Welcome to episode 137 of the G two on 5g.<br><br>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 Federal Analyst Ancho Sag. Let's get started with my first topic and I'm gonna apologize for the lighting for those of you that are watching the video.<br><br>I am in my home in Isla Marra in my bedroom. I've not been on the beach, although my complexion looks very red. But with that, let's get started with my first topic. So Mike Dano at Light Reading posted an article this past week talking about cybersecurity hacks of all the major operators in the us including at and t, dish, T-Mobile, and Verizon.<br><br>And so it's got me thinking there needs to be more done. Relative to ensuring security of these new 5G networks, there's no question that 5g brings improvements in encryption over LTE e, but that's not getting the job done. T-Mobile has really been in the limelight, but in the article Mike talks about in January, one of, at t's vendors was hacked and there was an exposure of customer data that included social security numbers.<br><br>Verizon suffered a similar attack and over 7.5 million of their customer personal identifiable information was leaked. Dish's internal IT systems were hacked. And T-Mobile has had a couple of different challenges. Over the last 12 months or so. From my perspective, more needs to be done.<br><br>Certainly no one's gonna be immune from cybersecurity threats, but when it comes right down to it, telecommunications infrastructure is critical. Infrastructure. It's one of the reasons why Huawei has been, put on ice. But I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts?<br><br>Do <br><br>very much. In fact I do think that there should be more scrutiny put on these operators. And when I say operators,  all of them. Yeah. There isn't enough accountability for what they're doing, what's happening. . And if this 5G infrastructure is as critical as so many people have claimed it is and why Huawei needed to be removed, then we should also be protecting that infrastructure from cyber attacks.<br><br>And it seems like, they're constantly finding their ways in maybe not into the network. . But if they're able to get access to different identifying information any kind of breach is a bad thing. And, maybe they need to have better security on their consumer side.<br><br>Hopefully they have better security on the infrastructure side. . But it's just not a good look. It doesn't really. In gender, much confidence in these company's ability to protect their users from hacks which I think is going to be a, an increasing issue as 5G becomes a more central technology for so many other technologies.<br><br>And I think that we need to look at how we secure 5G better and hold these companies to a higher standard. Because if everything's gonna be connected, it's gonna be the operators that become the weakest. I agree. And I also focus on enterprise networking, and there's been a lot of trends around integrating security into the networking stack.<br><br>When you look at SD WAN and SASSI and these sorts of things. I have been talking to at and t and there's nothing that I can really, talk publicly about right now, but they are moving towards that enterprise model of embedding security within the network infrastructure.  Certainly at and t has.<br><br>Formidable capabilities with respect to security in general with its alien involved acquisition and it's overall cybersecurity portfolio. But that's where the extent of what I can talk about public right now. But I understand that at and t will be making some announcements later.<br><br>This.  and as soon as that's public I will definitely be weighing in with my insights. But let's move to your first topic this week and you want to talk about some coverage updates with some of these operators? Yeah. This one's actually more focused on Verizon. Okay. So Verizon, this week actually announced that they are reaching 200 million people with their 5G ultra wideband network.<br><br>As some people might know, actually incorporates both their millimeter wave and their mid band network. But because their millimeter wave obviously doesn't propagate very well , I would say the vast, 99% of this 200 million is thanks to their mid band network. So the reason why 200 million is a big number is because that's actually where T-Mobile.<br><br>Hit critical mass with their network.  And really started to gain momentum adding customers, enabling new use cases. So I've been saying this since T-Mobile hit 200 million back in November of 2021. . , basically having this deployment at 200 million is a really big deal because it creates enough critical mass within the network and with with developers that they can believe that the network is more likely to be there than not.<br><br>So it, it's basically, two thirds of the time you're gonna get this ultra wide band  and if. Has lines on all three operators. I can tell you I am seeing ultra wideband more often than I am not. And the experience is good. It's not maybe as fast as what T-Mobile has, I'm probably seeing more in the R range of three to 400 megabits per second.<br><br>But that's still a vast improvement of where Verizon was a couple years ago. In addition to that, T-Mobile last week announced that they will be hitting 300 million by the end of this. And that their non their non-band network, which is their low band 600 megahertz network, already reaches 325 million Americans.<br><br>So they're almost at 100% 5G coverage, but their mid band network will be at 300 million by the end of this year. So they're also quite far along. And then at and t is a little far behind at 150 million. They've last announced, if you could correct me, but I think they're at one 50. Yeah. Also growing.<br><br>Yeah. They're somewhat behind, but I think they're gonna close that gap pretty dramatically in the second half, just based on some conversations that I've had with, yeah. So I mean they also started after Verizon did too, so That makes sense. Yeah. It was just due to the spectrum and their role out of two different bands simultaneously, but I think we'll have a very clear picture.<br><br>of where everybody is at by the end of this year. . And I think by the end of this year we can actually say that all three operators, in my opinion, are at critical mass. And once all three operators are at critical mass, I think that will actually enable developers and app, different companies and enterprises to actually start taking advantage of 5g.<br><br>Yeah. That said, I do think standalone is really important.  and I think that Verizon and at and t will both turn on standalone across their whole networks probably by the end of this year as a function of that network build out being big enough that it matters in enough places to actually do standalone.<br><br>But yeah, that's my analysis of the situation. Yeah that's spot on. And I'll add one thing cuz you, you talked about developers, and I'm not sure if I covered this on our mobile World Congress wrap up, I may have spoken about Open Gateway, which is a G Smma initiative.<br><br>Yes. So 21 operators are behind it and they're committing to open up, their networks, from an API perspective to speed 5G innovation, 5G application development. And and so I think that should also help because to your point, , once, once these operators, at least in the US, do hit critical mass with their mid band buildout.<br><br>Then, obviously, T-Mobile's first to sa, Verizon and at and t won't be too far behind. That really unlocks a true promise. And and then I think, we're gonna start seeing some some pretty innovative applications I think. , the majority of them are gonna be in the enterprise space.<br><br>I think I've spoken about that before. I think 90% of the innovation with 5G is gonna be transformative for enterprises. But I think we'll see some pretty cool consumer applications as well. But that's a great segue to my second topic and I wanna talk about T-Mobile. And apparently Neville Ray was at a Morgan Stanley investor conference this past Tuesday and spoke to the company's fixed wireless access.<br><br>I will mention that I have a device coming soon because I have discovered with my new build of my home in Bastrop that there's no fiber service out there. . Yeah. The broadband options are not great. You would've thought I would've checked into that before I broke ground.<br><br>Right. . So I'll actually be testing their fwa service.  probably sharing my experience with that in the future. But with that said, one thing came up and it's around capacity. And I wrote an article recently about, the fixed wireless access versus fiber debate.<br><br>One of the things I pointed out about fixed wireless access is that, , you've got some capacity limitations. And on prior podcasts, I've spoken about this as well. T-Mobile had a very aggressive goal. It was, north of 9 million. By 2025, they took that projection down to seven to 8 million FWA subscribers by 2025.<br><br>So Neville reinforced that and at this conference that he he presented at, and, so from my perspective, what's the secret weapon or the secret sauce there?  will he continue to talk about spectrum and how the company has a complete spectrum footprint? At the low band, the mid band and with millimeter weight, although its priority has been to first build out that, that low band for coverage, that's been their mantra.<br><br>And they're quickly building out their their mid band assets and driving that to standalone as. And that makes sense to me because, you and I have spoken about this before in the United States, T-Mobile has the most complete spectrum footprint. We like to call it the layer cake.<br><br>And so he Neville, even though he will be retiring in October and handing over the reins to Wolf and I can't pronounce his last name, but he's a former Erickson executive, will be taken over for Neville in October. The company says that it feels, very comfortable about its capacity.<br><br>But what are your thoughts? I think they will eventually transition to using network slicing for. These kinds of applications with fixed wireless. I also think they're gonna end up using millimeter wave more than they have led on. And I think that will mostly be in urban areas where there's just a lot of customers.<br><br>And I think what will happen is they'll they're going to feel out what the capacity demand is in certain areas with fixed wireless and cellular and other applic.  and do as much network slicing as they can. And then once they figure out their actual capacity demand, they can actually deploy millimeter wave in areas where it's necessary.<br><br>. And I think that's really the the difference between T-mobile's approach and maybe say Verizon, their at t's is that, they're sparingly deploying millimeter wave where they think it's necessary. Yeah. And I think that's going to be how millimeter wave is deployed globally. , the US just went with millimeter wave first, which, to their credit was what was available and maybe they leaned in a little too hard on it.<br><br>Yeah. But I would say just overall, it's just a it's just a tough, it's a tough topic in terms of spectrum. And some companies have less, some companies have more, some companies have overpaid for it. Some of them got a good. . But overall, I think fixed wireless is a great technology. It's really enabling a lot of people to have internet access at faster speeds, at lower prices, and ultimately that's what's important.<br><br>I agree. And I may be the beneficiary of that  outside of Austin but hopefully Elon Musk, apparently he's building a little town. In Bastrop County, and if anyone can get fiber out there, he will. But no, I'm excited to test out my T-Mobile  fixed wireless access service. But with that said, let's go to your second topic this week and you want to talk about Dish and they've gotten approval to test some low-band spectrum and, but you're thinking, does it make sense for them?<br><br>Yeah, so this, but I'll let you go first. . Dish is testing 800 megahertz, which is a spectrum that was offered to them to purchase by T-Mobile because T-Mobile had that spectrum and needed to divest from it as a result of its merger with Sprint. , it was actually a mandate by the FTC to do that.<br><br>Yeah. The issue is that they haven't decided whether or not they want that spectrum which I understand because they have six, a lot of 600 megahertz. They were actually the second biggest bidder of 600 megahertz after T-Mobile. So they have a lot of low band already. . The difference is obviously that 800 megahertz, I think it's something in the ballpark of 13 megahertz, 15 and a half megahertz of spectrum.<br><br>So it's really not that much spectrum. So it won't really meaningfully improve performance, but it will improve coverage. I guarantee it. 600 is not an infallible spectrum and there's gonna be a lot of places where T-Mobile has 600, that dish doesn't. So I think 800 could be a good filler spectrum for.<br><br>I can't say that I have enough knowledge of their spectrum holdings in a way to definitively say they don't need 800. There's a lot of people who are saying they don't. But I also think that there's a possibility that 800 could fill a lot of gaps for them. Where T-Mobile owns 600, so it is 3.5 billion, so it's not a cheap acquisition for them, but they will pay a penalty of somewhere in the ballpark of 72 million to T-Mobile and another three or 400 million to the s e.<br><br>for all the administrative costs and things like that. So I think it maybe actually makes sense for them to take this spectrum, even though it's not that much actual bandwidth. Yeah, I think it could considerably improve their coverage footprint and allow them to deploy more spectrum in more places.<br><br>That was my thought. They've got these requirements for coverage, right? And low band will help get them there. So that is an expensive price tag. But, they may have to bite the bullet and and move in that direction. But with that said my third and final topic, I want to talk about some discussions that have been trailing Mobile World Congress 23.<br><br>And this was a, an article that was on Rcr Wireless's website and there was discussion around, is there an over hype of private 5G wireless because.  Enterprise adoption's. Been slow around, and I actually weighed in on this on Twitter last week. My theory is that because there are so many different routes to get to private wireless, you could do it as a service, you can do it in a box.<br><br>There are a number of different vendors that are out there contending for share wallet, and again, cellular is something new to the enterprise. It's not wifi, it's not standard routing and switching within the enterprise. And so from my perspective, Because there's so many different routes to market that's creating some hesitation, maybe not confusion, but just I think enterprises are having to take more time to evaluate the different options.<br><br>So I'd love to hear your thoughts.<br><br>I tend to believe that if there's buzz about something, it's probably overhyped. The question is how overhyped is it? Yeah. I don't think private wireless is as overhyped as people want to say it is, mostly because it's the quickest point of ROI for deploying 5g, and it does solve a lot of problems that wifi and other types of wireless communication can't do, or even wire for that matter.<br><br>So I do think there's a lot of great applications, to your point. I think there's also a lot of different routes to achieve it. Yeah. But ultimately I think having these types of choices are good. But I also believe that enterprises don't really care how they get it. I think ultimately like a consumer they want to get connectivity to solve their problem.<br><br>And they don't necessarily care which route they take as long as it's cost effective and secure and reliable. . So I think those are the key components of delivering private wireless. But overall, there needs to be a little bit of consolidation perhaps, or a little bit more of trial on error where certain solutions fail while others succeed.<br><br>And I think that's just gonna be natural selection within our industry. And it'll just take some. Yeah, I mean it's still very early days and so there's, from my perspective, no cause for concern, just enterprises are gonna take their time. And also really where private wireless shines is an OT environment.<br><br>So operational technology, environments, manufacturing, transportation, and logistic. . These are areas that you can't easily do a forklift, and rip and replace. And some, you could argue that some of those environments are not connected today, or they're a mis mishmash, these are mission critical operations, within enterprises.<br><br>And so there's gonna be a lot of evaluation there. So I think time, it'll just take some time, but private wireless is gonna be extremely disrupt.  on a number of different fronts. And over the years we've talked about that. But, so with that, let's talk about your third and final topic. And oh my gosh, here it is again.<br><br>The C-band airline issue. And you wanna talk about another FCC update? Yeah. So the fcc actually there's two things that are going on. One, the FCC has lost its authority to auction spectrum.  Because it's authority has lapsed essentially. And that authority also needs to be reauthorized by the Senate.<br><br>And basically there's a standoff in the Senate between the two parties. And part of it is also. , they've, the FCC still doesn't have a fifth member to break ties. Because there have been some political issues with the candidate that the Biden administration put forward. And on top of that there was an article that was written for the I A T A airlines blog.<br><br>And they basically said mixed signals lead to 5g, confus. , which means that we still haven't solved this airline issue and that there are deadlines that need to be reached. And one of those is the July deadline where the operators will start to increase their power levels in airports. And, there's still a lot of there's a lot of issues.<br><br>Altimeter still need to be being replaced. Apparently the F AA didn't include foreign carriers in their 5G industry roundtables. But what's interesting is that in other countries these issues haven't been as big of a problem. And some of these countries deployed, no, midway mid band 5G first.<br><br>So they've actually ha, resolved these issues a long time ago. , Apparently only Laos has joined the us raising concern about mid band. And Canada has limited 5G transmission power. But it's very interesting to see how these things operate and what the issues might be.<br><br>I can tell that the, this article was a little bit , I don't know how to put it. A little problematic in the way it was written. , because it talks about how European 5G spectrum is 3.4 to 3.8. But that's essentially the same spectrum that we're using in the US for mid band as well.<br><br>. And they act as if the issue is in the higher band of three gigahertz, even though that spectrum won't even.  available or deployed for till next year? I believe so. I think this is, once again, an airline industry publication, maybe taking too much of a side with the airline industry.<br><br>Shocker. Yeah. Just like you and I would be accused of being too friendly to the operators. But I have the know.  that the spectrum that they're complaining about that's supposedly close to what's being used for alternatives isn't actually even in use yet. So I'm tired of this topic, but it keeps propping up its ugly head.<br><br>. And a lot of these people try to talk about 5G as a threat to security, but they like don't even have their act together about like spectrum. And knowing what's available. . I'm just tired. I'm tired. I just, I think there's just there's a lack of depth of knowledge with Res, certainly not the fcc but the the F faa and it's just, they're lobbying is, back and forth over the fence and it's just a complete clown show.<br><br>Someone needs to step in.  Address this issue and it's just, it seems like it's just, government bureaucracy run amok. But yeah, it's, yeah. And it's interesting cuz in this article they claim that the F FAA has logged 100 instances of possible interference with these radio altimeter.<br><br>Yeah. Although none of them have resisted, resulted in an incident or an accident, but There's no actual log of these that I've seen or shown, and I think that these might be older aircraft that need to be upgraded. So it's why aren't they just upgrading the equipment? Yeah, no, it doesn't make a lot of sense.<br><br>I think we need to have, a guest from the f a and the fcc on a future podcast to try to resolve this once and for all, but, anyway, my friend it's been another great podcast once, don't you take us home. Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners come this week's topics interesting.<br><br>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 Wilton Tech and I'm at On Shell sog. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in again next week and don't forget to rate us and subscribe.<br><br>Subscribe. Thank you.