Welcome to episode 143 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 sag. Let's get started with my first topic, and I wanna talk about satellite.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, sat. Iot? I don't know. Yeah. So they announced the launch of their first satellite to support five 5G Narrowband iot use cases. And SDX Central did a pretty cool article on this. So their base in Spain. Their plans are to eventually have 250 birds in orbit to support Narrowband Iott connections.

What's cool is it was launched with the SpaceX Falcon Nine Rocket that was launched from Vanderberg, US Space Force Space in California. What's really cool, cause I haven't really dug into kind of the dimensions of these LEO satellites. It's a 22 pound satellite that will be able to provide 5G coverage across more than 800,000 square miles.

For you tech nerds it basically supports connections using three GPP release, 17 non-terrestrial network NTN specification. And I know Ancho, you've talked about that in the past. So what I really like about what they're doing, it's been delayed. But they're focused on iot connectivity and Leo ba, based on the fact that it's closer to earth should provide, much better latency to support those sorts of use cases.

So what do you think? 

I think it's, already a use case. I think a lot of people are already preparing for when it comes to 5g, so I don't really think it's necessarily particularly novel. I do think it's. Novel that they are explicitly going for iot as an application, right? I also think that, latency might not necessarily be a key factor in a lot of iot applications.

However, maybe they're trying to position themselves for a type of network where latency is addressed for iot applications. Cause I'm sure iot when it's stationary and iott when it's moving are two very different things. And I think that might be their play, but we'll see what happens.

But, it's fairly slim network slice. It's, or is it five megahertz? It's gonna be limited obviously. But I think it'll be something that, that might happen. I'm just not sure if they'll be the ones who will make it happen. 

Yeah. What I like about it is obviously the implications for covering areas that are underserved presently.

And yeah, to your point, typically a narrowband iott doesn't take advantage of latency, but. There are some interesting sort of sustainability oriented use cases when you look at what Laura w and the Alliance is trying do to drive. But I just thought it was interesting because it's uniquely focused on Narrowband iot.

But let's move to your first topic and you wanna talk about T-Mobile. And I caught this announcement this week. You wanna talk about an announcement that they made with carrier aggregation? 

Yeah. So this isn't necessarily a very deep topic. We've got more, and I'll even say as a supplement, I've got something more to say.

T-Mobile demonstrated two x carrier up uplink aggregation on a commercial 5G standalone network, which is different from what at and t and Fs two weeks ago, which was done in a lab. And I think that's good to know that like ATT has its capability, but it's not in a commercial network.

T-Mobile has this capability and it's in a commercial network. Both companies are doing this. It makes total sense when you think about, how many applications and what kind of content requires uplink. And I think demand for uplink will always grow, right? And most likely, there will be a lot of users using Uplink when they're trying to improve their coverage because the uplink is what determines their coverage and having.

Two x uplink can improve your coverage even further. Making that robust uplink very valuable. And then another network announcement that I didn't include in our script and I just thought about just now is the coronation is happening in the UK today of the new King. And I was like, I wonder if they treat this like the Super Bowl and a bunch of carriers are gonna come out and say how we're preparing for the coronation.

And lo and behold, I checked. You did. And it says Vodafone uk and it tn to broadcast coronation using 5g standalone. And then I see other articles basically saying the same thing that Vodafone sets up. Its 5G network. For slicing for the coronation. Yeah. And then another article says Vodafone enables it and n coordination TV coverage is 5G network slice.

So clearly Vodafone is enabling ITN to stream the coronation over a 5G network slice, which is still, I think, relevant. Cool. I don't necessarily think it's crazy or something. Insane. But it's really interesting to see that the carriers are taking advantage of the coronation and how many people are gonna be there and how people are gonna be watching to use as the marketing opportunity for 5g.

Yeah, I wanna throw that out there. Might not be relevant to a lot of people personally. I don't even really care that much about the coronation or the monarchy, but I still think it's important enough to enough people that I think it'd be cool to cover and see, what the operators 

are gonna do in the uk.

Yeah. I think it's relevant obviously for the United Kingdom and I do recall that there was some conversation around 5G coverage associated with unfortunately, the Queen's funeral in her passing. But yeah, you know what, it's a relevant use case for For that part of the world.

But let's jump to my second topic this week and I wanna talk about Erickson. And there was an announcement that came out about a week ago that they're partnering with the Canadian government to drive innovation and 5g. And, as I dug into it, I think it could be a model for other regions.

So it's actually a pretty significant investment. It's nearly half a billion Canadian dollars. And the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is is focused on this and it really centers around three r and d centers that, that Erickson operates within Canada. And the whole idea is to create, a test bed to bring companies together.

Where things like 5g, advanced xg cloud ran core network infrastructure and quantum computing, as well as ai bring those experts in, to one area and provide a fertile ground for collaboration. And that's not unlike what we've seen some of the carriers in the US do with their innovation centers.

At and t has its labs. T-Mobile has, its its innovation centers and certainly Verizon does that as well. But I think it's an interesting sort of public-private partnership. And we see a lot of that in the us with academia. The, there, there have been some, I think from my perspective, what I've seen the US government do is just really create these These edicts and these frameworks to, to follow.

But the funding hasn't been significant enough to do that. But I think there's more that can be done because certainly, in the us and I think China probably maintains the same position. 5G can become a competitive advantage, certainly within the enterprise and certainly within.

Applications like manufacturing automation. But I don't know if you caught the knees or if you have any thoughts on the subject, but would love to hear your perspective. 

I did. I did hear some things. I saw some things, but I didn't really delve deeply into it, but I think that every government should be looking for ways to collaborate with infrastructure vendors to accelerate the deployment of 5g because I really do think that we're going to see 5G accelerate people's transformation economically. Whether they're transforming from a labor to a service economy or from a service economy to a manufacturing economy or from manufacturing economy to a service economy.

I think there's gonna be lots of abilities to increase velocity of money and work. And I just think that there's a lot of things that we don't really realize yet that 5G is gonna be enabling. Yeah, and I think the key is to have the networks in place so when people do think of the applications they're ready.

And I think if we take too long it'll become a six G promise instead of a 5G promise. 

I agree with you on that. And I think what'll be interesting, cuz, you and I have been talking about this. We, you and I were actually together in Austin for a media tech event. And as analysts we all like to get together and pontificate and, predict where we think things are headed.

But, I think one of the things that we, that several of us talked about at that event was like when do we get to the true promise of 5g? When do we see, at least in the us that. That, Verizon and at and t catch up with standalone. And I, I mentioned, I thought that, based on their their progress with building out their C-band assets, that by fourth quarter, first quarter of next year, we could be in a situation where in the US we've got standalone 5G deployments across the board that really unlocks the true promise of 5g.

And that's where I think that the innovation will really happen. And If the US were to replicate a sort of a similar program to what we're seeing in Canada with Ericsson, and certainly Ericsson has r and d centers in the us. They have a big one in Texas north of Austin. And Richardson or Plano.

I think that could really accelerate things, but it'll be interesting to see what results from this partnership with Erickson and the Canadian government. Let's new to your second topic. And Oh my God, are we gonna talk about the 5G altimeter issue again? 

Yes, we are basically what it is, the reason for this time and I really feel like I'm reading some of these headlines and it really feels the press are taking the side of the airlines because I think they have better pr.

But basically what's happening is Pete Budgie, who's the Secretary of Transportation basically confirmed that the July 1st deadline to get the imeter upgraded is a hard deadline and will not be pushed back. And of course the airlines are once again complaining. Yeah. And they're using their trade groups like the I A T A, which is the International Air Transfer.

Association to say things like supply chain issues make it unlikely that all aircraft can be upgraded by the July 1st deadline, threatening operational disruptions during the peak Northern summer travel season. So what I see, what I'm reading here is that the airlines are looking for an opportunity to take planes off of the runway so that they can drive up prices.

During the summer travel season because, oh, we can't upgrade all the altimeters and they can't fly if they're not upgraded in time. Yeah. So this almost feels like they're looking for an out to be able to cut how many planes they have going which will then of course reduce number of flights available, which then drive up cost per seat, which then increase their profitability.

Yeah. To me this just seems like another money grab by the airlines. It's really interesting that they also quoted a $638 million cost to do these upgrades. Which I don't recall that number being thrown out any time recently. No. And I also don't think that money was ever money was an issue.

I think we agreed early on when they saw that 90 billion figure or whatever the total was that everybody paid in, in aggregate. But What's interesting is the UK's civil aviation authority said there have been no confirmed instances where 5G interference resulted in aircraft system malfunction or unexpected behavior.

Yes. So I think we've gotten to the point where the airlines continue to bring up, I I don't know catastrophic scenarios, whether that's catastrophic, travel issues or catastrophic plane crashes. It seems like the airlines have really not done themselves a favor here in terms of being honest about the issue and just constantly, trying to approach the most I don't know, drastic.

Outcome that's possible as a result of this issue? I, I just wanna re reiterate, there's still a good 200 megahertz between what the airlines are using where C Band 

is Exactly, man. And, and I don't want to get political, but this, from my perspective, this also highlights what I believe is.

And I don't want, I'm gonna call Spade a spade, the incompetence of the Department of Transportation and understanding technology in general, and their leader is someone that, before he took that position was a mayor of a small town. And and clearly you can say that, hey, even looking back at prior administrations, when you look at, for example, the Facebook hearings and like we've talked about that on prior podcasts.

I mean our legislators that we've elected, Don't understand technology. And so they're knee jerking based on their constituencies and clearly the Department of Transportation and the Federal Communications Commission they still continue to not communicate well on this subject. And it's, yeah.

And so the airlines are going to, are gonna use it to their benefit. So it's not surprising to see this, but man, just when we thought that this issue had had died, it's it continues to rear its ugly head. We'll see what happens, but I'm hoping that my flights don't get delayed this summer because I've got a few scheduled.

But let's move to my third and final topic and. This is tongue in cheek, but this happened a couple weeks ago as well because I've been on vacation and, we missed a podcast there, but the FCC actually made an official announcement launching the Space Bureau. And I just, I love it.

It reminds me of that movie, was it called Galaxy Quest? Or, it's just, it's interesting. But, all kidding aside, With, we were just talking about Leo and satellite OT or however I pronounce that, that company there, there is becoming a space race here and there are a lot of companies that are jumping in to low earth orbit and and yeah, there needs to be some regulation here.

So I, I think it's a long time coming, and the charter for Space Bureau will be to manage all of all of this, all of the requests and just to ensure that, Things are done safely and incorrectly. So I don't know if you caught the announcement, but what's your take on it?

I 

did not catch the announcement, but I do think it's interesting that we created a space force before we had a regulatory agency 

in Georgia space. So this is part of the fcc so it's communication, but 

it's still part, yeah, it's still part of an existing structure, but it's a new branch.

Just like the Space Force isn't really a new. Branch of the military is just part of the air. The Air Force went Space, space Force. But yeah I don't really I'm interested to see what happens. Hopefully, they definitely get people involved that are knowledgeable about the area, the, the industry and what the future will hold.

So hopefully they're able to recruit people that will help guide regulation in the right direction. 

Yeah. And hopefully they're gonna go recruit from, the Hughes, you know these companies that have been in satellite Exactly. For a long time and put some acumen into the ranks there, but we're on a, we're on a roll here, so we're at your third and final topic and it is earning season and you wanna talk about Apple?

I mentioned media tech earlier and Qualcomm, so I'll let you take it away. 

Yeah, I think earnings. Was this week. It was interesting because there was a quite clear pullback on growth for all three companies. Yeah. If you look at apple, their revenue was the most resilient.

I think if you look at what they were able to post they still beat expectations and they actually had better iPhone sales than expected. Which is actually a great thing for them. But if you look at like Qualcom and Media Tech, who are the suppliers of most of Apple's competitors they're down double digits in terms of revenue.

And both media tech and Qualcomm had the significant hits to their smartphone businesses. And they've already actually taken hits. But the hits keep coming. And as a result, their revenue is downed quite a bit. I actually commented on both Qualcomm and media tech earnings.

But overall, I, I think when you look at what's going on with the market It's clear that the smartphone business is still retracting from its peak during the pandemic growing. Yeah. But I think that we'll probably see some kind of a rebound in the second half of the year. Unfortunately Q2 will also probably be bad.

But I think Q2 will most likely be the bottom. Especially as people with first generation 5G phones start to upgrade. Cuz we are in 2023. And most people didn't really get 5G phones until 2021 or even late 2020, so I think we're in a new upgrade cycle. But yeah it's been interesting, media tax revenue was down like 30%.

Their profit was down 50%. And Qualcomm was. Down double digits as well. Yeah. So it's not necessarily the greatest earning season I think for these big chip vendors. But Qualcomms saw a 17% decline, but part of the reason why they only saw a 17% decline cause their auto business sub 20%.

A lot of these companies are diversifying, Mediatech and Qualcomm both are very diverse now. So the smartphone business hits them a lot less hard than I think it would've been maybe five years ago. But nonetheless, it's really interesting to see, where the market's at today.

And that smartphones are smartphones, whether they're 5G or not. And volumes are down. They're not, they're down quite a bit for some companies, but overall, I think both. All common media tech have a very long-term vision for what they want to accomplish with 5g. And this is just a, a small bump in the road along the way for them.

And I think the market will probably recover by the end of the year. 

I think so too. And Apple's apple, so I'm not worried about Apple. I, I was really impressed with what Media Tech is doing to focus on the enterprise. We were at the the summit together and more to come here, but they have designs on enterprise networking and working with those infrastructure providers.

It's an untapped market for them. And so I think, it's a short term aberration here, but I think there's tremendous upsides for them in the future. But hey buddy we were really efficient this week. Another great podcast. Why don't you take us home? Absolutely. 

We hope our viewers and listeners, so on this week's topic's, interesting.

If anyone out there would like to provide us insights for future 5G topic for our future podcast, please reach out to us on social media, will is at Will Town Tech and I'm at acha saag. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in next week and don't forget to rate us and subscribe, subscribe.