Episode 15: The Big Questions Shaping Telecom: Satellite, Private 5G & Connectivity

Peter Jarich (00:00)

Hi everyone, and welcome to Intelligence and Noise, the GSMA Intelligence podcast where we take a look at what's going on in the industry. We sort through the noise to try and provide some intelligence. I am Peter Jarich, the head of GSMA Intelligence, and I've got with me Tim. Hey, Tim.

Tim Hatt (00:21)

How you doing, Peter? Good to see you.

Peter Jarich (00:23)

Good, good, good. So I've been off for a few weeks on holiday.

When I left, the GSMA's CEO newsletter had just taken a break, which was a problem for us because we use that as a launch pad to dig into some of the news, using what was chosen to go into that newsletter to talk about things that maybe go a little bit deeper, things that we're not talking about. But I am back, and the newsletter is back.

I'd like to say it's back with a lot of the most exciting news, and maybe it is. We'll get into that. But first, I'm going to kick off with a quick anecdote, as I like to do — random things I'm thinking that may be here or there, and sometimes actually link to what we're trying to say.

So, for part of my holiday, I was out in Las Vegas and was excited because, just as we were arriving, some of you may know that the robotaxi, Zoox, had just opened up to take commercial rides. And I was so excited to get it from the airport, but that was not possible from the airport.

I was so excited to get it from our hotel, which was on the Strip, to somewhere off the Strip, and it's wonderful. It'll take you there about twice as long as a taxi, twice as expensive, and it dropped you off somewhere and told you to walk the last ten minutes.

And it was interesting because I was thinking about that with my wife and said, "Yeah, probably we don't need to do that." So we were waiting in the lobby to catch our Uber and started chatting with a man who was waiting for his family, who had gone somewhere and was coming back to our hotel.

He didn't have enough people in the Zoox. Honestly, it is a tourist attraction. You're going to put your family into a robotaxi. It seems like a cool thing, especially if you have kids. So he loaded his family up, not enough room for him. He took a taxi. He got there like ten minutes ahead of them.

And then he was just waiting. And he was like — you could tell at some point he was looking like, "Are they coming? Are they kidnapped? Has this thing taken them?" Finally, it drove up and he went to get them out.

And it just kept moving. And he went and it inched forward like six inches. It's like, "I literally can't get them out." At some point, he just started tapping on the door and it opened up.

And I say this not to denigrate autonomous vehicles, because I think they are making lots of progress. And I think I just saw you can now get it from the airport, so as they learn, they're getting better.

But I think sometimes we think these things are moving in leaps and bounds faster than maybe is the reality, which is why a lot of times when I hear a lot of the questions about why, from a telco perspective, are we still talking about autonomous networks and sort of boring stuff, it's because this stuff takes time.

And I think even the flashy things, where there's a lot of people out there and you can see it in real life and there's a lot of interest, it still takes time.

So I'm excited for my next trip to a place where there will be autonomous vehicles. I will be out unexpectedly in San Francisco in just a few weeks and maybe try it out there.

And the flip side, how it looks at this, is for a change, I don't think AI is making it into the two big stories we're going to be talking about. Is that right, Tim? I think although there was some AI stuff in the CEO newsletter this week, we're opting to zig while the newsletter zags, right?

Tim Hatt (04:16)

I don't see how it's possible, but I think it's not a main headliner. It may just creep in beneath the surface.

But yeah, we're looking at some other stories this week. We've got some interesting news out of the US with Verizon and satellite technology, looking ahead to disaster preparedness. And I think some interesting news out of Japan with SoftBank on a related note.

And maybe if I can just give a little bit of context there, and then we dive in.

Peter Jarich (04:46)

Yeah. Take it.

Tim Hatt (04:47)

Then we dive in. So, in the US, what we're talking about here with Verizon is there is a storm approaching the US, as they do in regular amounts at this time of year. It's currently forming in the Gulf of Mexico, Storm Eduardo.

And the telco Verizon is really getting on the front foot of preparedness to set up its network to be resilient in the event of landfall and significant impacts.

And so what the plan here really involves is a multi-pronged strategy to ensure network availability in the event of hurricane impacts. That's backup diesel generators, it's on-site support, but it's also satellite technology.

And I think Verizon's been a pioneer here the last few years, working with Skylo and AST to get its network in a position to service NTN capabilities.

And as much as we talk about satellite at a commercial level, this is really supporting emergency response, which is a public good. And that's a fundamental part of it.

And I think it's something — well, I'll talk about it in a minute, but I want to get your reaction. This is something that operators can and should be taking a leadership role on.

Peter Jarich (06:01)

So is it AST and Skylo they're working with on this, or who are they — have they said who they're working with from the satellite provider side?

Tim Hatt (06:07)

So, yeah, AST and Skylo are vendors they've worked with for their NTN capabilities in general. For this strategy, on this specific instance, it's not with a single vendor. It's just setting up the overall network to be resilient in the event that the hurricane makes landfall.

Peter Jarich (06:25)

And I think you hit it, right? This time of year, it's why I take my holiday this time of year in Mexico, because it's cheap, because you never know — are you going to get rained out or are you going to have...

But I think it's similar to the time of year when sports season kicks off in the summer. A lot of outdoor sports — and actually, it could be any time of the year, really — you see the operators talking about, "Here's what I've done to improve stadium connectivity."

Likewise, it's this time of year, you see these messages of, "Hurricane season is coming, we're going to talk up all the things that we're doing." And that's not to downplay it, right? It takes a lot of work. It's important.

It's a good reminder. What I'm interested in, and what I think is the inclusion of satellite, makes sense. And it's a good reminder of how satellite can support that.

I do wonder if there's a bit of a self-serving play there, too, if I'm an operator, to say, "Well, yeah, satellite's good for this."

Let's be clear: I love satellite. I love it because it's great for public safety. I mean, direct-to-device, that's a different topic. I'm not so sure about that.

It is interesting. It puts them in a position to sort of say, yes, we see the value, and the value is here. The value is for public safety, it's for network resilience. I don't know how much the value is for these other things.

But I mean, there's got to be a bit of a play there to at least position it in a way that maybe is less D2D-focused.

Do you think that's a play here, or am I being a little bit too cynical on my part?

Tim Hatt (08:12)

I think that's probably fair.

Yeah, I think that's probably fair. I think in the US, at a commercial level, we know the operators see multiple uses for NTN technology.

Part of that comes into new revenue opportunities, part of it just means having a better network and a more extensive network, and part of it is serving the public good.

I think what has been lost in the mix with the Starlink everything of the last few months is that this has real practical technology consequences and impacts.

And if an operator can help steer the narrative as to where the technology goes and be agnostic about the variants, whether it's D2D or others, they're going to be in a better position.

I think what, for me, will be interesting from this is whether the lessons learned from past hurricanes and natural disasters translate into better network resilience.

You know, this is not a — as much as climate change is accelerating the risk of extreme weather and the incidence of it, these things are not unpredictable, particularly over the Gulf of Mexico.

We've seen this happen year after year, and this, to my mind, is one of the first examples of really getting out in front of the problem and having the network set up.

And when you think of all the other recent disasters around the world, from the Nepal landslides in the last few weeks to the wildfires in Europe — I mean, in Spain alone, I think around 270 people used satellite connectivity in the wake of some of the Madrid wildfires. So you see the scale starting...

Peter Jarich (09:51)

And that's from — I mean, from a satellite perspective, that is. I mean, you've seen that. Like I said, I think you do see the operators talk about preparing for network resilience this time of year in general.

So I think it is a well-known sort of process of, "Let's get ready for these things taking place." The integration of satellite is just another tool in that. So it definitely makes sense.

I guess what's interesting, and what I'm intrigued with, is that you hear this from Verizon, which makes sense. But we also know that in the US, the operators have come together to build a commercial relationship, a partnership, to figure out how do they work across multiple different satellite providers.

Doesn't sound like — doesn't seem like that's something fitting into this right now.

And maybe that's the case because this is less about capacity and less about maybe how do we secure that capacity, and more about, in this case, obviously, resilience.

But it'd be interesting to see if there is a role there as well. Because, to your point, this is — we're not talking about a revenue-generating, "I need to make sure that this is a competitive advantage."

We're talking about this as a, "How do I use this to make sure that we're delivering resilient networking, delivering public safety?"

That feels like there's definitely a role there for how do we band together to make sure that that's there across the different networks. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

I get the impression it's not really part of the discussion right now.

Tim Hatt (11:35)

Well, you're spot on. I mean, that 100% should be a part of the discussion. Whether — and exactly how much it is, I don't know.

But I think, do you get into things like sharing capacity in affected zones for a disaster coming in? Do you have more specific zoning? Do you have — you know, do you work with handset suppliers to accelerate the rollout of device capabilities, to tap into NTN frequencies?

All of these things are not — this is, as you say, it goes beyond the company level. This is more at an industry and public good level. And that's a key part of the discussion.

The other thing I think, Peter, as much as we're talking about the Verizon example here, NTN is not just about satellites. It's not just about D2D.

You could easily be forgiven for thinking it is, given how much news has been out on the airwaves. But it's also about other vehicles like HAPS, high-altitude platform stations.

It doesn't get nearly as much press. They fly at a lower altitude, but they're part of the solution here as well.

And I think some other news we saw out of the week, just to flag: SoftBank over in Japan recently completed some HAPS trial, flying an aircraft from the US to Japan and back.

And that is sort of slowly coming to scale after years of gestation. So I think there's going to be a lot we should look for in terms of multi-pronged solutions for this disaster response scenario.

Peter Jarich (13:07)

Well, especially from a HAPS perspective, one of the key value props of HAPS has always been that it can be more targeted, right?

Whereas satellite, you're obviously covering a much broader area, right? You're essentially covering a global footprint.

With HAPS, you can deploy it where needed and have that — you know, particularly if we're talking about being a drone or plane-type solution, as opposed to a blimp or an air station, you can obviously place it right over the storm, high enough above the storm, whatever it is.

I think there's obviously some concerns depending on the type of — if we're talking about a storm, it might be difficult, more difficult, than a fire or something that doesn't impact the weather.

I think it'll be interesting to see how those combinations come up.

And then going back to the partnership side of things, as much as we didn't see necessarily with the Verizon story some question about how different operators are playing together, this is not the last we're going to hear of that.

I think we saw in the news the discussions of European operators potentially coming together to bid for spectrum as a whole. I think we're seeing that in different regions.

So I think there's a lot more opportunities to see how these solutions can play off of each other.

And I would say the resilience/public safety story of how this is for the benefit of multiple folks, and you get more benefit when you're delivering that over multiple operators — it seems like an obvious story to tell. It seems like an obvious story that I would want to tell if I were an operator.

Tim Hatt (14:47)

Yeah, absolutely. I guess my question to you is, if you put yourself in an operator's shoes, how best do you tell that story?

Peter Jarich (14:56)

Yeah. I think, yeah, it's especially because you want to move quick, you want to get this out there, especially because the people who are potentially — and I think we forget this, right? — the people who are potentially tasked with delivering network resilience, preparing for storms, aren't necessarily the same ones that are working at the corporate strategy level and say, "What's our partnership strategy?"

And so you don't necessarily always have those dots connected. And it's very possible that sometimes you can't get the T's and C's sorted in time.

And as we know, as you just said, storm season is upon us for some folks, particularly in the Americas. And so, yeah, you don't wait till that's done.

Next story. What else didn't make the cut but could have made the cut, and should have made the cut into the CEO newsletter this week?

Tim Hatt (15:54)

Well, I think the story we want to flag is jumping across the pond with Orange in France, and it's across the European front, moving on private 5G, private wireless, enhancing its offering by acquiring a company called Obvios.

Probably not a household name to many people, but it runs a network platform called Dome.

And the reason, Peter, I bring this story up — and I think it's valid here — is for sort of two reasons.

Orange is acquiring the platform to expand its capabilities in private 5G. Of course, it has an offering already; it's well established. But the offering is narrowing the verticals that it targets, specifically defense, public services, and I think that speaks to the use case for private 5G being maybe a little more narrow than we originally thought, but also catering to the sovereign AI demands that particularly European governments are now starting to see.

You know, I'll contrast that in a little bit. I think it's worth contrasting it with some news we've seen out of China on the same topic.

But for me, the point of interest here is the narrowing of the use cases and expanding up the capability, particularly once you have a 5G SA network in place, which offers new capabilities we didn't see off the NSA architecture.

Peter Jarich (17:26)

Sort of implied in what you're saying, and I've said this a number of times, is, you know, we throw this idea of every vertical needs 5G, every vertical needs SA, every vertical needs a private network.

And the reality is many might not, or maybe many companies within a vertical do, but not all do, or many companies within a vertical don't need it, and some do.

And so I think, to your point of the narrowing, I think it's a recognition that some verticals are more suited to it than others, right? Or have a bigger need for it.

But then unless you have those base capabilities, it's just not going to make sense for any of them, right?

And I think there's a lot of pent-up considerations around: has 5G been a success? What's gone right? What's gone wrong?

And, you know, already looking to next year's big trade shows, CES, MWC. I remember CES last year and, you know, I think one of the sessions was, "Has 5G been a failure?"

And, you know, I think a lot of that comes down to, you really can't say it's delivered on the promises until you have those core capabilities like SA.

And so it's a bit of a nice thing that maybe we're getting to a point where maybe when your expectations are low, right? Because the expectations have been knocked out of it. It hasn't delivered on its promises; it's a failure.

And now, as you see SA actually picking up, the opportunity to show what can be done with it, I think, is going to be there.

Again, if you're focused on the right customers, if you're trying to sell this to everyone and tell everyone that they need something they don't need, then it's just going to be knocking your head against that wall.

And so that narrowing of the verticals that you see, that you call out, is critical.

And I do worry a bit about this. And we've had this conversation a number of times, that maybe Orange gets it and they have the capabilities on how to sell this.

But, you know, the other thing that sort of — we jumped into 5G with every sort of — was that telcos can actually sell into verticals.

Right? It was this, "Hey, verticals are an untapped market. It's a market that's untapped. Operators haven't been selling into it. Huge new opportunity."

But then you sort of make this leap of going, "Well, wait, they haven't been selling into it. And so you assume that just overnight they're going to gain the abilities just to sell into these folks, and that by saying, 'Hey, I've got 5G now,' the verticals are going to beat a path through their door and say, 'Give me this, give me this, give me this.'"

They need to build those capabilities, which is part of what you see with this sort of initiative.

But it's also something an Orange can do. There's a lot of others out there that I think will still continue to struggle with that, to figure out: do they know how to sell into the verticals, the right way to sell into the verticals, the right verticals to sell into?

I say this, obviously, it's a bit from our angle. It's part of what we do day in and day out, right? Through the work we do with the enterprise survey.

And I think to those of you that are out there, if you haven't checked it out, the results from the latest ones are beginning to drip onto the platform. So go check that out.

That's all about showing what those verticals need, pointing to the verticals and what they are doing with these capabilities, because we know this isn't just something that's obvious, right?

But I do think it'll continue to be a bit of a struggle. But it's good to see stuff like this showing how operators are addressing it.

Tim Hatt (21:08)

Well, and it's interesting because as much as private wireless has been a 5G use case, along with consumer-focused use cases, FWA, for several years, the reality is that we've moved to a new phase where some operators have exited the business altogether, some have downscaled, but those who have remained have really gone niche.

And I think there's almost an acknowledgement and recognition that that's okay.

That's okay to compete like that: narrow your bets where you find out who the buyers are and where the USP is.

And I actually think that's probably a lesson that is worth reflecting on looking ahead to 6G.

You know, we talk about — you talk about the enterprise survey. Absolutely, results are coming out onto the platform and our readers and customers should check those out.

When we look ahead to 6G, we're already seeing indications from enterprise buyers of the types of capabilities they would find useful.

But as an operator, you've got to ask yourself, can that be done on a 5G network first? And not just assume it automatically sells because there's brand-new, shiny kit out there.

Peter Jarich (22:20)

Yep, yep.

Tim Hatt (22:20)

So I think these are the kind of points that are interesting here that we're seeing from the Orange announcements.

And the last one I think is worth noting here, Peter, is that defense and the sovereign capabilities continues to rise up the agenda.

You know, Orange has a defense business within its business arm. A lot of other operators in the US, as well as other areas, are making closer inroads into servicing that.

So I think you're seeing this intertwining between network technology and critical infrastructure and defense capabilities that we're going to see for years to come.

Peter Jarich (22:55)

And we've talked about this in the past, right? We've talked about this, that you see things like the development of or the showcasing of positioning, ISAC-type technologies on 5G networks, just to show that you can do it before you get to 6G, right?

We haven't asked this question in the last few years, but the last time we asked this question in the Network Transformation Survey, about do you expect that one big value prop of 6G is that 6G standards and specifications will sort of push new capabilities into 5G networks, you always saw like 80, 80-plus percent of operators said, yes, they totally expect that.

And so I think, to your point, that you do have to ask the question of, one, what will enterprises pay for? And then two, like, what is good enough? And what can we do once you have SA?

I think there is an interesting angle there of: will sovereign AI be one of the things that helps to sell private networks? Or, like, what is the use case? And is the big focus on AI — AI in general, right? But mission-critical AI, sovereign AI — will that be a use case that drives SA?

I think it's got more hype behind it than just saying, you know, you need reliability or low latency.

So I do not doubt that it will have — it'll probably get more attention than some things, whether or not it's fully needed, right? That you fully need SA to deliver on those capabilities.

But it'd be a great selling point.

Tim Hatt (24:33)

Yeah, and just another quick plug to one of our colleagues, Radhika Gupta and her team, who are going to be releasing some new data on sovereign AI capabilities that telcos are rolling out.

Check that out when it comes out on our research website because that's going to show where the sovereign AI deployments are in the world and what type of use cases they're actually driving at.

And you see, as much as a lot is happening out of Europe, this is very much global.

Peter Jarich (24:58)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think — and I think that was one of the benefits of that work, is just showing how global it is and what's being invested in.

Tim Hatt (25:06)

Yeah, there definitely is. I mean—

Peter Jarich (25:08)

What else is on — I mean, are we — is this now the time for the Willie Nelson segment, "On the Road and On Our Minds"?

Tim Hatt (25:16)

"On the Road and On Our Minds." We might actually be up to a new song with that one, maybe, you know, coining a new phrase there.

But we can move into the other news that caught attention. I know, Peter, I think you were going to talk about the NVIDIA and Hugging Face—

Peter Jarich (25:35)

On the "On Our Minds" side of things, as much as I said AI didn't creep into the big news we'd be talking about, you can't ignore sort of — I say two NVIDIA moves, which are, for me, kind of interesting.

And I think it was interesting because, you know, I saw someone talking about, particularly as the NVIDIA earnings came out, "Hey, NVIDIA is going from being a compute company to focusing on ecosystems and software."

I'm like, I don't think it's fair to say becoming, right? I mean, the whole reason why — not the whole reason, but, you know, a major reason why their silicon does so well is because they have a software development platform that lives on it.

They developed CUDA to help do that, and because they develop networking solutions that could allow them to chain together solutions, right? It's why they've got these giant clusters.

They've always been focused on that, right? And to say that they're becoming that kind of company — they're investing in capacity and they've invested in all sorts of other companies. So there's always been part of it, right?

But I think to see that carry forward, that really provides the context for, one, the investment that they made in MediaTek, right?

And I think that's not too hard to read. They're trying to invest in a broader set of silicon providers and folks that can help just drive other parts of the ecosystem.

I think given their connections to the US economy, I mean, I'd have to imagine some of those conversations took place with Qualcomm as well.

But that was an interesting angle.

But probably the bigger one is obviously the acquisition of Hugging Face.

I'll say, you know, there were a lot of people out there that were sort of scratching their heads about why does this make sense.

I guess the numbers on the face, for those folks who don't know who Hugging Face is, are — they're sort of oftentimes referred to as like a GitHub of AI.

They basically house, host a whole bunch of models. I think the numbers are what, 18 million developers and researchers, sharing three million models, 500,000 datasets, a million applications, 200,000 companies using the platform.

So they've got a lot of folks out there.

Obviously, the value for someone like NVIDIA, and NVIDIA's been talking about open models a lot, right? And they've been talking about, you know, the only models that they support.

And you can look at this. I think there's a lot of folks going, "No, is this a way that NVIDIA is going to lock it down and require all those models to leverage NVIDIA?"

And they were pretty quick to say no, Hugging Face is going to remain open.

I just have to say we're setting ourselves up for horrible new terms.

I think someone said, "Yes, NVIDIA is one of the greatest supporters of OpenAI."

It's like, OpenAI with a big O or with a little O, right?

No, little O, little O. I mean, yes, both big O and little O, yes, but in this case, little O.

And the idea, though, right, is that I think it is this idea of how do I support that ecosystem, because that will help scale it.

And ultimately, it is self-serving. It is if open models, open-weight models — some people say open source and they say it incorrectly and they mean open weight, but whatever — use of these open models allows AI to scale, then it's going to benefit everyone, including NVIDIA.

And NVIDIA is going to be betting on the fact that, yes, they will benefit more than most.

And if they can also leverage this to make it easier for those folks to develop on NVIDIA, or make it easier for NVIDIA to support those models, then all the better.

So I think the only thing that I was sort of left scratching my head about at first was — and you never know. I mean, all these guys — I assumed it was an in-joke — but the price of $12,930,300,000.

I was like, that's a — like, is this an Elon Musk 420 joke? Like, is this another sort of...?

And it turns out it was. Apparently, if you look at it, the first six numbers represent the decimal conversion of the Unicode character for the Hugging Face, which is—

Tim Hatt (29:53)

There we go. That makes sense. There we go.

Peter Jarich (29:56)

Which I mean, does make me wonder — I mean, were we sitting in a board...? I'm maybe that's wrong. Maybe that was a joke.

And maybe this was put out there to capture folks like me that aren't really sure how to do decimal conversions of Unicode characters. So I could just be spouting just a falsehood there. I hope not, because that would be fun.

But no, I mean, it's clear sort of the connection there. I think what remains to be seen is exactly how they are used.

Tim Hatt (30:23)

Yeah, yeah. And you hit on something interesting about open and closed, which, you know, I just want to make a point on.

I mean, it's almost like we saw that back fifteen years ago in the smartphone OS world with the Apple-Google wars.

So one of them is closed, one's open. Will one of them prevail? The reality is both of them want — both of them want big—

Peter Jarich (30:42)

Sure, of course, of course.

Tim Hatt (30:44)

You look here, it seems to me like what NVIDIA is doing is really hedging its bets to win in all scenarios.

So, you know, we have the financing arrangements with OpenAI, Oracle, you know, any kind of frontier models. You're buying Hugging Face to preserve the open.

You know, NVIDIA, if they get their way, look to win in 6G by embedding GPUs into the network architecture. They're exclusive with SpaceX, as Elon told us on the Q2 earnings call.

It's a pretty good job of hedging.

My question is: does that have longevity? Do we continue to see open and closed kind of coexist, or does it go, you know, one way? Or can we even think about it—

Peter Jarich (31:32)

Yeah, I think it's still pretty early.

There's no doubt that, yeah, there's no doubt that this is obviously an investment to drive the open side of things.

Right? Now, you know, where it goes, that's the fun of this industry.

What else? What else is on your top of your mind in terms of news? I've got a couple of things that I think are small but interesting, but you shoot.

Tim Hatt (32:02)

Well, we've got the Apple event coming up on Wednesday, tomorrow.

Peter Jarich (32:04)

Hundred percent. Yep.

Tim Hatt (32:06)

Apple has their annual fall event, their autumn event, typically used as a big product launch pad, upgrade launch pad.

This year, added spice, given that they have a new CEO coming on board, has taken up the job.

And I think it just comes at an interesting time because the company is still one of the most successful and largest in the world, and yet it's driven heavily by the iPhone, which has an incredibly low churn rate and, well, you know, sustainable user base.

Our own survey data: less than five percent of people leave it for another OS. It's as good as gold.

But it has been weak on AI in general. And if I look at — you know, I'm an iPhone user, I still use Siri and other apps — it hasn't quite been there yet.

And so I think there's some interesting questions from the new executive management about how the company evolves on the AI front and where that goes in terms of its product portfolio.

One thing we don't talk a lot about, Peter, is, you know, OpenAI is also looking to get its hands in the hardware pie, in a less significant way.

But Jony Ive, obviously ex-Apple, really one of the product gurus there, moved over working with Sam Altman.

Does Apple try to respond to that?

The new CEO, John Ternus, came out of the hardware organization. Do we start to see new pivots?

You know, immersive reality was largely a fail so far, I think, for Apple. Do they get into new VR formats? Foldables are rumored.

You know, I think there's just an interesting product direction. Under Tim Cook, it was sort of stay the course with the golden goose, let that fund everything else.

Do we start to see a major change of direction? Probably not, but—

Peter Jarich (34:00)

Yeah, I think, I think, I think—

Tim Hatt (34:01)

Ultimately we should get some indications.

Peter Jarich (34:04)

Yeah, I think the big expectations in terms of hardware. I mean, just given the history there — in terms of history.

I think sticking with the hardware side of things, I'm going to return to something that you said, and this is a lot less exciting in terms of, you know, versus Apple.

But you're going to come back to your point about, on the private 5G side of things, the question of, you know, what can you do with 5G versus 6G.

Yeah, I was struck by a couple minor launches.

Yeah, the Fitbit founders launching something called Lufu Link. It's a safety band, it's a health and safety band.

And then you've got Plaud. I think a lot of folks know Plaud as the AI note taker. You'd slap it onto the back of your iPhone or there was a pendant, and they're launching a set of earbuds, the Plaud AI earbuds.

The interesting thing for me is they're both LTE devices.

And, you know, it's interesting when I walk around and I see a bunch of devices, or you see new device launches, and they're launched with LTE, it was oftentimes like, well, that's like a cheap — if you want to figure out the way to cost-optimize your device, you make your smartphone LTE-enabled and it's not 5G-enabled.

And it's an interesting thing that we're seeing new devices in mid-2026.

And I guess for the point of maybe a health and safety band, that's probably fine, right? You don't need tons of connectivity.

And for something where maybe the work is being done inside the earbuds, although I don't know how much of the work is being done in terms of note-taking and AI and whatnot in earbuds versus offloaded somewhere.

But it's interesting to see devices being launched that are LTE-only at this point.

What does that mean for longevity? Obviously, LTE networks aren't going away anytime soon. And maybe there's an expectation these devices won't be around that long.

But it does go to your point of having that conversation of how much do I need the latest and greatest technology? And does a consumer actually care?

Tim Hatt (36:20)

Yeah.

Peter Jarich (36:22)

I guess the bigger question is, and if it is something like a health and safety band where you don't necessarily even want to bother with connecting it to a phone.

So I was just struck by that — that here we are in the middle of 2026, and in many cases LTE might just be fine for some devices.

Tim Hatt (36:40)

And what's the numbers when we look at our survey data, when we ask people what they care about most in the handset? Battery life, durability, screen size still come top of the lists.

And if I'm a handset OEM, I'm not sure if I laugh or cry at that, but that's the reality that we see.

So, to your point, you make a good point on the staying power of just what works.

Peter Jarich (37:04)

And the question's just out there also of, for those designers, what was the decision of LTE versus RedCap versus whatever?

Last thing, just because I spent some of my holidays the last few weeks in the US, where obviously one of the big conversations is: do you want a data center in your backyard or not?

Tip of the hat to your folks, Tim. I see Canada just published Responsible Data Center Development Principles, so a set of principles that everyone could agree on to say, like, this is okay or not.

It doesn't — like, if I remember them correctly, they're not over the top.

Right? You need to make sure that these things aren't creating new energy requirements that aren't met. You need to make sure the community isn't paying for energy. You need to make sure the community knows exactly what's taking place, like what is the environmental impact.

I see more and more pushes for this. I saw some US politicians saying similar things, people on both sides of the political spectrum.

So hopefully that's coming to other markets soon. But congrats on Canada being upfront about that.

Tim Hatt (38:36)

We're trying to take a leadership position. What can I say, Peter? We're a welcoming country. We try to do things, you know, collaboratively and consensually, and we get the job done.

Peter Jarich (38:46)

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it is a big risk, right? Because there's a lot more open spaces that are cold, and you can see small communities maybe being sold on the value of having a data center, which may not be the kind of thing they actually want.

Tim Hatt (39:04)

No, I think there are legitimate concerns.

And the reality is, as much as you can have a government consultation for this, the power implications are particularly important, particularly when you get towards areas where there's less grid availability already.

And we see some of the major power draws from training the models in the AI data centers are very significant.

Peter Jarich (39:28)

And now is the time — like, now is the time, I think, to strike while you have the industry — like, you've got so much of the industry ready to come together to say, let's band together to develop principles on how to manage AI model development and how to manage — I think I've seen some work around autonomous weapons.

So, you know, basics of minimizing environmental impacts and water use.

And Canada got together, you know, all the folks you'd expect — Bell, Telus, you had the model makers.

Yeah, now's the time to do this. Hopefully we can see it in other markets.

Last part: are you going anywhere anytime soon, Tim? I know you've got — I know we've got India Mobile Congress in about a month, but before that, anywhere?

Tim Hatt (40:10)

Yeah.

Peter Jarich (40:11)

India Mobile Congress in about a month, but before that, anywhere?

Tim Hatt (40:16)

We're on the road a lot even before then.

I am off to Paris tomorrow to launch a report on AI literacy at the UNESCO headquarters.

We've got a bunch of our team in Malaysia this week for the GSMA's event there in Kuala Lumpur, looking at the ASEAN and South Asia region.

We've got events in Europe. I'll be in Canada again later this month in Ottawa, the nation's capital.

And yeah, then we descend on Delhi for IMC and meetings there.

How about you?

Peter Jarich (40:50)

Yeah, I'm excited.

I'm going to be going to Delhi from the Bay Area for the GSMA's Nova event. I know we talked about Nova in the past.

So hopefully I'll see some folks out there. If you don't know about it, check it out. It is invite-only, but I know people that can get you an invite. I can sweet-talk you into an invite if you're interested out there.

And, you know, special enough just like us.

And then I'm excited. I'm looking forward — it's probably over a month now, but then there's GTC Berlin.

So I think the chance to run some of these ideas — I'm sure we'll hear all about Hugging Face and we'll hear about MediaTek and all the things we just talked about when we see the NVIDIA folks out there in October.

So it's going to be a busy, busy fall, even before things like Doha hit us and all those other events.

So hopefully we'll see a bunch of folks there.

We will be talking more about those events as we get closer to them. Obviously, we will be doing things at some of those events, running our own sessions, running our own summits.

So look forward to us talking more about that.

In the meantime, thank you all once again for tuning in, listening to us ramble.

Please, please send us your thoughts — what you want to hear more from us, what you want to hear less from us about.

And in the meantime, and eventually I'll settle on exactly what this sign-off is. I think it is: "Seek out the intelligence, but don't be distracted by the noise."

Something like that. I don't know. You guys tell me. You guys tell me what you think the sign-off should be.

In the meantime, thanks, and we'll talk to you again next week.

Tim Hatt (42:51)

Thanks, everybody.