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
Wireless Wonders Unveiled: Exploring WBA's Groundbreaking Congress, AI Innovations, Seamless Connectivity, and Industry News Highlights
Curious about the cutting-edge advancements in wireless connectivity and AI? Wonder how the latest innovations could reshape our digital future? In this episode, we delve into the excitement and technological marvels showcased at the Wireless Global Congress hosted by the Wireless Broadband Alliance. From seamless connectivity across various frequencies and technologies to the transformative impact of AI on wireless networks, we tackle the significant themes and industry developments that are setting the stage for tomorrow. We also celebrate the achievements of the OpenWiFi community, overcoming challenges and building new business opportunities … now if only it could get away from TIP and move over to a group like the WBA who could help take it to the next level..
Join us as we explore the integration of Wi-Fi with 4G and 5G networks, examining how efforts like Openroaming and Passpoint ensure effortless user experiences. We cover the latest in industry news, including HPE's strategic acquisitions, new CBRS rules, and innovative projects like Project Kuiper's internet service in South America. Plus, discover how companies like Mavenir, Nokia, and Delta are pushing the boundaries with AI solutions, immersive voice calls, and even heartbeat sensing via Wi-Fi. We also share our anticipation for the upcoming HPE Discover 2024 keynote featuring HPE's Antonio Neri and NVIDIA's CEO, where the future of wireless technology and AI will undoubtedly take center stage - whether they mention it by name or allude to what their plans are!
Well y'all, it's Monday, june 18th and nothing says Monday like being Tuesday June 18th. It helps when you turn on the microphone. I had two cuts and one of them didn't have audio on it, so let's try this again Right now. What a day. It's June 18th. This is Waves. I'm Wireless Nerd.
Speaker 1:We missed last week. We were at the wireless global congress with the wba and what an incredible show that was. We had a great time seeing so many people, so many friendly faces, everybody talking about what the future of wireless was, and we are presented with solutions and products and ideas and concepts and everything else. But the gist of it was really that in the future there's there's so much innovation happening where people want to figure out ways to get connected that are as seamless as possible, and there's a lot of things that highlight this. Right now, we're in a time where Apple just made their announcement on iOS 18 that you can do Mac randomization. You can enable Mac randomization. I don't know if it's turned on by default. I don't think that that decision's been made yet. If it has, I apologize for not knowing, but once you can start doing, you can roll your Mac addresses. That really changes the way that people connect to guest networks a lot of networks that you and I connect to on a daily basis. So, whether it's a hotel or an airline or a restaurant, whatever, it is now that you can randomize your Mac completely using Apple devices. What does that mean for the way that people get connected?
Speaker 1:And, contrary to what Lee Badman may say on Twitter, I do think people are interested in experiences, but I'm not saying you put on a VR headset and walk through the cosmos. What I'm saying is that the big overarching theme is that the experience that people have using wireless technology was what was under the microscope at Wireless Global Congress that WBA hosted, and Nothing can emphasize that more than AI, because I think what we heard about was all of these different things that people were doing to make their networks better or to make their networks more usable, or to make their networks more accessible, or to make equipment more accessible and usable, and I really like the way that AI can tie that together. We heard so many different use cases for it without people actually talking about the AI, but more talking about what it means for the future of their networks. And one big shout out that I want to give is the open Wi-Fi community and OpenLAN. We had a really cool proud moment right before Father's Day proud dad moment, if you will where people got up on stage and talked about how they were using open Wi-Fi to build product, how they were using it to build business, how they were using it to gain customers. And we saw the numbers. The number of access points have shot through the roof 100,000 deployed, I think, was said. There's so many open Wi-Fi APs that are out there and people that are using it that it's now up, it's on its own, it's operating the way that it's supposed to and I love to see that.
Speaker 1:You know, I wrote an article right after the big cut at Meta and I said now that Meta's pulled out, what does this mean for the future of open Wi-Fi? And the point of that article was that without big funding, without someone ushering it along, how is it going to grow into what it needs to do? And I think Meta has stuck around to help get it to grow. But I really feel like Telcom Infer Project has dropped the the ball. I mean they just if you know me, you know I've got my issues with them, mainly because of a rough interaction I had with one of their employees, who shall remain nameless. Anyway, you know, telcominfoproject always treated open Wi-Fi like it was a redheaded stepchild of their whole thing. You know, you'd show up to the Fuse event and it was like oran, oran, oran, oran, oran, everyone talking about open, ran, open, ran, open, ran, open, ran. And it's like oh yeah, there's this open wi-fi project also, there's some people over there doing some things with some open wi-fi and now, in spite of that, they have continued to be absolutely successful. And so it was great to see some people from tip to be honest, to be fair, it was great to see some people from tip at wireless global congress talking about open wi-fi and where it's going and what it's doing, because it needed a home in order for it to grow. But now I think we're at a point where let's start to find it another home, and if I think about who I would love to see take that over in the industry just my own personal opinion I look at the wba, because I look at what wba has done with open roaming and I look at what they've been able to do to get it to where it needs to be, especially and so timely with the conversation that's happening right now. They have a product that they brought up, they had a product that they promoted and they got going.
Speaker 1:And now that this conversation has turned into, how do people get connected seamlessly through Wi-Fi 2 gig, 5 gig, 6 gig, up into 4G, 5g? How do they roam from network to network, from in to out, from out to in? What mechanism for authentication is there? And you look at open roaming, you go dude, it's right there. That's the easiest way to do it. You just enable open roaming across all of it and people can roam without having to reenter credentials or whatever. You just authenticate using open roaming, using Passpoint. You know, make sure that your networks are set up for it and they're using it. When you look at that and you look at, you know something like open Wi-Fi, providing the open hardware and the software that's native to open roaming. It's very cool. So it seems like such a good fit for the WBA to be like hey, you know what, why don't you roll open Wi-Fi and open LAN into the WBA right underneath open roaming? That would be cool. But there's so much happening in the industry right now that is highlighting the need for that type of seamless communication and nothing is going to highlight that, I think, more than what's happening at HPE. That's why I'm so excited, right, because when they made all these different acquisitions whether it was Athenet or whether it was Rasa, or whether it was Cape or whether it was Aruba, whatever it was that they brought in it was all leading into something, and I feel like this Juniper acquisition is leading into that, and I hope that this Juniper acquisition is the thread that ties them together. I hope to hear about what HP is doing, what their vision for the future is, because in that I think we'll hear about what to expect from the acquisition. Obviously, they probably can't talk about it, but it'll be fascinating.
Speaker 1:Now, in the next three minutes, real quick, some stuff that's going on. The new CBRS rules opening up access to more than 70 million Americans. Cbrs changes the way the NTIA and the FCC have passed this new rule that shows the way that they do analysis of interference. And so if you live, like on a coastal area, and you're using CBRS either as the general license or the PAL license, if the Navy comes in and flips on the radar, it shuts CBRS, either as the general license or the PAL license. If the Navy comes in and flips on the radar, it shuts CBRS down for everyone. Well, now they've changed the way that they're modeling that, so it opens up the opportunity to shrink those zones, which enables access for 72 million more Americans.
Speaker 1:Very, very cool, especially as a big advocate for CBRS, satellite TV operator Vireo has announced they're using Project Kuiper in south america argentina, brazil, chile, colombia, ecuador, peru and uruguay. Project kuiper back to internet service will provide a service to a population of 383 million along the lines of ai cell service software provider mavenir claims 40 operational efficiency can be used using its new ai solution. What they're doing is they're taking all of the log files and the counters and the traces and all the key performance indicators from their network infrastructure. They're loading it into a large language model. They're using generative AI to give you some outputs. So very cool to see that happening at the sell side. It's just a sign of the times, something really cool. Nokia did the world's first immersive voice and audio call. So if you think about situational awareness, you think about taking a call and hearing everything around you, being able to turn your head and be totally engulfed in the situation. I think that that's really neat to see what else is happening A new Starlink device.
Speaker 1:Spacex has received FCC clearance to operate a mysterious wireless device module running MediaTek chipsets in 2, 4, and 5 gig. Womp, womp, no 6 gig. It can fit in the palm of your hand. So if you look up, pcmagcom has this article listed. If you just Google SpaceX device, starlink Mini, you'll find it. And last but not least, delta, the Taiwanese company, talked about using Wi-Fi to see heartbeats and they talk about channel changes and they talk about the way that the wave moves through an area. We've seen Wi-Fi sensing. We talked about Wi-Fi sensing at Wi-Fi. Now we talked about Wireless Global Congress.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that are happening with Wi-Fi as a waveform and not just Wi-Fi as a service, and so this leads into my question where I asked the panel of people at Wireless Global Congress now that AI is going to solve all these network problems for us, what are you going to do with your free time? So wireless sensing and using the radio wave to do stuff, I think is very, very cool. I'll make it a short one. This week I want to make sure that I'm paying attention to the HPE Discover 2024 keynote, with Antonio Neri, the CEO of NVIDIA, is supposed to be joining as well. So that's going to be a cool one.
Speaker 1:Last thoughts on any of the stuff this week I mean last week was just a big week with Wireless Global Congress and it was so good to see so many people, so many big vendors, out there supporting what's happening in wireless. I'm glad to see it, I'm glad to hear it. I think the overall AI conversation is this overarching conversation that is going to tie all of these things together for better, not for worse. And I think when you don't have to worry about the way that your clients are connecting two, four, five gig, six gig, whatever it is, it's not just not worrying about how they're connected, it's worrying about making sure that their experience is what it can be the Athlonet conversation with HPE or Rubauba networking, and how that ties into a single dashboard, and how you've got Wi-Fi and 4G, 5g all merged into one. I think that that's really what I want to look for.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm going to go get ready. It's 10 o'clock here, central time. We've got one hour to go before the keynote with HPE Aruba. I hope you all have a wonderful week. I'll talk to you soon.
