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
Connectivity Unleashed: Wi-Fi 7 & iPhone 16, Bluetooth Innovations, and a lesson on DAS, Private Cellular, and Wi-Fi Offload!
Get ready to unlock the latest secrets in the wireless world! Can you imagine what a Wi-Fi 7 iPhone 16 could mean for your connectivity? We'll explore this thrilling possibility in our episode, shedding light on how it might change user experiences and network operations. You'll also discover how I stay ahead of the curve using tools like RSS feeds and Inoreader, ensuring you're always in the know about industry shifts.
Ever wondered why Verizon is playing it safe with 5G neutral host and private networking? We break down their cautious approach, contrasting it with the bolder strategies of AT&T and T-Mobile. Our episode dives into the dynamics of Wi-Fi offload, private cellular networks, and DAS, with insights from key industry players like Solona and listener questions that enrich our discussion. Expect a detailed analysis of Verizon's unique position and how it shapes the broader technological landscape.
Bluetooth 6.0's precision and security, the nostalgic yet functional Barbie flip phone, and game-changing acquisitions like Verizon’s grab of Frontier Communications are also on our radar. We'll touch on AT&T’s Wi-Fi 7 rollout and
Join as we explore the financial nuances of deploying DAS and private cellular networks. What's the difference between DAS, Private Cellular, Neutral Host, and W-Fi Offload? Wrapping up on a speculative note, we share the buzz around Xnet Mobile’s AT&T partnership and invite you to upcoming industry events. Tune in for an episode packed with breakthroughs, expert opinions, and an engaging glimpse into the future of wireless technology!
Hello everybody, good morning. Good morning. I hope you had a wonderful week. Drew Lentz, the wireless nerd, here to examine and explore what's new, what's now, what's next, what's happening in the wireless industry Lots of fun stuff. It was a busy week. You know. Usually I cut these things on Monday or Tuesday. Monday was Labor Day, tuesday was catching up, wednesday was you know, I'm fired up out of here. Thursday is like, well, I might as well do a Friday and then Friday's here, let's cut the podcast, let's have some fun. So I hope everybody is having as a fantastic week as I've had.
Speaker 1:It has been a really eye-opening week, third week in school for the little kids, lots of back and forth and trying to get all those things sorted out, but I think we got it down. I think there's a lot of good stuff happening. Now to jump into what's happening in the actual industry holy moly, 5g man and Wi-Fi offload and all these things. Sometimes I think maybe I'm just in a bubble with what I do and what I'm focused on that week, and then I just see all the articles posted about everything that's online and what people are talking about and movement, what I'm focused on that week, and then I just see all the articles posted about everything that's online and what people are talking about and movement, and I'm like, oh, I guess I'm on trend for a little bit. And just so you know, if you've ever wondered, I wonder if anybody still does what I do.
Speaker 1:I still use RSS feeds. I use a whole lot of RSS feeds. There's no good way to aggregate news like RSS. I haven't found any way that I think works well. And I remember the old Google Reader. God, I miss that thing so much. But I use Inoreader. I-n-o-r-e-a-d-e-r Inoreader Eno reader. I don't know. If you're listening from there and you want to give me a sponsorship, I will take it because I pay for this and I like it a whole lot. Actually, I don't mind paying for it, but if you want to sponsor, I'm always down for that too. Anyway, I use it. I aggregate just a whole slew of articles and it's where I come up with just some of the most random stuff that's going on. But it's good. It's things that I think are fascinating and I like to share with you, and I'm hitting. I'm at 890 subscribers now on the YouTube channel. I've got a whole bunch of followers on a couple of other different places. So thank you for paying attention and giving me your ears. There's still a lot of people that listen to the podcast only, and that's great. I like it. I like that you listen to the podcast only. Let me know if the sound is ever bad or if there's something that I could do better, and I'll be happy to do that.
Speaker 1:So the first thing I'm going to do this morning is I'm going to go through just what tabs I have open. Usually, I make a little list of articles and things I want to read, but I was looking at some new articles this morning and some stuff popped up that I thought I would share. So first there's this there's this rumor we're three days away from the Apple event with the new iPhone 16, and it's going to have Wi-Fi 7, apparently, according to the rumor mill, which I hope is true. It would be great. But there's this rumor that it's going to drive a handset upgrade super cycle. And what does that mean? That means that people are going to look at this and from 13s, 14s and 15s, they're all going to go. You know what? Now's the time Now? Now's the time to make a big upgrade and just jump onto the iPhone 16. And I think it would be fantastic because if it does include Wi-Fi 7, that would usher in a whole new level of not just connectivity. I'm thinking about it from our side, the nerd side of the people that have to actually operate these networks. If we have more people running Wi-Fi 7, man, that would make the networks able to be operated a little bit easier. A little bit less contention, a little bit of slicing happening, a little bit of resource unit allocation. It might make it cooler to have that many Wi-Fi 7 devices on there. I didn't see any stats from Wi-Fi 7 coming from Cisco Live this year and I know usually at some of these conferences people talk about it. So I'll be keen to see the number of Wi-Fi 7 devices that start to make their way into our everyday lives. But that being said, september 9th, iphone 16, they say. You know, given the strong consumer interest in AI capabilities, we anticipate a super cycle of upgrades when Apple launches their devices that will support an embedded Apple intelligence expected later in the year, said Rebecca Griffiths, vice president of product management strategy at Assurant, which collects phone trade-ins and prepares them for resale.
Speaker 1:This is from an article in Fierce Networking, Fierce Wireless, by Monica Alevin. Oh man, you know, monica, I really need to learn how to pronounce your name. I'm going to send you a message, I think on LinkedIn, and I'm going to say man, you know, monica, I really need to learn how to pronounce your name. I'm going to send you a message, I think on LinkedIn, and I'm going to say hey, monica, how do I pronounce your name? Because I don't want to screw it up anymore. Make a little note to that. So that's pretty good Supercycle. That'll be good to see all that equipment coming on. New equipment Now, immediately after that. I saw this morning on Fierce someone on fierce someone. Let me see if I can find it.
Speaker 1:At&t and verizon aren't worried about an iphone super cycle. Posted 19 hours ago. Dan jones at fierce network says apple bulls are hyping a potential iphone super cycle, but operator execs are more cautious. At&t has a massive installed iphone base that rivals could try and poach. An analyst notes that apple's new gen ai features have already been implemented by google and other handset providers. So are they expecting the super cycle? Well, I'm not really concerned. Pascal Desrochers says we've lived through iPhone launches before and we're prepared. We're going to be competitive in the market, but disciplined, he said, ignoring the Gen AI hype that Apple bulls have been spreading about the iPhone 16, upgrading your phone is often the time that consumers can be enticed to switch carriers, said Avi Greengart at Techsponential that's a cool name, techsponential. At&t has a lot of legacy iPhone users, which makes it a rich target for rivals. Okay, well, that'll be interesting to watch.
Speaker 1:If you're on AT&T and you've got an old phone, are you thinking about switching? I use Verizon and I don't know if I'm happy with it or not. I don't know that I've ever been happy or not with a carrier, but on that note, you know, what I do know is that in this day and age, when I'm playing with a whole bunch of these Wi-Fi offload networks and private cellular and neutral host and all of the MoCon and all that other stuff, verizon isn't playing nice with anybody else. And it's funny because I think that again, I think that that might have just been something in my little world that exists, me and the other nerds that talk about wi-fi offload all the time. But then I read this article right, and it's in here somewhere and there's this article about uh, it's again from fierce. Fierce is covering it, dance is covering it. Dan Jones, you're on it, bro, you're on it.
Speaker 1:5g neutral host, private networking, gains prominence in the US. But if you scroll down, they talk about how you've got all these different groups that are signing contracts with AT&T and T-Mobile. You've got Signal Roam, insert plug here. You've got American Bandwidth. You've got, you know, uh, infinigi. You have all these groups that are using AT&T and T-Mobile. There's even there was an announcement from Xnet yesterday that they're supporting their first operator, their first mobile network operator. They didn't say who, but they said they're supporting their first operator, not plural, uh, singular. So it's gotta be either AT&T or T-Mobile.
Speaker 1:Based on this, I don't think it's Verizon. But if I scroll down on here, my boy, ray Chua, who I have not met yet, who I'm looking forward to meeting in just one month at the Meter Up show in San Francisco. Roy, did I say Ray? I didn't mean Roy, anyway, sorry, I've never met Roy, so when I put a face to a name it'll be way cooler.
Speaker 1:So roy chua, principal analyst at avid think during a call with fierce, says verizon was open to neutral host, but only if they were the anchor tenant. And this is the drum that I've been beating for a minute. Right because they you know verizon comes out and they say, oh, we're going to do this neutral host private 5g thing with cummins in their in their factory and it supports at&t mobile. And everyone's like, okay, that's gonna be great, verizon's finally going to support neutral host. So all the people that have AT&T and T-Mobile already are like, okay, sweet, let's call Verizon and get them on. Verizon's like no, no, no, no, no, you can do neutral host as long as we do the neutral host for you. But we're not going to play in the opposite direction. So they haven't come around full circle yet to fully support Wi-Fi offload or support neutral host.
Speaker 1:From a Verizon perspective, they're kind of sitting there with their arms wrapped around that thing, gatekeeping the industry a little bit, which is kind of a pain. But they have to have a reason for doing it. There's a desire to have private 5G for indoor coverage that uses multiple carriers Roy says, roy Chua says and that delivers an E911 for indoor for safety reasons. There's a lot of pluses in the scenario. If t-mobile can do an, at&t can do it, I don't see why verizon can't do it. He concluded uh, but they still haven't done it. So you've, even though private 5g networks have started to jump up and 5g has entered into neutral hosting. Verizon is still nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1:That being said, I had a really cool conversation this week, talked to a couple different vendors, but one of the vendors I went back and rewatched the Mobility Field Day episode because I wanted to make sure I got my facts straight with Solona, and Solona talked about Moxon, not Moken. Moxon multi-operator, not carrier, but multi-operator exchange, and that was interesting. And they talked about how they will start supporting neutral host using private 5G, and I don't know if it's completely ready for the market yet or not, so we're going to go look on their uh. We're gonna look on their website and see what's publicly listed in there, and it says on here private 5g changes everything. And it says there's all these great things, your own private 5g network, we connect where wi-fi can't. Uh, focus on security, grow your business.
Speaker 1:Nothing on the front page that talks about being neutral hosts, though, and they did mention this. I went back to verify, to double check my work, but I swear I had seen something recently on their on their Web page, that talked about Salona supporting neutral host, and you know it was. It was more than just the mobility field day announcement that they had, but I want to say that it was neutral host only with AT&T or T-Mobile, that nothing was done yet. So it's, man, I wish Verizon would figure this out. Let me see Wi-Fi 6E private cellular. No, it doesn't say anything on here yet. Private network man, I don't know it's. It's got to be on their website somewhere because I saw it. You know what? They have a search tool. Let's see if it neutral host. Let's see if it works when I punch it in there.
Speaker 1:Neutral host web. There was a webcast. Neutral host networks in building cellular. Yes, salonaio slash neutral dash host is where you can find this information and it talks about t-Mobile BYOC 2.0. There are five bars of public cellular coverage.
Speaker 1:They have a whole brief on this thing and I think that it's awesome. I think that when you compare it to DAS, this is such an interesting solution and I'm going to talk about that at the end because I do want to go over what the difference between some of these technologies are. I've gotten a lot of questions, especially after I did the thing about Signal Roam running on Ubiquiti. I have gotten a slew of questions and I want to make sure that I address what the differences are between Wi-Fi, offload, private cellular with neutral host and DAS, and then we can throw in amplifiers in there as well. So lots of you know lots of stuff swirling around Verizon on this. You know Verizon saying, well, we're not worried about the super cycle for iPhone 16, but they're also not worried about private 5G, they're also not worried about offload. I don't know what's going on in Verizon. I have no insight over there. Speaking of insight, this is kind of funny to switch over to my next tab here.
Speaker 1:This is like podcast ADD, after seeing a Wi-Fi network named Stinky Navy found hidden Starlink dish on a US warship. To be fair, it's hard to live without Wi-Fi. It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. For instance, a former US ambassador to Kenya got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom, the only place he could use his personal computer to access an unsecured network that let him log into Gmail, where he did his official business. But let's see the USS manchester, who didn't like the navy's restriction of onboard internet access in 2023. They decided the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a starlink terminal on the o5 level level weather deck of a us warship. They called the resulting wi-fi network stinky, and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went as far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports, suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower. Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly.
Speaker 1:This is an article, by the way, from Ars Technica, nate Anderson. Fantastic, thank you for digging this one up and sharing it with the world. A full-on navy investigation and a court-martial. Oh god, still for half a year. Life aboard the manchester must have been one hell of a ride. Oh my god. There's a picture of it and everything. Uh, anyway, there's. All the details are online.
Speaker 1:But you know you can't. How do you hide? How do you hide starlink? How do you? She didn't? Do you hide Starlink? How do you? She didn't think to hide an SSID. That's wow.
Speaker 1:You know it taught you rogue networks right, easy, easy way to look at it. Does anybody ever really look at rogue networks? I mean, that's always been a feature of all these access points and all their services. And you know, and you look at it. You know rogue APs. Yeah, I know there's a bunch of rogue APs, but it's like that whole syndrome where there's too many alarms. You know, you see so many rogue APs. You're like, oh, another one. Rogue AP alerts man can definitely come in handy. Let's see what else we got on here. Where's another good one? Ifa 2-2024. Here's an interesting one. I haven't read this article yet, but let's flip through it in real time.
Speaker 1:Rcr wireless news, kelly hill, reporting that the bluetooth special interest group, the bluetooth sig, has released a new specification that includes channel sounding capabilities with quote true distance awareness. In quote for fine ranging use cases. Quote Bluetooth channel sounding will enable a standards-based, secure approach to reliable and accurate distance measurement and many types of products will benefit. The organization said in a blog post about the latest spec. That blog post can be found by visiting Bluetoothcom. It talks about Bluetooth version 6.0. Silicon Labs has already announced support for the capability on its xg24 chip, saying in a news release the feature quote enhances the accuracy and security of bluetooth ranging capabilities.
Speaker 1:Silicon lab said that it's able to provide location accuracy of less than a meter with the new bluetooth spec. Okay, so less than a meter is good. Fine, time measurement can give you more. Um, that's great, not thrilled, I guess. I mean, that's cool for bluetooth ranging. But ftm is a little bit more specific in there and you know everyone's adopted not everyone, but you know cisco's adopted it and aruba's adopted it. So find time measurement there will be awesome. I guess this is, you know. Look, I'm not knocking, I'm just saying that let's say I mean I can get a meter with wi-fi. I can get less than a meter with wi-fi if I really tune it in. I mean, hell, I did that with the guys at wave spot. Shout out to sit in a team at wave spot, aka pronto networks. Remember pronto networks anyway, um, wave spot could do that when we tuned it in. Man, I could have two cash registers sitting at a convenience store and I could tell you the difference between cash register A and cash register B using Wi-Fi. So not necessarily thrilled.
Speaker 1:Silicon Labs explained previously Bluetooth Received Signal Strength Indicator, otherwise known as RSSI, was used for location but relied on estimations. Aha, aha, was used for location but relied on estimations guesstimations, it should say he digs knowingly and was susceptible to radio frequency issues such as signal obstruction or multi-path that could reduce its actual accuracy. Okay, what? What I mean really this. Yeah, bruh, this gets down into like into the end of the article. It's like, oh, this is great, they're gonna do some stuff of uh I don't know bluetooth sounding it out. It uses phase-based ranging as primary means of establishing around trip time, secondary ranging method double check and verify pbr measurement. But I don't know, it says.
Speaker 1:In a world where location awareness is critical, bluetooth channel sounding revolutionizes proximity and location capabilities, propelling bluetooth technology into a new era that has only previously been done by fine time measurement and by Wi-Fi and by other Bluetooth, like the stuff inside Mist and by things that have already Come on, guys, well, that's cool, I'll take it. Greetings from Jamaica Whoa, that's awesome. Man Mark talking about nothing about Verizon? Yeah, it's Salona, they didn't mention Verizon on the neutral host, but Luke Fong. Greetings from Jamaica. What's up? Man, that's awesome. Now you're making me rethink my lunch plans immediately to jerk chicken, like immediately. Okay.
Speaker 1:So, phase-based ranging using Bluetooth? Well, that'll come in version 6.0, thanks to the dedication and hard work of Bluetooth community. It's always expanding that from Bluetoothcom, where you can find out more information about Bluetooth channel sounding. Very cool, look it up, you know. Another tool in the tool bag isn't going to hurt anyone. I would love to see more people using location-aware applications. I mean that would be cool. Uh, you know, I remember uh eric at intel talking about that at wi-fi now world congress and then talking about it, um, at the wba talking about things you know. When you, when you step up to your computer, it's able to identify you, not just based on your face and based on your login, but based on your proximity to that, to that. So location-based services have another thing there. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Ntt deploys citywide private 5G and IoT in Brownsville, texas. I cannot tell you how happy I am to read this. I've strong been an advocate, and long been an advocate, for not just bearing fiber when it comes to bridging the digital divide, but also taking a top-down approach and coming from the airwaves as well, and it looked like for the longest time that Brownsville was only going to focus on the fiber side. And now Brownsville, texas, has commissioned NTT Data to deploy a private 5G network and a roster of IoT and AI applications to support prominent public services, public safety, environmental sustainability and economic growth. It doesn't sound like they're doing it for connectivity, but they're doing it for IoT and I will take it because that is awesome. Keep in mind, brownsville's the same place that Elon came in, and so we're gonna give you guys $20 million. And they used it to do what?
Speaker 1:Deploy streetlights Not smart streetlights, not intelligent streetlights, just regular old streetlights for a beautification project that then had to go back and be removed and raised because they put them in there too too low, so they've had a couple of stumbles here and there, but knowing that this is happening is fantastic city management over there. I couldn't be more proud of you way to go. Brownsville, looking at this from the top down um, they let's see ntd data, which has a major us 5g smart city deployment in vegas, resales private 5G systems from Solona and Cisco we're just talking about Solona and also Nokia on an ad hoc basis. The vendor brand on the Brownsville installation has not been confirmed. Very cool. The company also sells in-house and third-party IoT solutions.
Speaker 1:Man, it would be so awesome if Brownsville used connectivity for 5G, using 5G not just for IoT, but for getting people online as well and broadband specifically for devices or mobile devices or handhelds. Oh man, city of Brownsville is named the worst connected city by the US government's National Telecoms and Information Administration, otherwise known as the NTIA, in 2017. It's now becoming one of the best connected cities in the United States. They still haven't done much yet, so it'll be cool to see this taking place. This is down in my neck of the woods and I'm glad to see that our area is getting on the map for something really cool. So, again, very neat to see, very neat to see this, awesome, very excited for them.
Speaker 1:All right, what else we got going on in the news today? Uh, dicom is buying black and beach's wireless infrastructure construction business. Might not mean a lot to you all, but black and beach does a whole bunch of infrastructure and telecommunications deployments and dicom has purchased them for 150 million dollars, capitalized on growth opportunities and wireless network modernization. That that's that whole 4G to 5G move and then 5G into 6G move. Interesting to see DICOM doing that. I guess I don't know if Black Veatch is completely divesting themselves of this, but it's going to provide wireless construction services in New York, jersey, missouri, kansas, colorado, utah, wyoming, idaho, montana.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's the largest ever wireless services acquisition by DICOM. The business was a subsidiary of Raleigh, north Carolina, headquartered construction company Overland Contracting. It's also a subsidiary of Overland Park, kansas-based engineering firm Black Veatch, so pretty cool. Pretty cool to see it's employee-owned. Oh, it was employee-owned, that's awesome. It was sold to Ansco and Associates of North Cross, georgia, and then into DICOM. The acquisition strategically strengthens DICOM customer base and expands geographic scope to more broadly address growth opportunities and wireless networking modernization, including Open RAN, the transformation for initiatives and deployment services. Very cool to see that.
Speaker 1:It's good to see some movement in that space, speaking movement in the space t-mobile acquired. They put in the bid to acquire us cellular and now there's some senators that are jumping on board to uh, not protest that, but they're sounding the alarm in a concerted effort to protect competition and consumers. A coalition of us senators, including elizabeth warren, amy klobuchar, chris Murphy, bernie Sanders, cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal, have written a letter to Jonathan Cantor, assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division, department of Justice, and Ms Jessica Rosenworcel, the chair of the FCC, saying that they should be scrutinizing this $4 billion acquisition of US cellulose, saying it could reduce competition, raise prices and have other potential consumer and employee harm. And T-Mobile had acquired Sprint in 2020, and now they gobbled up US Cellular. So the alarm has been sounded and featured news is from wirelessestimatorcom. Very cool.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've visited this website before, but good to see some good reporting happening there. There's no name that I can attribute with this, so whoever wrote that article, good job. Let's see what else we got going on here. That's about all I have on my open tabs, but, man, there's a lot going on. And then in the last week some other things have happened. I mean, obviously, 4g and 5G private cellular is making a move and people are talking a lot more about it. But there's also something coming from a pricing perspective where it looks like some of the pricing is going to change on some of the stuff. I got some partner notifications that pricing is getting slashed on some vendor equipment and I'm not going to say who. I don't know if I'm supposed to say who according to reseller agreements, but be on the lookout because I'm I'm looking at the, the whole scene of this.
Speaker 1:I'm going okay, well, private 4g, private 5g is starting to take off. People are looking at it more. You start to talk about neutral host and where that's playing a little bit heavier, and with the introduction of mocking and moxon and people using these now, with support for att, t mobile, with maybe-Mobile, with maybe someday Verizon coming on, with all of this happening for a vendor who is starting to see some really cool upwards trajectory to now cut their pricing by a decent amount 40% if I read it correctly. Now you're going to see vendors that are on the up and up with their pricing dropping. This is going to kick it in high gear for them, which is awesome to see. So good luck to everyone in that space.
Speaker 1:A lot, of, a lot of very cool movement happening in private 4g and private 5g um and again I want to. I want to break down some of the things there at the end, but I do want to talk about the edge core and indio conversation that came up on I saw it on linkedin. Indio and edge core are working together on open Wi Fi. They put out a press release saying that they're going to work together from the software and the hardware side, so that it is a collaborative effort from them to advance open Wi Fi. And this is a big deal, right? Because if you think about a press release that would come out that says, hey, meraki has announced it's working with HP Aruba so you can use Aruba access points in the Meraki cloud, that would be huge news. Now that hasn't come out yet.
Speaker 1:But if you know anything about open Wi-Fi or if you don't know anything about open Wi-Fi, that's how open Wi-Fi works. It's an open network management and orchestration system and you can use any vendor access points with any vendors management platform and it's. It's really cool. But now not only do you have that, but now you have two vendors. They're saying, hey, we're actually going to work together to do this. You have two separate vendors, two separate hardware manufacturers one of them that specializes in software, one specializes in hardware and they're saying, hey, we're really going to make a concerted effort to move this forward. That is so cool. Congratulations to Edgecore and to Indio for having the courage in the space to do that. I think that's really neat and I'm really really glad to see it continuing to push the envelope with open Wi-Fi. And just what a great project to have efforts like that being put together by vendors who are saying, look, we got to work together and really make this thing work for everyone. I thought that that was pretty neat.
Speaker 1:What else do we have going on Brick? So I came across this company called Brick on Instagram and they make a little tag that you can stick on the wall and when you have the app on your phone, the corresponding app, and you tap on it, what it does is it disables a number of applications on your phone and you can choose the ones that are distracting to you. Whatever the social media apps are, youtube, whatever it is, it's going to distract you and whenever you tap that brick, it basically bricks your phone and it makes it so that it only uses the applications that you've deemed non-distracting if you will, and the only way to turn them back on is you have to tap the brick again. And what a cool use of NFC along with apps to do something that I think is really neat, because article after article there was one this morning in Wall Street Journal or New York Times talking about schools and about how people are trying to figure out how to either ban phones in schools or use them only for good and I saw this thing brick and I was like man, there needs to be one of these at every classroom entrance in every school so that students can use their phones for the calculator or to document something, but make it so that there's got to be a way, there's got to be something out there where a school can push that and when you walk into the room you tap the phone and that disables everything except the core functionality. And then you tap it when you leave and then you can use all your socials. I think it's a great idea. I think it's definitely early in what they're doing, but kudos to them. It's two guys that started this and they're millennials, if I read it correctly, which was shocking to Fast Company who was reporting about this, and it was just really neat to see that people wanted to figure out a way to brick their phones on purpose. Along those lines, september I think 23rd is the date to place your orders.
Speaker 1:The Barbie flip phone is going after an entire generation of people who want a digital detox. It's a standard flip phone. I actually I've got, not the Barbie one, but I have a TCL one right here. Nokia has introduced the Barbie flip phone. It's got a mirror on it, it's got some little bangles that you can put on it. It's bright pink and with a really cool pattern and it has the most basic cell phone functionality and a five megapixel camera and it's meant for people who just want to disconnect everything everywhere. It's selling for like 200 bucks or less. You can order it on October 23rd.
Speaker 1:I really want to get one for my daughter and I had this conversation with her. She's 12, right and I said, hey, I want to get you this thing. I think it's really cool and I think it's going to be kind of trendy and people might like it. And she's like, yeah, but unless a lot of people are doing it, it's not going to solve the problem, because if you don't have some type of way to interact with your peers, you're going to feel like you're missing out. And this again for my daughter, who does not have social media. We have taken the bold step of not allowing social media. Yet it's been very difficult, it's not easy for her, and we recognize that and she recognizes that and we're trying you know, she knows that we're trying to figure out how to, how to navigate parenting in a digital world. So I said, well, what about this? And she's like, yeah, but that doesn't solve the problem, unless all of my friends have one, because then nobody's texting. But if you get a whole group of people and some of them are still texting and they're they're not disconnected, then does it solve the problem? So I think the Barbie phone, as cool as it is for people under the age of 25, I think actually, honestly, it seems like maybe the people that are over 25 are going to be more interested in this. I showed it to my wife and she loved it. She's like, yes, but then she stopped and she's like, but I can't send email on it, I can't work on it, I can't do the things I need to do on it, and I was like that's kind of the point. And she's like, yeah, I get it, but it's just so difficult to disconnect when your entire world is on your phone. So I think it's going to be cool to see, and I would definitely love to see a trend of that. So the Barbie phone.
Speaker 1:Anyway, speaking of connectivity, this fresh off the presses Verizon Communications has agreed to acquire Frontier Communications for $20 billion, $10 billion in debt and $9.6 in cash. The purchase will boost Verizon's fiber optic network connections by 2.2 million subscribers over 25 states. It's going to recapture some of the Fios fiber lines it sold nearly a decade ago. So Wall Street Journal reporting this. It's a big deal To see T-Mobile making the play a couple of weeks ago and acquiring a couple of providers to get into that space. Now Verizon re-upping what they're doing with Fios. There's movement in that direction, not just the mobile side. But to see some of these MNOs really digging deep into their pockets to get back into the fiber space and to bolster their fiber offerings, it tells you something, right? It definitely tells you something.
Speaker 1:Um, along those lines, at&t made made a couple of announcements last week and they said that before the end of the year they're going to be pushing wi-fi 7 equipment to its customer base, which is neat. If you talk about, you know, is this is this part of the uh, of the whole push in the iphone direction? I don't know. Josh goodell, the vice president of product experience, says they pride themselves on being the backbone of modern connectivity. Uh, they operate entire networks made up of more than 1.4 million miles of fiber and they transmit 737 petabytes of data daily. Wow, that's like a lot, man, and when you're at home you probably use wi-fi. That's why they're excited to be among the first to bring wi-fi 7 to customers, with plans to introduce a new wi-fi 7 capable gateway before the end of the year. We believe wi-fi 7 will help customers access the multi-gig internet speeds made possible by fiber and the next generation applications and technologies that will be built upon them.
Speaker 1:To me, if you take that press release on sept 3rd and then you take the iPhone 16 stuff and then you talk about the people who are the pundits, saying, hey, there's going to be a big super cycle for iPhone upgrades. If iPhone 16 has Wi-Fi 7 and you've got AT&T pushing Wi-Fi 7, that is the start of some great marketing for them. So kudos to them for getting in front of that. Not a conspiracy theorist at all, but if you put all those side by side, that looks like a good news story. The Barbie phone did not support Wi-Fi 7, I don't think, by the way, just in case you're wondering, but I need to go back and look at the specs. Anyway, that's what I've got going on in the news.
Speaker 1:Now to talk a little bit about the other stuff, about private 4G and private 5g. I've got a lot of of comments, specifically about signal roam and what we're doing. A link for the brick phone mark is asking for the brick phone. It's called uh, let me see, I can't remember. Get brick dot app. G-e-t-b-r-i-c-k. Dot a-p-p. Your phone minus the distractions. Uh, get brick dot app is the website for that mark. So if you want to take a look at it.
Speaker 1:My channel inspired me to work in wireless, now for wireless provider and nyc. Hey, sweet man, that's really cool. I'm glad to hear it. Uh, appreciate that. That's neat. A little little inspiration, that's cool, man. I appreciate that very, very much. Let's see what else. Keep inspiring, bro. You got me into wireless. Now I work for a Wi-Fi provider Yay, all right. Phase 114 BX from the BX. I like it, man, very cool. Okay, what else we got on here? Let's see when was I going.
Speaker 1:Okay, I got a lot of comments specifically for people asking about what Signal Room was and how it worked, because I put it out there and I said you can use your Ubiquiti wireless network to fill coverage gaps and help with cellular coverage, and that caused a whole lot of conversation. Lots of threads on Reddit, lots of threads in the Ubiquiti group on Reddit, lots of threads on the video there on YouTube. So let me take a second to explain what's in my mind when it comes to this, because I think about it from a top to bottom approach of affordability and capability. Right, but more affordability than capability. So let's start at the top right, let us start at the beginning. It's a very good place to start, as they say, in the sound of music.
Speaker 1:So at the very top you've got DAS, and so DAS is digital amplification, digital antenna systems. Some people use either term, but DAS is basically where you take a device that's connected to a cell provider, a mobile network operator, and you plug it in in the back, you plug in fiber, you plug in you know, ethernet, whatever it is, and then you can air run fiber, optic or coax lines out to antennas distributed all across your facility. If you've ever been to an airport or a large stadium, you've definitely seen DAS or the weird looking teardrop antennas that are up there. Sometimes they're panels, but they are basically meant to operate a cell tower, if you will, a cell site on the actual premise, right? So it's there, and you want to make sure and God, I hate saying on-premise, because I always screw up and I don't know if I'm saying it right and I blame all of that on the folks at Mobility Field Day and it's actually on-premises and that's why I worry about it, because I screw it up, okay, anyway, so you've got a cell site deployed on-premises there in the location and your cell phone then connects directly to that and it broadcasts a lot of the same frequencies that the carriers use, or a subset of those frequencies, and your phone doesn't know the difference between where you are in the stadium or in the shopping center or in the airport and the cell network that's outside, because to them it's all the same and that's the. That is like the most basic, uh and most incredible functionality for connecting cellular devices. It's a one-to-one match to what's going on on the tower.
Speaker 1:And if you increase 4, 4g and 5G, 5g really focused on microcells and smaller cells and they don't really want to focus on macrocells like 4G did. They want smaller cells and smaller cell areas. 5g was really good at that because you get more users in close proximity using higher amounts of capacity, and that's where small cell really came in and that's where DAS really plays strong. So that's where small cell really came in and that's where DAS really plays strong. So that's at the top level. But it's expensive as hell. That's the only problem If you don't have a budget for it. You're talking hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to deploy this stuff and that's not a stretch. It is very expensive to do and I had a great conversation with a friend of mine who's a big DAS integrator this week and we talked about when is the right time to deploy DAS, and it's the stuff that's done before the sheetrock goes up and the cables are run and the antennas are put in and everything's set. And DAS is like putting a cell site in your facility. That's DAS right Now. If you take a step lower than that in price, you've got a couple of different options and those options to me are right in that private cellular space options and those options to me are right in that private cellular space.
Speaker 1:So if you have private cellular, if you're only worried about connecting your devices to your data network, then private cellular is a good addition to a Wi-Fi network. It's not a replacement of a Wi-Fi network, but it's a good addition to a Wi-Fi network. Whether you're using 4G technology or 5G technology, it's all about what you're doing and what your use case is and how much capacity you need. But when you've got private cellular, what that does is that allows you to take your private devices, connect them to your private network so you can do data sharing. Think about IoT, think about forklifts driving around a warehouse. Think about communications inside an industrial space or at a farm or agriculture or healthcare, where you just need inter-office communications. Private cellular is phenomenal at doing that. Wi-fi is great for big data, you know, in close proximity. Private cellular is good at covering these large uncarpeted areas phenomenal at it. And again, 4g 5G, depending on what your use case is Now. Add to that all this conversation that we're having about Moken and about Moxon and about neutral host networks.
Speaker 1:So imagine you have a private cellular network that's not just working for your IoT and working for your devices, but now it allows you to connect that back to the carrier. So we're seeing that right. Solona talked about that, infinigi talks about that. There's a couple of different providers that are talking about it where you can have that private cellular experience. But instead of spending all the money on DAS, because that was the only way to connect to the carrier in the old days, now I can use CBRS band 48, lte band 48 to use with my devices, where my phone can go inside and it immediately connects to that CBRS network and my phone doesn't know the difference. It knows that it's just connected to, can go inside and it immediately connects to that CBRS network. And my phone doesn't know the difference. It knows that it's just connected to the carriers, whether that's T-Mobile or AT&T, in this space in the United States right now, because Verizon, being Verizon, isn't supporting everything yet. Unless you buy it through Verizon, then it does all three of them.
Speaker 1:But if you have private cellular tied into the carrier using neutral host, that to me is a little bit of a threat to the DAS space. Because DAS is so expensive and when you look at the price model and we talked about this at Mobility Field Day the price model for DAS is about, if you say it's 100,000 square foot building across five years, it's about three bucks a square foot is what it comes out to is what you can budget for DAS. If you look at doing this with something like Celona, you're looking at like a buck, 50 or less, maybe even less than a dollar per square foot. That is significantly different compared to where DAS is and it not only supports the aggregation, the movement to the carriers, but it also supports private cellular. So now not only do you have the same user experience as you would, because you're roaming onto a network that's supporting the carriers, but now you've got all the private cellular components as well. Now you've got video cameras and ATM machines and forklifts and sensors and all the other IoT stuff that runs private cellular.
Speaker 1:So to me, that's the part that was like the huge missing piece. And Joel Lentolman in Finnegy showed this off and this is what they're doing at the Facebook campuses and he's gotten so many really great accolades for us because what he did was insanely awesome and it still is. You look at it and you go man, you've built something incredible. Because it's private, you can use it for private cellular or you can use it for the carriers, and his solution uses equipment from Airspan. And now you look at Celona saying, hey, we're going to do this. Well, now you have a company that is not only offering the hardware and the orchestration and the software and the SIM management and the private cellular and 4G and the private cellular and 5G and access points that support both 4G and 5G. Now, if they're tying into the carriers, it's kind of a big deal. It's kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1:So you've got DAS up at the top, super expensive but very feature-rich, just like the cellular connection model. Then you've got private 5G, private 4G with a neutral host connection in it. That's kind of in the middle. And then down at the bottom you've got what we're doing at SignalRoom and what that's doing is that's saying, look, you don't want to replace infrastructure, you want to use your existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, but you want to add a way for people's phones to have a user experience. That's better, because the cell service might suck inside the building.
Speaker 1:That's where Signal Roam comes in, because you can say, look, we can reconfigure your APs, we can use Passpoint, and that Passpoint will allow your subscriber phones on AT&T, t-mobile or any of their MVNOs to seamlessly roam onto the network securely using 802.1X authentication and still have that tie-in to the carrier. So when I walk in, if I'm on T-Mobile or AT&T, when I walk in and I make a phone call, it just works. My cell coverage might not be good because you're at the edge of a cell or you're inside a school or a building where the coverage is really poor coming from outside in. But now you're tunneling everything across Wi-Fi because you're using Passpoint to authenticate and you're using that Wi-Fi calling those same ports on Wi-Fi calling to push that data for voice or for text messages or whatever. So you've got Signal Roam. That doesn't require any new infrastructure, just 15 minutes of config. But it uses and leverages Wi-Fi authenticated via Passpoint to the carrier right and then piped out to the carrier. Then you've got private cellular in the middle and then private cellular with neutral host attached to that and then up at the top you've got DAS.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to take a second to explain. I know this is making the podcast run a little bit long, but I wanted to take a second to explain that because I don't know if everyone knows what's going on there and I did receive a lot of questions for it and I wanted to make a video that I could chop up and edit and send to people and say this is what I mean when I talk about it. So I hope that I did a good job explaining that. As with anything, I make no promises on my accuracy of information. I mean, I could totally be wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong and I've deployed this stuff so it's worked the way that I talk about. So it's interesting. The course cheap says Mark was a VOLT and VONR yeah, yeah Then. Oh, let me add something to that.
Speaker 1:Then you've got the folks over at Helium and at XNet who are doing this other thing and this other thing, and I've got some Helium stuff here, I've got some XNet stuff here and they are doing this thing where if you deploy one of the XNet, for example, if you deploy an XNet access point, it's pre-configured and they made the announcement yesterday that they're working with a carrier, unspecified unless they specified it today unspecified carrier, single carrier to do offload for them. And basically, if you have their access point and you turn this on, if someone comes into your network or roams onto your network and uses your Wi-Fi to access their carrier, they pay you in their token, which is a great idea. They pay you a certain amount per gig, I think it is that you get. Every time someone you know you reach a gigabit of usage on there, you get some token from Xnet or from Helium and then you can stack up those tokens and do something with them, trade them, sell them, whatever it is. But it's basically a way of compensating you for using your bandwidth to do carrier offload.
Speaker 1:Now I've been following that for a minute because it sounds like such a great idea. And if I could stick little Helium or XNet access points up everywhere and turn it all on and people could just use my network and then I got paid for it, that would be great. If you're a hotel operator, you put this in, you can monetize your Wi-Fi. That's in there. That would be awesome, but I don't know how well it works and I'm not, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm going to reach out to the teams at x and helium and see if they want to join the podcast sometime, because I would love to learn more and I would love to learn what makes it, what makes it better? Um, and I would love to learn how that monetization component of it works, because right now, like with signal room, we have to charge. There's a fee associated with it, because some of the reporting we have to do and the setup and the time and the servers and the authentication and all that stuff, there's a fee associated with it, where some of the carriers have a way that they do it at no fee. Helium and XNet are saying they will pay you for it. So does Google Orion. Google has a thing called Orion that does the same thing. But I tried to set up Orion and I found it to be a little bit cumbersome, although Edgecore just announced a setup for it yesterday. So so Edgecore just announced a setup for it yesterday, so I'm going to see if I can dig into Orion a little bit more. But there's this whole D-PIN, decentralized network, infrastructure infrastructure network, sorry and decentralized Wi-Fi D-Y, d-y and D-PIN, d-e-p-i-n and D-E-W-I.
Speaker 1:Go look online, go look on X and C, if you can find some of that stuff, if you're interested in that. It sounds super promising but it hasn't scaled yet, so we'll see where it goes. I'm a huge fan of Helium, so I hope that that starts moving pretty soon. Let's see. Mark says my guess is T-Mobile. You know, I'm going to look real quick on X and I'm going to see if there have been any announcements on that because let me see, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in it. I'm interested to see who it's going to be.
Speaker 1:X net mobile. So on on X, if you go, xcom slash X N E T underscore mobile. This is X net mobile's deal. The weight is over. First major us mobile carrier contract, direct carrier deal, roaming deal in deep end. They're very excited about it.
Speaker 1:They have a community call. Uh, yesterday or two days ago, 2 000 people tuned into it. It's a fun community call. If you want to learn more about it, jump on their uh x page or their twitter page and look it up. But they don't have. I'm gonna look in the comments and see if anybody left any comments. Can you guys please hire an actual marketer to help brand drastically? Oh my God, sorry, going to zero. What carrier, what carrier, what carrier, what carrier, what carrier? No one has said anything. They do have a very active Discord channel as well and on their Discord channel sometimes they release a little bit more information channel as well, and on their discord channel sometimes they release a little bit more information. Let me jump on their discord channel just so that we can have the conversation.
Speaker 1:At&t wi-fi passpoint x net offload. Okay that someone posted the ssid after enabling it. So instead of guessing who it was, someone uploaded a screenshot showing that it's AT&T Wi-Fi Passpoint. So the the it's been solved. At&t is working with Xnet, it looks like on their equipment to do offload.
Speaker 1:This was posted um a couple days ago, so fantastic to read that. Good. Good for them. Um, interesting. Yeah, well, didn't, didn't see that one coming. Well, it's not Verizon, I mean. But hell, I could have told you that Everyone seems to be waiting on Verizon at this point, so we'll see.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's all I got. It's been a week, man. It's been a week, and next week I'll try and get this thing back on schedule, but I do appreciate you taking the time to listen a little bit longer. We are still just a little bit shy of the amount of subscribers. It takes for my wife to invite me to go to Mexico with her. So if you would please share this one, 107 of your best friends and uh, and then I can do a podcast from Mexico, that would be. That'd be really cool. Anyway, um, um, I hope everybody has a wonderful week.
Speaker 1:There's stuff coming up, um, you know I always go over the events calendar, but the events calendar stacked, man, there's a. There's a ton of stuff going on. The big ones to me are uh, are wlpc and prog. Fingers crossed might be able to go that one. If you know, uh, if you know of anyone who wants to sponsor it here, let me. Let me cut real quick. Let me do a full commercial ready.
Speaker 1:Hey, everybody, if you know anyone who wants to sponsor the waves podcast, please ask them to reach out to me. They can find me at wireless nerd, drew at drew lyncecom. Reach out to me, be happy to sponsor, talk about your product, talk about your service. Send me to a trade show. Let me go over everything in the industry for you. I'm happily accepting uh sponsorship. There you go anyway. Uh. Seriously, though, if you know anyone who wants to sponsor it, there might be someone online to get me out to wlpc prague, which would be phenomenal because I love that group of people. It would be great to see them.
Speaker 1:Wlpc phoenix is coming up again in february. Speaking of wi-fi offload and stuff, um man, I hope there's a big presence of that at WLPC. That'll be cool to see. And then CES, ces. If you're making plans to go to Vegas, please let me know. We have a really good time. We can do a meetup and we can all hang out in Vegas for a night, have a couple of drinks on Mr Sean Bender. We'll let him pay for the tab. Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful week. No-transcript.
