Welcome to episode 147 of the G two 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. Joining me again this week is Fellow Analyst Ancho Sag. Let's get started with my first topic, and Apple's been in the news this week.

But I'm gonna talk about their opening up support for private. LTE and 5G networks with iOS 17. And so the big question in my mind is, can it help accelerate private cellular adoption? We've talked on prior podcasts about the slow ramp here. Certainly when Apple enters a market a category, they're a category creator.

So I'm not sure if this is gonna necessarily accelerate things, but what I like about it is basically this is an article that RCR Wireless posted. It was James Blackman and he spent time with Apple. And basically the details are that for 5g, they're gonna support both standalone and non standalone modes.

And so this is gonna support obviously iPhone 13 as well as some of the newer iPad models. And so from my perspective, this is great. Obviously it's gonna have to support the spectrum bands and, private network deployments. But I think, it's compelling when Apple does something when they lend support.

It's always a good thing. And I know that it's not, this isn't directly related to an article that you wrote that got Monster views this week at their worldwide Developers Conference. But what are your thoughts? 

This is, all WWDC related. Yeah. Cause iOS 17 is the next version of iOS.

And I thought it was interesting because it further validates that private 5G is a important technology for the enterprise and for growth of 5G and Apple supporting it is just a, another validation of that. They also supported standalone, so this is just the next step in that evolution.

The one thing I will add, they also, other than talking about the headset the Vision Pro. Then we'll also talk about how RCS and SMS is gonna be handled by iOS 17, which is interesting. Yeah. And it's going to improve the experience in, in, in threads for iOS users where Android users are part of the thread.

So it improves that a user experience, but it doesn't, apple isn't actually doing anything to improve the Android user experience. For iOS for group chats with iOS users. Yeah, they're making some things better. They're introducing new products and they're also introducing, the next step of what you would expect in terms of 5g.

Yeah. 

Good stuff. Yeah. If if our viewers and listeners aren't aware ancho penned a, an epic host on Forbes you're up to what, over 200,000 clicks? Yes. It's also 

quite the long read I recommend you maybe set aside some time to read it. I think it's good. But it doesn't have all the thoughts that I necessarily had.

I woke up the next morning and a bunch more thoughts, and that's normal when you have something big like this happening. Yeah. Quickly write something that was a lot instead of letting it 

stew. Yeah, there was a lot and I did catch your Twitter updates there with your additional, thoughts, the night after you wrote it.

What I really appreciated about your coverage is that you looked at it through, a le a very critical lens and I think. There, there are lots of apple fanboy out there and fan girls. And some of them were har heralding. This is like the next generation an ar vr, but your analysis was what was very balanced and so I really appreciated that.

It is a long read, but I encourage our viewers and listeners to check it out. But let's go to your first topic this week and. We've been talking about the space race for quite some time, and you wanna talk about dish and at t objecting to T-Mobile and SpaceX recent spectrum request? 

Yeah, so this is about T-Mobile using their PCs G Block band for satellite communications.

This is the block that they've already explicitly told everyone they're gonna use. What's really interesting about this is that at and t's criticism is that T-Mobile is going to interfere with their own network. It's not that they're worried that T-Mobile's going to interfere with at t's network.

Yeah. They're worried that T-Mobile's going to interfere with T-Mobile's network as if T-Mobile wouldn't be worried about that on their own. So that's a really interesting thought. Also Dish added some comments with the FCC as well. Saying that they should dismiss or deny SpaceX's application.

And they said that they, that SpaceX has failed to explain how it'll avoid excessive outand emissions in the adjacent H block and AWS four Spectrum, which has been licensed to Dish. So this is obviously a dish concern for their own bands of frequency. And T-Mobile and SpaceX have responded to these objections saying that, T-Mobile's consumer handsets will communicate with SpaceX satellites and will be the same handsets that operate today on T-Mobile's threshold network.

Therefore, no further demonstrations regarding the potential interference from T-Mobile's handset operations are necessary. So that's a interesting response. I don't think it's a very technical one. But I think that we'll find out, I guess at this point. Yeah, I think it's really up to the Ft FCC to decide whether or not they should be concerned.

I have a feeling, that SpaceX and T-Mobile will have to probably produce some kind of documentation to prove that they don't think there's gonna be any out of band emissions. But this really sounds to me like at and t and Dish are potentially unhappy with SpaceX and T-Mobile's partnership.

More so than they are with the use of T-Mobile's own spectrum. But I do think we should really lean on the FCC to do their job and verify either maybe using the N T I A or other agencies to verify that there won't be any issues. But at this point it doesn't really sound like either side is particularly providing a considered amount of evidence to validate their concerns or to dis.

No dismiss these concerns. Yeah, 

There, we've talked about this there, there's a lot of, I wouldn't say misinformation, but there's a lot of confusion around how, Leo is gonna integrate into cellular networks. I'm actually planning a Forbes piece on this topic, and I'm gonna begin drafting it next week.

I'm hoping that I can get it published next week. I just within the last hour of our recording this podcast actually spoke with someone at a s t space mobile to understand the nature of how they've been approaching this, some of their intellectual property. And it was very enlightening.

And I'll be sharing those details in a forthcoming Forbes article because I think. There, there's a lot that needs to be explained to the general public about terrestrial and satellite and how it's all gonna work together. But with that said, I wanna move to my second topic this week, and we've actually talked about this before.

On a prior podcast we talked about the rumors around Vodafone and three UK potentially coming together in a mega merger. It appears that. It's, it is gonna happen. It's imminent. There was a fierce wireless article written on this subject and who wrote that article was Julia King. And and obviously this is gonna bring a lot of scrutiny on the part of the the European Commission to ensure that this is not going to be anti-competitive.

But what's interesting, and in the article it was just blindly stated that analysts, quote unquote analysts have stated that, one benefit that they see of the merger would be the ability for the operators to pull resources such as ranch sharing and, ranch sharing is something that's been going on in Europe for quite some time.

It's not anything that's been happening in the, the US or in North America. I know that you haven't decided opinion on this From my perspective. I think there's some benefits, but the concern that I would have would be service quality and pricing. What do you think? 

I don't really feel like there's enough of a challenge in the UK to deploy 5g.

I don't feel like I've heard either three or Vodafone say that they are struggling to deploy 5g and that they need to merge together to make this. Deployment a better thing. Yeah I, it's really tough in most markets when you see consolidation to justify that it won't create less competition.

But I'm always open to hearing what those potential synergies are and why it would create more competition. The example, obviously being T-Mobile, acquiring Sprint, a lot of people were very against that. Just mention that. We definitely agreed that, the US cellular market had become a duopoly.

And T-Mobile broke that duopoly by merging with Sprint. Yeah. So I think there are some places where having a merger does make sense, but I just haven't seen anybody justify the Vodafone three merger in that kind of way. 

Yeah. And quoting, quoting analysts is stating that, the ranch sharing thing could be beneficial.

That's already happening in, in Europe right now. Yeah, time will tell. But it looks like it's pretty imminent. At least the, their intent to do that. But it's gonna have to pass the scrutiny of I believe it's a European commission not just the European Union in general, but but that's a nice segue to your second topic and you do wanna talk about the European Union.

And the consideration of a Huawei ban across the entire footprint of the eu. Right now there are some outlying countries that are still deploying Huawei, so I'll let, I didn't catch this news, so I'd love to get caught up on it. So 

this was something that I'd seen reported in multiple publications.

But basically this was something that is an extension of what the EU has been working on with its 5G security toolbox. And it was trying to usher or gently guide European countries to implement rules and considerations. And they don't feel like enough countries have taken the.

Suggestions seriously enough. And I think it sounds like they might be moving towards a ban simply because they're not allowing these countries to evaluate or they've allowed these countries to evaluate and make decisions, but some of 'em are taking too long. So it seems like the European Union is looking to just outright ban Huawei and other Chinese vendors.

Huawei seems to be the focus of this, but I also see the word Chinese vendors use a lot. Yeah. It might also include ZTE e but it's interesting cuz Huawei actually responded to this. This article is from light reading and they said that Huawei opposes politicizing cybersecurity issues and assessing cybersecurity risks without sticking to recognize technological standards or excluding specific suppliers from the system without proper technological evaluations of violation of the principles of fairness and non-discrimination.

Yeah. And they talk about how Huawei equipment's closely scrutinized for security and things like that. And they're proud of their security record in Europe, but if I recall correctly, they've pulled back considerably in their investment in Europe. They were supposed to have a lot of presence there.

It seems like they've really moved back on that. But it seems like Germany might be the big problem here in terms of install base of Huawei equipment. Yeah. Especially when you consider that 57% of Germany's 4G radios use Huawei. So this might be the biggest pushback, but it's the EU and 1 1, 1 country doesn't get to decide for the rest of the eu.

So Germany might get forced into a ban. Yeah. But we'll see what happens. I think that the Huawei equipment in the west has become a 

non-starter. Yeah. No, absolutely. It has. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see now, as far as their investment in Europe. Initially this was, pre pandemic, Wally was making investment in what they called cybersecurity centers.

They set one up in Brussels. The second one was set up in another location. By my recollection, I know they did a lot of design work on the handsets in Paris. And they've traditionally had a pretty large footprint in Europe, obviously they've pulled back, given the entity listings and that sort of thing that's really been driven by the us.

But, I do see, there, there are some outlying countries, in, in Europe that are, they're moving forward in some, some parts of Southeast Asia, which is, not, obviously not part of Europe. But But, Huawei seems to be a pretty resilient company and they're pivoting and they're leveraging their technology expertise and their manufacturing and other areas like inverter technology for solar panel type platforms and solutions.

But it'll be interesting to see how that all winds out. But let's talk about my third and final topic this week, and I wanna talk about Ericsson. And they're seeing big application opportunities with 5G standalone. This is something that you and I have talked about numerous times. Standalone will unlock the true promise of 5g, from a latency throughput performance standpoint.

This was an article that appeared very recently on mobile worldwide and really what this was all about. There were executives from Ericsson's units in the UK and Ireland. That following Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, they set up a demo day at Ericsson's UK headquarters.

And Ericsson was demoing a number of of use cases that included network API monetization. That's something Ericsson's been very focused on. The whole notion of opening up the network so that you can speed the development of next generation applications and that sort of thing.

Private 5g in industrial settings and ar sports gaming. Were some of the the highlighted use cases. And this is a, not a totally enlightening news topic this week, but it really reinforces what I think you and I have been discussing for a number of years that, hey, listen, 5G is a journey and we have this tweener called non standalone and and honestly, We're not gonna see most mobile network operators get to fully deployed standalone networks until towards the end of this calendar year and first of 2024.

So what do you think? 

Was this the connected to the thing that they did in the uk? Yes. So the interesting part is a lot of that was stuff that they showed at mwc, right? So I think it was like a rehashing. Of what they were demonstrating at M wc. Which is fine. But I think it also shows that we haven't really made much progress in the last three months.

And that things are still very much in the same place in terms of implementation of standalone. And I think it's a, I think standalone is gonna be the fastest way that we get 5G in, in real. Implementations that matter to businesses. Yeah. And people. But I think tho those deployments are just taking longer than I think everybody would like. Something I would also like to add is, a few weeks ago I forgot to actually even talk about this, and I apologized to our listeners. I was at the Digital Transformation Summit, the Qualcomm held okay. And it's been a whirlwind last few weeks, so I apologize for all of us.

Actually, I picked up a cold along the way. Thankfully it wasn't covid good. But at this digital transformation Summit, it was all of these big, integrators like the Accenture's, the Tatas, the ntts. Everybody was talking about how they're using private 5g. To implement new use cases and new techno technological advances within their industries for their customers.

Yeah. And all of it was private 5G driven? Yeah. The common thread across all of it was, We use private 5G because it's a lower latency. It's just that alone was a huge factor. Not to mention the fact that it can, be custom tailored to what the customer needs from these consultants, right?

Because everybody was there and Qualcomm, and this was their first real big digital transformation summit. And I think they really brought out all the big guns to talk about how they're using private 5G to accelerate. Their customers digital transformations. Yeah. 

It's no secret NT T has partnered with Cisco.

Cisco takes or brings a 5G as a service offering to the market. N T serves as the integrator there. Actually I was at Cisco Live this week and I got to meet with with N T leadership as well. And we were talking about the, this whole journey. And they also agree that it's been slower than expected, but they continue to put.

A lot of resources and effort into it because they see the full potential not only for industrial applications, but for smart city as well. But with that, let's move to your third and final topic. And I did catch this news this week around Dish, and they fell out of, I believe, was it the s and p 500, is that right?

But you want to talk about, hey, does this sort of indicate that potentially they're strapped for cash? Yeah. So 

the s p 500 thing is, I think a share valuation thing. Yeah. Cuz their shares have been getting hit pretty hard. And I think right now their share price is $7, which puts their market cap at 4 billion.

I don't think you get de-listed until you're lower than that, but Yeah. Their stock is not doing well. In the last year, it's pretty much just been a downward spiral. Yeah. It started the year, a year ago they were at 20 bucks and they're now down to seven. It's not great for them, but I'll say that this story that I saw is more actually about them looking to raise capital because there's concerns that they might not be able to hit their next milestone in 2025.

Of reaching 75% of the country. And the rumor is that Charlie Ergen is going around trying to raise money in other countries, whether that's flying to the uae or other countries. But the interesting part is, there's no official statement about this, but we're gonna dig into it more and see, what's going on and whether or not we can get some more information.

But ultimately, building a 5G network is not cheap. No. And building one from the ground up is also not cheap. And I think that they're, they're obviously you're having struggles, but I think if they can really pull through it, it'll be a big deal. And. I'm sure that the Amazon discussion that we talked about last week there's a possibility that could come to fruition, but I think they're there trying to explore all their options and trying to take advantage of what they have already and make the most of it, but also continue to grow and be a potential fourth 5g operator that has real competitiveness, because right now it's really hard to believe that they're a competitive fourth vendor.

No, their deployment has been slowed. I've met with executives and they've been very transparent in stating that, what they're doing is pretty novel and new. Although you could argue that Rakuten bloodied nose, with, with all the disaggregation and the open ran and.

The highly virtualized nature of their network deployment. But I think, what's also affected the dish stock price have been these cybersecurity breaches as well. There've been a couple and and it's been very costly. As far as I think to remediate the last one, it was in the tens of millions of dollars.

That doesn't bode well with subscribers. Because there's a lot of personal identifiable information that can be, passed over mobile networks, over, over smartphones, over tablets, over mobile devices. They're gonna have to get their security posture in order, number one.

And then, number two, yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna have to, work through some of these short term Trips and and getting their network deployed and, hey, lean into some others, like Rakuten, try to understand lessons learned.

Reliance is another operator in India that is is leaning into disaggregated infrastructure to deploy their networks quickly. And, we should talk about India because boy, By all measures that market is heating up. Now that they're past the 5G spectrum auctions, there's a lot of activity going on.

But anyway, with that said, it's been another great podcast this week, my friend. Why don't you take us home? Absolutely. 

We hope our viewers and Twitters film 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.

Will is at Will Town Tech and I'm at osha. We hope you have a great weekend and please tune in next week and don't forget to rate and subscribe.