just went through
the edge computing thing and it just recently
fell apart. But here we are in the age of AI
and no former calculations can be applied to
this new AI world, I think. I was going to say
that that brings me to the thing I wanted to
talk about, which was the Bell announcement.
This is exactly. And part of the reason that
I am a little less skeptical this time around
is because of announcements like we saw at Mobile
World Congress from Deutsche Telekom and this
new announcement from Bell. Basically, the announcement
is that Bell is going to build a really big.
AI factory in Saskatchewan. And the thing that
caught my eye was that Bell is going to invest,
they said, $1 .7 billion into building this thing.
80 jobs, lots of money. They're going to do the
compute hardware will be funded by Cerebrus and
CoreWeave. And most importantly, Bell is really
putting some real money into this data center
that they're building. To the degree where they're
going to take a real big hit on their free cash
flow this year, but they're estimating in 2028,
adjusted EBITDA is going to grow much higher
than what they previously expected. So basically
after they pay for the build out, they're expecting
a rise in their free cash flow due to this gigantic
data center that they're building in Saskatchewan.
And it really does tie directly into this idea
of... distributed compute. And for Bell specifically,
it really ties into the idea of data sovereignty.
That is their whole argument. This is a data
center that is run for Canada by Canadians, owned
by Canadian companies, with the data residing
inside of the borders of Canada. And Bell has
been very vocal about this ai strategy that they're
embarking on but i think that the important thing
with this announcement is that they're really
putting some serious money behind it and they
talked they talked about the the amount of nvidia
gpus that this computing site is going to have
really lines up with this whole thing the idea
of follow follow the money People at Bell have
been convinced they're not just joining a federation
of edge computing sites. They're not just spinning
up one or two test sites. No, they're building
a gigantic AI data center there in Saskatchewan.
$1 .7 billion. It is not insignificant. For Bell,
that is serious capital outlay. And so they believe
in this whole thing. I think that further erodes
my skepticism of this trend. I think that there's
really something here. I'm not entirely sure.
It makes the same amount of sense for an AT &T
to build a data center in Virginia, but certainly
for Bell in Canada, in the remote areas of Canada,
I think that this kind of thing could, certainly
Bell believes it's going to be successful. Yeah,
I saw this announcement and I thought it was
a pretty big deal. What was really interesting
is I had a conversation with the other Canadian
carrier about something very similar and their
investment in AI with TELUS. And they also had
a very... built in Canada, financed by Canada
for Canadians, sovereign AI. I think we're in
a place where there's a very heavy focus on sovereign
AI and empowering that. And I don't think it's
going to only happen in Canada. But I do think
the relationship between the US and Canada has
forced a little bit more of the Canadian carriers
to take on the role of what maybe we would have
expected a US CSP to do instead. And I think
they want to protect their data. And I saw this
as a 300 megawatt data center. So that's pretty
considerable. It's not quite gigawatt scale like
the US. But to your point, there's a reason why
you probably won't see carriers deploy these
kinds of things in the US because most likely
it's the CSPs with their gigawatt. capacity that
they're going to be deploying not to mention
the power infrastructure required to deliver
that i did see that it's happening in saskatchewan
just right outside of regina which i made sure
not to mispronounce because i've been corrected
many times and yeah the canadian operators have
also been notorious for under investing so i
think seeing them make this kind of commitment
means that they're very serious to your point
and they wouldn't make this decision lightly
And I think that there are probably some signals
from the Canadian government that they're going
to be more restrictive on AI and how where AI
data moves and how it's processed. Yeah, I think
that the idea of data sovereignty is just it
makes so much sense in the current geopolitical
environment. I just I think that is absolutely
the place where we'll see a lot of this kind
of investment, though, again. offer a skeptical
view i think we still have not yet seen the the
killer ai app there's not necessarily an ai service
i think a widespread ai service it's certainly
valuable i've used it all the time i know a lot
of people do i but i'm not yet convinced that
there that there's enough demand for ai services
to warrant this much investment in data centers
to keep them running 24 7 to keep that demand
up i think we're all assuming that the ai marketplace
is still in its infancy and that additional applications
and usage will evolve over time and i would not
be surprised to see that i just i guess we haven't
seen it yet i think that we are all expecting
more out of this ai wave it's just hard to tell
exactly what it's going to result in where we
where we're going to be in a year or two in terms
of ai technology and what we'll be doing with
it yeah and I agree with that. I think we might
be getting a bit of a sense of that with some
of these agentic claw -based applications. And
the application is actually the ability to work
for you and do things for you while you do other
things. But that's still very niche right now.
And I think the productivity angle for companies
is it's almost invaluable and being able to multiply
people's productivity. So I think that seems
to be. where a lot of energy is being focused
right now. But obviously that's not really the
focus of, I think, what these carriers are trying
to do. I think what these carriers are trying
to do might be a little bit more focused on private
personal data, like medical and other sensitive
AI data. Moving on to my second topic, I wanted
to talk about foldables, specifically the Oppo
Find N6, which is the latest foldable from Oppo.
It is... their first foldable with no crease
and they actually showed it on stage against
the fold seven and how different they look with
and without the crease i think this will be a
precursor for apple's foldable which will most
likely also not have a crease because that's
one of the biggest critiques of these foldables
is the crease down the middle in addition it's
also super thin It's top of the line, 200 megapixel
main camera, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gem 5, 6 ,000
milliamp hour battery. It's not quite as thin,
I believe, as the Honor phone or as big of a
battery, but it's close. But I think it will
have a better camera. And some reviews came out
a few days ago and they're pretty glowing. But
what's interesting is almost at the same time
as this new foldable came out, Samsung discontinued
their Galaxy Z tri -fold. which is a very high
-end tri -fold phone, which is about $3 ,000.
And yeah, it wasn't for a lack of demand because
they were selling out of basically everyone that
they were making. I think they were just losing
too much money on actually producing them. I
think this was more of an exercise in showing
that they could do it rather than actually trying
to capture market share with it. Huawei, I assume,
is also not making much money, if any, on their
tri -fold. Again, Huawei is not really in the
business of making money for their Halos. So
I think right now it looks like trifolds are
like a concept that you might be able to buy,
but isn't really economically viable because
of all the cost of the engineering. So I think
we might not see trifolds be very common or very
affordable. And I think that we'll probably see
more of them, but in very low volumes. I think
right now people seem to be focusing on just
one fold. And I was a big fan of Oppo's foldables
for a long time. They own OnePlus and they did
the Find N2, which was really a great phone and
the basis of the OnePlus Open, but they haven't
refreshed that one. So we're not going to get
it in the US. And unfortunately, we're not going
to get any of the Oppo phones in the US. But
the cool thing is that the new Find N6 also has
80 watt charging. and 50 watt wireless charging
so it's fast and yeah like this isn't quite 6g
but i think foldables will become way more commonplace
when 6g rolls around and yeah i think we're in
a place where foldables are becoming like the
top end rung of the market and i think the biggest
complaint that i've had in the past was cameras
and it seems like we're finally getting where
the point where like foldable cameras are good
enough that you don't need to carry around a
second phone like i do where i had the fold 7
but i also had my iphone because the camera was
just so much better on the iphone but now i'm
i moved to an s26 ultra and i'm reviewing that
and i love the camera but it's not a foldable
like i'm already missing my foldable yeah i was
gonna ask is that a is that a form factor that
you do are you a fan of foldables my biggest
use case for a foldable other than having my
child's monitor their crib monitor on one screen
and doing stuff on another i love having my work
calendar and then my gmail on the other screen
and being able to just oh like someone's asking
me like are you available this time and just
have the calendar open at the same time and not
have to do the tab thing where you like do the
windows correct before it's so much more valuable
or best one another one is have a menu open on
one screen and then have the online ordering
open on the other. There's so many applications
where having two things open at the same time
is great. And like over time, the phone also
learns what those pairs might be and suggests
pairings that you use together often. So yeah,
like I'm a foldable convert. I'm not as converted
on flips as I am on folds. I think folds are
way more productivity focused, but the camera
has always been a weakness. And I do think the
Razer Ultra, which we talked about. a few weeks
ago. I think that will also solve a lot of problems
in terms of the camera capabilities and might
convince me to ditch the 26 Ultra after I'm done
reviewing it. I did notice in the most important
news of the week, the trailer for the new Spider
-Man movie came out. I saw that. And he's got
a foldable phone. Spider -Man does. It's a flip.
Yep. It's a flip phone. I couldn't tell quite
what it was, what model, but the fact that Spider
-Man carries a foldable phone, I feel like that's
a... That is an interesting signal to point at
the potential opportunities in this market. I
think we're all eyes are on Apple to see what
it's going to do. But I agree, it's widely expected
that Apple will release a foldable phone at some
point. Yeah, the nine to five Google guys say
it was a Z Flip from Samsung. That's not a surprise.
They probably paid for that one. I would be shocked
if they didn't. But there are still people who
are not aware that these phones exist. So it's
probably a good marketing opportunity for them.
I'm sure it's a good marketing opportunity for
them. It's hard to beat having Spider -Man carry
around your phone. That's a pretty good selling
point. So my second one, you've got the phones.
I'll take the broadband. And my second news announcement
that I think is worth pointing out this week
is about Google Fiber and Astound Broadband.
They announced a merger at the beginning of this
week. Certainly very interesting. Both of them
are sort of tier two regional fiber providers
in the U .S. But from a networking side, this
is very much an example of the fiber land grab
that's going on in the U .S. right now. And this
is a big trend that I think is only expected
to continue. We saw it with AT &T acquiring Lumen.
We saw it with Verizon acquiring Frontier. And
we've seen it with a lot of smaller acquisitions
by some of the smaller fiber providers. Basically,
it's a fiber land rush. The goal is to get as
much territory as you can so that you can deploy
fiber to it. And that's certainly what this acquisition
between Astound and G -Fiber, that's what this
stems from. And also it just means G -Fiber is
stepping out of the market. What we don't have
yet is an idea of whether this new... merged
company is going to be branded as Google Fiber
or G -Fiber, or if they're going to keep the
Astound broadband brand. The company Stonepeak
is the majority shareholder for Astound, and
obviously Alphabet is the majority shareholder
for G -Fiber. Alphabet is going to keep a stake
in the merged company. And the merged company
is going to have about 7 million locations in
26 states when that merger is finished. And it
is going to provide some fairly substantial competition
against, and I believe Comcast and Charter. So
those are who that merged company is going to
be competing against after they merge. But yeah,
it's another signal of the land grab that's going
on. And I think in my mind, the question is,
who's next? As companies increasingly acquire
fiber providers, we've even seen T -Mobile, right,
acquire several smaller fiber providers. And
I think they're on their way toward 12 to 15
million total locations with fiber in the next
few years. And so the question is, which company
is going to be the next one that will be snapped
up in this land grab? From what I've seen, discussion
is around BrightSpeed or Unity. Those are two
other sort of regional DSL cable fiber providers.
And so the discussion is possibly is Verizon
emerging as a bidder for either BrightSpeed or
Unity. Nothing announced, no real rumors along
those lines, no published reports on discussions
between those companies. But I think that's just
generally market discussion. That is the next
acquisition target, possibly BrightSpeed or Unity
with Verizon discussed as a possible acquisition
candidate for that company. But again, nothing
announced. But I think that's what's happening
right now. It is a land rush. And really, the
question is, now we've got Astound and GFiber
merging. Who's next as these companies merge?
And then the real question, though, that hangs
over this whole market is. How many fiber providers
are we going to have in big markets? Cause many
markets already have two fiber providers and
some markets already have three and a few have
four fiber providers in the same market. And
that, that does seem like too many fiber providers.
It really, the economics break down if you can
only get 10 or 20 % of the, of a given territory
in terms of fiber take rates. And once the number
of fiber providers in a given market rises to
a certain point, the economics just don't work
out anymore. I think right now we're in that
shakeout of the market in terms of number of
providers in a given market, who owns all those
providers, whether it's a wholesale business
model or if they're going to direct to consumer.
We're really seeing that shakeout right now.
And obviously, as we're hearing on the 6G podcast,
this all has direct importance to 6G because
This is the grid that underlies all wireless
networks. This fiber network is the grid that
underlies current 5G networks. And certainly,
as companies build out fiber to new locations,
that is the wired grid that will be underneath,
that will be the foundation for any 6G network,
for sure. Yeah, I was going to say that I feel
like this was... Semi started by Google fiber
back when they first launched the service to
create some kind of competition in internet services.
And then, and then Google fiber stalled and stopped
expanding. And then they bought, if you remember
web pass for all the millimeter wave backhaul,
instead of having to dig, I don't think they
really took advantage of web passes capabilities.
I think they just bought the network and utilized
it for what it was. The reason why I know that
is because my aunt lived in a web pass home in
her condo and they had web pass and I was really
impressed with the speeds and stuff, but I wasn't
impressed with the lack of growth because I thought
once Google bought web pass, they were going
to actually take advantage of that tech and they
never really did. I'm a little sad to see Google
Fiber get kind of hoovered into Astound. I will
say that I'm not as familiar with Astound's network,
so I did some research and looked into their...
deployments. They're fairly prominent in Texas,
but they're also pretty prominent in the Northeast
and a little bit in the Northwest. They also
have some pretty big footprint in California.
So they're in the more populated states, it seems.
Nothing at all in Florida. Maybe they could be
looking for... some fiber down there. But yeah,
I think you're right that according to the New
Street folks, Astound is actually primarily cable.
Cable is 85 % of their total locations. They
have 4 .5 million locations in 13 states, Astound
does, and 85 % of those are still cable. So they
have a significant number of locations that they
would presumably upgrade to fiber, Astound does,
owned by Stonepea Capital. But yeah, it's an
interesting merger between those two. I don't
think I would have expected that between chief
fiber and astound and i will tell you the general
sentiment is negative in terms of google getting
acquired or at least google fiber specifically
because i think a lot of people really had more
trust in google but also they see this as give
google giving up on another venture and yeah
google fiber did provide some metros with real
competition to cable and pushed cable to either
lower prices or deploy fiber so It'll be interesting
to see how this shakes out long -term. But I
would also say, I feel like this current fiber
land rush was started by AT &T and them kind
of building out their fiber as they built out
their 5G network and talking about how that influences
their ability to build out that network and to
have enough capacity as backhaul. So I think
it's really interesting that we're in this phase
thanks to AT &T. I don't think, to your point,
I don't think we're stopping anytime soon. And
I will always chuckle at the fact that Verizon
sold its fiber, most of its fiber business, and
then reacquired it through an acquisition, them
realizing maybe they needed that fiber. But yeah,
I think this is not a total shock. But I would
also say, to your point, there will probably
be more consolidation. And I do think having
multiple fiber options is good. But to your point,
very rarely do you actually have two companies
coming in and bringing the same. bringing in
different fiber. Like where I live, it's basically
AT &T or Google piggybacking on AT &T's infrastructure.
Yeah. And the G -Fiber network was, it's pretty
remarkable. It's interesting that Google built
that out. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense
for Google to be an internet provider in just
a handful of cities, essentially. That doesn't
really gel. I understand why they wanted to do
it in order to. push competition and to raise
speeds and lower overall internet prices. But
I know that there were rumors that G -Fiber was
for sale in the last few years. And I will say,
just in terms of Ookla data on G -Fiber, their
network is quite remarkable. And just in terms
of speeds, they have very high speed tiers that
they sell. We certainly see that in the data.
One of the interesting things that we do see
in the Ookla data is extremely low latency on
that network, which I think is, my theory is
that it's due to the rest of Google's infrastructure,
right? That not only were they building a fiber
network provider, they were also leveraging some
of the routing and data center and long haul
network that Google relies on for the transmission
of just google .com and all the other Google
services. So I think it was always a G5 rule
is always a standout, certainly one to watch,
but was never going to be a nationwide play.
by Google. I just don't think that was their
goal. And so I assume that from the Google perspective,
it's mission accomplished, right? Like they created
some additional competition for cable providers
and other companies in the market with super
fast speeds. And now they can bow out having
accomplished what they set out to do is what
I assume that their viewpoint is on the market.
Yeah, I think so. I think I never actually used
Google Fiber mostly because AT &T was available
to me at basically the same price. And AT &T
is been really solid for me for the last seven
or eight years. But I will say that there was
a time when I used to get one millisecond ping
on AT &T, and I think they realized they didn't
need to deliver that, and they dialed me back
to five milliseconds. So I do think that all
fiber networks, for the most part, are capable
of it. Whether or not they want to support it
is a different thing. Yeah, yeah, it does. I
assume it requires significant investment in
order to lower those latencies down past just
a few milliseconds. Yeah. But... We've got, I
think, our last topics, your last topic and my
last topic, gelled together. You want to go first?
Sure. So I saw this headline a couple days ago,
and I didn't really think it was anything special
because I've already discussed that Qualcomm
plans on having 6G devices for the Olympics.
But then I saw the mention that the Trump administration
was specifically asking for three commercial
6G devices for the LA Olympics. The Trump administration
plans to launch 6G in 2029, which is a year ahead
of when everybody else is basically saying that
6G will be commercially ready, including leaders
like T -Mobile. So it seems like there might
be a little bit of a disconnect between with
what the Trump administration wants and what
the industry is working towards. Obviously, LA
is happening in 2028. So it won't be anything
commercial by any means. The Olympics, the LA
Olympics are happening. Yeah, in 28. It would
have to be something pre -standard to a certain
degree. It's unclear what standard that will
be, but most likely it will be some form of 3GPP
and most likely it'll be release 20. It was very
interesting to see this headline because it seemed
like there's a little bit of a reality distortion
field around what the Trump administration wants
and what the industry is working towards. And
this was brought up during a Politico conference
called Powering 6G, and it was an SGP of Global
Government Affairs from Qualcomm. They're going
to do what they can do, I think, at this point.
But I will be very curious to see, one, what
Qualcomm is able to deliver, and two, how the
Trump administration will shape this because
they got into office in 2024, which means the
election will happen in 2028. So I'm wondering
how aligned this will be with their, it's not
going to be a reelection campaign. We know that,
but there's going to be some kind of effort to
claim global six -year leadership, national pride,
et cetera, et cetera, at these Olympics. And
I think that's part of it, but release 21. is
technically going to be the real 6G standard.
I'm very curious to see what this will actually
be in terms of 6G because of the 2030 timeframe
and how it's two years ahead of what everybody
is actually planning for. Yeah. Yeah. And I think,
so I, the NTIA, the government agency that is
tied to the White House, which essentially is
overseeing the BEAD program and many other programs
and overseeing the Huawei Rip and Replace program.
Late last year, NTIA announced that they wanted
6G at the Olympics. So I assume that this all
stems from an initiative within this current
administration to push 6G at the Olympics. I
think that there's a whole of government effort
going on right now that is working on convincing
companies like Qualcomm to... move quickly so
that the USA can proclaim a leadership position
in 6G. It's the exact same thing that we had
during 5G. It's the race to 5G. If you remember
all those discussions, this is the same thing
again. It is the race to 6G. It's each carrier
and each government wanting to claim first. And
certainly the LA Olympics are a good place for
that to happen. Do you remember the whole Verizon
and KT back and forth within the same week? It
was within hours. And I think there was, my understanding
was that, I think it was on the Verizon side.
One of them had to rush it. They just had to
rush it out. It was like several weeks ahead
of time. And they saw what was going on in Korea
and decided that they had to pull the trigger.
Because yeah, you got to be first. You got to
be first. It can't be a week late. No, that's
not going to work. And I'm seeing the same thing
on my side. I did get, I have seen some recent
filings at the FCC regarding the WRC 27. And
so this is actually related to what you're talking
about, and it's about this whole topic. But what
it looks like to me is that there's some early
lobbying going on with regards to the ITU's World
Radio Communications Conference next year, 2027.
And for those not familiar with it, that is the
international event where all country regulators,
spectrum regulators, meet at the WRC. meetings
that are hosted by the ITU and they're held all
over the world. And the goal of those meetings
is to get onto the same track in terms of spectrum.
Because the goal there is to avoid having 5G
and this spectrum band in one country and 5G
in a completely different spectrum band in another
country. That leads to, that doesn't encourage
economies of scale. It just makes it really difficult
to have a global communication system. And so.
The objective of the ITU and these WRC meetings
is to basically get everyone on the same page.
And that's a very common, that's been going on
for a long time. But the interesting thing here
is that what we're starting to see from lobbyists
like the CTIA and the NCTA is they're worried
about this upcoming meeting next year in November
of 2027, because it's going to be in Shanghai.
And so they are saying, and I'll quote some of
the things, is the CTIA is warning about rivals
like China having an effect here. And then the
NCTA wrote about the location of the conference
in Shanghai could deter some stakeholders from
undertaking this important work. And they're
warning that, hey, it's because it's in China,
we need to make sure that China doesn't have
overt influence on the. goings on at these meetings.
And I think a lot of what this boils down to
is the six and seven gigahertz bands. So China
has allocated the six gigahertz band for cellular
licensed communications, including 6G. The U
.S. has not allocated the six gigahertz band
to 6G. They are keeping the six gigahertz band
for Wi -Fi. And instead, U .S. regulators want
to allocate the seven gigahertz band. for 6G.
And so I think that all of this discussion going
on right now is mainly related to that discussion,
whether 6 gigahertz or 7 gigahertz should be
ground zero for 6G. I expect that probably both
bands will be used for 6G, but I know that there's
going to be a lot of negotiation up until this
WRC meeting in November of 2027 in Shanghai in
order to get everything straightened out ahead
of that meeting. The last thing I'll mention
is that as the 3GPP meets pretty regularly in
order to develop standards for cellular communications,
including 5G and 6G, the 3GPP just met in Japan.
And from my... It's real hard to understand all
the stuff that goes on in the 3GPP. It is a very
technical organization. But from my little bit
that I have been able to glean from their recent
meeting in Japan is that they did, the 3GPP did
make some decisions on future cellular standards.
They are looking at the 7 gigahertz band. And
from what I understand, the latest thinking there
is that they'll have up to, I think it's 200
megahertz wide channels or even possibly 400
megahertz wide channels, which is a crazy amount
of spectrum. But that they're looking at technologies
working in there. They're looking at full duplexing
flamework, all kinds of interesting technologies
that they are thinking about for the 6G standard
multi -radio spectrum sharing. So that would
allow simultaneous 5G and 6G transmissions in
the 7 gigahertz band. One of the most important
things that the 3GPP is working on is they're
working on a C -band grid compatibility for 7
gigahertz, meaning that a network deployment
in 7 gigahertz would work on the same cell grid
that has been built for the C -band or 3 .45
gigahertz. And for network operators, that is
an absolutely critical element for all this stuff
because what they really do not want to do is
build a new... uh cell tower grid for a new spectrum
band they want to use their existing cell tower
grid to deploy new technologies and they've already
built out 5g networks on the c -band grid and
so if they can reuse that same cell tower grid
for 6g that undoubtedly that is their objective
it still means that they would probably to put
a 7 gigahertz network into operation they would
still have to invest in that spectrum and in
new radios in order to broadcast in that band.
But if they could reuse the same grid, that would
lower the costs for the lower deployment costs
for them. So that's a lot of interesting developments,
right? We've got these sort of these big markers.
We've got 3GPP is working on 6G standards. We've
got international regulators meeting and trying
to decide a way forward for most of the world
at the WRC meetings. And so, I don't know, I'm
taking all these signals as that there's... forward
movement on 6G standards, 6G spectrum. Like this
is the kind of stuff that we watched in the early
days of 5G. This exact same discussion for 5G,
moving into new bands and new technologies for
5G. Same thing was happening again. So no surprises,
but certainly a signal that things are moving
forward in terms of spectrum, in terms of regulatory
sort of unity. So, yeah, it's not a surprise,
but it's also good to see in terms of if you're
betting on 6G, this is another signal that, yes,
it's going to happen. I think your whole Chinese
officials thing is very interesting. I do agree
that it's most likely about the six gigahertz
band. I was appalled by China's decision to.
allocate 6 gigahertz for 6G slash 5G only because
I'm a big Wi -Fi guy as well. And for me, 6 gigahertz
was a Wi -Fi band and it enables both Wi -Fi
6E and Wi -Fi 7 and it's going to enable Wi -Fi
8. So not having any of that 6 gigahertz spectrum
is unfortunate because it's much cleaner than
the 5 gigahertz band is. And God knows we have
so much interference in the 5 gigahertz, God
forbid, 2 .4 gigahertz bands. I think we are
going to see more allocation of spectrum for
uplink because of AI. And I think there's going
to be more demand for uplink traffic in general,
especially if we have on -device AI and we have
agents running on our phones. So I think that's
going to be something that makes a lot of sense
for 6G. And then the other thing was the whole
site reuse thing. That is 100 % something I saw
Qualcomm talk about last year. at MWC it was
one of their research projects and it was explicitly
around enabling seven gigahertz at 3 .5 in terms
of coverage so that sounds like a very that sounds
like a Qualcomm proposal if you ask me but it
sounds like something that's necessary if we're
going to see 6G deploy remotely close to what
5G can do in terms of footprint because 6G is
going to be standalone so it's not going to be
as quickly deployed as 5G was And that might
actually be a good thing for everybody because
even to this day, there's still a lot of 5G operators
who don't have standalone. And that means that
they just can't even deliver any of this 5G applications
that were supposedly promised when 5G was marketed.
So I think it's important that we have something
like that enabled. And yeah, I think you're right.
There's going to be a battleground on six gigahertz.
And I think to your point, harmonizing around
seven gigahertz is going to be important and
making sure that band. behaves remotely close
to lower frequencies because i can't imagine
from my experience six gigahertz does not propagate
very well so i think seven gigahertz is going
to be even more of a challenge i'm very interested
to see if yeah the propagation characteristics
in seven gigahertz is anywhere near c -band but
i think there was a lot of questions about the
propagation characteristics of c -band in those
early days so i think it remains to be seen I
personally think C -band still doesn't actually
propagate as well as some lower frequencies.
But I would also say that 7 gigahertz is going
to be interesting because I think to achieve
that kind of propagation, I think you're going
to end up having to have AI on both ends of the
connection to make that beamforming and whatever
else, what other techniques, super giga MIMO,
whatever they end up calling it. That's probably
going to have to be a new version of MIMO to
make it possible. and yeah i'm excited to see
what actually becomes real but i'm not sure we'll
even know by 2028 it'll be fun to see how it
shakes out and yeah i think we're in very interesting
times right now yeah yeah we'll see stay tuned
definitely and i think that helps us wrap up
longer longer podcast we hope our viewers and
listeners found this week's topics interesting
and please don't forget to reach out to us if
you have any recommendations for a future podcast
and also please rate us and subscribe. We're
on all the platforms. You can find us on YouTube
and any regular popular podcasting platform.
All you need to do is find us at 6G Podcast and
we'll probably be at the top. Thanks again for
listening. And Mike, thanks again for joining
me. Thanks a bunch. See you later.