Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
Diving into Old and New Digital Frontiers: Unveiling the Mysteries of Mobility Field Day 11, Exploring AM Radio for Emergency Comms, and Anticipating a Live Tech Interaction
Prepare to be electrified by the insider knowledge I, Drew Lentz the Wireless Nerd, bring straight from the tech trenches as we prep for Mobility Field Day 11. Get ready for the line-up of heavy hitters like Ubiquiti, Arista, and Cisco, you'll get the kind of peek behind the curtain that only the MFD crew can boast about! I'm excited about the details of Juniper's latest maneuvers and dishing on Fortinet's fresh retail strategies, all while urging you to jump into the digital fray with your most pressing wireless wonders - MFD11 is gonna be awesome! And don't think I've left out those shiny new Apple announcements; we'll dissect the latest iPad's 5G capabilities and lament its Wi-Fi 7 absence together.
Transmitting from the heart of AM radio debates, hear how I grapple with the static of my own electric truck while discussing the broader implications of emergency communication legislation. Shifting from the airwaves to the furrows, I'll dig into a Tennessee trial that's plowing new ground in agricultural IoT, potentially transforming how we farm with smart tech. Last but not least, gear up for our next episode's live broadcast, where we'll take your engagement to the next level with real-time interaction during Mobility Field Day presentations. Make sure your questions are locked and loaded; this is where the rubber meets the road in the wireless world.
What's up everybody. I'm Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd. Today it is May 8th 2024. We are less than a week away from Mobility Field Day coming up. So next week we're going to have a lot of wireless nerds out in the Bay Area getting to see some really cool stuff and sneak peek. On Monday I'm actually going out there a day early. I'm going to get to see behind the scenes of some really cool stuff and I might even get to see some embargoed stuff that I can't even talk about until a couple of days later. So keep your peepers peeping, pay attention. It's going to be great.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to go out to the Bay Area. It's been a minute since I've been out there, so I'm really looking forward to it. Going to see some old friends, new friends, going to have fun at Mobility Field Day. Let's look it up again. Let's see if anything has changed. Mobility Field Day, as he types in, mobility Field Day 11.
Speaker 1:Right now, still, as it shows, we've got the vendors that are going to be there Ubiquity, arista, juniper, fortinet, I know, salona and Cisco and the lineup is fantastic. Let's see. Wednesday, may 15th, we're starting with Juniper, going into Fortinet and ending with Salona, and then Thursday, arista, then Cisco, then I know, and then Ubiquity. To cap it all off, it all starts Wednesday, may 15th, at eight in the morning. That would be eight Pacific time. Oh, I hate it when they make us wake up early, but that's okay. Starts at eight. Juniper is going to probably provide some pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1:Curious about the HP acquisition. Will anybody ask about the elephant in the room? We shall see. And then Fortinet. I'm curious what they're doing with retail. They start to make these inroads and it makes me more curious about what they're doing and where they're going.
Speaker 1:So if you have any questions about what they're doing, please make sure to know that you can hit us on Twitter. You can get at us online Any of the delegates Sam Raul, ron, rocky, mohamed, mark, kevin, keith, jennifer, fernay, drew and Dev. We will all be online. If you want more information, visit techfielddaycom. Slash event, slash MFD11, or just look up Mobility Field Day 11. You or just look up Mobility Field Day 11. You can find all the information on there. It is going to be a fantastically good time.
Speaker 1:Hopefully Tom Hollingsworth has some more nerdy dad jokes for us. We'll find out how nerdy he can get, but in the meantime, this week let's talk about what's now, what's new and what's next. Some interesting articles that I have come across. Nothing too big, you know. We can start with what's new the Apple announcements. Everything came out there. They're talking about the new iPads, how the iPads are going to be the most impactful iPads that they've ever made. Moving into the M4 chip, which is fantastic and good.
Speaker 1:I guess I did not order one. I'll wait to order one. They're supposed to be lighter and bigger. Hopefully someone at MFD will show up. We usually have a nice display of the toys. You know what else we have. Look at this y'all If you're watching on the podcast or if you're watching on the video. I made little buttons, little wireless nerd buttons, and finally I refreshed my wireless nerd sticker stash and I also have some waves podcast stickers. So make sure you get those. If you want one, drop me a message, see if I can send you one Anyhow, anyhow.
Speaker 1:So apple had their announcements and I was hoping for wi-fi 7 in the ipad. Maybe not the air. I thought maybe the air be a generation behind. Maybe they go with wi-fi 7 on the ipad pro. The question came up online is it needed? Apple's usually two years behind. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:You know, let wi-fi 7 make its way into the market and gets you know, solid according to wired wired not mr lee badman said. You know, let it get stable first. True, quit trying to rush things. Uh, typical lee, I mean really. But he's right, you know. Let it, let it figure out what wi-fi 7 is doing. I just wanted it. You just you know, when you, when you see a new piece of equipment come out, you say man, what the latest and greatest? So we'll wait. Is it worth it? You know, it would be cool to have it. Mlo on the ipad would be great. So we're just gonna have to wait till the next cycle. I wonder what the first wi-fi 7 capable mlo device, client device like phone or whatever it's going to be. We'll find out. So some good announcements there, but nothing groundbreaking in the wireless world.
Speaker 1:They did mention 5g on both the ipad air and the ipad pro, so's going to be pretty cool. It was all sub-6 gig, it said, if you dig into the details, someone was kind enough on Twitter or X I still refuse to call it X someone was kind enough on Twitter to post the specs. They went and jumped on the website to see what the actual specs of it would be. And from a cellular and wireless perspective, wi-fi 6E, 802.11ax, 2x2 MIMO on the device, simultaneous dual band Bluetooth 5.3, which is the upgrade from where it was before. On the older one, I do believe, 5g, all sub-6 gig with 4x4 MIMO. Gigabit LTE with 4x4 MIMO, assuming you have a provider that's providing that to you. 5g bands definitely N48 is in there, so we do want to see 5G N48,. Fdd LTE 326671, and TD LTE does hit BAM48. So CBRS ready Yay. Cue the. I need my little soundboard back. Cue the applause. Yay. Wi-fi calling.
Speaker 1:Esim support everything since I was 15. I love having the eSIM. I was demoing it this morning, as a matter of fact. Esim I was demoing it this morning. As a matter of fact, esims make life so much easier when you're talking about private 5G or private cellular networks. Esims are just awesome.
Speaker 1:Dude, you just scan a little QR code. If you haven't seen an eSIM in action, I have a video on my YouTube channel where I was testing out some stuff from Raman and you really get to see how I do like a little demo, and I show how I scan it and how I make it work. It's pretty cool. It works exactly like it's supposed to. So no big wireless things coming, unfortunately, from the Apple event, but that's okay. Also, I didn't see any Wi-Fi stands in the background. I'm always scanning Anytime something comes up, I scan the background to see if I see a Wi-Fi stand in there, and I did not see any. So if you did, let me know. I like seeing them. I've seen them on TV all over the place Very, very cool.
Speaker 1:Anyway, next up in the news, let's see what has happened. Maravetus Research asked is open Wi-Fi ready for prime time? I was very happy to see this as someone who's been an advocate for open Wi-Fi for quite a while. I was happy to see that Maravetus Adleine Fella is his nameelaine Adelaine. Adelaine Fella, the chief analyst and founder at Myravitus, was talking about this and the highlights the articles published on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:The highlights say we do not think economics alone is the primary driver for adopting open Wi-Fi. For many customers, open Wi-Fi allows them to innovate and control their destiny in a volatile and uncertain Wi-Fi supply chain. Okay, I mean fair enough. That was a statement that was valid a year ago two years ago, I don't know how uncertain and volatile the Wi-Fi supply chain is now. Granted. When I was at Open Wi-Fi, that was one of the banners that we were carrying, but we knew that that eventually was going to come to the end. So combining these two drivers better economics and more value is necessary for disruption, they say, but it will take someone leading the charge. Open Wi-Fi is a decent car whose performance and value will improve as deployments generate the volumes required for continued R&D. Only commercial success will ensure the survival and eventual prosperity of its ecosystem of developers and hardware vendors. I could not agree more. Still waiting for someone to pick up the torch on Open Wi-Fi, as per my article a couple of years ago, I really want to see someone just take the lead. You know, edgecore has done a really good job with it and NetExperience has done a really good job with it, but to see a larger manufacturer pick it up would be fantastic.
Speaker 1:It's tempting to compare the sorry state of Open RAN and reach conclusions about what will occur with open Wi-Fi. It's tempting, he says. While there are similarities between the two initiatives, there are also considerable differences in the task complexity and the market's needs. I agree, and I look at open Wi-Fi and one of the things I always really got my goat was that the telcom info project was at tip when they had their big fuse conference. They didn't put enough emphasis on open wi-fi. They're like look at open around, look at over and look at over and nothing dude. But here's, here's open wi-fi storming the castle gates and it's like oh yeah, yeah, they're doing some stuff over there by investing considerable r&d and improving their offering with superior ai engines, better performance and more flexibility to customer specific needs.
Speaker 1:Open wi-fi adoption is made much harder to justify for cios and ctos, I don't know, man. Look at some of the new devices that are coming out and look at what the roadmaps are with those. It looks like you know it's more. People are moving the processing and the container and the memory and all that stuff down to the edge, down to the access point. Hopefully open wi-fi keeps up with that. You know aruba's announcement of their new Wi-Fi 7 APs definitely supports that. It's what they want to do. They're trying to push it down to the edge. So we'll see. I'm excited about that. But either way, some press is better than no press.
Speaker 1:Maravitis Research Wireless Infrastructure Analysts. I'm so glad that you published an article. I think that that's really cool. I like that more analysts are looking at this and saying, well, wait, cool, I like that. More analysts are looking at this and saying, well, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:What else is happening this week? Oh, this was a fun one, as someone who's a an old ham radio operator, ars technica, posted an article this was may 1st, so exactly a week ago and says am radio law opposed by tech and auto industries, is close to passing. Check this out. I'm going to read from their from their article in this a controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become law in the new future. That's so awesome. I love AM radio. I grew up on AM radio listening to Art Bell, coast to coast. Go figure.
Speaker 1:So much good stuff is happening in AM radio and the way that they look at this. They say look, this is in the event of an emergency. This is a big, awesome transmission medium that can be used. Democrats and Republicans are tuning into the millions of listeners, thousands of broadcasters and countless emergency management officials who depend on AM radio in their vehicles. Am radio is a lifeline for people in every corner of the united states to get news, sports and local updates in times of emergencies, our common sense bill.
Speaker 1:Make sure this fundamental, essential tool doesn't get lost on the dial with a filibuster proof. Super majority in the senate. Congress should quickly take it up and pass it, said senator markey and his co-sponsor, senator ted cruz from texas. I'll leave the politics out of this and just say that I adore am radio, so let's let that go. It has the support of 60 us senators and 246 co-sponsors the house of representatives, making its passage almost a sure thing. The national highway traffic traffic safety administration will be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the us have am radio available at no extra cost. 82 million people still listen to AM radio, according to National Association of Broadcasters, which you can imagine, is happy that Congress is supporting this. This is so cool, so I'm glad to see it.
Speaker 1:You know they talk about dropping AM radio. There's a bill in Congress to mandate AM radios on new vehicles, as some automakers have come to drop the option. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Electric vehicles don't want to put it in there. A big reason is the electromagnetic interference from electric motors. Okay, if you drive an EV and you have AM radio, put it on an AM radio and then hit the pedal.
Speaker 1:I did this the other day. I was trying to explain signal bounce, ionospheric bounce to my daughter about being able to listen to stations from Houston, even though we're in McAllen. I talked about sun and radiation and weather and climate and this and that and all the things that could affect it. But I was doing it in my F-150, lightning my electric truck, and I noticed that at the stoplight. The conversation was awesome because we were listening to 740 KTRH in Houston and six hours away from where I live, just for the record, and we were listening to it. It was great and as soon as the light turned green, I punched that go pedal and dude buh-bye, couldn't hear anything. So, yes, I'm for the AM radio thing.
Speaker 1:However, if you don't have local AM stations in your area that are broadcasting news of any significance, I don't know that this will make a difference other than the emergency broadcast network. So I don't know. But the tech and auto industries are not happy with it. According to CTA, which surveyed 800 US adults, of the 95% of US adults that heard the test, only 6% heard the FEMA test. Remember they played that tone that everyone said it was the 5G activating in your head or whatever it was Only 6% heard the test via radio and just 1% heard it on AM radio, as opposed to 92% who received the push alert on their smartphone.
Speaker 1:Requiring the installation of analog AM radios and automobiles is an unnecessary action that would impact the EV range. What Did they seriously? Said Albert Gore, executive director of Zeta, a clean vehicle advocacy group. Come on, man, it's going to affect AM radio, is going to affect the range of your vehicle, dude. Surely if I can build it powered by a potato in my living room, I could definitely imagine that it doesn't suck up that much juice. Whatever, that's a terrible reaction to it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, am radio law opposed by tech and auto industries is close to passing Good. Bring in all the AM radio. Maybe we'll bring back AM radio. Maybe I'll just start broadcasting this on AM radio. Tune into Waves on AM 710. Wouldn't that be cool? Anyhow, all right, so I digress.
Speaker 1:What else is going on? Smart Agriculture? I don't know why I have this tag. Let's see. Agriculture IoT system sends power through the soil. That's why I have it tagged. This is from the IEEE Spectrum, tennessee field trials power sensors for just pennies per day. Power is a major obstacle in the path to real-world smart ag. Even the most energy-efficient devices still need power to track and report GPS coordinates, moisture levels, temperatures, soil acidity, nutrient concentrations and invading pests.
Speaker 1:Speaking of Ted Cruz, just kidding, don't talk politics. He says Long-life batteries, solar panels. And don't talk politics. He says uh, long life batteries, solar panels, wind generator generators, laser, microwave energy, bmc and capacitor lane drones. It can now settle over and charge buried induction coils. Let me read this again capacitor-laden drones that can settle over and charge buried induction coils.
Speaker 1:Researchers at Tennessee Technological University in Cookville have another new idea sending electrical power directly through the soil. Hello, nikolai Tesla, this isn't just a laboratory curiosity. The researchers have transmitted electric power using a through-the-soil system to power remote sensors and long-range low-power LoRa radios distributed over a two-acre test plot through multiple growing seasons. The engineers powered their tests with a mobile solar panel array and are required roughly 0.1 kilowatt hour per day. If they had paid retail rates for that power, it would have cost them just over a penny during the day. Cool story, bro. Uh, looks pretty neat, though I mean it's promising this is. This goes back to the thing where wi-fi now and dorothy popped up talking about, you know, being able to harvest antenna to power up radios using the antenna as an energy harvesting mechanism. So looking for alternative power is always kind of cool. So agricultural IoT so look it up on IEEE Spectrum spectrumieeeorg slash smart dash agriculture Cool article.
Speaker 1:What else are we talking about today? Oh, this one's interesting Verizon neutral host play at Cummins. So Verizon is sticking their nose in I guess, not sticking their nose, throwing their hat in the ring, if you will to neutral host networks and there's articles that have been published all over the place for it. Cummins is the first announced customer for Verizon Business, their facility and a neutral host network providing cellular coverage for distinct private and public use cases at Cummins Jamestown engine plant. A neutral host network can allow employees and the general public, no matter their mobile provider, to achieve a strengthened mobile signal via dedicated network infrastructure on a specific premise or campus. So let's explain what this is. This is neutral host network, but provided by Verizon, so Verizon comes in and puts it in there. It's private 5G, so you can connect all of your things to the 5Gs all of your internal infrastructure, your IoT, your robots, your manufacturing stuff, your cameras, your sensors, whatever it is To learn more about this today I think it was today or yesterday even Tesla busted out a video online and they talked about using 5G in its facility, I believe, in Berlin.
Speaker 1:So if you Google it and you look it up, it was posted yesterday at Gigafactories G-I-G-A-F-A-C-T-O-R-I-E-S. At Gigafactories, tesla Manufacturing put together a one minute and 18 second video about how they're using Private G internally. Now we're nerds, wireless nerds, and we've been talking about Private 5G and private wireless networks and cellular networks for a while. But now that Tesla's doing it, 160,000 views later, everyone's like, oh my God, I just need all this stuff. So it's interesting because it's coming into that common vernacular, the common language.
Speaker 1:People talked about the benefits of private 5G and 5G before, but having someone like Tesla pop out and put that front and center and talk about what they're doing following this announcement from Verizon is pretty cool, because what Verizon is saying is they're saying not only is this going to get you connected to the Verizon network, but since it's neutral host, anyone that walks in on any carrier can immediately attach that carrier. So their phones will flip over to the local installed access points or devices or e-nodes or whatever it is that they have, and they'll flip over and you can use your phone like normal. This is a big deal because this is Verizon opening up their hardware and their services for other vendors. So it says, as an anchor tenant for the care agnostic, neutral host network, verizon is the technical lead for network implementation, responsible for engineering, equipment and installation. This sounds like if you can't beat them, join them. This sounds like Verizon looked at what Infinigi is doing and looked at what what's the other company I just talked about I can't remember their name. Anyway, this is like what Infinity is doing and they're like hey, we can do that, we can do that too. And if someone else is going to spin up a business unit doing it, why don't we just do it? And then we make all of the money.
Speaker 1:So interesting for Verizon to throw their hat in this and provide the neutral host component. I would have imagined that would have been T-Mobile first. This seems like a very T-Mobile thing to do. So to have Verizon pop out and do it, it's kind of interesting. I wonder what their play is. The combined network implementation will provide mobile connectivity for the site's 1 million square feet of industrial space, a million square feet of outdoor space and for 1,500 employees who work at the site to produce approximately 500 heavy-duty truck engines per day.
Speaker 1:Ericsson is the sole platform provider to verizon business for the network build-up. Go ericsson. Well, good for them. It's pretty cool. This is an interesting use case and I'm glad that. I'm glad that private 5g is getting a use case for this, but it's interesting that's coming from verizon, so that's fascinating. Anyhow, uh, I think that's all I got for today.
Speaker 1:Oh, one thing if you get a chance, there's a show coming up the National I believe was it National Restaurant Association Technology Show. They've got a tech preview with Rob Grimes and Marcus Viscitti published online, so take a look at that. I want to see. I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, so I'm not going to talk about it yet, but I wanted to hear what they were going to talk about at the National Restaurant Association show to really find out if anything new had come up since Mertek and since NRF. This is May 18th through 21st, so in about 10 days we're going to find out what's new. But good for them. The National Restaurant Association show is taking place at McCormick Place in Chicago, illinois, so if you're around, go check it out. We also had broadband communities happening this week in Houston. I really wanted to go to that show, but I did not want to drive up to Houston, so I hope that that show went really well.
Speaker 1:We've got Cisco Live coming up in about a month. Mobility Field Day 11 is coming up. We've got HPE Discover coming up. We've got High Tech the hospitality industry technology show coming up. Lots of good things are. We're in that season, so if you're at any of these, send me a message. Let me know if there's anything that you see, anything you want me to talk about.
Speaker 1:And speaking of things to talk about, I'm super excited. Infinite cloud gave me some access points. I'm going to plug those bad boys in and see how that work. And I've got some new gear coming in from a couple different people who have listened to me and said hey, you know what? True, we want you to talk about our product. So if you have a product you want me to talk about, if it's good, send it to me. If it's bad, I won't talk about it. Unless it's really bad, then I'll really talk about it. So if your product really sucks or if your product is really awesome, send me one. I'll be happy to play with it. What else we got? Wba, the Wireless Broadband Association show is taking place. It's in June, also taking place in Dallas. Might see my beautiful face there, or at least hear my voice. They're doing some really cool things there. But more than anything I'm really focusing on next week. Next week's going to be really fun.
Speaker 1:Mobility Field Day 11 is coming up. We will be in the Bay Area. We've got plans set up to do all kinds of stuff, but again on the down low on Monday I'm sneaking around an office in san francisco proper a really cool new technology. I'm going to go run around and see what they do and how they do it. I'm getting a neat little walkthrough and tour of some released products, but also some unreleased products, so very excited to see that. Can't wait to get my hands on it. Can't wait to see what they've got.
Speaker 1:Uh, pay attention uh to next week's episode where we're going to be coming at you live from the Bay Area. I want to do it somewhere cool. I wonder if I can find somewhere cool to broadcast from for waves next week. I'm going to take all the gear out with me anyway, but there will be no shortage of hearing my voice. If you listen to Mobility Field Day, you know I tend to ask a few questions of hearing my voice. If you listen to Mobility Field Day, you know I tend to ask a few questions. So again, if you have any questions for any of the people exhibiting at Mobility or not exhibiting but presenting at Mobility Field Day, please send them over. Thanks for listening. We will catch you next week.
