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
Embarking on a Wireless Journey: From #MFD12 to eero & Starlink's Rural Revolution & the Future of Connectivity Plus Wi-Fi and Open RAN 5G Insights
Stepping into new roles always comes with a mix of excitement and challenges, and I'm thrilled to share my latest adventure as a Senior Solutions Architect with Amazon's Eero. You'll catch a glimpse of my journey into the vibrant world of wireless access points and mesh networks and get a sneak peek at the tech events like AWS re:Invent and CES that I can’t wait to be part of. Let’s not forget a nod to Johnny Cupcakes, a brand that has been a personal favorite, and the inspiring story of Johnny Earle's rise from selling out of his car to building a retail empire.
Ever wondered how Starlink's two-gigabit speed predictions could change rural connectivity? We explore this game-changing development as the FCC grants Starlink a commercial license for its direct-to-cell program, potentially shaking up the wireless ISP industry. Alongside these advancements, I share thoughts on the recent shifts within the FCC, marking the departure of a respected figure, and the ripple effects of these changes. The episode doesn’t shy away from humor, with a look at Daisy, the AI granny with a mission to outwit phone scammers, all while pondering the ethical implications of such innovations.
Technology isn't the only focus here; we also uncover Saudi Aramco’s potential billion-dollar investment in Mavenir and its significance for Open RAN technology. We touch upon the trials and triumphs of Boost Mobile, the strategic moves in the CBRS spectrum, and a possible Dish and DirecTV merger on the horizon. With contributions from industry experts like Matt McPherson, we debate the coexistence of Wi-Fi and 5G, and wrap up with a personal Thanksgiving greeting, celebrating milestones, and an invitation for feedback to keep this journey as exciting and engaging as ever.
Howdy, howdy, howdy. It's Drew Lentz, Wireless Nerd. It is Tuesday, november 26, 26 de Noviembre. Aquí estoy en el estudio de Chachalaca en McAllen, texas. Here we are at Chachalaca Studios. I don't know, I like to call it Chachalaca Studios, it's just my office. What a week it's been. And it's so. It's so cool, it's so refreshing.
Speaker 1:I've been keeping a secret for a little while and now I finally get to share it with everybody. It's been a heck of a year. To quote another country music magician, he says Parker McCollum has a song where he says it's been a hell of a year. Well, it has been a hell of a year, parker, and I am happy to announce that after this incredible year that I made a cool little video I posted online, I've joined the team with Amazon with Eero. So Eero is a company that manufactures wireless access points for people's homes, for mesh networks, for people to pop up quick and easy to use, solutions that are focused on making sure they deliver a good quality of experience, and a couple, two, three, four years ago they got acquired by Amazon, so you might have seen them in that whole little world of Amazon things that are out there, and I have come on board as a senior solutions architect, helping have some fun with Eero, and I'm very excited it's been. It's been really cool, man. It's a good team and I've been way busier this week than I thought I was going to be. Next week I'll be at AWS reInvent. If anyone will be out there in Vegas, let me know. I'll be happy to meet up with you and then I'll be scheduled for CES, which is dope because I was going to go to CES anyway. Y'all you know the drill. I love going out to C's a lot happening and it's going to be a really fun ride. It's going to be a cool place. We're doing some really neat stuff and I'm very excited about it. So, yeah, it's back to the grind, if you will, but I wouldn't have chosen something that I didn't really want to do, that I didn't like. So it's cool.
Speaker 1:I got to be picky a little bit, had some really good opportunities, got to see what the market looked like, and I think I talked about this last week. I reached out, actually to my recruiter, to one of the recruiters that I was working with, because I really wanted to know what it was like to be in the recruiter's shoes, especially in this day and age with everything that's going on with tech. So, that being said, keep up the good fight. If you have any questions or you need any help with recruiters or talking to people or any of that, let me know and I'll be happy to connect you to whoever. There's always people there hiring and there's a lot of really good opportunities that are out there in the wireless space. So if you're looking for a new gig, if you want to change a little bit, then you know, reach out and I'll help connect you to changes. I am. I'm rocking a sweatshirt that I talked about on linkedin today. This, uh, one of these sides here. This is a brand I love man johnny cupcakes.
Speaker 1:Johnny earl has announced that he'll be closing his store johnny cupcakes that's on newberry street in boston and it's it's been a. It's just. You know that it's a brand that's been around for a really long time and to watch him grow in his brand and do the things that he's done. He started off working in a comic store and playing in a hardcore band and then selling merch out of the trunk of his car and then turning that into a brand and then opening stores across the world. I got the opportunity to be at his grand opening on Melrose in LA a bunch of years back and it was what an incredible experience. And he's gone. He's a speaker. He's a keynote speaker, inspirational type speaker. So if you're looking for someone to come get a crowd all creatively thinking about what they're doing, johnny's a good guy for that. He's kicking off his experiential industry or his marketing industry, I guess or his marketing agency in the marketing industry. So if you need someone to really build an incredible brand, johnny Earl E-A-R-L-E. You can find him online. He's in Boston and Johnny Cupcakes is not dead. He's just moved mail order, which is awesome. But his little logo says do more of what makes you happy, and I've always followed that. So it's a fun dude.
Speaker 1:Sad to see the stores go away, but that's okay. We'll still order some stuff and I'll be rocking the cupcake and crossbones for as long as I can. So that's what's going on there. Tomorrow, let's see. Tomorrow's another workday, I guess. And then Turkey Day is this week. If you're in the States. If you're not in the States, feel free to eat turkey anyway, and let's see.
Speaker 1:Let's jump into some stuff that's going on. First, I mentioned some of the shows that are going on right now. We've got WLPC coming up in Phoenix. The voting might have closed. I think the voting still might be open for the sessions for WLPC. If you're in the wireless industry, if you're listening to this podcast, I really hope to see you at WLPC. If I haven't met you yet, please come up and say hi to me. I'm going to try and do a broadcast from there this year. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a really fun year. The content that was at the Prague show was so good just so incredibly good. So coming into Phoenix, it's probably going to be just exceptional and I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody out there.
Speaker 1:That's coming up in February. Ces in January it's my favorite thing to go to. Always has been. I really enjoy CES, seeing what's happening in the consumer electronics industry. Next week is AWS reInvent. I went to it last year. It was my first year. I went with my buddy Bender and he got to show me the world of AWS, which is pretty interesting. I mean they do a lot of cloud stuff like a significant amount, so that's a fun show. I think that's all. I don't know what WICO's got on the calendar right now, but they're doing some fun events. They just had another one wrap up. So just a lot happening as the year comes to an end.
Speaker 1:But there's also some changes that are coming, man, you know. So, if you don't know this about me, I'm not really a sports person. I follow the Astros because I'm in Texas and I try and follow the Cowboys. But person, I follow the Astros because I'm in Texas and I try and follow the Cowboys. But I mean, really, is any Cowboys fan really a Cowboys fan at this point? I don't know, spurs go, Spurs go. But you know, other than sports, I love politics and I love following politics, and so I don't talk about it on here because it's just not the right place, man, you know. But when things bleed over like they're doing right now, I'll try and give a very different perspective, not political, but the stuff that's happening with USF and with USAC and with E-rate is tough, man, and it's tough to watch.
Speaker 1:And now, some of the broadband things that are happening with the broadband equity grants. There's some things that are happening. So let's jump into what's going on right now. First and foremost, a tweet came out about three hours ago. It looks like and here's the tweet, let's see. Is my screen showing? Okay there? Yeah, if you're okay. So if you're watching this on the internets, then you can see the screen. Let me make that a little bit bigger for you. There you go, you can see what's happening on the screen. If not, I'm going to go ahead and read it. And what it says is the fcc just granted starlink us commercial license for our direct to sell programs. Check that out, man. Direct to sell on starlink. The fcc approved it.
Speaker 1:There's a lot that's happening with that space, with sad, with the satellite communication space, and I wasn't expecting to talk about this. I didn't even know that this was going to happen as quickly as it did. But direct-to-sell I mean this is fascinating to know that Starlink has a direct-to-sell approval, because does this mean they're another carrier? I know that they've partnered with T-Mobile and I know that they've got the direct-to-sell program that they've done with T-Mobile for Handoff. But does this mean that we're going to see SpaceX and Starlink come into the carrier space? I don't know. I don't know. I mean it's been approved and the document over here from the FCC. Let's load it up real quick and see what this thing looks like on our handy-d pdf reader.
Speaker 1:In the matter of space exploration towing request for deployment operation authority for spacex gen 2 satellite system, modifying it to add a direct to cell system. I mean I haven't read it, I'm not going to read it right now, but wow, that's. Is that a sign of the times? Does that mean that we've got to look forward to do another type of carrier that's out there? I mean I remember the iridium and I remember those worked pretty well, but these are running on the devices that are in our pockets today. I mean kind of fascinating to think about where that's going to go.
Speaker 1:The thing that I wanted to talk about before that, even before they announced a direct-to-sell deal, was this SpaceX has two gig speeds for Starlink with capacity upgrades. Gwen Shotwell said the company's improvements to satellite communications are advancing at a rate similar to Moore's law for computer chips. This article filed by Michael Kan in PCMag November 18th, saying Starlink is going to creep up on those 2 gigabit per second speeds. This you know this all I come from the WIS space right and doing stuff in rural America and trying to figure out how to get people connectivity who don't have access to traditional connectivity, and this is just like this is nuts man. I mean, is this really happening? Spacex and satellite comms advancing and moving so fast? The cycle of increased capacity is based on the same cycle as chipsets, which is likely to double the capacity every two years.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, here it goes and there's the video. So currently a single $349 Starlink dish can receive download speeds between 100 and 200 megabit per second depending on the area. I have Starlink, I'm a Starlink subscriber for my backup service here at my home and you know I've seen the speeds. But man in the gigs, wow, what signal is that to the rest of the wireless isp industry? You know toronto makes a product that does some pretty incredible stuff up, you know, multiple hundreds of gigabit or multiple hundreds of megabits and into gigabit speeds. But you know, with the advancement of mlo and things that are being deployed now for outdoor wi-fi, I guess those speeds are are about par for the course, which is kind, kind of crazy. So, wow, gig satellite. I mean, who would have thunk it Along those lines? Stuff that's happening within the FCC. You know there was the announcement of Starlink being able to go direct to sell.
Speaker 1:But there is one thing that has made me a little sad, just because this is someone who I have followed for quite a while and has always. I just I always felt like this person was super friendly and I got to know some of the people in her office, and I don't. I may have traded an email or two with her, but never got really the chance to sit down and have a conversation with her, but always did some really neat stuff. Chairman Rosenworcel. Jessica Rosenworcel has announced her departure departure from the FCC. This isn't new.
Speaker 1:Whenever there's a changing of the guards when it comes to the president, usually if they're of the opposing party, they'll go ahead and step down, and so she said that she intends to depart the FCC on January 20th 2025. She issued the following statement, saying serving at the FCC has been an honor of a lifetime and especially her tenure as chair is the first woman in history to be confirmed to lead the agency. President Biden for entrusting me with the responsibility to guide the FCC during a time when communications technology is part of every aspect of civic and commercial life. I agree, she's been there for a while doing some really neat stuff, and she talked about how this is. You know how, how car brandon carr has been, I guess, tagged for taking over as the fcc chairman under trump and said hey, you know he nobody knows these people better than he does. So there's, you know, regardless of of party affiliation and whatnot, there's there is a change happening at the fcc. Is it going to be beneficial to consumers and businesses, one side more than the other? I don't know. I mean, we'll find out. The fcc has has a change happening at the FCC. Is it going to be beneficial to consumers and businesses, one side more than the other? I don't know. I mean, we'll find out. The FCC has always done a pretty good job of trying to keep things down the middle and with a twist right on either side. But just to know that, we had her for a minute. So, chairman Rosenworcel, we appreciate everything that you did. It was fantastic to have the first chairwoman of the FCC. So kudos to you on all the hard work that you did and we're looking forward to seeing what's happening Coming next with the FCC.
Speaker 1:And let's see what did she say? There's a quote. Ars ran an article and she said where was it? She said setting up the largest broadband affordability program in history, connecting more than 23 million households. She said yep, she had a two-to-two deadlock. Oh, here we go. She's familiar with the staff, saying the FCC is fortunate to have extraordinary expertise thanks to hardworking public servants who labor faithfully to implement the law and help build a digital future.
Speaker 1:From his time here, I am confident that Commissioner Carr is familiar with the staff, the responsibilities of the new role and the importance of the continued US leadership in communication. So very cool to pass the torch on to the next one. But can he sing karaoke like a Jit Pai did at the Wi-Fi? Now, excuse me, world Congress in Sarasota. All net neutrality stuff aside, that dude was fun to hang out with. I got to say that it was a good time. Let's see what else is happening. This was kind of cool. I guess there's things that I need to be careful what I talk about because of who my employer is. Now I guess I can't. I'm not an official spokesperson for the organization, so I'm just going to read this headline here from Ars Technica that says Amazon pours another $4 billion into Anthropic, openai's biggest rival. Amazon has now committed $8 billion to AI startups that make the key chat GPT competitor. What I will say isn't necessarily about that news, although that's really cool for Anthropic.
Speaker 1:It was that when the elections were going on. I built a website called politikeracom and at politikeracom what we did is we pulled publicly available data from voting locations throughout or from the general election headquarters in the counties that we live in, and we plotted it all on a map and I think I talked about it a little bit on here. What was really neat about it was we didn't write any code and I didn't know what Claude was. I mean, a friend of mine, a developer friend of mine, was like dude, we totally have to use Claude. And so I used Claude. We used Claude to write the whole thing. Claude did all the programming. For us is the model from Anthropic. It's the tool from Anthropic that is used. It's their AI tool. So we interfaced with Claude and that's how we wrote all the codes. That was kind of cool to see that come full circle. It was pretty neat. It looks like we both got a little. How do you do? Tip of the hat from Amazon. So that's kind of neat.
Speaker 1:Need to see another organization getting some new stuff. It says under the agreement, anthropic will train and deploy its foundation models using Amazon's custom-built Trainium for training AI models and its Inferentia chips. Is that how you say it? Inferentia For AI inference, the term for running trained models. I hope to see some of this at AWS reInvent. It'll be neat to see some of that stuff going around.
Speaker 1:I have no idea what to expect from AWS reInvent. There's a couple meetings I'm going to, so I'm excited about that, but I can't wait to see what the buzz is, especially regarding AI. The company worked with Amazon's Annapurna Labs division to advance processor development for AI applications. Reportedly, anthropic has also been assisting Amazon with developing a new version of its Alexa AI Assistant. That's pretty cool. I haven't met anybody on those teams yet. Looking forward to meeting people on those teams. That's going to be pretty neat to see how all that comes together. So I'm excited for that. I think that that's pretty neat. There's a lot of stuff happening in that space. Obviously, you know that as well as I do. Let's see. I don't know what this is. Let's see. Ai grandma yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1:Perplexity, another tool, another AI tool. Check this one out. Perplexity says the AI grandma ties up scanners. Daisy, an AI-powered granny developed by O2 in collaboration with scam baiter Jim Browning, is designed to combat phone scammers by engaging them in prolonged conversations, thereby preventing them from targeting real victims and gathering valuable data on fraudulent tactics. I just thought this was I guess you can use it with perplexity, I'm not sure the features enable Daisy to engage scammers effectively, maintaining believable conversations that can last up to 40 minutes.
Speaker 1:You know, I laugh at this, right, because I think that this is that's kind of funny that it would do this. But there was an article that was done. That was a podcast I listened to and it talked about the people that are in these call farms, these spam calling farms, and what they go through, and you know, they found something that escaped and and got away and talked about how horrendous it was actually working for these places that are these, these spam calling farms. So so, yeah, this is this is good and it's funny, man, but the human impact of this on the people that are going to get baited into talking to ai, I don't even want to think about that, but either way, that is an interesting use case for AI, daisy, the AI-powered granny, yeah, anyway, I don't know what that has to do with wireless, but I thought that that was pretty funny. Sorry, I thought I'd talk about that one. Let's see what else do we have. Oh man, okay, that one, let's see what else do we have. Oh, man, okay, this one's kind of weird and and oh, come on, really, man, so I'm not, I don't subscribe to telecom papercom, and I guess I should, because then I can show off what this article is, but I don't. Well, okay, you guys want to stare at the screen with me? Let me turn that screen off, anyway. This, anyway, this was an interesting article to read. Let me see if there's somewhere else that I can find it.
Speaker 1:Aramco, saudi Aramco is in talks of a billion-dollar investment in Maveneer. And that is here we go. I found it somewhere else. I found it on Paul Lipscomb on DCD Data Center Dynamics. Has this published here? Aramco Digital is reportedly in talks to take a significant minority stake in the US software maker Mavenir Telcom. As reported by Reuters, aramco Digital, the digital arm of Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco, is in discussions of a potential billion dollar investment. I think I just said that it reports that the deal values Maveneer at $3 billion.
Speaker 1:So the thing that gets me about this man is that this is the articles I've read about Maveneer, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that Maveneer is a Texas company. In reading about what they're doing and in reading about Open RAN and what they're doing with Open RAN and what they're doing with AI is that they're providing the software that orchestrates and runs these networks and there's this big push for AI on the back end to help not just the troubleshooting side of it but the support side of it as well. That smells funny. A billion dollars from Saudi Arabia coming into a company that's running all of the AI intelligence for the back end, for 5G and 6G technology. It just I don't know. I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I don't do the global politics thing, I don't know what that looks like, but it's definitely a sign that Open RAN is getting a heck of a lot more traction.
Speaker 1:Open RAN I've got a few articles on Open RAN here that I want to talk about today because there's some significant movement in there and it's taken a while to get it to where it is. But now you have organizations that are deploying Open RAN and the deal with Open RAN is very similar to what we're doing with Open Wi-Fi. Same kind of product group right is very similar to what we're doing with OpenWiFi. Same kind of product group right, where you have a radio access network from one vendor orchestration from another vendor. Maybe you have a control plane, a data plane from another vendor and you've got radio heads from another vendor and antennas from another vendor and they all work seamlessly together using OpenRAN to communicate back and forth with them.
Speaker 1:Now there were some closed OpenRAN things that were happening. By closed OpenRAN I mean there were companies, and I don't remember who it was, if it was Nokia or Ericsson. Basically, there was a company that said, yeah, we're OpenRAN, but we only support our OpenRAN equipment with each other, and it was like dude, that's lame. So now it seems like there's a lot more happening there. The OpenRAN battle has been tough Vendors such as Ericsson commanding some of the bigger deals, notably a $14 billion open RAN deal with AT&T and other groups that are out there playing in this space, and so, man, it's kind of weird to think that there's an out-of-the-country organization that's making an investment or looking at making an investment behind that. That's kind of crazy to think about. There's another thing. Let me talk about Verizon real quick, because crazy to think about. There's another thing. Let me talk about verizon real quick because check this out.
Speaker 1:Here's another article, this from our buddies over at fierce network, monica aleven 11. I'll even monica, I don't know how to say your last name aleven 11, al all. Even I don't know. I don't know what it is. This is covering that. Verizon's latest dash deployment isn't as lame as it sounds. I love the headline.
Speaker 1:First of all, verizon deployed an open RAN-based DAS at two locations in Austin. So DAS is Distributed Antenna System, digital Antenna System. I believe it's only Distributed Antenna System. Now, das is where you take a head end that's connected to the carrier network via fiber or copper in some cases, and then you run fiber optic cables or RF cables or coax cables out to antennas. You distribute them all over your location, your stadium, your airport, whatever it is, and then it acts as a cell site in your area. That's a traditional way to do DAS right. So Verizon has deployed two locations in Austin using Open RAN-based DAS, ready for this. You know where this is going.
Speaker 1:These DAS systems use O-RAN interfaces and gear from different vendors. So what they did and in this case this one was at the University of Texas Moody Center and the Austin Convention Center, both those areas. There hasn't been a good conference at Austin Convention Center lately, other than I mean South by Southwest is always there, but this is interesting to see UT Moody Center and Austin Convention Center. It's in here somewhere where they talk about it. Here we go.
Speaker 1:Verizon claims these DAS installations in Austin are special because they're the first DAS commercially deployed in the Verizon network using O-RAN interfaces with various components from different vendors. Just like we said, samsung is providing its virtual distributed units, their VDUs, with an ORAN interface to a CommScope DAS. So that's kind of cool. So you've got multiple vendors in there doing it and they talk about how it drops in the lower cost, how now from a competitive perspective they don't have to use the same vendor, and how they're able to work with different vendors best of breed for different areas, and talks about how it future-proofs it so that now they can swap one out of the other. And the multi-vendor strategy is really strong. Verizon deployed Samsung and Comscope, but there's other ones that are out there.
Speaker 1:My buddy, monica Paolini from Sins of Philly was quoted in this. I see no problem with single-vendor or two-vendor open RAN because they're the first step in the open RAN direction. And even with multi-vendor RANs I do not expect a large number of RU, cu and DU vendors in the same network, even if the interoperability is there. The more vendors you have, the more complex the network is. So you need to find the right trade-off and avoid having more vendors than you need. Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1:But then inter-Maveneer right, these guys come, all this AI to make it all work the way that it's supposed to work, and they're just one of many. But then it's like okay, you got this whole network, everything's running great, but it's Saudi. That's kind of weird. You see what I'm saying? It's kind of weird. I feel like I'm not too far off the mark on that, but that's I mean. Whatever I mean, maybe we don't have an issue there. That's with Verizon. And then there was another one. Check this out.
Speaker 1:And here's another article that popped up along the same lines from our buddies at RCR Wireless. Juan Pedro Tomas says Hughes secured a deal to deploy 5G ORAN in Fort Bliss. So now you've got Verizon doing it, now you've got Hughes doing this, and there's some information happening with Hughes. If you know, they're an EchoStar company, so lots to talk about with those. Know they're an EchoStar company, so lots, lots to talk about with those guys. It featured a RAN intelligent controller which will allow the Department of Defense to test RAN intelligent controller-based software applications for military networks. And this is at Fort Bliss and it can serve for their valuation purposes for their network supporting the DoD and commercial customers in and around Fort Bliss. And let's see it talks about, let's see it talks about, let's see. Did they talk about who they use? But look at this, look, here's the, here's the part, here's the part ready under the terms of the deal, use will serve as the prime contractor demonstrating, qualifying and integrating a ran intelligent controller in the test network, which will also incorporate oran's infrastructure ready for this.
Speaker 1:Engineering expertise in 5g spectrum from boost mobile, also owned by EchoStar, boost Mobile. There they are again. You've got this group, boost Mobile. We talked about them last week. Boost is trying to figure out. They say that they're ready to play with the big three. They say that they're ready to be looked at as one of the big mobile network operators in the US and they're trying to make their mark man. They've got some Black Friday deals that are pretty stellar and they're trying to make their mark man. They've got some Black Friday deals that are pretty stellar.
Speaker 1:And so now Echo Star is putting this out using O-RAN and using the spectrum from Boost because they own a whole ton of CBRS, right, and we'll talk about that in a second. They own a whole ton of CBRS. So what are they doing Now? They're using O-RAN with that spectrum in these areas. That's pretty neat, man Like. In these areas. That's pretty neat, man, like I said, lots happening in there. So the open RAN space, the open Wi-Fi space, the open networking space there's some pretty cool things that are happening there. Look, I'm going to scroll down. What is going on in CBRS, I ask myself. And so there's this article. Check this out. This is why Boost Mobile isn't using CBRS right now. The company owns whoa nice advertisement. Here you go, good job, nice advertisement there.
Speaker 1:Fierce Wireless Monica, whose last name I can't pronounce. She filed this article also on November 18th. The company owns oodles of CBRS licenses across the country, but it's not using CBRS Spectrum for the build out of its national 5G network. Boost is waiting to get clarity from the FCC. So here's the deal they own. Echostar bought all the spectrum. Dish bought all the spectrum on the CBRS spectrum and they've got stuff in 35365. They have those allocated units there, but they also own stuff down in 3.4, right, and so they spent a billion dollars. Look at that. Priority access licenses in 2020, spending almost a billion dollars to acquire 5,492 licenses. It's not using those licenses, which cover most of the US. Why not? We've not started with CBRS? Boost Mobile CTO Eben Alberton told Fierce in a recent interview.
Speaker 1:This discussion with the FCC is fantastically timed. I think we should have time to discuss this. So now they're talking about power changes and they're talking about can they use more power in the spectrum that they own? What happens if you open it up from 349 all the way up to 39? So they're not doing anything yet, but now they're doing all these like they're popping up little things, like the steel down in Fort Bliss. So Boost Mobile is sitting on all this spectrum. They're saying, hey, we can compete with these big carriers. They're sitting on all this spectrum. What happens if they get this? What happens if they get this? Man, it could be pretty crazy for Boost, but now you've got Starlink beaming cell phone from space into your pocket. What an interesting time, man.
Speaker 1:Mobile World Congress this year is gonna be kind of interesting. I think there's a lot happening there. So it's weird to watch what's happening. The CBRS auction everything went up. It's like, okay, it's done, but there's always more to the story and we're seeing more of the story come out over time, especially with the way Boost is doing it.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not going to dig into what happened on the Dish Network, echo Star, the Dish Network and DirecTV merger. That was supposed to happen. It didn't is what happened. The merger failed, it didn't go through. But now they're saying, well, it might come back up again, they might do that again. So what a time, what a time. What a time. What a time, golly.
Speaker 1:So lots to talk about today, y'all Sorry. Lots to talk about. Lots of fun stuff happening. I hope I still have your attention. Maybe I don't have your attention. You know what I haven't. It's been a while. Let me check and see.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I get little notifications. They're like Drew, someone's trying to talk to you online and sometimes they're not. But let's see. Let me jump on LinkedIn real quick. That's usually where I get a lot of people trying to chit chat, reacting to the post. Very good, oh look, I posted about me changing jobs and lots of people have given me some serious kudos. So that's always good to see, man. It's always like. It's always neat to see when your friends get excited for you and they came out of the woodwork on this one. It's pretty neat.
Speaker 1:Okay, three, I have three comments somewhere. I don't know how to watch my. I don't know what's up. I gotta learn how to internet a little bit better and then maybe I could. I'll be dming you soon, says luis guzman. Scott mcneil says I wish I could make it. Life has conspired to give me for going. Which frequency is starlink running for backhaul? So for backhaul, that's where they're doing. They were testing out the lasers, the point-to-point lasers, free space optics in space, and I know it's like 1950, I think is what they're doing to communicate to Earth. But I don't know what they're doing on backhaul, not sure. Anyway, okay, let's see what else we got. What's new, what's new, what's new, what's happening right now Edition DirecTV fails for now, but we but we'll see what happens over time.
Speaker 1:Or it says ergan sweetener wasn't sweet enough. Hey, that dude still. You know, I'll say it. I think I've said before he was one of the nicest people I met. Charlie ergan was a lot of fun to hang out with, man. I hung out with him one time in uh for you know, for a hot minute, and he was just a just a really nice guy. It was wisp america and it was this tiny little conference where there were like 300, 200, 300 people there and, dude, all of a sudden, the you know president of dish rolls in just to have conversations and just to hang out with us and that was. That was pretty awesome. I don't know if he still does that or not, but it was pretty. It was pretty neat. Yep, so there was a lot that happened with that merger, or the, the failed merger, but so be it.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about wi-fi. My buddy, matt McPherson, was quoted in a paper talking about 5G and Wi-Fi coexistence and that's pretty neat. I love Matt. Matt, if you're listening, hello, it's good to hear you, good to read what you're saying. Matt McPherson, the wireless CTO at Cisco, is talking about coexistence between 5G and Wi-Fi and that's so great and refreshing to hear, because I really think that this isn't a one-size-fits-all. This isn't a situation where it's going to be one or the other and there's a lot that the two can share, and I don't have to beat that drum. If you're listening to this podcast, you're pretty aware of what's happening in the industry and I don't think that there's anyone who's actually in the wireless industry who's saying it has to be one or the other and if they are, you're listening to the wrong podcast. You should tell all your friends about Waves. Anyway, cisco has a ton of experience in the enterprise Wi-Fi and it's selling a private 5G solution. So I haven't seen the Cisco 5G solution. I haven't seen it. I wish I could see it. Matt, send me one, let's play with it. Is it O-RAN capable? There's a good question for you. I wonder if it is. If it's Cisco, maybe not, but I'm curious if it is.
Speaker 1:So four people on his team literally wrote the book. Oh yeah, here's the plug. Right, I love it. Nice. Wi-fi 7 In-Depth If you haven't dot com, there you go and you can purchase it. Wi-fi 7 In-Depth your guide to mastering Wi-Fi 7, the 802.11 BE protocol and their deployment. This is from Jerome Henry, brian Hart, benita Gupta and Malcolm Smith all fine individuals who know how to write a fantastic book. So if you're looking for the new hotness, you're looking for a stocking stuffer for your Christmas list. This is the one that you want to buy all your wireless nerd friends out there. Of course, free plug for JJ's wireless security book. Make sure you want to buy that one also.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so Matt goes in and he's talking about I lost my deal here. Matt goes in and he's talking about how the two can coexist right and how they can live side by side. He says we take an AirPrize view Whoa, where'd it go? There we go. We take an enterprise view. We know how enterprise manages networks. We know how enterprises apply policy to those networks. We'll come up with a private 5G solution that allows you the same tools. And so this was cool. This was like November 21st, right? So November 21st, matt's talking about how these two things will go back and forth. And then look at this. You ready? Check out this article as it loads.
Speaker 1:November 24th, november 26th, two days later, cisco taps NTT-owned Transatel for instant 5G airtime of global eSIMs. Cisco is to use the France-based virtual network operator Transatel, owned by Japanese outfit NTT, to provide enterprise customers with out-of-the-box 4G and 5G cellular connectivity on its own eSIM solution in 180 countries. It will be embedded initially into Cisco's infrastructure solutions. It said so now you've got a 5G chip that's going in there that works through Transatel and NTT to work native 5G out-of-the-box. Cisco called it a game changer for a variety of enterprise use cases, such as on-demand SD-WAN, fast scaling native 5G out of the box. Cisco called it a game changer for a variety of enterprise use cases, such as on-demand SD-WAN, fast scaling for 5G carriers, edge compute for IoT. So it was really neat to see those two things happen back to back. First you get Matt talking about hey man, they got to coexist, they're going to live together, everything's going to be happy. And then it's all bam, two days later they're talking about implementing that chip.
Speaker 1:Now, while I'm talking about Cisco, let me quickly talk about Mobility Field Day. That happened last week. It happened on Wednesday. Cisco gave a really bang-up presentation. Now I wrote an article about where I think that that component of the industry is called Mower Field Day MFD as well. You can find it on LinkedIn, but it compared what's happening in the whole campus network as a service and the network as a service solutions that are out there To me. I was trying to explain network as a service to someone. I started talking about lawnmowers and then I just wrote a whole article about lawnmowers as a service, mowing as a service. But if you want to talk about lawnmowers themselves, if you want to talk about the hardware and the components, cisco had a really cool presentation.
Speaker 1:It was fun to watch. First off, if you know me, you know that that was my old team, so seeing everybody up on stage was really cool to see. It was great to see those faces and to hear what they were talking about, and they had a couple of enlightening moments at Mobility Field Day and this. This is so I'm riffing right now. Right, this, I don't have any of this written down, so let's see what stood out to me. So let's see here.
Speaker 1:The first thing oh my god, it was curb is cisco ultra reliable broadband, ultra reliable wireless broadband. Curb, the fluid mesh stuff, dude, it's fluid mesh. So the fluid mesh acquisition happened god, I don't even remember when it happened and it was like why is cisco going to buy this mesh product? What are they going to do with it? Is it ever going to come to fruition? Are they going to do anything neat? And then they start busting out these crazy iot devices, these hardened devices that had curb on the back end. Essentially, what curb did is that's two radios, one to basically one to transmit one direction, one transmit another direction so that it could do handoff like on a train. Think about like you're on a train car, train's cruising down the track and one radio is communicating with a pole and as you pass it, the other radio is already locking up that link so that the handoff is seamless up to hundreds of miles per hour. This thing's working. It's just handing off from one to the other to the other, creating that ultra-reliable solution.
Speaker 1:I have my own problems with their naming convention ultra reliable. I had a whole blog about that from a bunch of years back, but that's not the point. The point is is that they have the curb technology, which has always been great, and me, who's done some of these outdoor municipal wireless networks? And with the background in Strix, I don't know who raise your hand. If you remember Strix and the Lego building blocks of access points that we had, it was like well, if you've got these two radios, one transmitting here and second building the link, or maybe you've got one transmitting north and one transmitting south, why not put an AP on there and use that AP for access so I can communicate up with a tower or to my local node beside me and then use Wi-Fi to serve clients underneath? And so I remember at Cisco, when I first started, I was like dude, how cool would it be to get all of that under one roof and that's what they announced. That's one of their announcements is that they're going to bring the CURWB family into management right now on the Catalyst side, on the Catalyst Center side. And then they said obviously quote unquote, rocky in the future, if you will. But it was really neat to see them advancing into that technology space. They've got the products. They just were managed by something completely different. Now the architecture is a little wonky, I'm not going to lie, and they know this. You got to pass the data all the way back to an independent curb device and then from there you can kick it out to a switch. And they explained all that and you can watch the videos at Mobility Field Day. But it was really neat to see that they're taking some of the products that they have and they're finally getting them all in the same management and control plane.
Speaker 1:As Lee Badman famously said, the single glass of pain. I wish I had the applause button for that, god. Speaking of Lee, it was so good to just spend time with him. Man, if you don't know Lee Badman, I'm equally parts happy for you and extremely sad for you. He's someone that you should get to know and he's a hell of a writer. So just look up Wired Knot and you can read some of the stuff that he's written about Wired Knot, the things that he's written in the wireless industry, anyway.
Speaker 1:So they talked about that. They talked about their new wi-fi 7 aps and then they spent a lot of time talking about ultra, ultra wideband, uwb and you know, the last series of aps that they had had fine time measurement integrated into it and it was a deal where, like cisco, spaces is the thing that they use to to look at all of the like, all the spaces, all the environmental things that are happening in the building. And you go to cisco Live and they've got the demo of using the wireless to control the blinds and control the doors and control the lighting and then when you integrate spaces into the APs, then you can start to see where people are and where they spend their time and how much time they spend and dwell time and you can control your whole space using this. But it was always an added license fee. Well, now, with their Wi-Fi 7 APs, that is actually included with their Wi-Fi 7 APs, that is actually included.
Speaker 1:The license for Spaces is included with the purchase of those APs, and to me that's a big old sign of the times, right? I think I posted about this somewhere, about how now people can finally get a chance to realize what that product is and what it does. And playing devil's advocate, is that because nobody bought the licenses? I wonder. But I don't think so. I don't think that was it at all. I think it's a great product and, more than anything, the Spaces team has put so much work into that that I'm so glad that everybody gets to use Spaces now. Who buys a Wi-Fi 7 AP? So I'm totally stoked for the Spaces team.
Speaker 1:But using fine time measurement, that was a part of what the Spaces license would give you with the ability for the APs to find each other. Now, with ultra-wideband, the APs can find themselves better. Now what does that mean, right? What does real-time location services and Wi-Fi mean? It means that not only do your devices understand where they are and they're aware of where they are, but when you start to think about the clients, the client side of this, eric McLaughlin did an incredible presentation last year or this year at Wi-Fi Now, and I think he did it at WBA as well, where he talked about Intel's vision for what spatial computing looks like, or contextually aware computing looks like where you go and you sit down at your desk and, based on where you are in the network, it automatically logs you in because, instead of two-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication, part of that is you being in the presence or your watch and your phone being in the same presence as your laptop and understanding that that's something that needs to happen for some type of security authentication. So when you think about what ultra-wideband brings to this, and then BLE 6 as well, and you think about how all these phones have the U2 chipset in them now that allows for ultra-wideband native functionality on its own chip. It's what they use for AirPods and AirTags. It's what they use to do the little trilateration, triangulation stuff.
Speaker 1:If you think about what the implications of contextually aware computing can mean in this day and age and what that can mean five years down the road with being able to identify where compute resources are located and how to use those resources in the time that those resources are needed, this goes back to man, the book that's sitting on my shelf by Matt Ball. Matthew Ball has a book called the Metaverse and it's incredible to think about and I want to touch on it, because he talks about spatial computing in the metaverse not spatial computing, but contextually aware computing in that book, where it's like if I'm sitting in this office that I'm in right now right, and I need a whole bunch of resources to locally run some type of AI generation, then why not use all of the resources that are in this office? I'm cleaning it out right now. There's a bunch of junk laying around, but from the stuff that's plugged in, I've got an Alexa device, I've got a ham radio, I've got two laptops, I've got a computer, I've got my phone, I've got my watch, I've got all these other devices that are plugged in that have compute power that's available. Why not use all of this compute power here right now to do what I need to do quicker, just based on where I am? And if I'm close to the bathroom or if I'm close to the hallway and there's spatial, there's compute that's available there then why not leverage that to give me as much compute power as I need where I need it, when I need it, and then, when I walk away, go into energy saving mode, shut that stuff down. I don't need to use the compute. Decrease my light bill decrease. Decrease my light bill, decrease the heat that's coming off these devices as soon as I walk out the door. Ultra-wideband gets us down into that centimeter accuracy, right Into inch and centimeter accuracy of where devices are and where people are and, by virtue of that, where compute needs to happen. So if you think about that, if you think about what that means that's why I got so excited about it it's like, oh, there's a UWB chip inside the Wi-Fi 7 AP Next we're going to talk about. I was like, well, hold on, there's so much more to the story when it comes to real-time location services and contextually aware compute that UWB is going to enable, and so kudos to the team for sticking that in the access points. I think that that's really neat and I'm glad that there's an emphasis on it.
Speaker 1:And when you talk about the power to visualize and harness all that and you look at the Spaces product, cisco's got a pretty cool solution for all those things that are going on there. They talked about that. They talked about their AI architecture, their AI RM. They talked about what they can do in the cloud. To take troubleshooting a step further, minsei Kim, one of my favorite people at Cisco, minsei talked about, he even tweeted. He talked about taking Radius and getting or not Radius. Taking Syslog and dumping Syslog. And this is like the Syslog of the future, where you don't actually have to look at the log file. You can use their product to go through and analyze everything that's going on to get you the results that you need about the network that you're working on. And then the next step is that automation component.
Speaker 1:The other presenter at Mobility Field and I appreciate y'all listening to me if you're still listening to me, it's a lot of fun 45 minutes in and I can't shut up. It's been a fun week, man. Then you talk about Nile, right, and this is where I talked about the lawnmower thing. You know I've covered Meter in the past and we were out at the Meter event and we knew Nile was coming up. And if you go back and look at the history of Nile and how it came about, it's a fun journey to watch. And Suresh was there and so cool to have him as a presenter, by the way so dope. We could have talked for hours and hours and hours about what they're doing and I think it's really neat.
Speaker 1:But they represent one extreme right, in my opinion, and the extreme that they represent isn't a bad thing, and I think that a lot of what's happening with Nile and with Meter and Campus Network as a Service and Network as a Service, it all goes to the same thing that I'm thinking to the reason I jumped on the team that I did, as I'm looking at everything it's going, you know, are we finally at a place where people are willing to and comfortable enough to pay for a solution that is going to work the way that they want it to work and then that's it? They don't care about channel size, they don't care about channel width, they don't care about frequency, none of that stuff. The people like you guys that are listening to this y'all you know gals and guys that are listening to this y'all are the ones who appreciate the minutia when it comes to it. Y'all are the ones who appreciate the minutia when it comes to it. But a lot of that stuff are things that can be automatically delegated, changed, resource-conscious, resource-aware, can be manipulated and modified by a system, by a radio, by an orchestration server, whatever it is, to facilitate a better connection. So if we can do that and we can demonstrate that that works well, are we at a point where things like Campus Network as a Service is actually viable, and one of my favorite questions that I asked all my questions are my favorite questions.
Speaker 1:Lee had some good questions too, though, and Scott I love listening to McDermott ask his questions too. It was always fun, but the thing that I asked Suresh was like, what's stopping now from taking over the world? What's holding this back? What's holding Campus Network as a service back? And the answer was blunt. It was people, right, it was people who just don't want to change the way that they do things, don't want to change the way that they do things, and that kicked off this whole conversation about how, you know, are we at that point in our careers where we're comfortable letting go? We're comfortable letting go of the reins and letting the quote, unquote the computer do all the work for us? And if we are, what does that outcome look like for us in the next couple of years? What are we going to spend our time doing?
Speaker 1:And I get it, it's hard to let go, and I use the self-driving car analogy. I remember when I first sat down in a Tesla and I put on full self-driving, I was so scared I would keep my hands right near the wheel just in case, like, oh God, I hope it doesn't wreck. You know what I mean. And then two weeks ago, three weeks ago I got in a car that was doing full self-driving from here to Corpus Christi, three hours away, and it drove the whole way and it was comfortable and it was convenient and it worked the way that it was supposed to. And, yeah, there's little things. It would get kind of herky-jerky going around a corner in a parking lot or whatever. There's little things. But we're at this point now where it's gotten so much better than it was before.
Speaker 1:Are we there with networking yet? Are we at a point where people are willing to say, hey, you know what, set it and forget it? Almost right, set it up and let it do its thing, and if it's not broken then we don't need to worry about it. Let's focus on the big things. Have we finally turned the corner on spending more time working on devices to make sure that they work and then doing the troubleshooting, where we have a lot of troubleshooting that goes into it? Are we finally at a point where it's like set it up and spend a little amount of time only troubleshooting the really, really tough stuff, which, again, the little tough things are the ones that take up all the time. Right, it's those snowflakes, they're all snowflakes. As Suresh said, there's all these little snowflakes on networks or of networks that consume all of our time and our energy. But are we at a point where we can get rid of the mundane tasks and get rid of that stuff? And I think that that's when you talk about the future of networking.
Speaker 1:Niall again represented to me. They represent that far side of it where it's like here's the option where you just cut a check and everything works the way it's supposed to. Now there was some back and forth about if that's viable or not, but at the end of the day, we're getting there because there's people pushing the envelope. Right, I just came to work at a company that I take stuff out of a box and I plug it in and I haven't deployed it yet in my house. Right, honestly, because I want my wife to do it. My wife is one of the most brilliant people that I know and she has very little patience for technology. It's just supposed to work. So I want her to deploy it so I can get her opinion right. So are we at a place where you can just take stuff out of the box and deploy it and then go okay, it's working, it's great, walk away, don't have to worry about it. That's the promise, right? That quality of experience from a deployment and administration side, not just the user side, but the experience of being able to set up networks and walk away from them. I think that's where I look at Nile and Nile is the assistant in that, they're the hand holder, in that where they say, yeah, you can do that and we've got your back should something happen. I think it's cool. And then the whole meter conversation, right, and then the whole meter conversation, right. So, anyway, that was Mobility Field Day in a nutshell. Those are my feelings on what was happening there.
Speaker 1:One of the things I touched on when I was talking about that is something that came up in let me see if I can find it. There was an article that was talking about Broadcom and Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 8. So the last thing that I wanted to cover on here is this is an article that was published on let's see by Broadcom and RCR News. Sponsored Drew's reading. Sponsored messages.
Speaker 1:Broadcom demonstrated the power of 320 megahertz channels live last May at the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Summit in Geneva. Now the reason I thought that this was fascinating and I asked Eric from Intel, who's quoted in here. I reached out to him on LinkedIn, so if you know Eric, say hey, you should totally talk to Drew. I want 15, 20 minutes of his time because he's quoted in here talking about the number of devices that are supporting 320 megahertz. When it comes to personal computing devices, such as notebooks, desktops and tablets, intel recently found that, of the 269 models on the market, 87% support 320 megahertz, while just 13% only support 160. The company further reported that Wi-Fi 7 has ramped 2.3 times faster than Wi-Fi 6C one year after the Wi-Fi Alliance certification. And so Eric's in here talking about support for 360 megahertz in the 6 gigahertz band.
Speaker 1:Man, you know we still fight for 20 and 40 megahertz, right? But 320, is 320 going to be the norm? And it looks like, if there's support there, is this what's going to ship out of the box? And for residential? You know, I don't know. I got to go look at the specs of what Eero's doing, right? I don't know. Is it out of the box 320 on Wi-Fi 7? I don't know how it turned on yet, don't tell my boss. But is it 320 out of the box? And if so, cool, let's see it work. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But in enterprise, is that really the deal? Are we going to see enterprise access points that come out of the box at 320 megahertz? Because that just gives me the heebie-jeebies man. It just seems like that's nuts, because in a presentation that Cisco did when we were talking about this at Mobility Field Day, this is just like going back to 802.11. Even with all the magical spectrum that's out there now you're down to three channels. You've got six channels to choose from, three usable channels and 320 megahertz. So I'm curious if anyone's deploying 320 megahertz channels. I'm going to turn it on, I'm going to see how well it works and, again, I'm in an enclosed environment here in my house, so not a big deal, but I'm curious as to what 320 megahertz channels look like in the enterprise. That was a lot, and if you stayed the whole time, I appreciate you. Anyway, that's what I got going on, man, lots on my mind and lots happening. I hope that you all are having as wonderful of a year as I am.
Speaker 1:If you want to talk about what I'm doing at Eero and you want to get hands-on with some of the gear. You want to understand a little bit more about Eero, please let me know, because I'm truly excited about it. I've got a fun background in mesh networking and this is the the next iteration of that and it's really neat to see. So if you have any questions about what I'm doing, reach out. Otherwise, yeah, man, reinvent's coming up next week and then I might be out in the Bay Area in second week in December. So if I'm out there in San Francisco and you want to say hi or grab a drink, I'll post something online and we can go grab a coffee or a beer or something. And otherwise, if you're going to be at CES, drop me a line. I'll meet you guys out at CES and we'll go have a grand old time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's great to talk to all you. I hope you enjoyed the interview last week with Mario from Helium. That's got some really neat stuff that's happening there. If you want to learn a little bit about anything else and you have someone you want me to interview, please drop me a message or do an introduction. If you think there's someone good that you want to hear on the show, I'll be happy to talk to them. I'm loving learning as much as I am, so it's really cool. Anyway, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're in the States, happy Thanksgiving. If you're not in the States, happy Thanksgiving from all of us here in the States, but I hope you all have a tremendous week this week. Thanks for listening to the Waves Podcast. We're still getting tons of downloads and I really, really do appreciate them. My wife still owes me a trip to Mexico that she has not allowed me to cash in on yet, so maybe someday, honey, if you're listening, you'll follow through with your promise to take me to Mexico if I get more than 1,000 subs on YouTube, which I do have like 1,000 and a half 1,600, something like that. So if you like what you see, drop me a message. If you don't like what you see, drop me a message. Also, I'd rather hear the bad than the good. No-transcript.
