Episode 6: The Future of Satellite Connectivity, 6G & Network Sharing: What's Changing?

Peter Jarich (00:00)

Hi everyone, and welcome to Intelligence and Noise, the GSMA Intelligence podcast, where we try to look at the last week, talk about what was generating some noise, what you should be paying attention to instead of the noise, and hopefully lend some intelligence along the way.

I am Peter Jarich. I am the Head of GSMA Intelligence. Thank you all for joining me, and thank you, as always, to Tim. Hey, Tim, how's it going?

Tim Hatt (00:27)

Good, Peter. How are you doing?

Peter Jarich (00:30)

I am doing super good. We've got a lot to talk about this week. We're getting into the summer period, where things get a little bit quiet, but things haven't quieted down quite yet. So I know we've got a lot to dig into.

But let me just start out with the quick beginning, as I usually do, to hit a bit of an anecdote, which hopefully will set up things for the rest of the session.

For those of you who haven't noticed, I'm wearing my Continental hat today. It's Continental, the tire maker. You all might wonder, what does a tire maker have to do with anything that we're talking about?

Well, I got this hat. It's a prized possession. I got it at the Tour de France a few years ago. As the caravan goes by, they throw out things, and if you are lucky enough—or have the will to push aside small children and old women—you can grab some cool stuff.

I was the former. I was lucky. I didn't push anyone aside, and I got this cool Continental hat.

But it's a reminder that, as the podcast drops, we'll be going into the second week of the Tour de France. And it's interesting because we talked a bit about this early on, Tim, about the FIFA World Cup and how we sometimes underestimate or don't pay enough attention to everything that takes place to make those events happen.

And we released some good research about the various ways in which connectivity, and in which telecoms, are enabling that.

But the prime example, right? The example that I think everyone sort of—we talk about all the time—is the Tour de France. I mean, we're entering the 113th edition. It started in Barcelona, which, if you haven't seen the pictures of the team time trial going past the Sagrada Família, it's pretty impressive. You should go look at it.

I mean, I know a lot of folks don't know much about the Tour de France: 21 stages, 3,300 kilometers. Vegas odds this year are on the perennial winner for the last few years, Pogačar, I think. A hundred-dollar bet would get you $125. So clearly everyone is—he is clearly the—

Tim Hatt (02:53)

Yeah, you never understand my good—

Peter Jarich (02:57)

That's—that's not a good return of money, but it does feel like it's probably a pretty safe bet.

But as usual, Orange is the connectivity partner, and it's interesting because there were a number of years where Orange brought analysts, brought journalists, mostly journalists, to go and see all the work that they did.

And it's because there is so much that goes into that, right? This is mobile relays. You obviously know the route in advance. You've got to make sure that there's connectivity.

Why do you have to make sure there's connectivity? Because you've got broadcasting, you've got live broadcasting. Back in the day, it was motorcycles, but now you've got drones. Most of the cycles are connected. Obviously, there are different ways of communicating, not necessarily with the cellular network, to all of the riders.

But now, I mean, you add on to that building out the fiber connectivity in the finish towns, having edge video processing. You know, it's a whole lot of stuff that we take for granted.

And as much as we talk about FIFA—and we do—I mean, that's a handful of stadiums in a stable environment, as opposed to a moving environment.

But what I think is interesting, sort of as a flip side, is I think those days of bringing media and analysts to see some of this stuff have almost—I don't think have dropped off, right? But it feels like that is less of a part of what Orange feels it needs to do because this has become just second nature.

And so I think it is worthwhile sort of taking a step back and going, all the stuff that's just required—not to mention, you think about the amount of people who are standing along the sides.

And I don't know, I've seen estimates that it's one of the most attended sporting events because, over 21 stages, you get how many thousands of people along the course for each of those, right? And these stages run, you know, a hundred miles. And so it's a lot of connectivity.

So, just a nice reminder as the World Cup goes into it. And apologies, Tim, we won't talk World Cup because I know it's a sore spot.

Tim Hatt (05:11)

We're—we've had mixed fortunes. We've had mixed fortunes. I am a dual national, for everybody out there. Full cards on the table: Canada and England. So we had one good and one not so good.

But Peter, I know you're a keen cyclist. Have you ever cycled a leg of the Tour de France before, in your own time? You tried that?

Peter Jarich (05:30)

No, no, no, no.

There are tours that do that. There are tours that run up—best I do is go and watch it.

It is—I think it's a bit like golf, right? Where to find the time investment to take four or five hours is just hard, right? Not to mention the length, the difficulty.

Yeah, finding the time is the hard part. The physical part, that's easy. But the physical part, you know, climbing up Alpe d'Huez—that's hard. It's just finding the five hours to do it. That's the hard part.

Maybe someday when I'm retired.

But that brings us into—let's talk about sort of, as we do, framing the last week's news in terms of the CEO newsletter that goes out.

And as I do that, quick reminder: we talk about which of the two stories that made it into the newsletter do we think is particularly important and why, and which of the two stories that didn't get picked do we think maybe should have gotten picked, or at least why it's semi-important.

So last week there was a big discussion, a bit of discussion, around the China smart glasses policy that came out of CICT, which is interesting. It was a voluntary policy about how manufacturers should think about what they're doing with smart glasses, notifications, data storage. It paired pretty well with the topic that we talked about last week, which was the new glasses from Snap as well as Meta.

As a result, we're not going to talk about it because we talked a lot about smart glasses last week.

So the one we are going to talk about, as much as everyone knows Snap and they know Meta, and hopefully they know China—it's a big country—we're going to talk about something that I think a lot of people may not know too much about.

And it's the acquisition of Iridium by Rocket Lab, which took place in the same week as Rakuten getting some funding from the Japanese government to build out a satellite constellation for Japan.

So I know we've talked a lot about satellites.

Right. So this is just yet another satellite story. But it's a different angle because Rocket Lab—am I wrong? Do you think—am I the only one that was kind of like, cool name, much cooler than SpaceX or Starlink? I like the name, but not too familiar with the company. Am I—was I the one living under a rock?

Tim Hatt (08:06)

No, you're right on that. And let's just put some context for the listeners here, because you're right, we do talk a lot about satellite, but a lot of it has been the big names: Starlink, Amazon, Globalstar, what's happening.

And these are two companies that are well known within the satellite sector, but not to a lot of other people.

So Iridium is a long-established satellite company that's been around since the nineties. It had a very kind of undulating history. It went bankrupt at one point, came back.

It has now revived itself as an IoT specialist. And critically, it's got 60-some-odd satellites in orbit, but has a slice of L-band spectrum that made it a big prize—really the last prize on the Monopoly board in the consolidation game for satellite.

Rocket Lab, very much a smaller company that specializes in the launch part of the satellite sector, so it competes with SpaceX, competes with United Launch Alliance, competes with Blue Origin, a few other players there.

What it didn't have was an actual satellite services business. And so as much as it was in the launch area, the trend, as we've been seeing, is towards vertical integration. And so Iridium provides it with that side.

And I think—I'll get your reaction, Peter—but what I think is interesting here is that this removes the last piece of MSS spectrum that was available from an existing player. So that's gone, provided the deal goes through.

And second, it does provide a more scaled IoT specialist in the satellite sector, which we don't talk as much about. We'll get into that, but I think it's a really interesting deal.

Peter Jarich (09:52)

Yeah, I mean, Iridium was really playing up the IoT side of things, which, as you say, we don't—given all the buzz around D2D, we kind of don't talk about IoT so much.

And I think what—as I see it correctly, like, Iridium has 500-plus partners out there, so it's working with—.

And I think all this ties into the other angle, which I've seen a lot of folks talking about, which is, you know, the margin Iridium has from running its business is pretty big compared to Rocket Lab.

And it's also just recurring revenue, right? As opposed to sort of making it a bigger, more scalable, more stable business.

Because it's an $8 billion acquisition for a lot of spectrum is one thing, right? And yes, it kind of builds you into an end-to-end company. Now you've got services, now you've got spectrum.

But, you know, they had to take out a bridge loan, right?

Tim Hatt (10:41)

It did.

Peter Jarich (10:41)

They're—you know, it's kind of a big bet, but it really does drive that out there.

And I think it's interesting because I think you are seeing that although all these companies have their different angles, they all still have the same sort of issues of: yes, we want to get to vertical integration; yes, spectrum is critical.

This is still a business, which means it'd be good to have some recurring revenue.

As I understand it, there's a lot of big focus on Rocket Lab and their—it's sort of, I don't know if you call it the next-gen rocket, but the Neutron rocket, which is a little bit bigger.

Which is why, if you look at their press releases, there's a lot of, "Hey, we've had another successful launch, we had another successful launch. Trust us, we know what we're doing. It's going to be good when we—"

It's the same thing, right? As you see with all the—you know, every time we watch every new SpaceX launch, which does or does not work, right? And the same thing with Blue Origin.

There's a lot of focus, and I think it's just interesting because it's just kind of the same story with a different angle.

Tim Hatt (11:48)

Yep, it is. And I think the fact that they are—as you say, Neutron will compete with SpaceX, albeit on a smaller scale. It's not as big as the Starship or the Falcons, but it is in that space.

But this adds a new layer to what they can do. And I think we shouldn't understate the IoT aspect of it, because as much as we talked about direct-to-device for servicing consumers, there is a whole other IoT dimension in our own forecast, Peter.

You know, we think that there's an addressable revenue base of close to $10 billion annually by 2035 from D2D for IoT. And that's across a whole range of sectors.

And Iridium, along with Skylo and a few others, are really in a strong position for that.

So for Rocket Lab, it's a timely move. I think the question will be: to the extent Starlink starts to compete in IoT, that adds new tension that wasn't there in the past.

Iridium is right now—they like to say they're in the cockpit of virtually every airline. They supply PNT, positioning, navigation and timing services, along with an incoming IoT direct-to-device service called Iridium NTN Direct.

So they've got a lot of balls in play here, but what they didn't have was this surety of a long-term financial partner. And looking out amongst the options, this actually makes sense for them.

Peter Jarich (13:14)

Yeah, it becomes a scale business.

I mean, these are all—and, you know, you've got to look at this going, okay, from a scale and vertical integration business, it’s just the fact that we started with, right? Hey, we've heard of Starlink, and you've got Starlink and SpaceX, and you've got the AI data center play, and you've got the whole "we're going to build our own silicon development capabilities" of it all, right?

Vertical integration that Musk's been pushing.

And you've got the Amazon side of things, right? Where again, you have services and you have launch. And then, in theory, you have the distribution side of things that we'll yet to see, of what you can do with Amazon.

And so if I'm out there and I'm looking at Rocket Lab going, this is really cool. You've got some rockets and you've been successful. What they claim—they're the second most launched, you know. They've got 1,700 satellites in orbit that they've launched and, you know, the second most for US satellites.

I mean, rockets—that's—I mean, those are big numbers.

But if I look at that and go, that's cool, but how do you compete with that scale and integration of those other guys?

And obviously this doesn't quite get to you—you know, this doesn't get to you the sort of integration that you get with being connected with Amazon. It doesn't get you the manufacturing.

So there's other angles there, but it takes a step in that direction, which has to make it a little bit more compelling or a little bit safer for investors.

Tim Hatt (14:39)

And it also just really confirms the level of consolidation we've seen in the last year.

I will be honest, I thought it would take a couple of years, maybe 24 to 30 months, for a lot of this consolidation to take place, but it has accelerated and we've seen it.

You know, we've seen Omnispace and Ligado previous to that, SES–Intelsat, obviously now Amazon–Globalstar, now Iridium here with Rocket Lab.

All of this, you know, the pieces are moving very fast, and Starlink is the main driver—not the only driver, but it's the main one.

We're now in a position where we're moving to an execution phase, but the scale is in place.

And I think it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out.

Another interesting point, just before we move on, I think it's rare—and this speaks to how urgent the deal was, probably from both parties—Rocket Lab is actually a smaller company revenue-wise than Iridium.

Peter Jarich (15:38)

Yep. Yep.

Tim Hatt (15:40)

You don't often see a smaller company take over a bigger one.

Peter Jarich (15:43)

Ha ha.

Tim Hatt (15:44)

That takes some buy-in from both sides, and I think that speaks to the urgency of it.

Peter Jarich (15:49)

No, it's a complete—like I said, the bridge loan's important there.

Obviously, the difference in margins. It is sort of a how-do-we-become-more-of-a—I don't mean this pejoratively—but more of a real business, right? With scale.

I mean, I think we are—before we move on, as I mentioned, the other part of the satellite news was Rakuten moving forward, or getting money from the Japanese government to build out a satellite network just over $900 million from the government, doing it with AST.

This kind of fits in with the story that we talked a bit about a few weeks ago, where we saw it in India, and it's this tension between, okay, it's a scale business, but it doesn't have to be a scale business if you've got some sovereign requirements and you really just need to build it up for your own country.

What I think is interesting is if I look back, so they're doing this with AST. AST is going to be supporting them. But the initial announcement between Rakuten and AST was from 2024. Like, there was a 2024 announcement between the two to do this.

So is it just a, "We want to do this, but it's going to wait till we get money from the government"? Or what happened in those two years that we've been waiting for?

Tim Hatt (17:06)

Well, this stuff takes time. Those are easy to do, but when you actually get to putting birds in the air and, as you hinted at, meeting government compliance requirements, that can take longer.

And I think what you're seeing now in Japan is kind of a multi-vendor approach.

KDDI is a Starlink partner. You have Rakuten now with AST.

And it's an interesting country because both of those, while they're using US satellite technology, are dancing to the tune of the Japanese government in terms of how the sovereign requirements are set up.

Yeah, and we've seen this in other countries.

Peter Jarich (17:42)

Of course they—you know, have to.

And I think all the Japanese operators have partnerships with Starlink, right? I mean, so they all—because kind of everyone has to, right?

I think it's—well, it is another feather in the cap for AST, I guess. No pun intended with their naming of their satellites.

Going back, though, as a nice segue to the stories that we didn't pick, I will say one thing: we know where Musk launches his rockets from. Where does Amazon launch theirs? Do you know where—do we know where Amazon—

Tim Hatt (18:20)

They have a mix: Texas and others across the southern US.

Peter Jarich (18:27)

If I see correctly, Rocket Lab is launching from New Zealand. And I will say those look like the prettiest.

I mean, if you wanted to encourage me to go see a rocket launch, I mean, Texas is nice, but I'd happily go to see a rocket launch from New Zealand.

Which brings us to the story that wasn't picked.

So there were two sets of stories that weren't—that were up for discussion.

One, the massive, roughly trillion-dollar set of investment commitments in Korea. That's around chipset and memory development, about $85 billion from Samsung and SK hynix, about $57 billion from SK and Naver and some other folks in terms of building out data centers, and then some other stuff in terms of robotics.

So huge, but felt a bit like—I think from a discussion standpoint, this just feels a bit like more investment commitments that we've seen from all sorts of other folks, right?

I mean, trillion dollars is a big number, but not necessarily surprising, right? Is that fair?

Tim Hatt (19:41)

It's not surprising. It's crazy to say that that kind of money is now table stakes, but that kind of money is table stakes.

And the Koreans are a hyper-advanced tech economy, like the US, like China, and they know the need to move now on it.

I think the interesting thing is they're using their national champions to do this. The sovereign compute and the sovereign layer—we keep coming back to that question, but that is really essential here in terms of how the competitive dynamics play.

Peter Jarich (20:13)

Sovereign compute and also just competing and building those capabilities.

And also, I think to your point, in terms of sovereignty being about playing to national requirements, also, how do we incentivize building out new manufacturing capabilities outside of Seoul, outside of those hubs, right?

So how do we use this money to try and push development elsewhere?

But for all of that, that's not the story that we said we would talk about.

We want to talk a bit about One New Zealand.

And yes, we're comparing a one-trillion-dollar investment in AI data centers and memory and robots with what One New Zealand did, which is they made an announcement about—was it six towers that they've launched to support rural applications.

It is New Zealand, lots of those, two of which are being shared.

So, yes, we're essentially talking about sharing.

But I mean, the key part here is, again, it was—we wanted to find something to talk about other than the one trillion in Korea.

But the key here is sharing.

It feels like it's a topic that we all know has legs: network sharing, right?

"Hey, how do I roll out some capabilities, particularly in rural areas, particularly where there's some important use cases?"

And yes, they've got some examples there.

But we don't see it. I mean, there are examples—the big ones out of Europe that we know about: Sweden, UK, France. You could kind of think of China Tower as a shared model.

But it feels like we don't talk a lot about sharing, right?

Tim Hatt (21:48)

We don't. We have in the past, but we don't now, and so much of that has been usurped by the NTN conversation as a way of extending coverage.

Just so people know, when we talk about site sharing here, we're talking about multiple operators sharing infrastructure to extend their networks, primarily to rural areas.

You can have a very light-touch level of sharing. That's where you might put your equipment on the same mast. Or you can have a deeper level, that's called active sharing, where you're going to share your actual radio equipment. Less common, but it is possible.

And what we're seeing in New Zealand here from the story is that One and Spark, competitors, are going to be sharing infrastructure to help roll out 4G and 5G coverage to critical transport corridors.

And I think the interesting thing here is that when you look at New Zealand's population coverage of 4G, it's everybody. It's 99%. 5G is only 60%.

So New Zealand is a very geographically expansive country. There's coverage there, but there are some areas—highways leading to industrial centers—that are uncovered, and this type of solution is really important to see.

And I think, Peter, I'll ask you a question: like, as much as this may be small scale, is it a reminder that voluntary network sharing is still an option for operators to extend their network?

Peter Jarich (23:09)

It's—and that's exactly right.

I mean, we can't—it’s a joke to put this in the same league as a trillion-dollar investment, right? I mean, we're talking six sites that were built out. Of those six sites, two are being shared, right?

But it's exactly that. It's a reminder of, hey, these are options.

It's also a reminder of kind of when this works, right? When this works, meaning, one, if we're competing for 5G coverage, it's really hard.

Because coverage is a differentiator, and sharing kind of takes that away. It means we have to compete just on services or brand or whatever else.

And coverage, we know, is what consumers care about.

And so it's kind of hard for new technologies. But if we're talking about critical corridors and we're talking about hard-to-reach places, then it becomes—and we're talking about, I don't want to say corner cases, right? But two sites kind of suggest corner cases—where we need to deliver emergency services.

It's a lot easier.

But the second thing, which you hit, which I think is critical to where this works, is voluntary, right?

Because we've had this conversation before around shared networks that weren't voluntary. And I think we've seen this.

I think we put out some research a few years ago when we saw DNB picking up, and just the question of, you know what, and for folks, Tim, for folks who don't know DNB—

Do you want to provide the quick snapshot on DNB?

Tim Hatt (24:42)

Yeah. So DNB in Malaysia—different country—was the original provider of the government's single wholesale network four or five years ago, since transitioned to a double national wholesale backbone with another provider, U Mobile, supplying the other.

Peter Jarich (25:00)

And the difference there is, right? I think when it came out, we put out some research which said, hey, you know what, there's a lot of arguments for network sharing, but there's a difference between network sharing and a mandated single wholesale network.

And what's interesting is you've seen that evolve, right? You've seen that evolve to the extent where, in Malaysia, you have the operators—I mean, one, now there is competition; two, you've got the operators invested in DNB, and it's become more like that voluntary type of—

It's become more like what we're saying is it's where you can look at voluntary sharing.

And so I think that is interesting to see, the way that that has moved.

But let's get off of sharing and what else is going on on our "On the Road and On Our Minds" section.

Cue the music. Someday, producers, we'll have some section for cueing the music.

"On the Road" is probably going to be a little bit less. We've gotten back from MWC Shanghai. We talked about that last week. From DTW, we're entering the quiet period of the summer where it's going to be a little bit quiet between now and September.

So, if you are—Tim, if you want to go first—what did you see that you think is worth calling out?

Tim Hatt (26:22)

So, there was a—again, we're going through different subjects, but I just want to make a mention of the Comcast NBCUniversal announcement last week.

So Comcast, mega cable operator, multimedia and telecoms group in the US, owns NBCUniversal, which has Sky. Of course, it has a major cable business.

The announcement here—and it's in the FT and a number of other outlets—is that they are going to spin off their media businesses from the cable and telco operation.

The rationale is that they're better able to execute their own strategies independently. That's the public rationale.

I think there's something deeper to it. I think there might be something around this opening up the door for consolidation on the cable side as a defensive play against other connectivity options, including Starlink.

But I think what's interesting, and the reason I call it out, Peter, and get your reaction to this as well, it kind of draws to the end of an era of this telco-media convergence experiment.

We've seen this for 10 years, give or take, a lot of examples. And I think it must have just started out with promise that these kind of mergers made sense.

You combine it all under one roof. Streaming has blown that out of the water, and new options have undermined that.

And I think this deal is now a recognition that actually there might be other—as much as combining those makes sense on a strategic level to your customers, you don't necessarily need to own the assets.

There's more of an asset-light option there.

Peter Jarich (28:03)

Yeah, I think there's also—you don't see this much, I think, and I'm not really sure in the US right now it's that much of a driver.

But there have been concerns, I think, sometimes about, from a policy perspective, controlling the content as well as the distribution, controlling both of those, and how that works.

And again, I'm not really sure what the current US administration's views are on that.

But obviously, I think what's interesting from my perspective is that I see this at the same time that we've had all the management consultants talking about delaying.

Hey, how do you delay as a telco? How do you delay your business and how do you drive more value?

And usually the poster child is towers, right? Get rid of your towers. Look at how much extra revenue you've driven from your towers now that you're split off, and that business is now valued, and the sum is greater than the parts, etc., etc.

And so I think that it's a bit of a natural part of that.

But also just, it's been really—there have been very few examples of when you have those tightly linked, of where that linkage is at.

And I don't know exactly where that linkage sits within Comcast, how tightly they are linked. It doesn't feel like, again, it's been a while since I've been there.

But yeah, I don't think it's an end of an era. I think we'll continue to see it, particularly in some markets.

I think there is tighter connection in some Asian markets. I know Korea, there’s a tighter connection between some of the content.

I think if you look at Rakuten, right, I think—

The flip side is the whole telco-to-techco idea, that hey, to be a techco, you've got to be involved in all sorts of different businesses. And that's probably going to include media, right?

And so I think it's, for me, less of an end of an era and more of a "what is your strategy?" Right?

Are you doubling down and just going to understand the telco side, or do I have this broader consolidated vision of the world where I do everything and you can actually make it work?

Tim Hatt (30:00)

Yeah. It's a change of strategy, and I think you hit on a good point, which is there are partnership options. There are other routes to market if you want to have an entertainment and media option.

I think the big-ticket M&A has been shown that that is maybe less of an attractive approach. Not to say it can't work, but it's less likely.

And you're now moving to much more of a nimbler go-to-market strategy.

So we're going to see that.

What's—what about you here?

Peter Jarich (30:28)

In the theme of going back and forth between big money and small money, and how we think about these, I guess mine is a $28 million government contract that the FutureG division of the US Department of Defense—Department of War, for folks who want to call it the Gulf of America—which went to Cohere Technologies, focused on ISAC.

So again, $28 million. Not huge.

But the idea here is that what they want to do is—and then for those of you folks who don't know, FutureG is sort of the innovation side, Department of Defense. You've probably seen or heard of Tom Rondeau. He's always at MWC, really making an impassioned, very eloquent, really articulate argument for saying, look, we want to figure out how we leverage commercial technologies for the benefit of our mission-first agenda.

Mission first is Department of Defense, right? It's defending the US. It is, in theory, if they can, defending it at home and abroad, however you take that to mean.

And in this case, really, it's about how do you leverage technology that Cohere—for folks who don't know Cohere—it's a smallish startup that's been focused on delivering a new waveform.

It's called SOTF, OTFS, which you could have called it a 6G—a 6G wannabe. It hasn't made it really into the 6G specifications, as far as anyone's talking about.

But their other thing that they really pushed is how you can leverage some of their technologies in tandem with existing technologies.

And so what you see from this is trying to figure out how you leverage their specifically ISAC-focused technology called PELSTONE alongside standard OFDM to, in theory, leverage commercial networks to go and deliver these ISAC services.

For me, I mean, for me it's important for a few reasons.

I mean, one, it kind of connects to some of what we talked about at MWC, which is this whole—and the US Department of Defense, as long as some other folks, pushed this thing called O-RAN, which is the idea of really, you know, more of an open development platform for radio access networks.

This fits obviously well into that, right?

And, you know, I've seen some folks in the media saying, is this showing a preference in the market for one technology versus OFDM? And is this something that Ericsson and Nokia should be worried about?

You know, it is one indication from one group who wants to do something right away, right? Particularly around drone defense.

And obviously, the requirements of something like the US Department of Defense are pretty important.

I'm not sure the Ericssons and Nokias of the world are necessarily super, super worried yet.

You could also sort of look at this as, is it potentially a way for one particular stakeholder to say, "Hey guys, you should pay more attention to this."

I mean, it's $28 million. It's not—you know, they've got $500 million to spend. So $28 million is not like we're talking about a huge chunk of that.

So perhaps it's just getting folks to move.

But I think it really is interesting to see some of the movements again below the surface on the ISAC front and on the 6G front.

Always excited, I think, to see new technologies, new technology innovation get some traction.

So yeah, that's what I was paying attention to this week.

Tim Hatt (34:15)

It's interesting. And with the US DOD, we have seen them move early on a number of technologies, including 6G even last year.

Are you seeing examples of this in other parts of the world from government defense procurement?

Peter Jarich (34:32)

I'm not seeing it so much, right?

So I haven't seen—I think the US Department of Defense has been particularly vocal.

So I think they've definitely been more vocal than the rest.

I haven't seen it, but some of it might just be it's the Department of Defense, so it's not necessarily as visible.

This stuff is taking place. This stuff is going to be taking place, and maybe you just don't—you know, it's not front and center.

And I'd encourage you—I mean, there's a great quote from Rondeau on the FutureG side of things to really call out why this is important.

And it's just—there's no mincing of words here, right?

It is: either we find these technologies to be super important for keeping America safe.

Again, you think about something like going back to the World Cup, right? Being able to use commercial networks and commercial network technologies to go and sense what's taking place.

Think drone attacks. Think something that's coming long range. Particularly important.

I think the US is well situated.

There are some security and privacy discussions we're not having around ISAC, which I think will hold it back in some areas.

But I think clearly the US is going to try and figure out how to make—move this forward.

So yeah, that is always interesting to see cool new technologies get some traction.

Peter Jarich (36:13)

Tim, last thing before I guess we call it a day. I assume you're super excited for Eurovision 2027. Is that correct, for those folks who don't know?

Tim Hatt (36:13)

I hereby resign my job because I will be competing for Canada, or in the lineup for Eurovision next year.

You heard it from here first.

Peter Jarich (36:21)

You've got my vote.

You've got—for those folks who don't know, and for those folks who wonder about how you get into Eurovision, it really is just an investment or partnership with the European Broadcasting Union, right?

Tim Hatt (36:36)

That's all you need.

Peter Jarich (36:37)

So as long as you are a partner with or a member with—I don't know exactly what it is. That's not my job. I know enough just to be dangerous—you get to participate.

Canada has done whatever it needed to do with the European Broadcasting Union that we could see.

Tim Hatt (36:50)

Well—

Peter Jarich (36:50)

Yeah. Once again, Celine Dion.

Tim Hatt (36:54)

Yeah.

Peter Jarich (36:54)

We just need Celine Dion competing for yet another country. I mean, you could bring her back.

Tim Hatt (37:00)

Exactly.

Peter Jarich (37:00)

So I am—I mean, I'm—

Tim Hatt (37:02)

All hail the Eurovision supergroup, and we will be there in full force for it. I think us and the Aussies are the only—

Peter Jarich (37:07)

Between Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Justin Bieber, Barenaked Ladies. I mean, it's stacked.

I think—I think it's going to be—I mean, maybe—

Tim Hatt (37:18)

Nickelback. How long will we go? We're going to start boring the audience if we keep going on.

Peter Jarich (37:24)

Maybe a supergroup. A supergroup headed by Alanis Morissette. I mean, this is—

Tim Hatt (37:29)

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Jarich (37:30)

This is—you heard it here, guys. 2026 was nothing.

Thank you, Tim, as always, for a—

Tim Hatt (37:39)

Thank you.

Peter Jarich (37:39)

—great conversation.

Thank you, everyone out there. We haven't seen any good suggestions for a closing motto or theme, so please send that in.

And, as always, you can now begin and go give us a rating. So please do that on your favorite platform. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and meanwhile, we will see you next week.

Thanks, everyone.

Tim Hatt (38:05)

Cheers, guys.