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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Wireless Revolution 2024: Unraveling Wi-Fi 7, Private Networks, Industry Shifts & A Glimpse into 2025 with AI and IoT Marvels
Ready to witness the wireless revolution of 2024? Join me, Drew Lentz, as I navigate through a year brimming with technological breakthroughs and pivotal industry shifts. You'll uncover how CBRS has transformed into a linchpin for full-stack solutions and the unstoppable rise of private wireless networks. This year, the tech world was buzzing with excitement at events like CES and the National Retail Federation, where IoT marvels and wireless convergence stole the spotlight. Plus, learn how AI is not just a buzzword; it's a game-changer, with giants like Cisco and Meter redefining the wireless game.
Wi-Fi 7 is not just a new number—it's a game-changer, revolutionizing both consumer and enterprise spheres. Talent migration due to industry layoffs has reshaped the workforce landscape, bringing fresh perspectives and opportunities. My personal experiences at events like Mobility Field Day and B-Sides underscored the ever-pressing need for wireless security and innovation. I also share exciting technological feats like Morse Micro's 80211AH Halo technology and my own explorations with EdgeCore equipment, showcasing the dynamic advancements within our field.
Looking ahead to 2025, there's so much to be optimistic about. Explore the promising future of CBRS and private cellular networks, coupled with neutral host solutions like Signal Roam and OpenRoaming. Wi-Fi's relevance endures, seamlessly coexisting with emerging technologies like network-in-a-box solutions and low Earth orbit satellite systems. As I reflect on my journey, including a transition to Amazon's Eero team, the industry's evolution becomes even more vivid. With personal growth and professional achievements, the wireless landscape continues to offer thrilling possibilities for the future.
Well, hello everybody, good afternoon. It's about four o'clock central time in Texas and it is New Year's. It is the day before the end of 2024, the beginning of 2025. So happy early New Year to everybody. I hope it was a wonderful year.
Speaker 1:It was a bit of a different year, I think, for some people. There were some crazy things that happened to a lot of people and I wanted to just jump on real quick and do a recap. I wanted to look back at 2024 and see what was happening, what was going on, what it meant to you, what it meant to me, what it meant to everybody. So, once again, I'm Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and this is your 2024 recap. What I did was a little bit different. I went back through all of my show notes to see what I talked about throughout the year. I looked at some of the news stories that were out there. I went back on my Twitter account. I guess in 2025, we're just going to call it X. Okay, I'm just going to move forward. I don't think they're going to change the name back to Twitter, so henceforth. I never wanted to change it, but what are you going to do? So let's just go ahead and start calling it X in 2025. So I went back, I looked through my X account, I looked through LinkedIn, I listened to a bunch of different podcasts to see what was going on and what were the stories that stood out. I fed that all in the chat GPT, and I said give me some show notes. So let's see what happens, let's go with that. You know, I made my own right. I made my own notes because a lot of stuff happened this year and let's I mean, let's start there.
Speaker 1:January, almost exactly a year ago, things were let's see, ces was coming up, national Retail Federation, nrf, was coming up again. The same two trade shows happen every year, so that was pretty cool. And then, shortly after that, the announcements from cisco with the first round of layoffs came through, and then some more layoffs came through after that, and so this was an interesting time. You know, we I had hit the ground running doing some great stuff on on the cisco team and was excited about nrf. We had some a really good showing there. I got to go out and support my buddies at comcast business and help them out. There were Wi-Fi stands aplenty to be had downstairs at the restaurant innovation area and some of the things that came out of that show were neat. I remember talking to the team at let's Chat, which now is part of I guess they're more integrated with Comcast Business where you can do live language translations. That was so cool, man, not just being able to pull up to a menu board and talk in one language and have it answer you in your own language, but also you could take an order in a language and it would translate it to the language that the people in the kitchen needed to hear. That was pretty neat. It was neat to see that technology come about.
Speaker 1:January last year also gave us a chance to go to CES, and CES is always it's always fun. I love CES. I always enjoy CES. It's such a good show, it's such a great chance to get out and see everything. I think, if I go back and I try to remember what I saw at CES last year, oh man, there was just. There was so much that was there. I talked to the team at Haiku Box. That was really cool, got to learn about their little box. I talked to Six Sigma and Six Fab, another company out there. I talked to a lot of IoT people, so there were some themes that really started to set in at NRF last year and at CES. And if I think back also on June RF last year and at CES, and if I think back also on June well, not even June, sorry, january if I think back overall, I think there were some key themes that stood out to me across 2024. And I've got them written down here. Let's go through these.
Speaker 1:So first, wireless convergence. That was, you know, we've been talking about it for a long time seeing a lot of different devices that support multiple protocols, that support multiple technologies in one, and I think that this was a really good year for that. I think Meter making the announcement about integrating CBRS into their full stack and making it a one-stop solution. That was really a very cool sign of the times. You know, at Mobility Field Day this year we saw the little icon that had been there before on the Juniper dashboard with Marvis where it said private wireless. And so this year private wireless really was a core topic and the way that it merged into wireless convergence I think was really neat. Cbrs was doing a lot of really good things happening. Cbrs that's one of my notes here.
Speaker 1:I got to spend some time with the team at Raman and had just a great time with them playing with their product this year and giving them some feedback and getting up to speed on what they were doing. There were some announcements from them announcements from Khajiit, announcements from Solona on the private 4G and 5G side, and so now you're seeing this marketplace where it's not just about the Wi-Fi, it's about the Wi-Fi and it's about the 4G, 5g story, it's about the IoT story, it's about the Halo story. Announcements about Halo came out this year as well. Let's see there were so many great things and underlying a lot of it was AI. This was a good year for AI to be front and center a lot of the conversations when it came to wireless. So that was really neat to see as well, whether it was with Cisco doing what they're doing on the back end, whether it was with Meter doing what they're doing on the back end with their technology, whether it's Marvis. And can't ignore the acquisition the HPE Juniper acquisition. There were some good acquisitions this year HPE Juniper. We also had the partnership with NetAlly and Hamina. We had the Oseum and MetaGeek acquisition. That was pretty cool. There were some good things that happened this year a little bit of convergence in the wireless space not just of the wireless but in the wireless space but a lot of that revolving around those magic letters, ai and seeing AI work and do things was really cool. So I think that was part of the key themes.
Speaker 1:Industry shakeups, mergers, layoffs, acquisitions yeah man, lots of layoffs, lots of good talent on the street right now and lots of good talent got moved around. Really neat to see people in the last. I feel like in the last month a lot of jobs started to land. It was really good to see people. I feel like in the last month, a lot of jobs started to land. It was really good to see people becoming part of teams that they wanted to be a part of. That was really neat.
Speaker 1:Our big events last year we had obviously Mobility Field Day to me stood out. We had MFD 11 and 12, and that was pretty cool. I love those shows. I love the Tech Field Day shows and MFD was really good. This year Got to see my buddies you know Mark, commenting on LinkedIn. It's great to see you. You know we had WLPC. You know, can't go wrong with WLPC. I'm still sad that I missed Prague, but that's okay. Prague was really great, so it makes me look forward to WLPC in February, you know, next month, I guess. After tomorrow it'll be next month, WLPC 2025.
Speaker 1:I got to present at B-Sides again. I don't know if anybody is familiar with B-Sides, I don't even know if I talked about that on the podcast, but I've been a strong supporter of our local B-Sides community, b-sides RGV here in the Rio Grande Valley, and I got to present again and show off all kinds of tools and basically all the bad things that can happen with wireless and a little bit of how to protect yourself against it, but more about showing off. Hey, here's the things that you might not be thinking about. Actually, I just talked about that last week on the podcast, but that was really fun to talk to a team of security-oriented or security-minded people about what they're doing with wireless and how it's going to affect their day-to-day lives. I think that that's something that we, as wireless professionals, need to be thinking more and more about as time goes on. Yeah, I know I missed you in Prague too, man, but overall I think it was a great year for enterprise. I think consumer had a really good year, also One of the key themes that kept coming out when I would look up articles about what was going on in 2024, wi-fi 7.
Speaker 1:I mean, wi-fi 7 really came out. This was the year right where Wi-Fi 7 jumped out and and started to be introduced in consumer products a year ago at CES. And now there's more consumer products that have it, more enterprise products that have it. Lots of Wi-Fi 7 in 2024. So that's very cool. If 2023 was the year of 6 gig, then definitely 2024 was the year of Wi-Fi 7. So let's go back. Let's see Key events and innovations.
Speaker 1:This is according to the chat GPTs, after I loaded it with data January, a Morse Micro's 80211AH Halo demo with a two kilometer range. Now I put that in there specifically because Morse Micro has already said that they're going to make some really good announcements at CES, so that's going to be really great to hear. I want to see what's happened a year since the two kilometer test that they put out there. As I talk about Wi-Fi Halo, I've got the AP sitting right in front of me from EdgeCore, the E112, right, I've got the Halo antenna on it. Having some registration issues with it on the cloud service. That's okay. Firas already posted up a deal on LinkedIn. If you haven't seen that. Go follow Firas F-I-R-A-S and you can see some of the stuff that he's done with this exact equipment. So I'm excited to see how my test environment and test procedures stack up against it. This will be pretty neat.
Speaker 1:That happened in May. The Meters AI tool command entered the scene. That was really neat. I got the chance to interview the team on the podcast and get to talk about it and what it was doing and what it meant for the industry as a whole, and then that was followed with the MeterUp event. That was such a pivotal moment for me, I think in 2024, was seeing the way that they had implemented AI in a really, really usable fashion and how Meter had done this in a way that really redefines the way that networking is taking place at an enterprise level. So very cool to see that. Shouts out to Neil and Sunil and the whole team over there my Sarahs Hi Sarahs, I miss the Sarahs. Great, great team, great product, great launch, cool year 2024 for Meter. That happened in May. And then with Mobility, field Day, private Cellular took a leap with Raman and Khajiit. In October, ocm acquired MetaGeek. Netally and Humina partnered up for the first time. You get these two really cool partnerships.
Speaker 1:I think the tools scene has had a lot. It's had a really good year in 2024, whether it's Hamina and Oseum or Hamina and NetAlly, or NetAlly just doing incredible things. I love NetAlly. It's such a great company with such a vast amount of tools. And then you had CEDOS, who made their appearance. I feel like it was two years ago it may have only been a year ago that they showed up at WLPC. And then now their wave spectrum analyzer is out. They've made some incredible leaps and bounds with their software in the cloud. And then you've got Hamina, just constantly pushing and pushing and pushing. And we saw that at Mobility Field Day 11. And then again we saw it at 12, where they're bringing live data from the network into their planning tool. So it's no longer just a planning tool, it's an observation tool, a troubleshooting tool, and it's finding that single source of truth for the way that your network should operate and the way that your network does operate, and using data to build those models. Just an incredible year for tooling in the Wi-Fi space. Very neat. And Eronia, you know, with their spectrum analyzer. They've just continued to make incredible equipment that's out there. I really want to get my hands on it. That's one of my 2025 goals is to get the Eronia spectrum analyzer in my hands. Really neat to see that.
Speaker 1:Back on Event Highlights Mobility Field Day 11 and 12, one of my key takeaways there was that we saw vendors who came in at MFD 10 and then came back in 11 and then came back in 12, saying this is where we were, this is what we said we were going to do, this is what we did, this is where we are, this is where we're going, and then they would follow that up with this is what we said we were going to do. Here we are the same thing. What a very cool story to tell for those vendors that have been part of Mobility Field Day over and over again, for them to be able to come back and say this is what we promised, this is what we delivered. Well, nobody really promises, but this is what they said they were going to do and this is what they aimed for and this is what they did. And we saw that from.
Speaker 1:One of the cool groups that showed up was Ubiquity. Seeing them at MFD11 was really, really cool and being able to be a part of that audience was incredible. And have that feedback with Ubiquity, who just normally doesn't, who isn't out there with everyone around, and to have them come out and take the feedback and then go and make product. I mean, looking back at it now, the feedback that we gave them at MFD11 was a lot of that product. You know they teased out different SKUs I think he said 12 different SKUs they were going to introduce in the wireless space and having them actually follow through and put in the things that we asked for and put in the things that the community really wanted was really cool. It showed a lot from Ubiquity. It was neat to see that.
Speaker 1:And I think it wasn't just them though. I mean, in talking to cisco and in talking to to salona, they, they did a lot of the same thing. Salona making that neutral host announcement, cbrs, was really great at mfd. But I, you know, I gotta say if there's one person that I really got to give a shout out to at mobility field day, at both of them, that I went to suresh man. You know, having one of the co-founders of Nile just take candid questions and just give absolute, just bluntly candid responses was so awesome. It was just really cool. And again, product aside, just being able to have a conversation with a founder and have them just answer honestly was great. Not that anyone really doesn't, it's just it's so rare to get the founder standing on stage in front of you. Bob Friday's always been real good about being there and being a part of it, you know, and having the people that are the brains behind all of it and talking about the reasons that they did it and talking about why they're doing it Very cool. So, suresh and Niall, thank you for your candid responses there. Very cool. So, suresh and Niall, thank you for your candid responses there. Very, very neat.
Speaker 1:We had Wi-Fi Now in Sarasota and I got to say that was a very cool event. Man. The Wi-Fi Now, wi-fi Global Congress was there and it was really cool to be out in Sarasota of all places, it was so green, but having the conversations there with everyone in the industry and understanding where we were and what was going on and listening People were talking about AI sensing and about using not AI sensing, ap sensing, wi-fi sensing, so using access points and using the chipsets and the access points to be able to have those work as radar almost was really neat, but then we didn't really see anything, right, so we heard about that but then really nothing. Nothing really happened after that, no big announcements in that space. So that was a little bit interesting. But Wi-Fi Now in Sarasota was great. It was a great hotel, it was a great space. I would look forward to going back to that. And then later on in Dallas we had the WBA event, the Wireless Broadband Alliance event. So a lot of the same speakers that were there. But the WBA event had more of a focus on open roaming and the state of open roaming and where it is and where it could go, and it was great to see that grow in 2024. Open roaming has come a long way, so that was pretty neat.
Speaker 1:In the consumer side a couple of things happened. One I think it was in March I don't have my timeline open, sorry Was it March? Let's open up the magic timeline here. March the definition of broadband changed to 100, down 20 up by the FCC. It was official and that was really good to see. Now it's up to the equipment manufacturers in the industry to be able to produce equipment that can get that speed and we saw that this year. We saw the Toronto equipment that was out there doing an incredible just breakneck speeds. Right A gig of it, 900 meg per second a gig. I got to go to a really cool roadshow. I got to go out and get underneath the tower, ride around on a bus and get hands-on without equipment. That was really great to see. Wi-fi 7 again took off. Starlink Mini launched, which was in and of itself, huge. I think today's last day if you're a Starlink subscriber. The Starlink Mini is $399 if you want to go purchase one, I do believe today's the last day for that. But Starlink Mini launching was really cool.
Speaker 1:There's so much satellite news this year, so much happening in the sat space and I don't I don't expect that to slow down as more providers come out, as more technology comes out. It'll be a great year for satellite moving into 2025, especially, you know, this year. One of the things that happens the fcc granted the ability for for starlink to be mobile carrier so that they can offer sat to satellite to cell or satellite to handheld coverage direct from space to your cell phone it's not even a cell phone at that point your mobile device from satellite to mobile. That was pretty nuts to see the convergence thing. I keep going back in that in my head. It was interesting to see that and I feel like I use the word interesting a lot, but it was fascinating for me to see those that come together.
Speaker 1:What else do we have that came in in 2024? Professional milestones oh yeah, signal Roam. I got to launch the Signal Roam product. That was really neat. We did that this year, working off of the technology of the American bandwidth that's put together and launching that in a number of different locations here in the state of Texas and well, actually all across the US. The MeterUp event was really great. In September I got to go out to Alaska for 10 days I want to say I think it was 10 days, eight days, something like that and go do some engineering and site survey and that resulted in a really cool project. So I'm excited about the future of that. If you're ever in the port of Juneau pretty soon, your Wi-Fi is going to be working spectacularly as well as your cell signal right now is a little funky there, but you're going to have killer Wi-Fi coming up in Juneau here pretty soon based on the work that we were able to do and it was great to just be out collecting data and getting my hands dirty.
Speaker 1:Personally, I think it was a different kind of year for me. After the layoff announcement and after I found out that I had been affected by it, I just chilled, man. I just chilled and I got to choose the projects that I wanted to be a part of. I got to do some really cool stuff. I helped build a homecoming float. I got to volunteer at my kid's school. I got to volunteer at my daughter's school. I really started to work on my photography, which is now showing all these really awesome side benefits of stuff. If you ever see me now, you're probably going to see my camera in my hand, which is something I used to do all the time. So getting back to that has been really great. I got to experience that side of personal growth.
Speaker 1:But my wife just for what it's worth I don't really talk family stuff on here too much, but my wife is just killing it at her job. She's so good at what she does and I'm so proud of her and I got to sit back and watch her grow this year and that was really really neat. I had this strange moment where I dropped her off at the airport and she got out of the car with her luggage and I said okay, honey, I'm going to take the kid to school and I've got this and I'm going to do this and I'll do that and do that and have a. That's what she's used to doing is dropping me off at the airport and going and handling the day-to-day stuff. And I got to spend basically a year doing that and it was really refreshing and cool. I got to play with tech, I got to work on the podcast, I got to do all these wonderful things.
Speaker 1:But now, diving back into it, it was very refreshing and it's given me a much bigger and greater appreciation for the work that we do on the wireless side and how much it just really affects our day-to-day lives. And I think a lot of that went into my decision to move to the Amazon team, to the Aero team at Amazon. It's so great because these are things that affect us every single day. I mean, the access point sitting right behind me is the working access point that I'm connected to on this. Well, okay, I'm on ethernet on this computer, but you know what I mean. Like my phone and all my devices are connected to that and being able to get closer to home with wireless. I think that was one of my pushes into making the decision to move over here. So many great things y'all. So many great things are gonna be happening in 2025. Eero has proven to be such a cool team. It's only been almost two months but some great things happening, not just with NRF coming up and CES coming up, but after that y'all are going to see, my Instagram is going to go nuts. I'm going to have some fun out working on projects. So professionally and personally, it was a really cool year for me. I hope it was a really cool year for you as well.
Speaker 1:I saw a lot of movement in the industry. A lot of people that I didn't think would get cut got cut and a lot of people that I thought would get cut didn't get cut. There's lots of reorg happening, but I still you know, I've said this, I guess, quietly with people around, friends and whatnot and it's just such a weird time I feel like in the industry, where there's just confusion. Big Enterprise has this confusion going on, man, and I know I'm not the only one who feels it. It's like you know, there's innovation happening, right, and there's stuff that's happening with new technology and there's stuff that's happening with new access points, and we get that, but organizationally it seems like it seems kind of stale. And I say that with being completely objective here, right, it's just really weird to watch all these good ideas and all this stuff not making you know, bubbling out to where it needs to be and getting in the hands of people that use it, and then you turn around and you wonder why? And you look at the organizations that are producing the hardware and producing the software and it's, you know, it's been like kind of hazy and then out flies Meter going. Hey, we're going to do all this crazy stuff and it was great to see. But I think we're in for some really cool times because as things start to settle the HP Juniper acquisition, the stuff that's going on with Cisco, meraki, the stuff that's going on with all the different groups that are starting to play in the space it's going to be a different playing field.
Speaker 1:I feel like going into 2025, 2026 and beyond, where it's like we're getting a facelift. Maybe it's just me, right. Maybe it's just me because I was out, because I was hanging out and my mind was elsewhere. I was picking up kids and DJing, working on photography. But I look at the industry now and it doesn't look like the same industry that it did a couple of years ago, and that's a good thing. I know that there are a lot of shakeups, I know a lot of people were affected by that and I know a lot of people still haven't recovered from that and haven't landed.
Speaker 1:But I really feel like the wireless space is in a different. It's in a different season than it has been, and I'm excited for what I'm anticipating is going to happen. I don't know what the right way to say that is, but whatever you get the point, there's a lot of really cool stuff happening and it's neat, and I think we're going to see some of that coming up at WLPC. We're going to start to see people talking about how it's all affected it, because WLPC again and I harp on it I mean at this point you would think that I'm like you know, like I make money off of them or something which I don't. Nor would I want to Listen. If you need your event produced, call Matthew Castile. He's the guy who organizes WLPC for Keith. He does a bang-up job putting the whole thing together. He's your guy if you want to put something together like that. But what it is to me and what excites me about it is not just being able to see my friends and hang out, but it's such a good touchpoint for everybody in the industry to really understand what's happening and are the things that I'm feeling about the industry, are other people feeling them as well? And I think that that's one of those things that happens only when you get all of us together, only in an environment where we feel like we can talk and there's vendors there as well but it's not a vendor's conference where you have to use our product and here's all the benefit of using our product and here's the ecosystem if you use our product. It's not that, it's hey, we're just a bunch of nerds hanging out talking, and I really want to see what other people's thoughts of 2024 were, because to me, it was a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Now. Predictions and goals going into 2025, this is the segment that I'm supposed to talk about. According to ChatGPT, it's the next one and it says anticipate advancements in AI-driven networking yeah, no shit. You think Obviously that's going to continue to happen. Been networking yeah, no shit. If you think Obviously that's going to continue to happen.
Speaker 1:Growth of CBRS and private cellular my gut tells me that it's going to grow, but at what rate, I don't know. It just feels like it would have ramped by now. It feels like it really would have started to just take off. I'm not trying to discount it and say that CBRS and private cellular isn't going to grow in 2025. I'm sure it will. I just don't know what that ramp looks like. I mean, is it straight up? What's the degree of growth here? Because I love the neutral host stuff. You all know that. I mean I love what we did with Signal Roam, I love what's happening with Passpoint, I love what's happening with OpenRoaming. I love that neutral hosts is being that there's CBS providers, cbrs providers that are using neutral hosts. I love that. That's really starting to take off. I think it's cool. I think it's going in the right direction, but I don't know at what rate.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's going to replace Wi-Fi. I don't think anything's going to replace Wi-Fi. I think Wi-Fi is still here to stay. It has been here to stay. The whole conversation of 5g versus wi-fi is just clickbait in 2024 at this point. I mean, so many people wrote so many articles that said the exact same freaking thing. Who's gonna replace wi-fi? No, dude, it's not. And now it's not even a conversation. You know it's. It's yeah, okay, it's just another cellular technology. Now halo is it going to replace wi-fi? No, because he uses wi-fi. But is there anything that's going to come in and be a contender against Wi-Fi? No, and I think that that's a ridiculous way to look at the industry.
Speaker 1:I think that Wi-Fi does what it's supposed to do. I think that 5G does what it's supposed to do. I'm loving seeing the 4G and 5G network in a box. Things pop up on my LinkedIn feed where people have figured out that you can just throw all this stuff in a single case and turn it on. I think that's pretty neat. I think we'll hopefully see more of that ability to just pop up a network overnight very quickly and easily using low Earth orbiting satellite systems like Starlink or any of the other contenders out there. I think that's really. It's a good space to be in so much. It feels like there's so much to talk about in 2024. And, like I said, I tried to write it all down, but when I stop and think about it it can be condensed pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Usf USAC deemed unconstitutional. That was crazy in July and we still haven't figured out what's going to happen with that. There's speculation that that actually might all go away, which I don't even want to get into. How terrifying that is for some of the bigger equipment manufacturers and for the you know, school kids and children and and school districts. God, I can't even imagine what it'd be like to, just one you know, overnight lose your budget for technology. That's pretty nuts. Cisco locationing UWB and FTM Suresh killing it. Yeah, these are my notes.
Speaker 1:Aws reInvent I had a good time at reInvent. I like that. That's just a show I did In November. I made my announcement that was come over to Eero. That was cool. And then here we are in December the end of December kind of a down month I got to deploy a Wi-Fi network up in a community in Northern California. That was pretty awesome. I got to see the stuff. I've got a whole garage lab going. Right now my garage is filthy so I won't post photos, but as soon as I clean up a little bit I'll take some pretty photos and post them. I have a whole Eero lab happening in my garage. For the last week I've just been building it and having a blast at night 10 o'clock at night, jamming out to Daft Punk and teaching my eight-year-old how to rack equipment. That's what I did for the last couple of days. It was awesome, man, just a fun time.
Speaker 1:But I think 2025 is going. I think we're going to start to see the industry changing in 2025. I feel like 2024 was a year that needed to happen, to break some stuff and to make people feel uncomfortable and put people in a comfortable situation so that there could be some interesting growth in 2025. I think that's what we're going to see. 2025 is going to start to redefine the expectations of what we understand in wireless. I feel, not just from a Wi-Fi perspective, but in a wireless perspective. Overall, there's a lot of movement that's happening and it's great to see, and people's expectations of Wi-Fi are just that it works really, really fast and very quickly anytime they need it, and it's just a given. It was a given coming into this year and it's going to be a given coming into 2025. But at lightning fast speeds with very minimal latency, to be able to do all the things that people want to do. And those things we don't even know what they are yet.
Speaker 1:Right, if you go back a year, there was a rumor that Apple was going to have their vr headset and then they busted their headset out and then it flopped. You know, not a lot of people bought it. I'm sure it was awesome, but I'm a dude, I'm a big ass nerd and I didn't even buy one. That's too rich for my blood man I'm. That's a lot of money right there. And vr just kind of, you know, like that's what it did this year. It's kind of fell apart this year. Not a lot happening. Wow.
Speaker 1:Mark just commented on LinkedIn. He says losing budget is scary. I might get out of education tech if I can't afford to buy the gear needed to support the schools. Yeah, man, but that sucks, right, and I get it. But man, that sucks for the schools. And in Texas we have a whole other thing going on with school vouchers and all this stuff. So I don't even know what that's going to look like. I don't know what that's going to look like coming into 2025.
Speaker 1:And then there's all the again not political, but there's the new administration stuff coming in. And what does that mean for broadband? I mean, I'm not the guy that follows what's happening at the FCC. Go look at broadband breakfast. That's the other Drew, if you just type in broadband breakfast and I'm sure he calls me the other Drew also. It's broadbandbreakfastcom. That is a website. Look, let me see if I can share my screen here. Is this going to work or is it going to fall apart? No, it's going to fall apart. Good job, drew. Broadband breakfast is great at this and Drew over there does a phenomenal job covering the politics behind broadband. And if you want to learn more about it, just go follow that.
Speaker 1:If I can give you a follow for 2025, go follow broadbandbreakfastcom. Go, keep up with what they're doing. They have a lot of information. They stream weekly on Wednesdays at noon. They have a lot of information. They stream weekly on wednesdays at noon and they talk all about the fcc and about regulation and policy and all that. And they're just a really great choice for it, because there's so much happening that with the new administration coming in, we'll see what's doge gonna mean for wireless dude. I don't know, I can't. I don't know what's gonna mean for the wi-fi stand why. You know, wi-fi stand had a cool year. I don't know. I don't know what it's going to mean for Wi-Fi stand. Wi-fi stand had a cool year. Honestly, wi-fi stand, I didn't look at how well we did this year versus last year or so, on and so forth. I just know that we did some neat stuff and, as always, I appreciate the business of Wi-Fi stand Goes without saying.
Speaker 1:Big time sponsor of the Waves podcast. I did some sponsorships this year. If you want to sponsor in 2025, let me know. I'll be happy to take your money and sponsor this thing. Very excited to help support sponsors who support the show. I would love to get some new equipment. So if you're feeling generous, please let me know if you'd like to sponsor and I'll be happy to make you a sponsor of the show. Yeah, I think that's all I got. Man, I'm ready to go eat some black-eyed peas.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk completely off topic. Let's see, I live in South Texas, so I live in a city called McAllen, down on the US-Mexico border. Whenever anyone asks me, I do the little Texas symbol and I stick my finger down there and show people where I live. And the traditions that we have down here are a little bit different and I'm curious if anyone else has these same traditions. We do things like black eyed peas. I feel like that comes from my mom's side, from my mom's family's market, so I feel like black eyed peas is like a Southern thing. So I make the black eyed peas, we do uvas. So you put a grape in your mouth. You put 12 grapes in your mouth, one for every wish coming into the new year. I think that's more of a Hispanic tradition, more of a Mexican tradition coming into the new year. I think that's more of a Hispanic tradition, more of a Mexican tradition.
Speaker 1:Then there's all the goofy stuff. Like all the single people wear red chones, red canciones, red underpants, if you will, red underwear. If they're looking for love, you take your luggage. I want you to picture this. Okay, picture me with 12 grapes in my mouth, wearing red underwear, running out the front door with luggage. Don't picture it. It's a terrible, terrible visual. But you take the luggage and you run out across the street and then you run back to signify that you want travel in the new year.
Speaker 1:I used to do that and then I got a job where all I did was travel. So it might work. I don't know. It might work. What else do we do? You open the front door and you sweep out. You sweep the front area of your house to sweep all the bad out right, all the bad vibes, and then what else do you do? You open up the front door and the back door to let all the air clean itself out. Yeah, strange traditions, but you know what it's fun. What else do we do? I'm trying to think of other. It's red underwear, it's luggage. It's graves oh, it's red underwear, it's luggage. It's the graves of toasting with champagne. Obviously that's about it, man. So that's what I'm going to be doing tonight toasting champagne, running around in red. And I don't. I'm not looking for love.
Speaker 1:I have an amazing wife. If you haven't met her in 2025, meet me in a trade show. She usually hangs out at those things with me, or I do it with her, so you might get to meet her. If you, if you need commercial insurance, she's your person. If you have a startup company and you need insurance, let me know. She'll help you. If you have an established company, let me know. I'll put you in touch with her Free commercial. That's it, man. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. This is the end of 2024. 2025 is going to be spectacular. I hope it's a wonderful year for you.
Speaker 1:The next couple of shows I'll be at, I will be at CES I just got a great. Just the next couple of shows I'll be at. I will be at CES. I just got a great, just a cool message from Keith Parsons. My buddy Keith will be at CES also, so hopefully I'll have some time to run around the show with him. I know there's some other nerds that are going to be out there the guy from CleverFi, I think he's going to be there. He's going to be at NRF also. So if you're at CES in Vegas from the 4th through the 10th, Let me know, I'll be there for that. And then I will be in New York City for the National Retail Federation, nrf, from the 10th through the 14th, I believe. And then I come home and then I've got a trip coming up on the 25th that I haven't talked about yet, but it's gonna be so freaking awesome. The 25th through February 8th more or less, I'm going to be providing all of the Wi-Fi for the World Surfing League World Championships on behalf of Eero and Amazon, you know, on the company. It's going to be really, really neat. So I'm excited to be a part of that More to come there, and then I'm going to come home for four days and then go to WLPC in Phoenix, actually for seven days.
Speaker 1:Golfing on the 17th. Get in touch with Matt or Mac or me or Rob Boardman if you want to play golf with us on Monday, the 17th. We're all playing on Flying In on Sunday and we're going to go play a round of golf on Monday. The first annual WLPC Classic, brought to you by I don't know insert sponsor name here. I think we're all going to bring some swag to give out, so that should be fun. And then that's February, then March I'm not sure and then up comes everything else. So those are my plans. If you're going to be anywhere around those areas, please drop me a note, come by and say hello. If not, that's supposed to be also during that whole polar vortex, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, this is the last podcast of 2024 for me. That puts us in the books. I appreciate everybody listening. Have yourself a wonderful and happy new year and I will talk to you all in 2025. See ya.
