welcome to episode 139 of the GT on 5g. It's the latest inside 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 as fellow analyst Anshel Sag. Let's get started with my first topic and I caught the news about the UK Department of Science, innovation and Technology announcing a competition for open ran.

And the question I have is, can it really drive innovation? There's 80 million pounds that are dedicated to this project that come out of a larger. Fund called the UK Open Networks Research and Development Fund, which is 250 pounds. And so basically this is aimed at removing foreign infrastructure from mobile networks in the United Kingdom.

The competition just began. It'll close on May 23rd.  and in terms of who's eligible, the the article that I read on telecoms.com was The investment will be delivered primarily in the form of com. Pleaded grants to consortia of capable businesses, academic institutions, and public sector organizations.

So this is focused at, squarely at the public sector. But hey, I know, I think anything is a good thing. Open RAN is has traditionally been very cost optimized, performance optimized, although there have been companies like Qualcomm that have been addressing that with accelerators and that sort of thing.

You and I have talked about that on prior podcasts, but what's your take on this? 

I think it's a necessary effort. I think the good part is that, this is a government and understanding that the that there's very likely not going to be a market solution for this problem if they really are pushing for eliminating  vendors that they are not considered national security safe.

So I, I think that us just bolstering the overall security of networks, I think is ultimately important. , anything, I would actually treat this as more of a network security program. And as a component of that program would be to fund the activities. Open ran companies or startups to deliver solutions that address the problems that the UK government, other five eyes governments have, right?

Because, mostly it's five eyes governments that are following this regime of changing over networks. If you look at Germany, they have tons of Huawei equipment, right? Compared to other countries. I think it's a very interesting approach.  I think you said how many millions of pounds was that?

80, 80 million pounds. For this particular, 

it's about 150 million or so. Maybe a little less. 120 million. Yeah. But, I think that's just scratching the surface. Yeah. I think most of these government programs generally don't really have enough money to accomplish what they hope to achieve.

But I think if they just spark some innovation and interest in the sector, I think that's already a component of what they're supposed to be doing. . But yeah I think it's a good thing and hopefully it yields some more competition in the open brand space. Yeah, 

no, your comment on security I think is spot on.

I've been critical of open round.  When you look at the different consortiums out there that are focused on it like the Iran Alliance there're not as many working groups focused on security. When you disaggregate infrastructure, that creates a risk. Expands the threat surface. And I agree with you.

I think, the focus should be and probably will be on security. But let's move to your first topic and we this kind of caught you and I by surprise, but until they, an announcement that they're exiting the 5G PC business, the connected pc, you wanna talk about that. And I shared some insights on Twitter as well, but I'll let you take it.

Yeah. 

So I actually. They weren't really trying to make news about this, but that's usually when news gets generated. Yeah.  The interesting part is that I reached out to both Intel and Media Tech about this situation because this is a joint partnership between Intel and Media Tech.

 In the sense that media tech is the modem supplier while Intel is the platform. And the integration. So yeah, ID tech delivers a chip in some of the capabilities in that modem, and then until, pretty much takes it the rest of the way, all the way to the o eem and helps it get integrated.

And there were quite a few designs that, they were really gaining some momentum with this project. But it was sh a former shelf of itself in the sense that originally its purpose was to integrate Intel modem. Into Intel platforms. But I believe since 2019, the Intel modem business has ceased to exist, right?

And was sold off to Apple for about a billion dollars, which I think Apple got a deal on. Now, that said, apple has been working on those modems, building their own modems, using some of this ip and the engineering talent that they had and it's been four years and they still haven't delivered a product.

It's questionable whether or not that program really was viable to begin with. But yeah, Intel said that this is part of them pursuing their more manufacturing focused strategy. And I guess part of that means cutting programs, right? And this program was both LT and 5G modems. But it does not impact their wifi, Bluetooth, or ethernet business.

Northern Networking edge or Thunderbolt, it's just the modems. And as I said, the modems are from media tech. But I did ask Media Tech for their opinion or their statement on this and they said that, . They have a strong history of delivering global wireless solutions and continue to make investments in their wireless modem platform beyond the smartphone into PCs and other devices.

They will continue to work with Intel on the wireless modem technology transfer to support their existing customer base and future partners. So it sounds like Mediatech is open to taking whatever customer's Intel.  And helping them transition to media tech since they were already using media tech modems.

. But I do think this will probably drive up the cost of 5G modems and PCs. And I think it will also push more OEMs towards Qualcomm if they're looking to do an integrated 5G solution. , because the only really fully integrated solutions are gonna be media.  and Apple. Once Apple does ship, but Mediatech doesn't ship in PCs.

On, on the processor side, they only ship in PCs on the modem side, so they do have some Chromebooks but we haven't really seen a Windows PC from them yet. And it'll be interesting to see if that happens. But right now Qualcomm is the only game in town when it comes to 5g.

Yeah, I agree. This isn't good. From a bill of material perspective, I think there's a bigger issue around just the connected PC platform in general and easing provisioning, and now we have Eem apple, with its latest iPhone announcement broke open the gates with respect to eem and driving adoption there.

And I think, EEM will provide a cleaner. Faster path to provisioning. And I think the mobile network operators are gonna need to partner a little more strategically with the p c OEMs, like the Dells and hps of the world and Lenovos of the world to make that whole, business, viable.

Both, from a hardware standpoint cuz it burdens the hardware, but also just from an activation standpoint. But with that, let me move to my second topic and I wanna talk about Meir.  and there was an article that was published on Fierce Wireless, talking about their strategy in pursuing 5G open ran hardware.

Okay. And it got me thinking is Mair stretching itself, too thin? So on prior podcast we've talked about the company. They've had a few reductions in force. They've had to refocus their efforts. I think they size the market incorrectly. They hired to that and they had to fire to that.

And in this particular article they talked about Open Beam, which is the brand for their radio and their c t o, and I'm not gonna, the Joy is his first name. I'm not gonna attempt to pronounce his last name, but he basically states that. Mair never intended to be in the hardware business, given the drive for domestic suppliers, they felt that they had to participate and provide a product.

But that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because you've got very well established players that are doing radios like airs, span networks, and J m A wireless now airs, SPAN has had some stumbles. They had a spac or something that didn't quite. Wind out correctly. I did like their ticker symbol, it was mimo.

But for me that, that doesn't really add up. But I feel like, on your, kind of your pick your ran flavor think that there are enough options out there and it's just, I think. Mair is focused on something. They've traditionally been very strong in software and orchestration and that sort of thing I don't fully buy, what their CTO was, was courted as San and that Fierce Wireless article.

But I, I don't know if you caught this article or if you have any comments before we move on to your second topic. I'll 

Caught it. Yeah. I don't know how it came up, but you and I might have even talked about it. But the one thing I'll say is, . When software companies suddenly become hardware companies, it usually doesn't turn out well, right?

Or it takes many iterations for it to succeed. And I'm not sure that Mave necessarily has that luxury. I 

don't believe so either. So time will tell. But let's move to your second topic, and GTC 23 was this week and you and I were participating in lots of those virtual sessions, and you want to provide some insights on a couple of those announcements.

Yeah. 

There were quite a few 5G sessions, which I thought was awesome. Yeah. I think you and I both participated in some of those. The good thing is this is their last virtual gtc. Next year we'll be in person. . I don't know where it'll be, but . The inkling is that it won't be in San Jose anymore.

It's too big. But this GTC 23 I've been participating all week. I think today was the last day. . And there were a lot of XR sessions. There were a lot of 5G and there were all, a lot of XR and 5G sessions. Yeah. Including a Cloud XR 4.0 session, which kind of goes over the newest features in Cloud xr which is Nvidia.

Cloud XR streaming platform that enables their GPUs and the cloud to successfully eliminate the boundaries of having GPU compute on the device. And allows for streaming from the cloud directly into a headset, whether it's through a wifi network, through it's a wired network or through 5g.

So this iteration of Cloud XR is very much focused on enabling 5g. I see Cloud XR even being used.  In a ton of different ways where compute is just remote, and that's really what this is about. And with this new generation of clax are they're implementing end-to-end L four s, which stands for low latency, low loss, scalable.

And that basically allows for. The ability to reduce jitter on a 5G network. , when sending packets of xr, content. And because jitter is such a big problem in 5G networks.  and Jitter is also a problem with xr. They are working with, infrastructure vendors and operators to implement L four s, which is a com, actually a part of the 5G standard.

Yeah. To make sure that there aren't any issues with jitter. And they're tagging these packets, and then network is able to detect these tags and ensure that they're queued up correctly and making sure that all of the content is properly. . And as a result of that when the operator implements L four s, it works seamlessly for the application developer.

And they don't have to really worry about what's going on network side because it's all designed to work together. Yeah. And the cool thing is that it sounds like a couple operators are already on board. They didn't say which operators they were, but they said they were working with Erickson and Erickson helped them build this solution.

Clearly, if Ericsson's involved, there are gonna be some Ericsson customers that are probably gonna implement this. Yeah. But it's very, I promising for XR and 5g. And it's, the kind of stuff that I love to see out of conferences like this because it's like really meaty. , valuable information that helps us understand where the industry's at and where developers can, take advantage of these technologies and not just talk about what the potential is endlessly.

The good thing is they said that it'll actually be shipping in q2, which is next month. And that'll be like a preview and then mid q2, so like maybe may timeframe it'll be public. So it's a very. Release. It's not coming out at the end of the year. And hopefully we'll see some really big improvements on how XR applications are do deployed with remote rendering at the edge.

That's awesome. And I'll just comment I participated in several sessions as well and one big takeaway for me was the announcement that Nvidia made with at and t how they're helping with their, with NVIDIA's AI platform help at and t do intelligent truck roles and routing improve the speed of network deployment and performance and really lean in.

To what Nvidia has built very impressively with, its with its AI platform to bring intelligence to, arguably one of the largest mobile network oper operators on planet. Great stuff. Let's move to my third and final topic, and I wanna talk about a Forbes article that I posted this week.

It was on Wednesday. Go ahead at Will Town Tech if you want to read about it. But I wrote about NT T's partnership with the city of Las Vegas and I made an illusion to the movie Get Smart. This is all about private networking and smart city deployment in a very high level. I've, I spent last year a couple different sessions with Michael Sherwood.

He's the Chief Technology and innovation officer. For the city of Las Vegas. Really great guy, very humble, very approachable. And we were really talking about some of the things that Michael was wanting to facilitate through these smart city deployments to serve not only residents of Las Vegas, but also visitors and the use cases, that are leveraging 5g focus on improving remote learning connectivity and the associate applications.

Both trained security through intelligent monitoring and lighting systems and parks and venues and traffic congested areas. And then finally delivering robust connectivity for residents, including broadband access to those that are underserved in the poorer parts of the city. And I saw that firsthand.

So I had never been down to the city center. It's well past the strip of all, with all the casinos and beyond. The city center is the lower socioeconomic area. And Michael tells me that, many don't have, basic, internet access and and I assume, F w A will be a part of that as well.

And another interesting investigation that he shared with me through leveraging N T and SOLONA with C B R S spectrum. To do a lot of these private network deployments. But he is also experimenting with millimeter wave in certain parts of the city for computer vision applications and that sort of thing.

Getting back to that, that that, that security, sort of stuff, to, to improve, just the overall security for visitors that go there. Because lots of people like to go to Las Vegas, lots of people like to over consume, booze and food and whatever. And sometimes you find yourself, in a precarious predicament.

And that's not unlike any city in the us. But if you wanna learn more go hit my Twitter feed. And I spent a lot of time, talking through that and it's a really innovative partnership. And this kicked off actually at Mobile World Congress, Las Vegas in September. And then when I was in, back in Las Vegas for another event, I met with Michael in person downtown.

But anything you want to add to that before we move to your third and final? No, just that, 

I was gonna say that Las Vegas is definitely one of the cities that's trying to experi. As much as possible with new technology to elevate the city. And it's, it's residents access to those technologies.

Like Halo was one of the first companies to launch like a semi-autonomous driving service there. There were some other companies like tiv that launched self-driving vehicles there. T-Mobile was one of the first, Vegas was one of the first cities that they launched their 2.5 in.

That's right. , you even go way, way back. Ymax was, Vegas was one of the first cities to launch Ymax clear wire. Yeah. 

That's a blast. 

So I think Vegas is definitely trying to be an innovative city. When you look at what they did with at C ces, I drove around and they're doing a lot of like smart city vehicle to vehicle to infrastructure.

Innovative POCs trying to figure out how to make people safer and vehicles safer. So it's really interesting to see Vegas is continuing to push down this path and figure out how they can make their city better for all of their citizens and even visitors. 

Yeah. And just a final note. The city and N t claimed that this deployment represents the largest municipal deployment in the United States.

Although I did meet with an executive with N T at Mobile World Congress, and he said, stay tuned. They're partnered with Cisco and I think with Cisco, n t can do some really big things with private 5g. So with that, let's go to your third and final topic. And you wanna talk about Huawei and they've announced some new phones, right?

Yes. 

So in a China only event Huawei announced, I want to say four phones. They announced the P 60 series. Which include the P 60 Pro and P 60 Pro art as well as the Make X three. And what's really interesting about these devices is that they are pretty competitive on camera specs, display technology fast charging.

They support up to, 66 and 88 watts. So maybe they're not as fast as some other om. , they've got big batteries. They're fairly sleekly designed. However they are limited to using 4G LTE And they're only using SNAP tracking eight plus gen one chips. So they're actually one generation behind where all their Chinese OEM competitors.

and they don't only have LTE It's really interesting because these are gonna be their flagship devices, obviously the C P 60 Pro and the Pro Art and the May X three. But the question I'm really wondering is, , can it really be a flagship phone if it doesn't have 5g? Yeah. Especially today with, all of the capabilities that 5G is starting to enable.

And you know how long people are holding onto their phones for can you really still be on 4G and be paying, as much as you would for a flagship device? Yeah. I think it's gonna be a very uphill challenge for them, but I. It's been an uphill challenge for them ever since they, they got banned.

And I think it's gonna be really challenging for them to sell, like in mate X three for almost $2,000. With only L T E. . 

I agree. Yeah. Wally has done some beautiful design.  They have, a design studio in Paris and they do things with, paint, and finishes and just beautiful design and, they integrate high-end optics and that sort of thing.

But I agree with you. A flagship phone has to have a 5G modem. Straight up. 

And they're banned from having them yeah. don't really know what to think of their business or how it will survive. Yeah. But, it's a tough call. I don't really know who's gonna be buying those.

Yeah. 

Interesting. Hey, my friend, it's been another great podcast this week. Why don't you take us. Absolutely. 

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 future podcasts, please reach out to us on social media, will is at Will Town Tech and I'm song.

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