T-Mobile, AT&T, Ericsson & Wilson Connectivity New Moves – 5G Factor EP77

All right. Hello and welcome everyone to the 5G Factor. I'm Ron Westpa, research director here at the Futureum Group, and I'm excited about today's episode because my distinguished colleague Tom Hollingsworth, the networking nerd and event lead at Tech Build Day will be joining me.

And this has been pretty consistent. Uh, it's always a pleasure to be co-hosting with Tom and Tom. How are you coming along since our last, uh, recording, uh, what's new?

Uh, we've been busy getting prepped for our next event coming up next week, so I've been, uh, heads down taking a lot of briefings. Uh, you know, there were some earnings reports that came out this week that had everybody kind of excited. So I'm just, I'm looking forward to a chance to talk about some of the stuff that we've seen over the last week and, uh, maybe educate some of our listeners out there about some of the cool stuff happening.

Yes, and I think, uh, this is also an opportunity to talk about what we've been working on this week, and that is Networking Field Day 36th. It's November 6th and seventh after election day. And we're very intrigued and excited about the LightUp because it includes Arista Networks, potential path solutions, elicit and the these networks.

So it's a pretty compelling combination, I think, of startups, the independents and, well, the networks has graduated to, you know, like public traded company that's mature. Anything to add, Tom, about, you know, what's going on with, uh, networking Field Day next week? Well, we're excited to be hearing from first time presenters like Elicit and and Meter of course, because they're, they're doing some interesting stuff in the marketplace.

But like you said, some of the companies that have been around for a while, we want to get an update on what they're working on. And I've been told there's gonna be at least two different product launches that are gonna be happening during the event. I can't say anymore, but you should definitely tune in.

That's perfect. Routing it out with the meter and the elasticity. All of these companies, all six of them, just that they are gonna be coming out with I think, very insightful information for all of us.

But I think it's a testament that companies are launching at coming out with press releases still lie with Tech Build Day, so what's not to like. And with that, let's dive into the 5G Factor itself because we have a lot of ground to cover. And I wanna start with something that has been pressing that certainly came out at the Resupply G Americas event when talking at least with the top tier operators such as T-Mobile and at and t.

One thing that is keeping them up at night, some that you know is driving the key decision makers is what to do about Spectrum. Now this is not unique to this timeframe, but I think it's becoming more acute. And part of the reason is, is that the US does not have an updated comprehensive national spectrum plan in place.

And that's why I thought it was notable. Uh, you know, in terms of, okay, it see T-Mobile at and t and other operators really knocking on the door of the US government say, Hey, you know, we need to fix this. We need to figure out ways to improve our spectrum situation because scarcity is going to impact, uh, at the end of the day, the quality of 5G services is going to make a difference.

And how effectively the operators could not only compete, but certainly, uh, serve customers. So the White House Office of Science and Technology policy released the National Spectrum Research and Development plan. And this new plan will serve as a tool basically to guide government decisions on spectrum related research, shake private sector efforts, and provide a shared reference for stakeholders.

And the overall goal is to, you know, make sure that the US can claim leadership when it comes to spectrum RMD and certainly China comes to mind when this goal is, you know, spotlight it and specifically the plan identify opportunities for spectrum related RD in four categories. And for example, one is innovation areas for use inspired research, which is, I think important because it's being driven by likely operational spectrum use cases. That is let's link the r and d more closely to where it will actually make a difference, where it'll actually make use cases well real.

And these are often to late to specific frequency bands normally placing high importance on cost effectiveness and uh, also potentially coupling it with specific application needs or constraints. Uh, we, uh, on the last 5G factor on a recent 5G factor talks about how Band 14 was vital to enabling at and t to support, you know, the public safety critical infrastructure out there across an LTE network. And so we're anticipating more of the same and also informs the overall national spectrum strategy that recognizes the spectrum needs of the mobile network operators.

Then that includes, uh, the lower three gigahertz and seven gigahertz bands for more study and potential repurposing for full powered license use. And so this is, you know, basically the level set as to, you know, why Spectra policy is important, why Spectrum RD is vital. And uh, Tom, from your review, what are you seeing here that, you know, can be a difference maker that is like, aha, this is something that could actually help?

I think that the big thing is that the, uh, government is pushing them to do use inspired research, right? Look, this is no longer just a situation where they're gonna be putting up spectrum blocks for, uh, auction and then hoping that somebody's gonna do something with them. And we've seen this recently, the millimeter wave bands where some of the companies are starting to give those back because, well, it turns out we really didn't have a plan for these all along.

We just wanted to buy them 'cause they were there. You know, it's the same problem that I have when I go to the store and I'm like, oh, this thing's on sale. I should probably buy it.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but it's on sale and I should buy it. And now that's not gonna work out. 'cause what you end up, in my case, you end up with a garage full of junk.

But if you're a a, a provider, you're ending up with a, a virtual garage full of spectrum that you can't really do anything with. 'cause it's not contiguous that you don't have any idea of how it's gonna work. And so what the government's basically saying now is, let's take a step back.

Let's make sure you have a use for it before you go off and buy it. And, and we wanna show we see those things and we're gonna give you accelerators to do r and d in it. Because before it was as much about denying it to other providers as it was being able to do anything with it.

Well, now I'm gonna give you money if you actually do something with it. And, and that's kind of the kick in the pants that some of these providers need to just kind of, you know, get off their laurels and get it done. And then the other thing is, when you look at the fact that they wanna do dynamic spectrum sharing, where you are trying to pull together all of these resources and dynamically adjust so that more users can get on at the same time, anybody who's ever gone to like a sporting event or been in a hospital knows that the more users that you get in a the given area, the less performant you system is.

And so they're wanting to investigate doing things like maybe tuning the antennas a little bit more, uh, doing better noise, uh, accommodation because, you know, everything now has a, a much higher noise floor than it used to because of all of the devices that are out there transmitting. And then even using things like digital twins to be able to kind of do modeling of the system to make those changes more impactful when they actually do put them out as opposed to just clicking a knob or pushing a button and going, well, I hope that worked. Exactly.

I I couldn't agree more. And so could the mobile operators, you know, it's the, there's that buyer's remorse scenario that played out with the millimeter wave. And I think there's, uh, about a four year window where the mobile operators are sweaty about the spectrum scarcity.

In fact, 5G America's, uh, at TT Mobile, we're pretty consistent and, uh, persistent about we are facing, uh, spectrum scarcity situation where the innovation is actually working with, you know, new companies or whoever can solve, you know, how to optimize spectrum, how to, again, you know, have, uh, spectrum sharing enabled, uh, with the resources that exist. And that's why there's so on board with, okay, let's have a national spectrum plan that is more rational, that's, you know, linked to rd uh, being based on, you know, use, uh, case outcomes versus okay, the highest bidder. And I think that's going to correlate with, uh, correcting the mid band spectrum imbalances that are out there.

And, uh, that means that the mobile connectivity is no longer going to be, uh, uh, so, uh, dependent on spec, I mean on auction outcomes, I think, you know, we've seen the results are there or decidedly mixed where they can just result in this stranded spectrum scenarios and it's not helping anybody. And so as a result, I think this is something that will be welcomed. I don't think there's gonna be any partisan issues when it comes to, okay, let's have a mo new improved national spectrum plant in place and hopefully it won't cause this, you know, four year window of sweating for, you know, the, uh, US mobile operators.

And that's something that I think, uh, will, uh, happen. But again, you know, government isn't exactly rapid in its decision making, but I think these are very important steps to avoid, you know, some, uh, unfortunate, uh, scenarios. And with that, that, uh, is leading into our second topic, and that is nets that are programmable.

Ericsson came out with a, I think a very important announcement, and that is, it's, its new 5G advanced software offering. So emphasis on the software part here, and there are three key factors to this new, uh, Ericsson, uh, push that is, first, it's looking at high performing programmable networks, uh, that are designed to enable operators to better align that networks to improve business outcomes. So that was a constant theme.

5G Americas, it's not so much about technical issues, although that's still out there as we see with, you know, spectrum, uh, sharing and scarcity, uh, concerns. But also next they came out with seven new 5G advanced software products for high performing programmable network needs. And that, again, can help with the revenue diversification, improving the user experience and also overall operational efficiency.

And finally, 5G Advanced strengthens ran software portfolio of theirs with technology such as AI powered ran, intent driven networks and service aware ran. Now this is something we've been talking about for a while, but I think we're definitely getting closer to achieving these goals. We saw Ericsson partner with, uh, Nokia and, uh, naturally Nvidia as well as T-Mobile to come out with the ara, uh, AI ran innovation center.

So this is, you know, where they're putting, you know, uh, money on the table to really make some of these capabilities happen on the AI ran side. But the programmability is definitely tied into this. Yeah, for example, along these, uh, seven new features is real time AI powered automation.

And again, they're linked at the hip AI being able to advance automation and it can certainly occur across RAM implementations. And that is to, you know, uh, enable operators to steal more efficiently, handle more complex, uh, scenarios. And it's quite simply keep up with the demands out there and why not use AI to keep up with, say, being able to offer AI as a service, uh, enabling ai, uh, inferencing at the edge using, uh, their assets.

And, uh, as a note, uh, this, uh, uh, this new set of software products will be available between, uh, this quarter and also the first quarter of 25. So this is around the corner. This is something that we'll be seeing in production work, certainly in 25.

And with that, Tom, uh, what do you see about, you know, network programmability that's different this time it's been talked about for a while. Do you see this Ericsson announcement as really, you know, pushing these capabilities forward across the 5G ecosystem? I think I do, and part of it comes from the fact that we've spent so much time kind of deploying these 5G assets out there just so that we can do these kinds of things.

When you look back at the history of mobile operators, even LTE was kind of this customized cobbled together system that mostly worked a lot of the time, but sometimes it didn't. And man, I hope we can make this work, but really by building this on more commodity hardware, by building this with more off the shelf software, we are able to kind of move some of these developments that have been going taking place in the networking arena into 5G. The one that kind of stood out to me was intent-based networking.

Uh, if you're not familiar with the ideas behind intent-based networking, it's real easy. You go in and you say, I want the network to do X, and then it's up to the software to figure out how to configure the network to accomplish the business goal. So no longer do you have to think in things like VLANs or you know, border routers.

Uh, instead you think in business goals, business units, subscriber units, cells, things like that. And, and you can make it more declarative by saying, I wanna see X and then let the software go out and take care of that. And by using more AI driven functionality, it can even adjust on the fly.

So you can set things like minimum thresholds if, uh, user quality falls below a certain metric, then, you know, bring these other assets online or shunt people to other towers or, you know, whatever it happens to be. And more importantly, energy efficiency is something you and I have talked about a lot across a variety of things that we've been doing is most people don't understand how much it costs to keep the lights on at one of these places, uh, yeah, across all of the devices that they're using. So if they can slip into a lower power mode or kind of more focused in times when there's less load, uh, like, you know, I don't know, 5:00 AM there's not a whole lot of people jumping on the towers.

So if I can reduce usage during that time, that provides me with the cost savings, you know, that could not have been realized any other way. So I think that that ericsson's onto something here. And by positioning this to the service provider market, what they're saying is, is that we're the best partner to go with because we not only give you better technology, but we help you save money to implement more of those features.

And I think that's something that's gonna be valuable as people start looking at the bottom line of these subscription services is, how can I get the most performance for the least amount of investment? Yes. And I think it'll also boost the network.

API proposition out there, networks that are programmable will just be more flexible and agile and be able to use APIs to, you know, address a fast emerging use case to allow developers to, you know, inject more innovation into the service offerings. And it's pushing forward to this ultimate goal of autonomous networks. And I think it, it's someone coming at parallel with say, autonomous vehicles.

Yes, it's a, a great vision, but it's a journey. It's going to require some flood, sweat and tears to get to it and it's gonna take some time. However, I think announcements like this are indicating that we're getting closer in a meaningful way that, you know, hopefully that natural language prompts can actually make the intent-based networking capabilities, you know, applicable in the real world.

And this is tying into our next, uh, area of focus. And that is a company Wilson Connectivity that just recently rebranded itself. It had been Wilson Electronics for many years.

It had actually started off about a quarter century ago, speaking of vehicles enabling, uh, radio connectivity on vehicles and being able to track them. But now they have definitely expanded their portfolio, they have, uh, matured and what they're uh, doing is, uh, taking approach that allows customers to support both the public existing networks as well as private networks on a unified power efficient wireless, uh, infrastructure. Again, that power efficiency factor is spotlighted.

And I think, uh, this is linking closely to, you know, the TM forum's, uh, objective of enabling autonomous networks in production environments. And that means, you know, zero weight, zero touch, zero trouble. I know the term zero can be viewed as overhyping.

It, uh, however it gets the idea across all of these capabilities will just be a lot more efficiently implemented and well quite simply more, uh, user friendly and that it aligns with zero trust security. So here is, I think the, uh, tiebreaker, it's okay, you can have very compelling AI engines that have, you know, really cool, uh, chat boxes, but there's the data that's out there within these organizations manage where they can be trained and then, you know, fine tune and aligned to enable something like an autonomous network that includes certainly a private 5G uh, component and also supporting the SLAs and so forth that, uh, come with a, uh, say a private 5G network offering regardless of who is providing it. And so what I think is also different about Wilson Connectivity is that they're combining, you know, das solutions with the capabilities of private 5G.

And I think that's something that's gonna be increasing demand because there's just a lot of distributed antenna technology out there. It's a classical brownfield environment. People are who are gonna implement private 5G will want it to work, but that it's already in place and they're already not broken.

And that certainly includes distributed antenna systems, but also includes, you know, wifi. And that was something that was a key takeaway at the 5G Americas event, is that there's gonna be a big, uh, demand, we believe for, uh, unified observability and management platforms that can allow a organization operator to know what's going on with the wifi network, with the private 5G network, with the das implementation, you name it, whatever the combination that's needed is required. And I think what's also important to note is that Wilson's das Solutions could distribute RF sources from the 150 megahertz range all the way up to five gigahertz.

So within today's private 5G environments, that will certainly be helpful. And so with that from this, you know, welling, uh, connectivity, rebranding and, you know, emphasizing, you know, combining, uh, these capabilities, Tom, what do you see here that could help, you know, catalyze, uh, private 5G implementations? Honestly, I think this is a good move for them because one of the issues that you run into with companies that are very well known for doing one thing like das is that that becomes associated with that company very directly.

And so in order to kind of get the new capabilities out there, you really do have to remind people, oh, by the way, we're gonna do something new, so we probably need to change the name. Uh, you know, it's like, uh, remember when IHOP tried to rebrand as the International House of Burgers? And everyone's like, yeah, but you're ihop.

Um, this is kind of the opposite of that, right? Like they, they want people to know that they are, they're doing more. And I think that, that you can't just get by on a DAS system anymore.

You have to have these new capabilities. You honestly have to be the one stop shop to, to do this. I mean, I'm assuming that most of the people who listen to the 5G Factor are familiar with distributed antenna systems.

Um, if you, if not, you know, quick Google will tell you, these are the kinds of things where they basically drop a cellular site on top of a hospital roof so that you can get cell coverage inside of the hospital. Except now with the advent of things like guest wifi and wifi calling, they're less valuable and necessary and they're definitely not worth the money that you're paying for them because these are not things you typically manage by yourself. You, you have somebody to manage them for you.

So for the companies like Wilson that are trying to offer these services still, they're trying to get it to the point where they can still continue to make that as high margin revenues while providing more than just, oh, we'll, we'll make the cell phones work inside of the hospital. And so that's why, you know, doing things like power consumption, um, monitoring and things like that, oh, or providing that kind of service for an outdoor area is so valuable. And one of the other things that you have to understand for a lot of these things coming out now, these iot devices, I reference medical a lot because that's still where you see a lot of das implementations.

Think about the number of devices that are getting put on networks and hospitals now that have functionality that is either, you know, very small, low powered wifi or in some cases even cellular capable, uh, you, you really need to have good connectivity. And I think that that's the value of what a company like Wilson can bring to the table, provided they can get people to understand that they're doing more than just doing das. Yes, and I think that's a very critical point con there's still an education component here.

Yes, uh, there are plenty of folks who are familiar with wireless implementations and they're comfortable with wifi. They might even have private LTE and that's certainly a part of the mix here. Uh, but at the end of the day, it's about, okay, why, you know, private 5G And I think, uh, it's aligns with, you know, those indoor outdoor scenarios.

You know, campuses are a great example. It could be a hospital campus, could be a, a college campus, you know, a industrial campus. And yes, you know, for the carpeted areas, the wifi can work very suitably.

And in some limited scenarios it can also work even on outdoor basis. But we're talking about the flexibility of, of 5G network. You have to have it in places where like it's a mining operation or energy exploration.

There's just no way around it. wifi cannot simply, um, meet those scenarios. Plus it's, uh, a matter of fleets and other, you know, things that are integral to so many organizations.

You again, you know, you need wifi for, you know, being able to support that part of the organization. And that's I think, uh, why Wilson connectivity as well as players like CEL are in a prime position to take advantage of this burgeoning demand and, and this area. And they're gonna be able to ride a on, you know, private 5G coattails, which will expand.

Again, it went through a hype cycle like so many other technologies that are new on the scene and it got over hypes and you know, now folks are like really private FI 5G, but believe me, these, uh, private 5G implementations are expanding on a daily basis. People have, uh, cut, um, kicked the tires more, there's more awareness, the capabilities have improved, there's solutions that are more streamlined. So, you know, there's less complexity involved and AI is assisting in this regard.

And that includes, for example, the Erickson announcement. Programmability can help with optimizing outdoor siding for a, a private 5G network implementation as an example. And so with that, on that up note, I guess we can call it.

I appreciate everybody for joining, uh, today's 5G Factor. Tom, once again, always a pleasure to have you on to talk things 5G. Absolutely.

It's always a pleasure to be here, Ron. And uh, you know, there's always really good stuff coming out of the industry if you know where to look for it, and I'm always happy to jump on and discuss all of those cool things with you. So make sure you stay tuned to Networking Field Day.

Uh, next week we're gonna have some, uh, great presentations from the presenters out there. And some of this is technology that you'll probably be seeing coming to a 5G Network before you know it. Right on.

Yes. Uh, networking Field Day, it's on Tech Field Day site, the Futurum Group website. Check it out just like the 5G Factor itself, please bookmark it.

And also we're on Techstrong tv. What's not to like, you know, we just have so many ways that you can check out our perspectives and what's going on. That's very important.

And not just the 5G ecosystem, but on Tech Field Day, what's going on in the overall networking industry. It's all interrelated. And again, thank you everyone for joining.

Have a great 5G and Private 5G Day for that matter.