Welcome to episode 136 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 Ancho. So we're gonna do our Mobile World Congress Show Wrap up.<br><br>We are a little late. Both Ancho and I got back late last week after the big event. So this will be posting on Monday of this week, but let's get to it. I was able to post my Forbes wrap-up article, and if you're interested, I'm gonna be talking a little bit about that on the podcast today. Go hit my Twitter handle at Will Town Tech and Ancho is working on his as well, and it should be posting within the next 24 hours.<br><br>But with that said, Let me start with my first topic, and I wanna talk about Nokia. And so in my Forbes article I wrote, this was probably the SPL flashiest or splashiest of all the announcements at M W C, but Nokia and revealed a new brand. And Patrick Moorehead, Daniel Newman and I were at that reveal ceremony on Sunday, so we got to work early , and we had a very full week.<br><br>And we'll be talking more about that. But there's a new, there's a new brand logo and that is part of a six point plan that c e o Peca Lendmark is embarking on. And this is an attempt for the company to recast itself as a business to business services company and infrastructure company. Certainly they've had branded phones over the years.<br><br>That is now a license with, and you probably know Ancho, the name of the company, right? Term d. , yes. But that brand will remain the same because it is very much associated with consumer. So the new brand it's very interesting. It's almost hieroglyphic and and that's by intention because executives told me at the event, Or shortly after the event on Sunday that having these hieroglyphs together connotes collaboration.<br><br>And certainly when you see all of the the figures together, the characters together, whatever you wanna call 'em, you can definitely see Nokia. There was a lot of reactions, some positive, some negative. I like it. It's very science fiction feeling, but it's one way that the company can begin to recast itself as a B2B company.<br><br>It is gonna require more than logos. So the six point plan that I just referred to in. That Nokia, c e o presented at the event. And I'll just run through em real quick. Grow it's c s P business faster than the market. That makes sense. Expand the share of the enterprise business. Okay. Actively managed the portfolio.<br><br>I Patrick more and I found that one interesting. Certainly in the past Nokia's had some challenges with some of their semiconductor strategy and that sort of, So I'm assuming, and I elude to that in my Forbes article that could be what drives that third point.<br><br>They wanna secure their business longevity via Nokia technologies. They wanna build new business models, and they did talk about some of those at the event.  and they wanna develop its e s G business. Its enterprise business in into a competitive advantage. And certainly Nokia has some competitive advantages.<br><br>They've been very strong and optical, they've been very strong in radio. But at a high level I think this was very well received. Sometimes you need to do something, even if it's a brand. To recast itself. And certainly in the two years that its c e o has been on the job.<br><br>Now, PECA was actually a former employee. I didn't know this. He started his career at Nokia in 1990 and worked for the company for about a decade. Then he left, he did several other things and he came back two years ago. Certainly he's done things to flatten organizational structures, reduce cost, and one of the things that I find really interest.<br><br>Prior to his arrival the business units they were sharing budget amongst different business units. And so what he did is, and hopefully I'm characterizing this correctly, he basically created accountability within each individual business unit from a p and l perspective. And so all of those things have helped the company improve its profitability, but at share prices lag.<br><br>And you and I have talked about that, for quite some time. But I don't know if you have any further comments or if you wanna jump into your first recap for the show, but I'll let you. I <br><br>think Nokia has been on a interesting path. I think that their biggest challenges have been that as they've rebounded their business or found ways to grow they've been , stifled by either economic things or, industry trends or o one thing or another.<br><br>Yeah. And they did have a lot of turnover in the last few years. . So I think really what this company needs is stability and execution. And I think that will allow their share price to recover, cuz it's still fairly low. Yeah. Today where it is relative to where it was. And maybe that makes them a value.<br><br>Erickson's also been hammered quite heavily. , I think in general these two big network suppliers are in a very challenged space, but I think it's it's overstated in terms of how hard they're being hit. Yeah. And I don't actually see that growth of networks is going to slow.<br><br>I think it's going to change. . And I think that's why, Nokia's position today for private networks is very strong because I think there's going to be a lot of growth in private networks.  Of 5g. And I think them realizing that, that also requires more services and broader enterprise adoption.<br><br>, think they're just going to need to look for places to grow. Yeah. And I think that's what part of this new strategy is. . I think they've made some right moves that have set them up for this, and I think the branding is pretty good. I think it was cool the way they had it set up at the show.<br><br>Yeah. Where the o in Nokia was like a hallway through the booth. Yeah. And I actually used that to take a 3D picture on a tablet that I was using Uhhuh  which we'll be talking about later in the podcast. Yeah.  And yeah, I just think, the branding was solid. I had a, tour through the booth to see some of their future demos and some of the demos of the things that they're working on today.<br><br>Yeah. And yeah, it was really interesting to see how they're fitting into a lot of the future networks and technologies. . <br><br>Yeah. I'll just make a final comment on their sort of refocus on the enterprise. This has been traditionally hard for Nokia in the past because their route to market is through service provider.<br><br>And so when you look at what they've tried to do with NewAge networks,  they've built a very, decent business, with respect to SD WAN and that sort of thing, leveraging a lot of their intellectual property. But the route to market has been challenging because it's been service provider through the enterprise.<br><br>They, in one of the sessions I attended and an executive did speak to the fact that they are they're partnering with other companies, one in particular, Dell Technologies. Dell, ships more servers than probably anyone on the planet. I haven't looked at the latest, market share numbers.<br><br>But they're leveraging relationships like with doe. To change that selling motion and bring them into enterprise opportunities. And and Dell is interesting because they don't have anything that, that really competes with Nokia. Unlike Hewlett Packard enterprise with its Aruba unit they offer SD WAN and that sort of thing.<br><br>So Dell's strategy with networking.  is much more complimentary with Nokia. So they would be wise to really, partner strongly with Dell and have Dell bring them into opportunities because an enterprise selling motion is completely different than a service provider selling motion. And speak about that in my Forbes article.<br><br>But let's move to your first topic. And you and I visited Qualcomm, but you spent a lot of time with media tech. It looks like zte, Nubia, oppo one plus honor, and Leah, and you wanna talk about. . Yeah. <br><br>I'm going to try and keep it brief. <br><br>Okay. And I'll try to stay brief. Like we went long on that first one, didn't we?<br><br>But it was <br><br>A lot of things happened. Yeah. A lot of companies announced things. I, and to your point, I will have a complete article around the XR side of things. I will maybe have something later in the week. Around the 5G side of things in terms of technology. Yeah. But basically, Qualcomm, this is their show.<br><br>They made tons of announcements across, momentum in the XR space, 5g, wifi, basically every O e M that announced a new device. At the show, like oppo, like one plus like honor, like zte? Yeah. All of their flagship devices that they maybe launched in China and then were launching globally in the Europe, in North America at mwc, they all had Snapdragon eight, gen two SOCs paired with Qualcomm's wifi chips.<br><br>So those, that was a really good show for them. They had a lot of demos at their booth, a lot of XR headset.  a lot  fixed wireless equipment. I'll say that Media tech they had a new booth this year and it was right next to Nokia's. , it was gigantic. Yeah. It was way bigger than they've ever had before, and they had a lot of partners on the floor including I don't know, more than a dozen fixed wireless CPEs.<br><br>So they definitely are, winning there. And they had some satellite demos which I'll be talking about later in my second topic, about how everybody's positioned themselves for satellite. And then, Nubia, they announced a new AR headset as well as a 3D tablet, which is what I was talking about.<br><br>Yeah. That was actually through a partnership with LEA who makes the 3D display.  And Leia's launching their US version of that tablet as the Loompa two. And then oppo had a bunch of phones that they announced in the U in Europe, and not really North America, but Europe.  that were foldables as well as their AR glasses and one Plus showed off a concept phone that uses liquid cooling to cool itself off as well as their upcoming Android tablet which is powered by Media Tech.<br><br>So lots of intertwined relationships here. I think it was a big show for Qualcomm Media tech and all their partners. And yeah, it was a very exciting show for the smartphone OEMs and their suppliers. . And, 5G was very prevalent and almost a non-top because of how 5G is the base level now.<br><br>And yeah. Maybe we're looking at 5G advanced, which is part of my second topic, so I'm gonna let you chime in before we move on. <br><br>Yeah, no, I think it's great.  Obviously you get to cover all the fun stuff, right? And I get to cover the boring infrastructure , but yeah, that mean the booth, just from my perspective, the sh the show is it's back.<br><br>It's not quite at pre pandemic attendance levels. But I think in my Forbes article, I state that, it's, it was pretty close to a hundred thousand people. The booths were big. Qualcomm had another just, huge space as well. And yeah, I'm with you.<br><br>It's we've been on this 5G journey since probably 2018, and so we're beginning to see the maturity of it. I met with a lot of, smaller infrastructure players that are really focused on sa and private and fixed wireless access. And, I think a all of that will be the lion share of the focus.<br><br>For the better part of this year. But but with that let me talk about my second topic and I wanna talk about something that the G S M A announced. They announced an initiative called Open Gateway. And you know why it's potentially a big deal is that it is an effort. To expose APIs, both at the infrastructure level and just with what the mobile network operators are doing to accelerate 5G service delivery.<br><br>This isn't something that's, New. APIs have been talked about for quite some time. TM Forum is gaining some momentum right now exposing APIs and the initiatives that they're focused on. But what I really like about Open Gateway is that last year Erickson put at stake in the ground and said, Hey, One of the things that needs to be done is to expose APIs to developers so that they can innovate more quickly and develop the next ride sharing application in a 5G world.<br><br>I always quote that as the poster child use case for l t e, but, Again, that was Erickson last year at an event that I attended, but this year with Open Gateway, there's support from 21 mobile network operators out of the gate. And and it's pretty compelling. So initially they're publishing eight open APIs.<br><br>The ones that I found that were most compelling are one around quality of service on. Which that would, be angled towards, the network slicing thing, edge site selection. You and I have talked about how mobile edge computing is gonna supercharge 5G use cases.<br><br>So I thought that was interesting. And then routing and device location verification. gonna drive a lot of, location based services. And there's some pretty sophisticated things that you can do with 5G in that regard. And my friends at the Lennox Foundation through an open source project called Camara.<br><br>We'll be managing this. So it's eight to start, but there are there are many more open APIs that are planned to be published. Linux Foundation will manage that catalog. But I think this is good because typically in lt, in LTE it was a dump pipe mentality on the part of the mobile network operators.<br><br>And, you and I had talked about this, a couple years ago it was like the whole unlimit. Plan shoe dropped but there was really no innovation. And then the over the tops came in and provided the innovation like the Ubers and the lists and the other applications. And my hope is , that, not only will these MNOs, help expose APIs, hopefully they start investing in companies and monetizing these applications.<br><br>You and I have talked about T-Mobile, they do that with their ventures group. We've spoken, we spoke with Neel Ray at the event. We had a great conversation as Neville is nearing his retirement. But we've spoken with John, Saul, you and I were at their analyst event in Bellevue last year and and T-Mobile they're getting it, they're.<br><br>They're working with oper or they're working with these application providers in really driving innovation. Pano ai, a company that you and I have talked about on a prior podcast that Mo that uses 5G to monitor, wildfire, likelihood. They were given an award at the event this year.<br><br>I'm not sure if it was a glma or another award. I've been a GLMA judge in the past, but that's a proof point there. I don't know if there's any more that you want to add to that, but I just feel like there needs to be more efforts like this to really accelerate 5g innovation.<br><br>Because, honestly, a lot of there are a lot of people that are, just not impressed with where we're at today. But what do you think? <br><br>Yeah, I think you pretty much hit all the points I was gonna say. . , there just needs to be more ability to take advantage of the smart network.<br><br>Yeah. And developers, need to be able to point to certain APIs within the network to maximize their applications utility, either to minimize latency or improve power consumption or improved performance. Yeah. I think these things are coming. Interestingly something that I think will be talked about in my second topic.<br><br>So I'll leave it at that. <br><br>Yeah. So let's get into it. No surprise, satellite was a big conversation point. You and I, we attended a Qualcomm round table together, and they talked about the satellite snap dragon or Snap dragon satellite solution, but you wanna talk about that in XR and then 5g.<br><br>Yeah, so there were a lot of satellite demonstrations and conversations. The big ones were media, tech and bullet. Announcing, two different devices from bullet actually three different devices, two phones and a hotspot that are capable of doing two-way messaging today. One of those is an interesting hotspot that actually you can connect to a device via Bluetooth.<br><br>So you can add functionality to existing devices. . And the device is only a hundred bucks and it connects both to Android and iOS devices, which is really cool. Yeah. Or you can just buy a phone that has that capability built in. Mediatech announced which chip set they're using for this, and it's a standalone chip set, standalone modem.<br><br>. I actually wrote about that on Forbes before the show because they announced it like the day before the show started. . And we had lots of companies like Qualcomm talking about Staff Dragon Satellite Momentum, which OEMs are picking that.  and they got, honor and Shami and a couple others to say that, we're taking this service on.<br><br>And then there were other things around satellite, like Nokia was talking about how their component of what a s t space Mobile was doing with at and t. Yeah. So it was really interesting just to see Satellite is a very popular. . I did not meet with SCS Global this year which is actually one of the companies that I was first introduced to that was looking to do 5g, satellite pre pandemic.<br><br>. So I don't know where they're at with this technology, but there's a lot of companies out there that are working in that space. And then on the XR side the reason why I brought that up during our previous topic is because Alcom is working on.  building 5G APIs specifically for XR to allow improved location and improved awareness of where the user is looking.<br><br> To make, 5G applications better. Yeah. To improve battery life and performance. And then there was tons of other XR stuff. There were some demos that MEDIATECH was also showing with 5G and xr. For, remote rendering. And I actually met with HTC and they showed me their latest open, ran 5G in a box.<br><br>It's called the Marine Corps S two. . So it's actually their second generation device and it's basically a 5G core. In a box that's open, right compliant. They work with Lumen to build this thing as well as Supermicro. And you basically deploy the box in 30 minutes and you can connect a bunch of XR headsets to it, which, basically sets up a perfect environment for them to remotely access 5G connectivity.<br><br>And you can do it for multiple. Types of services. So it was really cool because they're showing an appliance that you can buy today that can do this functionality, and then they show you how they're actually doing it at the same time. So they were running a remote render demo of vre.  Autodesk software doing automotive design collaboration while they were also doing a virtual production studio in the other part of the booth running that both of those, applications off of this 5G core.<br><br> It's very interesting. Lots of interesting stuff going on in the 5g.  The XR and satellite components of 5g. And then, there was a little bit of talk of 5G advanced , looking into the future. I think we also saw some Taco six G, but I think six G talk may have been the most from from Nokia actually.<br><br>But in general, I think, even Nokia talked about the metaverse in their launch of their new brand and how that's a component of what they're doing. And I think it's very much because they see enterprise as a key component of the me, the growth of the Metaverse.<br><br> And if they're gonna be an enterprise services company, they need to make sure that they understand and can address that market. . And yeah, the 5G advanced standard will be, released in a couple years and probably will be, in devices maybe in about three years.<br><br>And we will probably see a lot of XR enhancements there , will be enhancements to satellite as well cuz satellite NTN is mostly a release 17 thing. And we'll very likely see NTN satellite 5G in release 18 with much faster downlink. More features like video calling and voice calling, which we won't have for the foreseeable.<br><br>Yeah. I think you covered two topics at once, if I'm not mistaken. ? <br><br>Yes. I can fire off a a third, but, I was just trying to be efficient with my use of time. No, we <br><br>went long on the Nokia one, on the first one, but I've got one more and then we can definitely wrap it up.<br><br>I'll just, I'll make a final note. At that Sunday Nokia reveal, since we're talking about Metaverse and XR and all of that there, there was a slide that was put up there where that's definitely a focus, right? And I think you addressed that quite well for Nokia to be credible.<br><br>within, their renewed focus on B db, they're gonna have to have a pretty solid metaverse strategy. And something that,  is a able to be monetized, within the enterprise and have real enterprise applications. And we could probably do a podcast just in having you riff on what you see the potential for, mixed reality within the enterprise and the metaverse.<br><br>But let me finish up with my final topic. I wanna talk about Huawei and in my Forbes article, I think the subheadline I used was the rumors of Huawei's death have been greatly exaggerated. They by all measures, had the largest booth footprint at the event. It's interesting because Huawei has been under the radar screen for the last two years, but they came out in a really big way and I did spend a little bit of time with them because I was just curious right, about what's going on and.<br><br>One of the things that really caught my eye was a mining use case, a diamond mining use case, and the joint venture between the beers and the Botswana government is called des I always screw this up Debswana . And what's really interesting, I learned that Botswana, as a region in Africa,  it basically represents the highest number of exported goods, which are diamonds from the continent.<br><br>It contributes two thirds to the overall country's G D P. So this is really important and Debswana partnered with Huawei. Several years ago to deploy an L t E solution. Their minds have been opened since the sixties. The first one was opened in the sixties. The second one was opened in the eighties.<br><br>They've been very manual, obviously. They're, we've, I think I've talked about 5G use cases with respect to mining, to automate things, make things safer, and that sort of thing. , basically what happened during the pandemic they had an LTE deployment in place, but they wanted to take advantage of 5g.<br><br>They wanted to be able to do things like autonomous piloting of mining vehicles and that sort of thing. They wanted to leverage computer vision applications tied to smart cameras. So they started this during the pandemic. They partnered with Huawe and Hui even developed some sort of coding for their cameras that would repel dust and grime and.<br><br>Maybe not diamond, granules, , but so that it provided unobstructed views of the mining operation. So I just thought it was really interesting. There, there was representatives from the Botswana from Huawei. , and also from, just the mining operation itself. And they basically stated that, they looked at many different infrastructure providers and Huawei provided the solution that was, in their mind.<br><br>Best of class. So this is interesting because it leverages 5g. Obviously there are certain parts of the world that are. Not as concerned as the West is about spying and security breaches and that sort of thing. But I don't know if you caught any of the wawei activity, but before we close it, I'd love to get your thoughts.<br><br>I did I went to their booth before the show closed because I was curious I wanted to see what devices they had on display. They did have some of their latest devices. Like I think it was the, 40 or 50. I already lost. I always lose track of what number they're on . But their latest mate devices, including with the Porsche design one, I thought it was interesting.<br><br>They didn't have any of their foldables out on display, which I thought was really odd because foldables are like a big battlefields right now. And I also saw some controversy. About their badges, tracking people. <br><br>Oh, I know, I heard that. Yeah. And <br><br>people were tearing down their badges and finding that there were trackers inside of them.<br><br>Yes. And what's really interesting is that it feels like one of those things where Huawei said that on the back of the badge, that there was a tracker, but nobody looks in the back of their badges. And no, they didn't tell anybody that they were doing. . And I think the big reason why I think it's a big issue is one, they have a lot of trust problems already.<br><br>But also if you're tracking people's location and in booth and you have some of the most advanced AI people tracking software in the world, you're telling me you couldn't do that purely with cameras , right? <br><br>Yeah. The optics are not good here, no. <br><br>And it was using wireless communications at a wireless show to track people without their consent.<br><br>Yeah. It's a big oof, I found that, that folks at the Huawei booth are pretty adamant about having bad those badges returned. So these were special Huawei badges that you had to wear to enter certain parts of the booth, and you had to pre-register and all of that.<br><br>And I was able to do that. Was Marsha Collier, actually a colleague of mine who I missed her at Mobile World Congress this year, but she made me first aware that, I think it was a light reading article that was written where they were actually showing Teardowns , like phone teardowns.<br><br>But, hopefully Wawe learns, like you gotta be so careful with those. The optics are not good, and they're doing their darnest to build trust. They've opened cybersecurity centers all around the world. They. People in to inspect their infrastructure and it just, it's it seems like it's one step, forward and, three steps back for them.<br><br>But anyway, they're still driving the business. There're certainly parts of the world that are comfortable with what they do in cellular infrastructure. . The company has also been building its presence and enterprise as well with networking solutions, routers and that sort of thing.<br><br>It only constituted,  maybe four or five years ago, 10 billion, but it's a hundred billion, in top line revenue. That's grown significantly for obvious reasons.  as they've pivoted away in certain parts of the world from, providing cellular infrastructure.<br><br>But yeah, it was really interesting. And it'll also be interesting to see how they move forward, because again, they were off the radar for the last two years. And boy, yeah, they <br><br>came back huge. I was actually reading Mobile World Live this morning, and apparently they're also abandoning according to the Daily Telegraph, they're ABA a purportedly abandoning.<br><br>The development of their 1 billion pound research campus in the uk, which they have yet to even break ground on. <br><br>Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't catch any of that. They are big and in, reinvesting in r and d and they claim to have one of the largest patent portfolios. On the planet.<br><br>Although, Patton County doesn't necessarily indicate, innovation, but they certainly file a lot of patents, but hey buddy, it's been a great wrap up session. I know you know, you and I and Patrick Moorehead, we were just going all week, but it was really exciting to be back and to see the attendees.<br><br>And to That was great. Yeah. To really see 5G maturing and and we're just inching ever closer to standalone and we're inching ever closer to, to network slicing. And my, my friend, Dean Boby, he may disagree with me on , the Power of Network Slicing. We had a little Twitter chat going on over the weekend about that after NM w c.<br><br>But hey, to each we all have opinions there, but but hey, it's been another great podcast. Why don't you take us. Absolutely. <br><br>We hope our viewers and listeners found this week's topic's 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.<br><br>Will is at Whale Town Tech and I'm ans Shaad. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week. And don't forget to rate us and subscribe. We also have the audio podcast, which is now shortened via ai. So if you think we ran a little long on the video side, hop on over to the audio side and it'll be a few minutes shorter.<br><br><br><br>And we're on Spotify, we're on Apple. Where else are we at, Anshel? We're everywhere. <br><br>And if we're not us now, , <br><br>Please subscribe. Alright.