Welcome to episode 135 of the GT on 5G.
It's the latest little-sized scoop on everything 5G.
We typically cover six topics in 20 minutes
and it's brought to you by more insights and strategy.
But this week, Anshul and I are gonna do a special episode
with our expectations for Mobile World Congress 2023.
So you and I will both be there next week.
There's been a lot of pre-announcement activity
that's been going on over the last two weeks.
So that sort of sets the precedent
or the foundation for our podcast this week.
But one of my big expectations is about network slicing.
And so recently, Cradlepoint and Ericsson
announced a proof of concept
where they demonstrated network slicing
with respect to application deployment
in distributed environments.
And I spoke with executives recently,
this is a very complicated endeavor,
mapping applications to slices,
especially in distributed environments with SD-WAN.
And I'm expecting to hear a lot more about this
from Ericsson and Cradlepoint,
but from other infrastructure providers as well.
So I'm wondering, what's your take on all that?
Yeah, I think I definitely have a little bit more
of a device-centric slant.
Me, it feels like there's gonna be a lot of Chinese OEMs
at the show announcing their European
and global launches, their devices.
In the last few years, there's been a trend
of Chinese OEMs launching devices in December and January
ahead of the Chinese New Year.
And then announcing their global and European launches
for the rest of the world at MWC.
So you're getting Xiaomi, you're getting OPPO,
you're getting Honor, you're getting OnePlus.
You're getting all of the big Chinese OEMs
showing what they've launched over the last month or two,
and generally announcing their availability
for the rest of the world.
That said, not all of these launches
are going to be targeted towards the US.
I would say most of them are not.
Most of them are targeted towards Europe
and MWC being a European show, that makes perfect sense.
I notice Americans will get excited about devices
that we may not get,
which has been quite a sad phase of what's going on.
And there are going to be some technologies
that will find their way in the US.
Nuvia ZTE working together with a company called Leia
to make a 3D tablet, a tablet with a 3D display,
but also 3D cameras so you can capture a few videos in 3D.
And it looks really incredible, at least from what I've heard.
And I'll be checking that out
and I will actually be reviewing that.
So hopefully I'll be able to show the US version of that,
which will not be a ZTE product.
Nuvia will also be showing their AR glasses.
So there's a lot going on the consumer side,
a lot of devices, lots of demos from Qualcomm and MediaTek.
You know, I have a lot of things to do and see it to show.
And you and I will almost never see each other
during that entire duration.
You're right, yeah.
I'll be focused on the infrastructure, the players,
and you get the cool stuff.
You get the devices, all the AR, VR, and all of that.
And certainly, what's fun about this event
is just being able to walk the fear on,
be able to meet these companies
and see these demos and that sort of thing.
It's gonna be super exciting from my perspective.
We've seen some announcements
from MediaTek and Qualcomm, right?
Recently leading up to the show.
And this is a strategy from a lot of these vendors.
They'll pre-announce before the show to build momentum.
And then there may be some follow-on announcements
at Mobile World Congress next week
when you and I are both there.
But do you have any back on some of the pre-briefing?
And a lot of the stuff's under embargo, obviously,
but is there anything that you can share
from like an end-of-ice perspective
that you've been pre-briefed on
that maybe the embargo's already lifted?
Yeah, so today, Qualcomm announced that StableDiffusion,
which is a very popular AI application for image generation
using text descriptions,
they have that now running on smartphone.
So it doesn't descend that data to the cloud
and receive it back.
They're able to run this entirely on the smartphone
and do it within seconds as opposed to minutes or hours.
So the performance is very similar
to what you would get on the cloud,
but using your own device and your own performance.
And that's a big deal because it shows the performance
that Qualcomm is able to achieve on device.
And enable developers to offload a lot of that
today's cloud AI rendering and inference to the device side,
which improves security, privacy,
and can potentially improve speed
as AI acceleration improves and the models get optimized.
In addition to that,
Qualcomm also announced an app called Qualcomm Wear,
and that's their IoT application for industrial IoT.
And it's a complete solution, connectivity services,
PPIs, the whole shtick, it's a whole thing.
Yeah.
And then MediaTek also just announced,
actually go live when we published this,
that they are going to have,
that they've announced an actual chip set
that will be powering all the satellite 5G that they have.
It's actually, it has a name.
It's the MT6825,
and it's actually a standalone chip
specifically for satellite communications.
So it's like something they can just add on to any SSC.
Obviously it would most likely be a MediaTek SSC,
but that's not exclusive.
And it's interesting because it's not necessarily
the same approach as other companies are taking,
as opposed to having integrated into the modem,
but it's also 3GPP and TN release 17 compliant.
So it's actually more universally applicable
to what the future of 5G satellite will be
than some of these proprietary applications.
And I think they will also be demonstrating that
with their partner, Bullet,
who will have both a Motorola DeFi 2,
as well as the Cat phone,
I forget if it's S75 or something like that.
But it's interesting because they will be able
to also show this hotspot that you can,
Bluetooth, an iOS or an Android device
that will give you satellite two-way messaging,
which is pretty cool.
Yeah.
I don't know if anybody else offers that today.
It's an interesting thing,
and I'll definitely be checking that out at the show.
And then on top of that, MediaTek also announced
a new SSC, which is the Dimensity 7200.
They've been causing announcements out there,
just like Qualcomm.
Yeah.
The Dimensity 7200 is interesting
because it's a new tier of SSC
that they haven't had before.
They have the 9,000 series at the top,
then they have the 8,000 below that.
And then there was this 1,000 series,
which was like the whole naming scheme they had.
So now they're adding the 7,000 series,
which will sit between the 1,000 and the 1,000,
but it still uses all of the latest cores from ARM
and the latest TSMC 4 nanometer
second generation fabrication process.
So it should be very power-efficient
and be very popular for mid-tier devices.
On Super and Pro,
MediaTek really over the last year,
they've really filled out their product roadmap.
And they were always a value player to Qualcomm,
but now they've got mid-range and higher-end solutions,
and they're really giving Qualcomm a run for their money.
And it's good.
I always talk about this,
competition breeds innovation.
And so I think it's a good thing for the industry.
But with that said,
my next expectation really is around private cellular.
And there's been a lot of hype around this
and like how the private cellular
with its ultra-low latency,
especially with 5G,
can really do some things that are very disruptive
relative to Wi-Fi when you look at
manufacturing automation, tactile robotic control,
and that sort of thing.
And this week,
Solona announced that it is expanding its footprint.
It's been really primarily a US player,
and now it's going global.
So I spoke with the CEO recently,
and they're hiring sales staff,
they're building a channel to really expand into Europe
and really take their private 5G in a box global.
And I think it's a wise strategy.
There are lots of routes to private cellular networking.
I've talked about that on prior podcasts,
but I really do think another big theme,
we talked about network slicing earlier,
but another big theme from an infrastructure perspective
will be around private cellular.
I'm expecting to hear some new news from Nokia as well
as they're maturing their portfolio and certainly Cisco.
I'm expecting, I can't really talk about it right now,
but although the embargo may break when this podcast posts,
but there will be a strategic announcement
with a company that many people are familiar with
on expanding Cisco's presence within private networking.
Would love to get your insights and thoughts
and maybe what the connection is
to what you focus on with AR, VR and devices.
Yeah, I'm really interested in what the,
I think we talked about this podcast ago,
but we haven't actually had a chance to see it
because it's not MWC yet,
but I'm really excited to see that Ericsson Intel
have partnership on standalone 5G with a PC
using network slicing.
Cause I think that's like the,
that's like application that brings together
all of the possible components and creates a solution
that I believe will be a huge boost to 5G adoption
and increase its use within the enterprise.
Because truthfully, I think a lot of consumers
are fairly justified in their lack of interest
in 5G because realistically to today,
most consumers aren't really seeing that much
of a difference in their experience as a cellular user.
Applications haven't changed.
They're marginally faster and in some places they're slower
because the transition to mid band for some carriers.
So I think that there will be big change
in the way 5G is perceived.
I'm not sure if that will happen
on the consumer side right away,
but if we do see this network slicing application
really take hold with standalone networks
finally becoming a thing,
I really believe that this one could be a great application
for us to see in person, experience it.
Cause you know, I personally have an optimal network
solution at home.
I'm getting three milliseconds over wifi,
gigabit per second in each direction.
That's very difficult to achieve outside
of a very controlled environment.
And can put even I have challenges
because yesterday I was trying to stream,
I was trying to download all of my PSVR2 titles to my PS5.
I was doing a virtual VR conference
and I had issues with interference.
Not every, there's a lot more work that needs to be done
with QoS and enabling better wifi and cellular interactions.
Believe that private networking
and network slicing is gonna be the key
that unlocks a lot of potential.
I agree.
And it's a journey.
You and I talk about this all the time.
If the 5G deployment is a journey
and the mobile network operators have probably gotten ahead
of the hype cycle and people are asking themselves
like what's really transformative,
but really the true problems of 5G gets unlocked
with standalone that's marrying the core 5G infrastructure
with 5G rant and network slicing.
To your point, quality of service and business environments,
also things like guaranteed latency levels
for cloud gaming, mobile gaming and that sort of thing.
And it's a journey.
In the US, mobile has been first to SA in their low band,
but they're focused on their mid band build out.
And as we've talked about also in prior podcasts,
mid band is the best balance of performance and propagation.
It's gonna take time.
And AT&T and Verizon are not too far behind with C band
and Romano build outs.
And I think Vodafone is clearly a leader in Europe
with what building getting closer to standalone.
We started this journey, how many years ago has it been, man?
It's almost five years now, right?
It depends how you count it,
but I would say from first 5G network deployment in 2019
to today, we are almost at four years.
Yeah, it's been a while.
It's been a while.
So it's a journey and we've got another six or seven years
because these Gs tend to be about a decade in duration.
But yeah, I'm super excited to see all this come together.
And I really, the other thing that I'm really excited
about this level of World Congress is that last year,
you and I were there with our chief analyst,
Patrick Morehall.
It was well attended,
not at the levels that it's been in the past.
I really do think 2023 will be the year we're past COVID,
we're past having to like provide vaccination cards
and that sort of thing.
And I'm really expecting there to be great momentum there.
People are gonna show up and it's gonna be super exciting.
But with that said, my third thought around my expectation
around Mobile World Congress will be,
and I'm gonna caveat this because artificial intelligence,
there's a lot of whitewashing going on there.
Everyone claims that like,
it's one of these very esoteric concepts
like the cloud for some people.
I think the promise of artificial intelligence
is in the ability for it to do intelligent things
from an automation perspective.
And these new 5G networks are gonna require automation
for fast provisioning.
And we're already seeing some of this happen with Apple
and Apple moving to eSIM on the iPhone in the US.
And I think that will become a pervasive extension globally,
but it comes down to intelligent automation.
And we've talked about 6G in the past
and how AI may be a part of that.
But what I'm really expecting to see
are some very tangible demonstrations
of how machine learning and artificial intelligence
can really power automation
to do some pretty powerful things
when you start talking about 5G as a service.
Cisco has talked about their solution.
There will be announcements at Mobile World Congress
where Cisco will be enhancing their portfolio,
AWS, Azure, they have 5G as a service solutions as well.
And AI is gonna be a big part of that.
So one of my big expectations,
I'm hoping to see some real practical applications
in machine learning and AI
with respect to the infrastructure layer.
But I'm gonna toss it back to you
because you are end device expert or VR AR expert.
Where do you think AI infused with 5G
can really change the user experience
from that end device perspective?
I will answer your question after I say
that you reminded me that T-Mobile and Amazon
asked us that they were gonna work together
on 5G advanced network solutions.
That's right.
And I mentioned that because I tweeted that out earlier
this week, so thank you for mentioning.
That was two days ago.
And that's basically deploying AWS solutions
for T-Mobile's private 5G application.
So I think T-Mobile might be the first one
to take AWS solution for this application.
But it's really interesting
because AWS is the leader in this space
and they have a lot of experience on the edge.
So I think there's a really big uplift
that T-Mobile gets by partnering with AWS in this.
And I think it's gonna be interesting to see
how it works itself out over the course of the year
because I think we both agreed
that T-Mobile's edge capabilities were a bit weak
when it comes to 5G private and non-private applications.
So I think that partnering with Amazon is a big deal.
We'll probably see some of that at the show.
I know Neville will be speaking at the Deutsche Telekom.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it
because I'm double booked during that slot.
But hopefully I'll always be able to say hi.
I think we might even have a separate meeting
with Neville on privately.
But yeah, I think your question that you asked me,
it's really interesting because I've been watching AI
infuse itself into the VR and AR space
for quite some time now.
Most of the head tracking and location mapping
and a lot of the object detection, that's all AI accelerated
and actually has been for years.
It's really funny because now people are paying
way more attention to AI.
But the reality is AI had to be implemented years ago
for it to work right.
And those algorithms are getting better over time.
They're becoming more power efficient.
The hardware is becoming more fixed function
for those capabilities.
So actually there's a couple of generations
of Qualcomm's AR, XR, VR hardware that goes into headsets.
The majority of headsets use their chipsets.
And most of those headsets have these fixed function
capabilities for AI built into the ISP, built into the GPU.
So there's a lot of AI acceleration
already built into the hardware for a lot of these devices.
So it's being used for vision applications
because that's where they have a lot of experience.
But I will say, and we've heard this with X75
and I think we're gonna continue to see it with MediaTek.
They have some demos at MWC that they'll be showing.
AI accelerated 5G modems.
Qualcomm said that their modems gonna be
two and a half times faster for inference.
And people don't really fully comprehend.
The modem has its own tensor cores,
its own ability to do inference
separate from the GPU, separate from the ISP,
separate from the DSD.
So you have AI already actively coexisting
along with the 5G capabilities.
But now we're gonna start seeing on-device AI
and then infrastructure side AI,
and then those talking to each other
to improve signal, battery life and performance.
There's a lot of AI that's getting infused.
And I saw a lot of that from a lot of companies
and it'll be really interesting to see
what Qualcomm will be demoing as well as MediaTek
at the show specifically with AI 5G.
Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned X75 as a Qualcomm solution
that we've talked about on a prior podcast,
but yeah, it's exciting.
And to your point, this has been AI has been maturing.
It requires huge data sets to train the models
and that sort of thing.
So one of my sniff tests,
when I talked to an infrastructure provider,
that claims that they have the best AI algorithm,
I always ask them, how big is that data lake?
And there are only a few infrastructure providers
that really have massive data lakes
like the Cisco's and the Arubas of the world.
But truly from my perspective,
the demonstrable impact of AI on infrastructure
will be around self-healing and quality of service
and that sort of thing.
And like you mentioned,
that ripples down to device performances.
And I will mention Huawei for a moment.
They have been a leader in the past in integrating AI
into a lot of their SOCs and their chip sites
on the phone level to do its really basic things
like their mate products where they were able to determine
as a user, were you more or email client intensive
or were you more browser intensive
and adjust the performance accordingly.
I'm gonna toss that out there to you.
Do you see any other phone manufacturers
like Samsung or Apple going in that direction?
The way I look at it is everybody's doing it.
I think there's varying degrees of AI.
I think Google is way out far ahead of everybody
on their implementation of AI.
I think Qualcomm is doing a lot to try and enable
their OEMs to do more,
but especially in hardware with APIs and stuff like that.
But I think Google is by far the way ahead of everyone
in their capabilities.
I think you'll see more and more companies
taking advantage of the hardware capabilities,
especially this year.
Yeah, actually this was something that I said
would be a trend at CES.
So I was a little early,
but I have a lot of this ability
to a lot of different companies
and I have the experience to know that
when something is starting and the AI trend
is really becoming something tangible
because the hardware and APIs are there.
But I would say Samsung has tried for many years
to make Dixby an assistant and have an intelligent AI
on your smartphone.
But if you look at what's going on
in like all of these smartphone cameras,
every camera is AI.
There isn't a smartphone camera out there
that doesn't use AI.
Whether it's for photo or video,
that's a standard thing.
That's actually been going on for years.
It's very lately marketed,
but I'm sure that marketing will get pushed forward
as far as possible
because they don't have an AI story
outside of voice recognition and camera.
That's what they're gonna push is their AI story.
But I think there's a lot more that can be done
with device intelligence
anticipating the user's needs,
making sure that they have the best user experience
catered to their needs.
Yeah.
I agree.
Very well said, my friend.
It's been a different podcast this week,
but we decided to try something different.
I think it's been a really engaging conversation,
but for our viewers and listeners,
tune in next week because Anshul and I
will be at Mobile World Congress in beautiful Barcelona,
sharing our live tweets and our insights.
But with that said, my friend, why don't you take us home?
Absolutely.
We hope our viewers and listeners
found this week's topics interesting.
If anyone would like to provide insights
for a specific 5G topic for a future podcast,
please reach out to us on social media.
Will is at WebZoneSeg, and I'm at Otshozog.
We hope you have a great weekend
and please tune in again next week
where we'll be coming to you from Barcelona.
And don't forget to rate us and subscribe as well.
Thank you.