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
Navigating LinkedIn's Work/Social Balance, Sticker Mule's Marketing Attempt, and Starlink Mini's Debut: Unpacking Industry Shifts, AT&T's Data Dilemma, and Community Connectivity Innovations with OpenAccess Networks
Are personal and political posts taking over LinkedIn? Join me, Drew Lentz, as I share my thoughts on keeping LinkedIn focused on business rather than personal agendas. We'll zoom in on Sticker Mule’s latest marketing blunder and its surprising reception, then shift gears to a hot topic: net neutrality. Discover the latest developments as the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals halts its implementation pending further review. Plus, get the scoop on the new Starlink Mini, which promises Roam download speeds of 50 Mbps for $599 with a 30-day trial. This episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
Our discussion doesn’t stop there. We dive into the increasing presence of Starlink products in major retailers and ponder the implications for the wireless internet service industry. The recent AT&T data breach has left users reeling, and we'll unpack the breadth and impact of this alarming security lapse. Moreover, learn how Apple iOS 18's Mac randomization could change the game for public Wi-Fi security. We also explore innovative community infrastructures, highlighting how South Texas is leveraging open access networks to enhance local connectivity. The role of specialized ISPs and the upcoming Broadband Breakfast summit round out our conversation when discussing open access and how it works on fiber networks, and how it could work on wireless networks as well. Waves provides a comprehensive look at the evolving landscape of community connectivity.
How's it going? I'm Drew Lentz. I'm here to talk about what's new, what's now, what's next in the wireless industry. It's the summertime so there's not a lot of craziness going on. Been some really cool updates on LinkedIn, seeing some people pick up some jobs, which is great. People moving around, which is fantastic. Love to see it, love to see the movement happening in the industry. But let's see, we got some stuff to talk about today. Not a whole lot going on, but definitely a couple of key items here that I wanted to pop up. It's been an interesting week. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Since last week, you know, aside from all the other stuff that's happening in the news that we're not going to talk about, you know, what I will talk about is seeing people post a lot of stuff on a lot of social stuff and personal stuff and politics and things on LinkedIn. How do you feel about that? Because I like to keep LinkedIn just with the business stuff, just with people that I know from the industry or people that I want to know from the industry. I like to keep it in one little happy silo, away from everything else, and I don't know if everyone is like that, but that's how I feel. I like to keep that little area just clean. You know, that's what. That's what Twitter's for right. Twitter or X seems to be that that's. There's a lot of stuff going on there and I saw some posts of some people saying the same things. There were some people that reported some different posts that were posted on LinkedIn because it was like, hey, man, this is an environment where you should keep the work stuff to work stuff, keep social stuff to a minimum. I don't know, I don't know how everybody feels about that. I'm sure that there's a number of different opinions. Either way, what I will say is that I was on that email chain. I don't know if y'all saw what happened with Sticker Mule, but Sticker Mule decided they sent out an email that was done as a, I guess, as a marketing campaign, but I don't know that it went over the way that they thought it was going to go over, and I saw a lot of blowback from that, A lot of people posting online. I think they're trying to capture what was happening and then, you know, in like a cheeky kind of way, say that this is, you know, an opportunity to pick up some items from them, but I don't know that it went over as well as as they thought it did with a number of different people. Give me one second. Let me check my mic here, make sure, yep, I can hear myself, which is fantastic anyway. Uh, so I saw that, but I think that's.
Speaker 1:You know, that's an interesting topic, right as we get closer into the election season in the united states and we get closer to the political stuff that's going on. Keeping it siloed is that important? I don't know. I mean, I have my own views that I post on my own personal stuff, but I try not to post anything on work stuff just because I don't think anyone will appreciate it. I don't know. They say what are the things? They say you're not supposed to talk about sex, religion and politics, so let's steer clear of that. Let's talk about wireless, sexy, religious, politically correct, wireless, anyway, whatever. Well, let's see what do we got going on today. A couple of different things I want to talk about the last one, or the first one, third, and I know that you can't see my list so you don't know what that means, but I'll talk about the first one first.
Speaker 1:Speaking of politics, net neutrality, the order shared net neutrality were blocked saturday by the sixth circuit court of appeals until august 5th. It's interesting because you know we thought with, with the new fcc coming in, with the new commissioner coming in coming in, that net neutrality was going to make that comeback and say, hey, you know, it's equal and fair access to everyone. But however, the Court of Appeals said, nope, we're going to block that for a minute until we get more information and see what's going on, because net neutrality is a big deal. I know that there's lots of carriers that think very strategically about net neutrality and about what that means for them. But I also know that there are a lot of wireless ISPs that think about net neutrality and what that means to them. I mean, if you're a local wireless ISP and again this isn't speaking for anybody in the industry, this is just my own thoughts right, but if you're a wireless ISP and you only have a limited amount of capacity on your antenna right on your base station, you want to make sure that it's being used as best to the ability for all of the users. And does that mean that when a user gets to download, consume more of that capacity by downloading movies, whereas illegally, versus the other person who does it legally, do they have a right to download, does illegal activity still constitute their ability to get online? That's a little bit of the argument, right? No-transcript? People's movies and they're using your infrastructure. So it's your infrastructure, man. They're paying to get on your service. They're paying for your service. Give them the benefits of that service. Net neutrality is such a tough topic to get around, so either way, it popped up and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said wait, wait, no implementing net neutrality until they can rule again on August 5th.
Speaker 1:So now, speaking of net neutrality and speaking of wireless internet service providers, starlink Mini. I asked a question a couple weeks ago hey, does anybody know where to get a Starlink Mini? Well, now everybody can get a Starlink Mini, with its widely available distribution in the United States, with Roam download speeds of 50 megabit per second. It'll cost $599 and comes with a 30-day trial. There'll be two plans to choose from. But you know what? I don't know if you still have to have before you had to have an existing Starlink account in order to take advantage of the mini, and I don't know if that's the case anymore. I wonder if I just go to Starlinkcom and I go click on a link. I wonder if I can just order a mini without having. Yeah. It says order me now, stay connected. Oh, no, that's a commercial. I don't want to watch the commercial Order now. No, no, it doesn't say that you have to be tied to any account, so I think you can do it on your own either way. I'm getting pretty excited because I hope. Yeah, that's what looks like.
Speaker 1:Starlink mini now available. No long-term contracts, 30-day trial arrives in one to two weeks. Standard is $4.99. On the hardware, the mini is a $5.99. Service is regional for $150, or Mini Roam, which is $50. And you can just tack on the $50, $50 a month for the service and $599. Dude, that's kind of insane. $50 a month for 50 gig, oh, 50 gig, okay. Well, there you go. You can pause the service If you exceed the maximum allotted plan.
Speaker 1:On mini-roam, you'll be unable to access the internet, except to access your Starlink account. Wow, unless you can opt in for additional mobile data. See, I'm learning as I go here, folks, I think I'm going to get one, though. I think I'm going to get one because I want to see how well it works in Alaska. Let's see. It should work pretty well up there From the perspective of the satellite right Access is access Anyway.
Speaker 1:So I'll dig into that a little bit, but y'all should know it is available now, which is pretty neat. I've seen some posts online with people posting stuff from their minis and I think that that's really neat. I think that it's pretty cool to have internet access where it is. And if you take that a step further, I know that there was an announcement this week somewhere. I don't know if it's an official announcement, but someone was showing that the SKUs were now available at Target and Walmart for Starlink.
Speaker 1:So being able to pick up Starlink at Walmart and Target, I mean, god, with my feets firmly planted in the wireless industry and the wireless internet service provider space in the industry, it is so insane to watch this happen, to watch a single service provider have the coverage that they do at the cost that they do, with the reach that they do, and getting into national care. You know national markets like target and walmart wow, it's crazy. But I mean it is where we are. So good for them, good for project hyper coming along, good for hughes and and this is great for everybody in the, in the leo space, in the satellite space. I don't know what it means for anyone else. But man, you got to believe. We just had a big outage here in the state of Texas where spectrum went down for almost the entire day. They blamed barrel, which everyone kind of rolled their eyes out. When they say that they blamed the hurricane was like oh, and then they said the third party provider. But when that happened I failed over to Starlink here and I know some other people that did as well. So being able to have that as an option, it makes you really wonder well, why am I paying someone for internet service if it has the opportunity to go down and Starlink satellite falls out of the sky? Unless he says, stranger things could happen. It's been a hell of a week.
Speaker 1:Anyway, in other news, the AT&T fallout is continuing. The AT&T fallout is a big deal. Every AT&T cell phone text messages, data information or data and information and phone call information and everything leaked, it's gone. I mean it's out, it's out there. It's a massive breach. At&t cell text, all that stuff, I mean just the text messages alone. Imagine what that's a treasure trove for anybody. I mean, if you think about all the things that can be done with that data, god, it's just that's so much data that's out there and how does AT&T come back from?
Speaker 1:I mean I'm not an AT&T user but I'd be terrified. I don't have anything bad. I've got a whole bunch of voicemail messages from my dad. I want to listen to his voice every once in a while. So I listen to my dad's voicemail messages but I mean I'd miss that. But I don't have anything weird on my phone. But just to think that all that data could be valuable to someone, that's pretty tough. So the AT&T data breach if you didn't hear. Basically it affected every user on AT&T's network and it was all of their call information, their text message information, their account information. All of it was leaked. I don't even know to what extent Credit cards passwords leaked. I don't even know to what extent credit cards passwords I don't know, but it's. It's tough. If you're an at&t subscriber, I mean pay special attention to that. That was what was going on.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there were any other big news announcements. Um echo star opened up a wyoming oran test lab. That's pretty cool. Good news for oran. Public wi-fi is. Wi-fi is table stakes, but unsecured wi-fi is a risky business.
Speaker 1:This is from the Reader Forum and RCR Wireless. We covered this in depth, in detail, but I will talk about it again. You've got to look for some type of alternative. I had a great conversation this week with a buddy, an old friend, a supermarket chain, where we were talking about Passpoint and we were talking about the death of the captive portal and what that means to hospitality. I mean, really, here we go, ready, we're going to go into soundbite mode. Let's see if we can do the 30 second clip on the Passpoint for the death of captive portal. Ready, here we go, let's put on radio voice. What does the end of the captive portal mean for the hospitality industry, for the retail industry and for anybody that uses captive portals? This is a big deal With Apple iOS 18 and the announcement of Mac randomization.
Speaker 1:Now anyone who uses a captive portal is going to be in a tough situation where their access won't be able to use that captive portal anymore. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You think it'll work? You think that'll be viral? Let's go wireless viral.
Speaker 1:It begs the question, man, I mean it's a tough one to figure out, but I love the idea of using passpoint, love the idea of using passpoint to authenticate people and to allow people to to grab that 802.1x certificate and tie it intoa mobile app. And the thing that came up this week that thought was fascinating and I think I've talked about it before is that, you know, apple was trying to help everyone's privacy by saying no, we're just going to randomize your, your mac, and that way people will never know it's your device connected to their Wi-Fi network. All right well, if someone uses a certificate that is given to them, an authentication mechanism using a certificate that's provided to them by the group, by the hotel or by the hospital or by the retail space, and now it's tied to their member ID or their user ID of their application, of their mobile app, well, dude, that's a treasure trove of information for the people that are leveraging that. So now I've got access not just to where they are and where they go and where they spend their time, but now tapping into the app. Now I've got their loyalty information. I know how much they buy when they buy, where they go. I know how many times they drive past a different venue. I know how much time they spend. I know how long it takes them to step in. I know how much time they spend in a parking lot. I know what their schedule looks like and when they're going to show up. Dude, I've got more information now because we've been forced into this by Apple, where it's like, well, dude, you guys are trying to protect the privacy side of it, but now you've really opened up the floodgates for people to be able to obtain so much more information about user habits by leveraging something that has to tie in that there has to be a connection, a secure connection, to tie into their device. And I mean a secure connection to tie into their device. And I mean, if you're going to tie into their device, you might as well throw the loyalty information on there as well. So I expect big things from you industry. From the captive portal industry. I expect an incredible pivot that is going to give so much great, detailed information to the people that are using and making guest networks available, using Wi-Fi and making guest Wi-Fi networks available. I expect big things, big, secure, happy things. The downside is as much as I expect it. If you think about now being able to have pinpoint accuracy of where people are inside these stores. What does that look like for the future of advertising and monetization of that information? I guess we're gonna find out. So that's a little bit about what's going on there. Um, those, those are kind of the two main things.
Speaker 1:I had a wyco, the wireless community man. I had that fomo last week. I didn't want to talk about it and and then Frenet brought it up and said we're all here in Manchester and I was like oi, mate, I wanted to go to Manchester, but that didn't get to happen. They just ran a poll. I was just looking at this WICO, the wireless community, y-coorg. If you go to WICO, they just ran it. They said Nashville, philly and Washington DC 36 votes. The polls are closed. Nashville, tennessee, won with 33%, followed by Austin, texas, and Philadelphia, pennsylvania, at 25% each. Washington DC down at 17%. I don't know if they're actually going to be able to do that or not. It would be pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Waiku is really really neat and it was so cool to see everyone in the industry support that. You know the last thing we want to do and you know they talk about the herd, right Last thing we want to do is get the herd and slice the herd up into a whole bunch of different pieces, and that's. I think that's some of the concern is that if you have too many wireless events. You can't have any really big good wireless events, right, but with the CWNP folks not having their events anymore, there was space, I think, in the industry for another industry event, and this one's localized and smaller. I just don't want to get calloused over with the events. Oh yeah, I'll just go to the next one or I'll just it's the same speech they had at this one and I feel like some of that already happens in some of the different shows where it's like, oh, I just heard that person speak, you know, three months ago and it was the exact same thing. There hasn't been anything new. So I hope we don't get any of that that comes into it. I don't.
Speaker 1:Wico group is is a good group of people, um, but how does it compare to WLPC? Elephant in the room he says I get the logo, for WICO is an elephant, so but to see Keith there and to see the whole WLPC crew at the WICO events was really neat. So we'll see, we'll see how it shakes out. I'm all for it. I think it's great and I think it's great that that there's opportunities for vendors to have their little showcases out there, to have their little tables tops set up. I think that that there's opportunities for vendors to have their little showcases out there, to have their little tabletops set up. I think that there is a need for that type of event when it's done right, and I think that WICO is doing a good job at that.
Speaker 1:And I don't ever foresee WLPC going in that direction where there's vendor-sponsored booths. So that's okay. Let's try and keep them in their own little silos and see what happens. But you never know I mean, you never know what's going to happen. Either way, I did ask, peter, if you're listening, I'd love to host one of these in South Texas, because nobody ever comes to South Texas and you will never see someone going to say, oh, we should totally have a WICO event in McAllen, texas. I'm here to tell you folks, I'd be happy to do it, even if it's me and three other people in a conference room. Bring it on. Uh, I'll, I'm, I'm in, I'm volunteering to host a mini waiku event. What else do we have going on? We've got wi-fi now coming up in europe, we've got wlpc coming up in prague, we've got wlpc coming up in february in phoenix, and, uh, what else is happening? Let's see.
Speaker 1:Let's go scroll through the news real quick. Let me pick a random article and see what it says. Telecom egypt taps nokia for country's first 5g network. Whoa, okay, that's interesting. Uh, full dev behind our build of space marine 2 leaks and players are already leveling up. Don't read about that one, you know, I don't. I don't really have too much time to play games, so I don't focus on that. Record label. Sue verizon for not disconnecting pirates internet service. That's an interesting one, that's. You know, we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1:Net neutrality rules temporarily stayed as judges weigh. Impact of SCOTUS ruling. Yeah, I mean, that's the elephant. Go back to elephant in the room. That's the big deal with the ruling that came down from the Supreme Court. How will that Shoot? I didn't even think about that, I don't know how. Not chevron, but says. The supreme court's decision last month low provide enterprises versus raymondo limited the regulatory authority of federal agencies by overturning a 40 yeah, is a 40 year old chevron precedent. Chevron gave agencies leeway to interpret ambiguous laws as long as the agency's conclusion were reasonable. How is that going to affect net neutrality? We'll find, find out. Oh, I hate to even think about that. Yeah, well, whatever, that's for a different social media platform, okay.
Speaker 1:So, all that being said, there is something I wanted to talk about real quick because Drew over the other Drew over at Broadband Breakfast had a really cool summit talking about open access, and so I wanted to share my viewpoint on open access to try and get some clicks I'm just kidding. I wanted to share it because I like my viewpoint on it, I like my perspective on it. I don't know if anybody else does, but thanks for listening. I do appreciate it. Turn off now if you don't want to hear my perspective on open access, because this is a drum that I've been beating for a while. And Because this is a drum that I've been beating for a while.
Speaker 1:And there was a guy, a gentleman, that I got to meet a number of years ago, who moved down to South Texas, down here where I live, and he was adamant that this place was going to be something incredible in the future. And, lo and behold, spacex and all the stuff that's happening. Kai wasn't too far off the mark. Unfortunately, kai is no longer with us, but his legacy remains a little bit, because he did a lot of really cool work in sub-Saharan Africa and he did a lot of work in a number of different up-and-coming or impoverished communities and economies, a main tenant, to build out that infrastructure like a city, a municipality, a community, a carrier, whatever it is, and then figuring out ways to make that infrastructure available in an open market and and and and friendly way that people could jump on it and they could use it to help spread, I guess, and encourage to some extent competition, to drive better communications opportunities for people that are using it. So in this idea, this is open access, right.
Speaker 1:So now here we are, 10 years later, and we're talking about open access, where a lot of these communities are saying let's build out fiber networks and then let's have a third party. It's your two-step or three-step process, from what I'm understanding about the way that was being discussed on Broadband Breakfast, where you have someone build out the network and then you have someone manage the network and then other people are free to use that existing infrastructure, that light, that fiber, that physical connection, to be branched off into different multiple providers. Because once the fiber is laid like, once the fiber is sitting in the ground, why not open it up? Why not say, hey, carrier A, b, c and D, use the infrastructure that's already there, it's already in place, pay us a small fee for using it, and now that offsets the cost of that infrastructure so you can offer lower prices to the people in our communities. And that's really cool, right? The community gets to benefit from that.
Speaker 1:What Kai and I talked about years ago and I wrote a blog about it even on wirelessnerdnet is doing the same thing with wireless. This, I mean, and all of a sudden, look at this, now we've got spectrum slicing, right, it's the same thing. Why not take you know, just like an MVNO operates on, you know, 4g and 5G services and network slicing and doing all that stuff? Why not do this on Wi-Fi? Why not do this on point-to-multipoint? You know, city of McAllen, where I live, for example, we have a big Wi-Fi network, covers a lot of the city. About 80% of the city is covered with it. Why not be able to provide SSIDs for different people that want to provide services in the community? Maybe one SSID could be free as long as you watch an advertisement. Maybe another SSID could offer limited access unless you want to pay for an upgrade. Maybe another SSID could offer a premium upgrade if you subscribe to their cell phone service or whatever it is. But the idea that open access is finally taking this huge leap and that people are talking about it because of Fiver.
Speaker 1:Fiber is really cool. I think that's part of the infrastructure conversation, that this is that next iteration of it coming into 2024, moving into 2025. Now that more communities have developed fiber to the home and fiber to the location, services really start to leverage that infrastructure that's already been put in place. And in the city of Pharr, for example, which is my next door neighbor, they've got this really cool network that they've built out. It's all fiber to the home. It's paid for by revenue from the international bridge and the port down here in Pharr, and so they're paying for all this infrastructure to be in place. But why not leverage that? Why not invite other local carriers to be a part of that and say look, you guys already have all of your connections to the Internet? When does the city of farm move into just managing the network, managing the infrastructure and making it available to third-party services to really take advantage of it?
Speaker 1:I'm not going to say that cities shouldn't be ISPs or municipalities shouldn't be ISPs, dude, if you can do but there's a lot of can. I mean, it takes a lot to put together an internet service provider. Anyone who's done it is rolling their eyes right now because they know I've built some of these things and they are not easy to build, they're not easy to run. Why not let the ISPs be the ISPs? Why not let the municipality be the infrastructure provider? I mean, it's the same thing as tollways Build the streets and then let other people come in and prioritize the lanes or whatever. So I love that. Open access is part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:I loved hearing about it on Broadband Breakfast. If you haven't listened to Broadband Breakfast, please tune into them. They have a great show and they record so much quality content. They've got a summit coming up in September, september 19th, they have a summit coming up in the DC area. They're much more involved at that level, like that dc level in in the united states. So please, if you have any interest in contributing uh, shout out to drew, tell me, said hi, check out broadband breakfast. They do a really good job of covering it. Um, but I think you know this is that this is that next step.
Speaker 1:Okay, once you solve that fiber connectivity problem, once you solve, you know, putting the stuff in the ground, then what's next? What's next for these municipalities? Are they just going to run it? I mean, dude, it takes a lot to build that ISP, and what are the demands going to be once it's in place? I was hearing some interesting numbers too 20%, 30% is on average 30% or 40% if it's operating well, for take rate. And maybe I'm wrong, drew, I'd love for you to clarify that. If you're listening, I'll send you a message. But imagine that on wireless. Imagine if you set up a rural wireless internet service provider. Imagine that the county does it, or imagine that a co-op does it in some of these farming communities, agricultural communities, and then you just broadcast different SSIDs like an MVNO for wireless. I think it'd be really cool. So that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. It's been a couple minutes dedicated to that, but either way, I hope youall are having a fantastic week.
Speaker 1:I do appreciate a couple of different things. One, I appreciate you listening. Two, I appreciate you disagreeing with me. So please keep sending those messages. I like those because I like my viewpoint to be as wide as possible. Four, I'm selling some merch, mainly because I wanted to buy a coffee cup for myself, but I figured why not? So if you go to bonfirecom, slash wireless nerd.
Speaker 1:You can support the waves podcast. You can buy a shirt, buy a coffee cup Um, you know, I make like three bucks or four bucks or something from each one, so that's kind of cool. Maybe it'll help pay for my restream subscription. But uh, if you want to support the show that way, that's awesome, and I do. There's a shout out, mr George Heckman, the latest subscriber, if you'd like to subscribe, I appreciate that as well. On the Buzzsprout link, you can contribute $3, $5, $10, $15 monthly, depending on what you want to, and I'll say hi to you every once in a while. So, george, appreciate you signing up for that. Thank you so much. Other than that, have have a wonderful week. I think I can't think of much else. I'm trying to think of anything pops up, but if it does, you know we'll get back on here. So I hope everybody has a great week. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week. Bye.
