TalkingHeadz with John Saw of T-Mobile
Transcript
Evan Kirstel 2:24
And we’re here at talking heads. In today’s episode, we have john saw executive vice president advanced and emerging technologies at T Mobile events an emerging absolutely so we have high expectations, john and nice to chat.
John Saw 2:39
Thank you and no pressure on me. And
Evan Kirstel 2:44
first of all, let’s say congratulated congratulations on the on the merger with sprint, I know you came up most recently on the sprint side of the house. Maybe give us an update on your experience through the merger. And how’s it going?
John Saw 2:58
Thank you. Thank you The experiences interesting that that’s the word, the first word that comes to my mind, in a way actually close the merger almost exactly a year ago in April 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, where none of us were allowed to go back to the office, I guess been interesting in the sense that the senior leadership team in a new team of a has even yet to meet in person as we speak today. We’re going to try to do a couple of weeks but it’s been interesting trying to to put a company together integrates so many moving pieces all while we have to respect COVID protocols most of us who are working from home trying to zoom in the our vision things that we have to do. But despite all that, I think this impressed how well the company has done.
Dave Michels 3:51
I’m gonna test that loyalty there. I want to I want to ask you because you coming from sprint, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. I don’t think you’ll think I am. But I thought sprint was kind of a head of T Mobile when it came to 5g. How was your journey going from sprint to T Mobile 5g?
John Saw 4:08
That’s an excellent question. Whether we were ahead a sprint aware the team above the head is this it’s actually at the end of the day, in material in light of real competition that we have to work with, which is competition with the two big competitors, at&t and Verizon, it was becoming increasingly clear, even when I was CTO at sprint, that there’s only so much we can do with 5g, right, because we lack the low band spectrum to get the ubiquitous coverage that we want. We have a lot of mid band spectrum. It’s also increasingly clear in a lack of legacy t mobile site when they were really out of 5g that they were able to only do it using low band spectrum which they have a lot of thanks to the 600 megahertz option and so they will able to focus on that, but they don’t have fresh mid band spectrum to bring play. So it’s becoming increasingly clear to us that, hey, it makes sense for us to put the two companies together because our spectrum assets itself and alone is going to let us build a much better and bigger 5g network that each of us can do on our own. We may have been the first sprint to roll out a metro based 5g coverage using 2.5 gigahertz. And we use some pretty cool technologies like massive MIMO is split mode, right. But it was very hard for spring to scale that beyond just natural coverage without access to fresh, organic spectrum. And the same problem team Obama has the other side of the problem is they have a lot of low band spectrum by no capacity to bring the play to scale in the long term. So we each have what the aggregate we each one would hear a guy’s f. and and that’s what a merger makes so much sense.
Dave Michels 5:59
Can you talk a little bit about the the cultural differences between sprint and T Mobile? You mentioned you haven’t had any meetings yet? But do you feel like it’s a totally different company or tell us about that,
John Saw 6:10
we have more in common than we have differences. Of course, there’s gonna be differences. But I think we have more in common. And one of the things that that we have in common is that we’re both we’re both trying to disrupt the wiles industries in our own way. We’re both smaller, scrapping competitors, right compared to the more established two. So we are both trying to find during our days as legacy companies, different ways to win, T Mobile has pushed out a lot of vertical uncarrier moves that we’re still doing today, to try to disrupt the wireless space, Sprint has always been pushing the company with the best value, both trying to steal customers from the big two. And we just figured out that, you know, with a merger, we can do a much better job and a much larger scale. That is a strong enough uniting vision for us to say, hey, let’s let’s work together and we can be a much stronger company together. I mean, there are some subtle differences in how it
Dave Michels 7:09
helps to have this around to fill the role of the scrappy carrier, right?
John Saw 7:13
Yes, that was part of the plan to help sprint grow to be the fourth competitor. Yes.
Evan Kirstel 7:19
And so speaking of competitors, your CEO recently said, you’re two years ahead of competitors in the 5g race, shed some color on that statement? That’s pretty powerful statement.
John Saw 7:31
Yes. So I think the race to 5g comes down to spectrum, and actually more specifically, unused spectrum of fresh spectrum that is actually not used by LTE. And the reason why Mike say that we have a two year lead is that we have sufficient spectrum to actually build a very capable network today, both with low band spectrum at 602.5 gigahertz and mid band, and we also own significant amount of millimeter wave spectrum. So we’re not really waiting for more spectrum to be available or for for clearing opportunity, we’re just going to start building and we have we our heads down and building, adding 5g at a rate that I don’t think the industry has seen for a while. Now, if we look at the competition, you know, the recent sea ban auction is that is the prime example. They both just spend in total $90 billion to get more spectrum, right, they’re not all going to be available to them to em 2023. And as you know, a lot of clearing needs to happen. Right. In the meantime, both our competitors are trying to, to use again, the only fresh spectrum they have available for 5g is mostly millimeter wave. And you’ll be trying to push that for a long time and trying to build a 5g network. But if we look at horizons network, they only available at point 8% of the time, as reported by third party benchmarks, so they’re not going to get that with millimeter wave, they need more mid band spectrum. That’s why they spend a fortune on it. And it’s going to take them time to actually put this spectrum to use. And guess what, even after if you’re able to get all the C band spectrum clear and release. T Mobile still owns more mid band spectrum than that. Right. So so it’s a shame that it’s banned collectively $80 billion, and still not win the gold medal for the most mid band spectrum. Wow.
Evan Kirstel 9:30
So that’s an interesting insight. On the network side, you’ve created this uncarrier model with that really disrupted the market on the consumer side for good. And now you’re taking that uncarrier approach into the enterprise with different solutions aimed at business, although you’re still well behind at&t and Verizon in the in the business enterprise kind of space. So tell us about your new approach to the enterprise and how it’s going to take an uncarrier approach.
John Saw 9:58
You’re correct heaven right. Now we have 10% of the total business share, right, at&t and Verizon has the lion’s share. We actually like this position to start with, because we’re starting, you know, we’re starting to grow our 5g capability. So recently, we launched what we think is the uncarrier, for business, that the VFX like work from anywhere. If you look at what it’s been launched with w FX, there are a lot of capabilities that we are bringing to the market that the incumbents are not willing to go. So we’re trying to push them the way we did with uncarrier. for consumers, we don’t have big castles to protect up only 10% market share. So we can try to be disruptive with the facts. And as an example, we are offering a very good unlimited plan that is actually cheaper than the pool plan that at&t and Verizon has is offering today. And we’re also offering a T Mobile collaborate capability that allows us to deliver a cloud native solution that reduces costs and complexity, right. And then we have the home internet for businesses, that allows our remote workers from enterprises did not have to compete for Wi Fi with their kids, who was all at home. So we’re providing a business level home internet service as well. So those are the things that we’re trying to do I know that we know meets the needs of the new normal.
Dave Michels 11:29
But it’s interesting. I have another colleague besides my colleague, Colin has become a raging T Mobile fan around the 5g story.
John Saw 11:39
I like calling the ready.
Dave Michels 11:40
Yeah. And he and he keeps talking about why t mobile’s better. And he keeps using a term, standalone 5g. And he kept he keeps saying that, that you’re ahead in the, in the space of 5g, standalone 5g? Could you explain that term in that category? And why? I mean, in the world of networking, stand alone is usually a bad thing you want to you want to be connected to everything. So give us an explanation on that.
John Saw 12:04
So let me try to explain that. So almost all 5g networks today, they is launch in tandem with Lt. Right. So it makes sense because LTE is well established. And most of the operators have deployed a lot of LTE including core networks that manage the LTE radios, right. So a lot of the 5g networks today are launch basically connected to the LTE core. It allows for faster deployment, you don’t have to, to rebuild everything from the core to the radios, upgrading the radios itself, and the cell sites is a big enough job. Right? Yeah. So this is what we call the non standalone version of 5g. So it’s really the bolt on? Yeah, yeah, it’s a bolt on allows us to move faster, right, you don’t have to reinvent the entire core while the specs are still being defined using LTE core and anchoring, essentially, to an LTE core plus and minuses for that, right. The big classes, obviously, we all get off the gate faster, we can rely on the stability of LTE, both at the core and also in radio performance when you don’t have 5g. Now, the minus is that you’re going to be forever if we keep doing this for a long time to if you’re going to be forever tethered to the performed capabilities well to eat, you’ll never get better than than the LTE performance. As an example, 5g brings so much more capabilities than performance capabilities in LTE, like lower latency, performance, right? The ability to support even more capacity, right, you can do carrier bonding, just with 5g channels, right without LTE. To do all that you really need a standalone 5g core for I know you mentioned this, then alone is not exactly a positive term to use. But it really just means that hey, over time, we need to cut the apron strings to LTE, and build your own 5g core so that you can realize the full potential of 5g without being tied to LTE legacy low latency, new capabilities over 5g that you just cannot do with LTE, like for instance, network slicing by the ability to do a private edge and edge computing, right, you need access to a standard core. I think the reason why your friend column is excited is that T Mobile is the first operator in the world to actually roll out a standalone 5g core. Right? We’re rolling out in July last year. And we’re going to continue to expand that capability. And you need that to unlock the full potential of 5g. Will your customers
Dave Michels 14:39
have any say of whether they’re connected to the standalone part? Or how do you determine who’s on scan alone and who’s on your migration network?
John Saw 14:47
It’s very hard for a customer to decide which car you want. So the network will actually find the best connection for them together with the phone. Right? It depends as well. What is your Coverage situation where you are, right? Are you in a place where you can get low band 5g as well as mid band 5g? Right? And how are you connected to the car so, so because we have a stand alone car, and now a lot of our low band capabilities on 600 is actually tied to, to the stand alone car. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of conditions, Dave, that we need to be managing dynamically so that our customers don’t have to worry about it. But more and more over time, we’re moving more and more functionalities, obviously, to our stand alone core. And we were the first guys to do it. Right off the gate. I think we had a two competitors of ours are only starting to do some testing right now. But you need a standalone core, if you really want to talk about 5g use cases, you know, otherwise, you’re no better than an LTE network.
Evan Kirstel 15:48
Interesting. I didn’t know that. Well, one of the things that we all do on this call is travel a lot. I remember one of the my favorite uncarrier services originally was you know, zero cost roaming, that was a big deal when it was introduced. So when I go overseas and Europe ICT mobile everywhere, can you clarify, is that the same company? Is that just the brand you share? How are you related when I travel to Europe, for example.
John Saw 16:16
So first of all, the ability to roam, this can be the same going forward, you we give our customers the ability to roam in hundreds of countries without additional costs. And that’s not going to go away. It also helps us when we are part of a much bigger company with Archer, Todd calm, who has a huge presence in Europe together with their roaming agreements. So if you look at us as as a as an entirety of a global company, right, we can bring a much larger volume of scale, and that enables us to actually get some really good roaming rates and much better roaming experience as well.
Dave Michels 16:52
So but is it the same company? Or can you clarify that? That response because I don’t understand is one company or different companies
John Saw 17:00
from a iva talking about from a roaming clearance perspective, it has to be managed from a from a US network site, obviously, because those are
Dave Michels 17:11
let me rephrase it. I think of T Mobile I think of T Mobile as a leader in 5g, for example, is that the same as the T Mobile in Europe or is that different?
John Saw 17:18
T Mobile us is I think our largest subsidiary for T Mobile. They are our parent company. And they own I think almost 50% of T Mobile USA. So you know that obviously, shareholders from the public as well and other investors, but T Mobile, larger telecom base in Berlin is our largest shareholder.
Dave Michels 17:41
I see. All right. Recently, I wrote about this. I know jitter, you announced a partnership with Dialpad, which is kind of interesting to us. You announced T Mobile collaborate, which makes you a UCAS company Welcome to the club. It’s pretty exciting for our audience, I think. Why did you decide to get into UCAS and why Dialpad
John Saw 18:00
Dialpad has been an established player in in this what I call earlier, the ability to help us deliver a cloud native solution. I know UK has been around for a while. But what we’re trying to do is do a mobile first solution that is cloud native for customers. Right? And if you paired it with our enterprise unlimited plans, and for enterprise customers to work from anywhere, that’s a very powerful offering. Right, especially when you bring in the capabilities for 5g as well. There are a lot of products out there that I noticed. That is pretty cool. doubt that talk you ebook conferences, that example. And we do include some of those capabilities. It’s a customized solution, right? It’s more than just that resell and out that and if you look at the collaboration needs from our customers, he allows us to tailor eucast in a way that makes it mobile office work from anywhere and with the ability and flexibility to do a lot of stuff using access to the cloud. Right and that is simply the best choice hands down to help us get to this mobile first born in a cloud solution.
Dave Michels 19:15
While correct Greg was raving about the 5g radio, he added his home office that he’s a dime off the shared internet and using all the Dialpad services through the 5g service. Very interesting collaboration. I’ll say we’re partnership collaboration is probably the better word
John Saw 19:31
we are going to be looking like and we will become the back to work company essentially, for the price, this wF x capability and adult by partnership, right? You no longer need to figure out your own dashboard that you have and how do you program it to some PBX that is collecting dust in the basement?
Dave Michels 19:52
Yeah, I think you better you better avoid that back to work term. You’re the uncarrier that’s fun. Back to work is like yeah, it’s like that. That’s the opposite of uncarrier. But
Evan Kirstel 20:02
Dave has a fax machine and a payphone in his front yard. So okay, he may be a great prospect for this solution,
John Saw 20:09
I think we will, we just think, for you.
Evan Kirstel 20:13
Let’s switch a little bit to the network side, I know an area you’re passionate about and where the network is going. You know, some are looking at 5g as an ideal way to provide gigabit services to residences, you know, run fibre to the pole and then Microsoft high frequency five gig to the last 1000 feet into the home. What do you think of this approach? Or what approaches? Are you looking at it for 5g beyond mobility into the last mile?
John Saw 20:41
There is a lot of things we can do with 5g. I mean, for LTE, the smartphone is everything. Right? For 5g, I think what you’re getting to heaven, the smartphone is just the beginning. That is why we’re trying to use 5g to disrupt what you call a last mile home internet. LTE may not have the capacity and performance to do that. I tried doing that when I was at Clearwire. So we have a lot of limitations. But with 5g with the ability to manage your network differently. With the amount of capacity we can deliver. I think the last mile, especially for home internet is a real opportunity that we’re trying to exploit. And as of today, we just launched this, by the way, officially a couple of weeks ago, we already cover 30 million hosts, which actually makes us one of the biggest ice peas out there. Right now. We’re not really running fibre to the poles and then blasting 5g from from there, we don’t have to do that we’re we’re running fiber to cell sites, using our multi layer cake approach of low band or mid band spectrum or even millimeter wave. And we have to, that’s how we intend to reach our customers, homes and businesses. That’s a more economical way. And even we just have this approach, we can cover 30 million homes already and growing.
Dave Michels 22:00
I got to ask you kind of an embarrassing question here. Am I a T Mobile customer? And the reason I asked you that is because I’m not sure. I’m technically a Google phi customer. And of course, the big benefit of Google phi, when I signed up was that it had t mobile and sprint and they could you know, pick the better network based on the situation. I don’t know what’s going on now. So tell me what kind of service I have.
John Saw 22:24
So Google phi is certainly one of our wholesale partners. Right? And you’re right, they in the past, they have the ability to pick between two different networks, you will need to ask Google phi so how they have actually make their selections lately, but essentially, you are using the network from the same company now the new T Mobile.
Dave Michels 22:45
I’m primarily at least a T Mobile customer, but yeah, you are but I don’t think Pfizer announced 5g yet and I don’t my phone’s not 5g. And so so I’m still on the it’s it’s
John Saw 22:55
coming recently, you’ve seen our announcement with Google to expand our relationship, our partnering relationship with damn with RCS but androids selling more pixel phones, especially 5g phones, YouTube, right. So watch this space, I think I think there’s a lot of good things coming.
Dave Michels 23:13
Yep. Very good.
Evan Kirstel 23:15
Great. Let’s switch gears to the internet of things for a moment very promising. on the consumer side, it’s been a little slow to take off. You know, the idea years ago of a connecting my washing machine or microwave has been a little slow, more interesting developments, I think on the industrial Internet of Things side for practical use cases. So what’s your take on the direction of IoT and industrial IoT, you know, a T Mobile?
John Saw 23:42
Well, I think we just launched our IoT platform recently, we can support all the different flavors of cellular IoT, cat 1am narrowband IoT, right. And we have high hopes for working with some customers to bring it to life. And obviously, it’s going to be leveraging expensive 5g network as well. So it’s been slower to take off like I said, I haven’t but I think we have all the pieces in place right now to really make make a big, big play in it. And a lot of the customers that we’re talking to expect a global presence, right, not just IoT that only works in the United States. And again, as part of being the Dodger telecom family, you know, we’re looking to figure out how to best serve them that way. But IoT is a is an untapped area, but a lot of opportunities, how best we can support this growing opportunity.
Dave Michels 24:36
In addition, IoT another another exciting area for 5g is video. Maybe that’s still true. I know a lot of people were disappointed to see t vision go away. Can you talk about what happened to T version and your partnership with YouTube?
John Saw 24:50
So t vision 11 clarify that T Legion is not going away t vision as the name. We’re now partnering with YouTube, and here’s why. When we launch a vision, you know, we’ve learned a lot since then. And one of the things we realize is that customers don’t need another video platform. What they need is choice and access to the best streaming experience and services they are. And what we see in YouTube is somebody who has the ability to do that they have content rights everywhere, they’re easy for me to do it. They have scale, right? t vision for t mobile’s is never about getting to the TV business. Right? It’s actually something to help us get into the home internet business. Right. So what we’re really trying to solve with T vision is to give our customers the ability to cut the cord, give them more value and more choices. With our partnership with YouTube, we can do that because they actually get the lowest price possible when they are bundled as home internet customers. So it was never really about us trying to get into the TV business is about building our home internet business, and giving our customers even more choice combining YouTube and our t mobile home internet offering and we have adapted really quickly in terms of what’s the best value we can bring, you know, do we do it ourselves with own platforms? Or do we work with swimming partners like YouTube and viral and I think our customers are better served when they have access to one of the largest streaming services out there?
Evan Kirstel 26:26
Well, you’ve just met the requirements of 99% of kids out there on
John Saw 26:32
revenue I
Evan Kirstel 26:36
had adults actually to be to be fair, let’s talk about you know, one of the key requirements for wireless which is coverage. When I travel overseas, Europe or Asia doesn’t even matter. You see much leg better coverage, faster internet speeds. And we’ve had historically here in the US when I traveled around, that’s changing obviously getting better was that one of the key drivers for the merger was better coverage, better capacity, bringing us up to a peer level with many countries in Asia Europe.
John Saw 27:09
Absolutely, I’m proud to say that T Mobile has done a yeoman’s work to actually do that in the United States. But the reasons why we merge the two companies together is that we can build a much better net will be much stronger coverage. And by way, much higher speeds. With the 5g network that we have built today, by the way we do cover, I think 295 million people now as of our earnings call that we announced a few days ago, and 100 and 40 million of that get access to the mid band spectrum $2.5 billion. So you can see speeds if I made the average of 300 megabit per second, right? That’s not just you know, best in the United States. That’s world class type speeds. Right? A big, far cry from what you usually get with 3g, I know the Europeans are better 3g coverage, even LTE. We’re talking about, you know, eight to 10 times faster. So yes. So that that is part of the reasons why the motivation for us to build a better network not only in terms of speeds, but in terms of reliability of coverage, as well. And I think we’re doing very well, on both fronts. If you look at all the recent benchmark studies that have come out,
Dave Michels 28:22
I wanted to ask you a little bit about customer service at T Mobile, it comes up a lot in the enterprise communications conversations because T Mobile took such a radical transformation a few years ago with it. I think it worked with Cisco to develop out a new contact center and and actually try to figure out how to service customers as a priority. As far as I know, that’s still going on. I know, I know the reputation is still going on. Can you share your observations on that customer service journey? And I think it’d be interesting because you started you were a competitor. So you you had to deal with it. And now you’re an insider. So tell us about customer service at T Mobile.
John Saw 28:58
I think you know, the first word that comes to mind when we’re talking about customer service, the T mobile’s being ops obsessed with our customers. And we are here’s an example. You know, T Mobile came up with the concept of team of experts in 2018. Right, and really, the whole focus there is trying to turn traditional Customer Care on its head. I’m not sure about you, but every time I call customer care with another company, I get bounced around all the time.
Dave Michels 29:25
It’s bad in general, but particularly bad in communications related companies.
John Saw 29:28
Yes. And sometimes you get bounced around a few times. And sometimes you get bounced around between call centers in the United States, India, but India back to the United States. And then you say,
Evan Kirstel 29:38
Alright, let’s not talk about at&t here. Come on, we’re we’re focusing on T Mobile,
John Saw 29:43
without naming names, right. So we have a team of experts, we actually, you know, really put customers first with a dedicated team. And you get the same team when you call every time. Right, and we have empowered this team’s team of experts to actually give them the ability to solve the customer. problems without having to transfer them around without any inefficiencies that you typically see. Like, you don’t have to keep repeating your stories every time you call and you talk to somebody new, right? So so we have a record of all that we have the same team supporting the same customers. Now, it’s more expensive to do it this way. But our customers love it. Right. In fact, in the last few years, I think Kelly and a team have spoken to other companies who is trying to learn this model from us, right. And if you look at JD Power, for a customer care satisfaction, I think we were number 121 times in a row. And so that speaks volumes for how this is resonating with customers.
Dave Michels 30:41
It really is an incredible story
John Saw 30:44
is the one of differentiation. When you talk to customers, who is a potential T Mobile customer, this is what we tell them that we will take care of you, we have you, we got you. And this is what we’re going to do.
Dave Michels 30:56
Well, one way to make customers happy is to keep dropping their prices, which t mobile’s been doing pretty aggressively for the past five years or so. Let me ask you, if the statement, over the past five years cellular prices have been dropping? Will I be able to say that in five years from now, I
John Saw 31:12
think what we’re able to say is that you’re gonna always get the best value from T Mobile.
Dave Michels 31:18
Let’s do this political
Evan Kirstel 31:20
VP of sales or this. Short?
John Saw 31:26
Usually in wireless, traditionally, you you have been forced to choose between, do you want a good network and you pay more? Or do you want to have value you, you know, you pay, you pay less, but you don’t have as good a network. I think for the first time they t mobile’s able to offer two simultaneously, because we will have the best 5g network throughout the entire 5g era. And we’re always going to give our customers the best value. So you don’t have to make a choice. There is always a reason why we have been growing and leading the industry in total net adds every quarter. And we’re going to continue to do that. Because we do provide the best value. And now From now on, we’re also providing the best 5g network. I mean, I just gave you the example a few minutes ago, I mean, look at even in the enterprise space. I mean, our two competitors are still I can’t believe it. I’m telling you this, but they’re still offering pool data plants.
Evan Kirstel 32:19
Wow. Well, you’re never gonna make Dave a happy customer. But I appreciate that messaging for sure. Existing competitors aside, what what do you worry about in terms of new entrants? Is it like a SpaceX or an Amazon with low Earth orbit or something else that we haven’t been talking about?
John Saw 32:38
satellite opportunities like SpaceX, project hybrid, Amazon’s working on one where I think they have their place, it’s a little bit more niche than what we’re trying to do. It all comes down to how much capacity Can you deliver, and we’ve satellites, you know, even with the four or 5000 satellites, that’s basically plans to launch right, the capacity is still fairly limited to be a full competitive threat. Right? I
Dave Michels 33:09
think they keep lowering them too. So we’re gonna have to start ducking when you walk outside.
John Saw 33:16
It’s a real opportunity for far out remote places, most of which is not in the United States where it’s hard to get internet access otherwise, right for villages and stuff like that. I think within the US, I think it’s I like could serve some niche areas where it’s hard for us to get back home do very remote places. But I don’t think it has enough capacity to to compete with with our our 5g network is
Evan Kirstel 33:44
interesting. Switching to applications you recently shouted out to AR and VR is some key use cases for 5g from healthcare to manufacturing, agriculture and more. Are those use cases you’re still intrigued with or
Dave Michels 33:58
sticking to your story?
Evan Kirstel 33:59
What are you thinking for the next few years?
John Saw 34:01
Absolutely sticking sticking to my to my story. You guys have been around for every G and all of us. All three of us have right? I think 5g is the first GE actually designed from the ground up to actually help transform businesses and meet their needs. Right? I mean, seriously, as good as LTE has been. It’s very easy, just a generic data layer. Right? And look at how far LTE has got, right companies like Uber, and Snapchat has actually built the businesses around a strong LTE network in this country. Other companies like Apple and Facebook, and Amazon has taken their companies to a new level by leveraging a strong LTE network. Just imagine what a 5g network can do that is designed from the ground up to have lower latency capabilities like slicing, massive machine type communications are reliable low latency. So there is a lot of potential. But I think Dave, I think we’re trying to get it was, hey, there’s a lot of talk right? Now and there is right. But, you know, if you look at some themes, right, and which is what I look at, right? And you mentioned AR and VR, I just think that AR and VR is going to work so much better with 5g. And 5g could be the catalyst to bring more AR and VR, not just for consumers, but especially for enterprises as well.
Dave Michels 35:23
Well, it’s interesting because in a lot of AR VR stuff doesn’t require a network, he just load it all up, you watch a movie or whatever, whatever experience and locally, when you start adding the networking, then it gets into more obviously communications. And, you know, that brings us back to partnership with Dialpad and conferencing services. So do you see 5g and VR and conferencing all coming together?
John Saw 35:47
Absolutely. Let me give you two example. One is with let’s talk about AR VR with with headwear, like let’s say Microsoft HoloLens. Recently, we did a demonstration, I showed a proof of concept with one of our selves, like contractors, where we gave them a AR VR hardware and driven by the software platform from one of the startups we’re working with tactile that enabled, basically the guy commissioning ourselves like to get additional help, right, remote expert help augmented instructions, step by step instructions on what to do when you condition, an element on a cell site. Right? That a lot of those renditions data is coming from the cloud. And the conduit is a fast 5g network, right? Imagine if we can do that for you know, let’s say in future for for ambulances, right, if the emergency room physician can see via AR and VR, what’s happening to the patient while the patient’s being rushed to the hospital, right lives can be saved. Right? So it’s not so much just putting content on your Oculus headset and play your gaming around talking about real time streaming, augmented reality to help our frontline workers. We’re working with a company now that has actually created digital twins, of labs and campuses so that professors and students are listed their avatars can come together actually work on a holographic heart, for instance, in biology, but they can walk into the heart, you know, lift up a piece of the muscle to see what’s in it, look at all the things right. All this is done with VR real time. Right? And your avatars move around. It’s more than more than just Second Life or gaming. It’s essentially education. To do all that from more places than what we can do today. You need a strong, fast responsive network. And I would say that 5g is that type of network that we can we can use it for
Evan Kirstel 37:47
what sounds like it. That’s really interesting. Yeah. And I think you might have made Dave a believer, which he’s a skeptic about everything. So
Dave Michels 37:54
I believe in everything. I’m just, you know, all adopted five years after you adopted and that’s, that’s really exciting. So to jump
John Saw 38:03
in such a good pair and talking heads.
Evan Kirstel 38:07
Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s been a real tour de force. And you know, you’ve been so open and and insightful. It’s much appreciated. We can’t wait to share this with our audience.
John Saw 38:18
Hey, Evan. And Dave. It’s a pleasure. It’s fun actually having the chat without going through pre reviewed questions. And I like the bantering. And the discussions. Thank you so much for having me.