Join us as we gather around the hedge,
where we dig into technology, business, and culture
with the finest minds in computer networking.
Well, hello, Audrey.
Nice to see you.
Audrey says hello. I can't bring myself to
do a high pitched,
feminine voice.
And hello, Tom.
Hi, Russ.
Second time for the day?
Yep. Yeah. Here we are. Two two recordings
in one day. I don't know. And now
we are joined by Doug Dawson,
who if you've never read his blog, pots
and pans, you ought to be reading his
blog. I'm just gonna say that upfront. I
read his blog regularly. You see me cross
post his stuff on my on rule 11.
And I don't know. He's just a a
great source of information.
He's been in the industry for as long
as I have,
which I'm you know, he's got more white
in his beard than I do. So there
you go.
So how are you, Doug? You are in
you're Nashville. Right? I'm doing well. Yes. I
live in Asheville, North Carolina. So we've been
here for eight, nine years now. So yep.
Okay. Cool.
Old telco head.
Old telco head. They used to own telephone
companies. I mean, I'm as telco head as
they come. Yes. So I I actually started
out when telephone companies use steppers mechanical switches.
So Stroggers. Right? Stroggers. Yes, indeed. Yes. Oh,
yes. So here's the thing. Right? When I
was in the air force, the the United
States military is notorious for having all this
advanced technology. Well, there's another entire side to
that that once something's installed, it's never removed.
Right. So so for instance, I worked on
the navy's network for a while on FleetNet,
and they were like, oh, yeah. We still
have bay routers.
I'm like, bay has been out of business
for five years. Yeah. We don't care. We
still use them. They're still there. So at
Maguire Air Force Base, we had stroger. We
had a 12,000
line stroger frame
with stepper switches.
And it was it was so old.
And and those things ran forever.
They did. They never broke. They never broke.
Yeah. That was it was insane.
So, anyway, alright. So we are talking about
we're gonna start with five g hype because
that's the right place to start. Right? So
talk to us about, like,
the transition
from four g to five g
and what that was all about
and how, like, we ended up at four
and a half g, basically, because five g
never really we never really worked. So talk
to us about that a little bit.
Yeah. So this takes you back now about
ten, twelve years. So about ten, twelve years
ago,
you couldn't go to anywhere in the industry
and not hear about the, the the the
five g war or the five g,
fight with China. Right? So we were in
a race with China for five g. And
they never did explain why that mattered that
we won, but it was very, very important
that we won that race.
And and and what that was it turns
out that after it was all said and
done,
that was a strategy that the three big
carriers
adopted
because that was their way to get the
public behind giving them more spectrum for five
g. And they and they needed it. Four
g was in trouble. Four g networks were
bogging down. They were really not in good
shape. People were literally getting blocked calls.
And certain times of the day, it was
just getting terrible. And but rather than just
go and make the the you know, go
in and say, we need more spectrum,
they created this crisis, which was a completely
fake crisis.
Because there never was a race with China
because and there's no race. We'll get to
the six g race today. There's no race
today because there's only really three major vendors
of this equipment, and they all do the
same thing.
You know, whatever the Chinese company does, the
the, you know, the the European companies do
the same thing. The technology doesn't get very
far ahead in either place, and the whole
world gets it. Everybody can buy it. So
so, you know, there's no such thing as
a race, but but we had this tremendous
race. I mean, it got so crazy. You
probably remember this because you're one of the
companies. The I mean, the White House had
serious conversations
about buying
Nokia or Ericsson
because that way, The United States would own
a a five g company. I mean, they
talked about buying lock, stock, and barrel and
buying the company to make an American company.
And they were serious about it. They actually
investigated it until everyone laughed them to death.
But but that's how but that's how crazy
the this hype was. It just it was
and you just couldn't go to an industry
forum. That's all anybody wanted to talk about.
How are we doing with this five g
race?
Well, part of the race was they made
these incredible claims about what five g would
do. And
and even today, I think we were just
talking before the show. We're only at today
at at four and a half g anyhow.
We never really made it to full five
g. And and and so, you know, a
lot of the things that they promised us
during that time period still have never come.
But but we actually over performed on some
of it. So, you know, for regular cellular
spectrum, they told us that we would get
the networks up to a 100 or maybe
even a little bit more megabits per second.
Well, they've outperformed that one by a mountain.
I just did AT and T just upgraded
my spectrum
in this town from the stuff they just
bought from EchoStar,
and I went from a 115 megabits down
to 381
megabits down in in three days. It's like,
woah. Because I've been watching to see when
they were gonna do the upgrade. And, like,
all of a sudden,
that's way they never promised that much bandwidth
on those spectrum bands.
But they but but they all but they
did claim up to 10 gig speeds,
knowing they've known their wave spectrum. They're like,
yeah. And and and you gotta and if
if you remember, if you watch sports
ten, eleven years ago,
every single sports event had ads from Verizon
where they held up a cell phone and
it showed one gigabit speeds on the cell
phone. You have to remember those if if
you were a sports fan. Can you hear
me now? Yeah. I can yeah. Remember that?
And those were and those were millimeter, and
they were real networks. They're still there today,
but but I think I read that that
those networks carry about a half a percent
of all of Verizon's traffic. So but they
are still there in downtowns of, like, Denver
and places like that still have these little
networks.
But but it turns out that that's a
really crappy spectrum for day to day
to day to use of cell phones. So
it just bombed. It's just it doesn't go
through anything. It bound it doesn't bounce around
things very well. And so so that, you
know, that just turned out to be a
giant bus. So we didn't get our gigabit
speeds,
but we did get way, way faster. So
they've actually outperformed on one of the key
things. But everything else, they've fallen down on.
Remember, they were going to,
you know, they were gonna use network slicing
to really stretch the spectrum. That was their
actually biggest thing that they said we were
gonna do. They were gonna go, if you
only wanna do a little thing, we're gonna
give you a fifteenth of a channel so
that you just get amount of spectrum that
you need. And if you wanna do something
really big, we wanna get you on and
off the network quickly. We're gonna combine all
sorts of different frequencies, and we're even gonna
go grab stuff from another cell tower next
door. And we're gonna give you this giant
pipe. So instead of being on for ten
seconds, you're gonna be on for a third
of a second, and that's gonna keep our
salt sites free. Well, they never did any
of that. You know? And and that was
their number one claim of how they were
gonna do this. They all they also,
they also talked about, Russ' favorite, beamforming. Beamforming.
Beamforming.
They were gonna they were gonna take the
cell tower that looks all directions, and they
were gonna beam right at you as as
somehow as you're walking or moving in a
car or whatever, and they were gonna make
sure that you got your spectrum by beamforming
so that it didn't get stray. That way,
they could they could do 20 different beams
using the same spectrum at the same time.
But they never made that work either.
They were also
then they were also going to,
yeah. So so none of those things ever
happened. None of them. They've they've happened in
there's a little tiny bit of spectrum slicing
that's been introduced here and there, and not
very much, but a little bit. And they've
played around with beamforming, but nothing that ever
worked. And and I don't think they've ever
played around with combining signals from multiple cell
towers. I'd never I don't remember seeing anybody
trying that one.
The other thing they promised was we were
gonna do small cells everywhere.
Phantom cells. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. We were gonna
have millions and millions and millions. That way,
that would protect the cell network because everybody
would be using the cell tower that's a
block and a half from their house instead
of the big ones are gonna be obsolete.
They weren't even gonna need the big ones
anymore because there was gonna be one in
your neighborhood. So then when they brought the
backbone to that one, man, you would have
all the spectrum you would ever need. Right?
Well, they they didn't even build a fiftieth
of what they promised because they the the
the economics caught up to them and they
went, boy, these things are expensive, and that's
an awful lot of backhaul.
Yeah. So they just they just never got
a a Femtocell. I had a Femtocell in
my house because I couldn't get near a
tower. And, like, so, yeah, I had a
Femtocell, but I paid for it. AT and
T didn't. Yes. But and they but these
were gonna be pole mounted small cell sites
that could handle a thousand customers, and they
were gonna be literally everywhere.
And they so they were so that, you
know, that's so that just very quietly went
away.
I think today,
last time I saw, I think there's 400,000
small cells, but that's a very deceptive number
because
75 to 80% of those cells are on
top of buildings and they beam down inside
of office buildings and malls. So they call
those small cells. They're not. They're they're a
bunch of night repeaters is what they are.
Right? So So I I remember this. I
was at the time, I was working for
an eyeball network that owned a ton of
fiber. And just as it was sort of
the the height the crest of this hype
wave. And I just remember the meetings and
people were talking about we are sitting on
a gold mine. We are gonna be rich.
We are gonna you know? And then none
of it. None of it. Well, no. A
a companies like American Tower went out, and
they gobbled up all these resources
to support the small cells. They actually went
out and built a bunch of them. They
they grabbed they grabbed backbone fiber routes through
all these cities because they were gonna make
a fortune on selling the backhaul to Verizon
and AT and T. Boy, that was a
busted business plan too. So everyone who everyone
who bet on that one lost their shirt.
So, you know, it just it just never
happened. You know, they also promised really
super low latency, like four megasecond
milliseconds, if you remember that. They never got
anywhere close to that number. And and that
one is one of my favorites because
one of the biggest things that they touted
that five g would do is it would
be faster than fiber from a latency perspective,
which would allow you to
really do real time stock trading.
It's like, I can do pretty real time
stock trading on fiber.
Or gaming or gaming was Or and gaming,
they said. Or gaming. Oh, yeah. Everyone was
gonna game on their cell phone because that's
that's gonna be the absolute fastest connection. Of
course, you we need it to we also
need it to fire, you know, the one
gig connections for that to work, which didn't
come. So that that would fall apart. But
and then finally, I think the oh, yeah.
Go ahead. Sorry. The other the other hype
piece that I remember over and over was,
remote surgery. I don't know why that stuck
with Oh, yeah. But, like, we're gonna be
able to operate on people across the world
because of this and yeah. And and there's
no doctor in his right mind that would
ever do that because of the insurance problems.
You know? It's it's like, wait. If if
broadband
goes out in the middle of this operation,
the patient dies and I get my ass.
So it's like, I don't think we're gonna
wanna do that.
You know, final the final really big claim
they had was
they can connect an immense number of people
to a cell site at the same time.
Remember that? I mean, they were just gonna
be able to I don't know. Forty, fifty
thousand people to a cell site. And and
that that's way beyond what and they didn't
really they increased that one maybe 40%.
They're bigger now, but they're not massively bigger
now. So so all those things that they
promised to do,
just didn't come to pass.
Now at the same time, what really came
into play was not their hype
because the other hype they had was economic
hype. How are they gonna pay for all
this stuff? Now this this didn't get spouted
in public, but it gots. But this is
what they told investors. If you went to
all the cordially,
announcements for them. So here's what they said
they were gonna do with five g.
You know, they first they said,
businesses are gonna adopt private
five g networks like crazy,
and that's gonna surpass residential revenues.
So so all these businesses were gonna do
all their own employees and customers were gonna
get on private networks. They were gonna put
five g in factories.
The five g was just gonna rule the
business world,
and and that didn't even come in. They
didn't they didn't accomplish a hundredth of that
claim.
Yeah. There was there were big yeah. There
were big things about how we'll never need
Ethernet. In fact, there are a lot of
factories that were built
that never were were wired
for CAT five or CAT six because Because
they knew this was coming. Yeah. That's right.
Five g is coming.
Yeah. Right. Okay. Now
this was such a rare thing that I
think it was about two years ago. John
Deere
rewired
about eight or 10 of their factories in
Illinois for five g and also with Wi
Fi at the same time, and they did
get rid of a lot of the wiring.
And and that was such big news because
I at the time when that was announced,
I looked it up and there was maybe
10 factories in the world who had done
that. So instead of instead of being a
massive business and and they and they did
it all themselves. Like, they didn't even use
the big carriers to do it, which I
found really amusing. So
so but but that that was supposed
to be larger
than customer subscription revenue. The next thing they
said was they're gonna pay for all this
because
they first off, they were gonna do IoT,
you know, Internet of things. Oh my goodness.
The IoT You were gonna have five you
were gonna have five g in your washing
machine, in your refrigerator.
Every car was gonna have a monthly $10
five g subscription. I mean, they were gonna
make so much money off of recurring subscriptions,
and so that was really what they were
counting on. And it turns out that Wi
Fi won that war a 100%. I mean,
nobody has a subscription for those kind of
things. You know, I mean, even cars. You
know, I have two cars that communicate with
my house when you pull in the driveway.
The first day we bought them, we gave
them the Wi Fi password. It dumps whatever
the heck they dump, and and it's done.
They don't need five g to do that.
So but they but everybody was gonna have
these subscriptions.
They also thought everybody would pay extra for
the speeds. It turned out nobody was willing
to pay extra for the speeds, and they're
still not willing today to pay extra for
the speeds. Everyone's I'm very impressed
to get 381
megabits on my phone. Would I pay extra
for that? No. I don't I don't really
I'm impressed that it's that fast. I don't
care that it's that fast.
You know? So, so that you know? So
it there was just nothing there. Finally,
they were gonna they were absolutely positive that
there were gonna be killer apps of some
sort, that five g was gonna be so
unique. And they talked about the AR glasses,
you know, the the the Google Glass and
all those crazy glasses people were. They talked
about virtual reality, and none of those things
ever came to pass.
And if they did, they were gonna work
on Wi Fi and not five g. And
so, you know, so so almost everything they
promised about five g failed.
Really, the only thing that they did right
was they got regular old day to day
speeds up a lot faster. But even there,
the American vendors
the American carriers
only allocate six or 7% of their total
speed to upload. They put all their speed
on download because they're having this marketing battle
about who has the fastest networks today. Right?
So they all the rest of the world
puts two and three times more of their
bandwidth to upload. So you still can't use
your cell phone for any of those advanced
apps that require two way communications because you
don't have very much upload on your cell
phone. I mean, I have three eighty one
down. I have 11 up. It's like, that's
ridiculous.
That's 3% of the bandwidth allocation is going
up. Right? So,
so, you know, that and it tests consistently
at that very small small level. So so,
you know, they just they overpromised
massively underperformed
except for regular day to day speeds. Everything
else they promised never came to pass. Or
it came to pass
in such a diminished
nature that it didn't make any mark any
difference.
And boy, did the heads roll. I mean,
a couple years into five g, all the
execs in that part of those companies were
all gone because they you know, their business
plans just died. And so, you know, there
was a real clean out of of the
executives at the cell companies from
who had promised all the stuff that they
were gonna be performing on.
So
and finally, what they they finally found their
use for five g, which is FWA
wireless home Internet.
That was
twelve years ago. There was not even one
mention of that. I looked. In all of
the press, nobody ever said, let's use five
g spectrum to do home Internet.
Nobody made that claim. Nobody thought that was
a good idea. It's still not a good
idea. We're using these very valuable
mid range spectrum bands for people's broad home
broadband.
When when most of the places are competing,
there's a there's a wired there's a wired
alternative, which is so much more efficient than
than using Spectrum to do that.
Are they adequate? Do they work? Yes.
People can get one, two hundred megabits and
they're not a bad product. Their their sellers
point is that they're cheap. They're, you know,
you can get them as cheap as $30
a month.
So but but they're just sucking
up all the spectrum,
and that leads to the that leads to
the six g hype. Well, before you go
there even Yes. The other the other thing
is that
when they did when even when you do
FWA,
one thing that no one counted on was
LEO,
and that is actually a result of beamforming.
Right? That's actually because somebody got beamforming
to work. It just wasn't the cell people.
So yeah. So, you know, before when you
had GeoSync,
the satellite was so high and the delay
was so long and the jitter was so
bad.
You just really, like, don't even bother with
this stuff, right, for anything for anything near
real time at all. But now with LEO,
it's not that much worse than your local
cell phone tower.
And so it's kind of eaten the FWA
space as well. Well, and and look out
ten years from now, it's gonna kill the
FWA space because they're gonna blow them away
in speed. Yeah. The next generation of satellites
is gonna be way more powerful. And so
they're not gonna be delivering 90 megabits anymore.
They're gonna be delivering five, six hundred gigabit.
And when they get laser working in space,
oh, it's even gonna be better for delay
and and jitter than what we have today.
Yeah. So they're gonna get they're gonna get
their,
jitter and and latency way down on the
satellites, and they're gonna get their speeds way
up.
And,
now as long as there's no competition for
that, if they keep charging a $120
a month, that's their that's their weakness.
But they're gonna bring those prices down
when they really wanted to rule the world
because they're gonna be able to do they
don't and they don't charge a 120
in Africa today. They are they selectively priced
by the company. We pay the full price
here.
Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway so so so keep
going to 60. I just wanted to point
out that that was yet another
another factor in the FWA stuff.
So now we're back to the same spot.
So now, you know, we're five years into
five g. These cycles are about ten years
to go from one generation to the next.
So five years from now, we should start
seeing the very first of the six g
stuff. Right?
Now we're starting to see the hype. In
fact, the White House put out a document
two weeks ago that said we have a
six g war with China.
They actually used race. They said we're in
a six g race with China. It's like,
wait a minute. This looks really familiar.
And they didn't explain why,
but but we are in one. I I
have no idea why.
Because we have
overall, this country now has
way better broadband than we did ten, twelve
years ago. Everyone's got every I don't care
what you're on. What was your I'm on
I'm on I'm on the cable company. I
I think at ten years ago, my speeds
were either 30 or 60 megabits, and now
I have a gigabit on my on my
cable company. I mean, we've all got these
giant increases in capability
just over a ten year span. I don't
know why all of a sudden we have
this crisis where we need six g, but
but we're but we've started the hype.
Now again, this hype
is coming for the exact same reason. They
want more frequency.
But now they don't want it for six
g. They want it they want it for
FWA.
They wanna go get another ten, twenty, 30,000,000
customers on this very lucrative
new product that they have, and they need
a lot of spectrum to do that, which
has nothing to do with with the normal
uses of a wireless network. But that's what
this is all about. The funny thing about
it is they already won.
The FCC already set aside 800 megahertz of
of mid range spectrum that has to go
to auction, and they're gonna have to go
robbing very useful bands that other people already
have. They're gonna have to dip into the
Wi Fi. They're gonna have to dip into
CBRS
just to come up with a 100. And
these are these these are all bad that
they're gonna take some of these things away.
A few of the ones are gonna take
away not so bad. I mean, there's two
different bans assigned to self driving cars,
a failure. We but, you know, go ahead
and get rid of those. Not I don't
know who watches your thing. We might get
a whole bunch of angry emails from folks
who think that's still useful.
But because because because I run into them
once in a while. They're gonna like, no.
We're gonna make that work. Like, no.
We're not because, you know, there's four or
five other technologies that cars could talk to
each other with that don't require spectrum.
So Yes. And and right. And exactly. Even
if they do, they're still LEO.
Even if they do, they're still
Yes. Wi Fi is so
blanketed in urban areas that we don't really
need
No.
Set aside spectrum to do it. So what
so you're saying they're giving away 800 what
did you say? 800 k or 800 800
megahertz spectrum.
And so Well, they're putting it up for
auction, but the cell companies are gonna win
it all. It's gonna only go to cell
companies because no one else can beat them
at a auction. And so it's being taken
from c CBMRA,
you said. Right? Well, it's taken it's gonna
be taken
between about
900 megahertz and about,
maybe
six and a half gigahertz. So in that
sweet range, which is where cellular is really
good, in that range of spectrum,
the FCC has to come up with 800
megahertz of bandwidth to put up for auction.
Yeah. All of it's already it's already used
for something else to do. I was gonna
say that's gonna actually be hard because that
is Yeah. It's very hard. Yeah. Yes. That's
where everything is. Yes. Yeah. Most radar systems
are at one point o gig, 1.2 gig.
Microwave systems are right in that range. Like,
everything is in there. And at the same
time, we're trying to use those spectrums for
more satellite stuff.
You know, they're talking about rating stuff for
for weather satellites. Like, no. Do not rate
the pin with the extra weather satellites.
I I don't I don't know what this
government has against weather satellites, but they seem
to not like them. I know it's like,
no. We gotta like weather satellites.
So I'd also like the radar at my
local airport to work. I think I do
too. I do too.
Very much so. Yeah. So so, you know,
I don't know. They're gonna have a really
hard time finding that because there's none of
this that's not used. But I say that
again. I I I laughed about the one
ban for cars because it's really not being
used. So it's like, yeah. That but that's
only a one tiny little slice of that.
That's I think that's, like, 60 or 80
megahertz. So, you know, so there is some
stuff that they can grab. They're gonna kick
the military off of a bunch of it.
I don't know that I want the military
to get kicked off with this stuff either.
It's like we kinda like them to have
stuff that works for them too. So
Right. Are they gonna impact amateur radio? Because
I would think they would. That's a bit
high frequency for for amateur
radio. Yeah. That no. That that's mostly below
that. Yeah. But Yeah. But they
they're but who knows? Because they're gonna move
all these people somewhere else. That's their thing.
Where are they gonna move those other people?
I
You know, there
it's mind boggling that they're and and this
was congress now. This wasn't the FCC.
I'm not a giant fan of a lot
of the things the FCC does, but they've
always
been pretty decent with spectrum allocation. They listen
to both sides, and they act as a
neutral arbiter, and they've mostly decided most of
their decisions have been good. They've always had
a little bit of physic a bias about
spectrum sharing versus outright licenses and little licenses,
big licenses.
But they kinda got the bands right. They
really did over the years. They they have
not done a terrible job of it. And
and what we do isn't sort of in
sync with the rest of the world, which
is kind of important that, you know, that
the gear you buy
from other countries will work here because we
don't really manufacture any of it.
So so Yeah. There's only so much tuning
you could do on a transmitter front end.
Well, now here, we're gonna rearrange all of
our stuff so that Yeah.
This this doesn't make any sense. But but
I
that order came down in the big beautiful
bill, and it's very obvious that AT and
T and those guys got that language inserted
at the last minute. That was a bill
that the people vote on that said they
hadn't read it. I mean, they couldn't have
it. It was, you know, it was this
thick and and and it all got forced
out at the end. So they got this
thing in there.
So they won that battle. But yet they're
still lobbying. It's like, well, you already won.
Why are you still lobbying? They're still lobbying
because I guess they want even more spectrum,
I guess. I don't know. But but we
still have this six g race. So,
so, you know, so it it's it's more
of the same. So we have this hype
starting. It's five years ahead
of the possible first introduction of a six
g technology,
which is,
on its face, a very funny thing to
say because
their first introductions
that they will call six g are gonna
be to try to finish off some of
the stuff from five g that they never
got around to. Right?
And but how much of this too is
just straight marketing. Right? Just It's all it's
all marketing. Yeah. I need to sell new
phones. Like Yes. You know, everybody has phones
and the the rate at which they're selling
them is slowing down. And and for instance,
the other day, I just bought a new
laptop. Well, a new a new tablet or
whatever. And you can get it with a
five g subscription, but it's $500
extra plus the subscription.
Like, why would I ever do that? Why
would I spend I have Wi Fi.
Why am I doing this to myself?
I mean, where would you have to live
that that would sound like a good idea
to you?
Yeah. I mean, I guess you have to
travel.
Or oh, yeah. Well, that's you know, are
you gonna travel with your tower?
I I I mean, the answer is yeah.
But, I mean, are are you putting that
in the back of the the back of
your SUV and taking it places every week?
I don't know. Yeah. You know, it just
seems crazy.
Yeah. I
I mean, if you work at home
and you absolutely are shut down for making
money when your broadband's down, it's not bad
to have a backup, but I have a
backup
for that. It's called this.
I mean, I know. We had hurricane O'Lane.
I live I worked on my cell phone
for four weeks before the cell towers came
back here. It worked just fine. I mean,
before the brought the the, my my charter
came back. These guys were back up and
running in four days, which is a when
you look at where what happened to the
towers, this was an amazing job they did.
Now they didn't get all of them up,
but they got the ones up that serve
where I live. Some of them took, like,
took almost months to fix. But because some
some places, the roads were gone. It's kinda
hard to fix the cell tower when the
road is gone. But but the point is,
you don't need a you don't need a
computer with that because you always have this.
You always have your cell phone with you.
If if if that $500
and that subscription works, so did your cell
phone.
Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly.
It's a need we don't have. Now here's
the funny thing about all this.
Because you mentioned satellites.
Nobody has been willing
and survey after survey, marketing survey after marketing
survey, nobody's willing to pay extra for the
speed, the latency, none of those things. No.
60%
64% of US households said they would pay
extra
to get satellite
paid or satellite texting.
Now they won't really once they find out
what it cost and how how crappy it
is. But the point is, everybody
runs into places every month where their cell
phone doesn't work. If you if you if
you go anywhere except your house, there's dead
spots. Right?
And so and we're a generation where you
can't wait three minutes, so you I need
to have that satellite. Right? They don't realize
it won't work in your car. It doesn't
work when you're at a house. It's like
you're gonna have to go out in the
backyard in snow to get your tax off,
but, you know, so be it. So it
won't really be 60%,
but that's the first thing we've seen in
the ten years where somebody well, a whole
lot of people said they're willing to pay
for it. That has way more promise
than all the stuff they've done with the
five g because nobody's paid anything extra
g. Nobody. They never got anybody to give
them extra money every month because the five
g networks are better.
So, you know, that was that's where their
business plan really fell down. In fact, cell
prices have dropped about 30%.
Yeah. People are paying less.
A lot. Quite a bit less. So they've
they've gone the wrong direction instead of up.
Now if they would have gotten every car
to give them a $10 a month subscription,
man, that was a gold mine, but they
didn't. Right? The satellite guys
are gonna do a $3.04, or $5 a
month subscription to be able to text the
satellites,
and and you're gonna use 20 or 30¢
worth. It's almost all profit. They're they're gonna
clean up on that product.
Wow. And young people will all buy it.
You watch. Young people will all do the
$5 add on. Guarantee it.
So Yeah. You know? And that money doesn't
go to the carriers. That money goes to
the satellite guys.
So
I I did. Sat satellite after all these
years, satellite's gonna be the one who found
a way to to to make money off
of this idea. So I think that's hilarious.
Yeah.
Yeah. And because of a technology, the cell
people couldn't get working. Honestly, that's what that's
what even makes it funnier.
It's like,
you tried to do beamforming. You failed. The
satellite people succeeded. Well, it's a different environment.
Right? It's much easier to beam form a
an earthbound antenna
to reach a satellite that's moving in the
sky
than it is to try to beam form
off the cell phone tower
to a cell device that's driving down the
highways 60 miles an hour. Like, those are
completely different classes of problems.
Well, well, they are, but
the satellite one sounds complex to me. Plus,
they don't really beam for them to you.
They kinda beam for them to a whole
pretty large neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. They do. So
they they all they have to kinda hit
your area.
But, you know,
majority of cell phone users are sitting still
in a in one place. They're not moving.
So it's like, okay. So you can't beamform
the cars. Why aren't you beamforming to me?
Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I like, I have,
you know, I have I've been sitting here
at my desk now for three hours. Beamforming
to me. You know where I'm at?
So, you know, so the fact that they
can't make that work is they can't make
that work. And the cell tower hasn't moved
now in forty years. I'm pretty sure they
know where that is.
Yeah. It's it's a little bit bad. Yeah.
And it's not like any of that's new
technology. I mean, seriously, beamforming has been around.
I mean, when I was in here been
around thirty years at at least. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. Yeah. It's probably longer. That's thirty years
ago. I remember it. So I'm sure it's
older than that. Yeah. Well, in radio systems,
you go back to the f to the
GRN 2029
and those types of systems
for doing airfield.
Right? And all the ILS systems are using
beamforming
back in the sixties.
Right. Yeah. You're right. So that's why Right.
Yeah. Way back.
Yeah.
So that's crazy. So so now five g
has a bunch of new claims.
First off, this this one kills me.
They're talking about day to day
guaranteeing
day to day speeds of at least a
100 megabits. It's like, wait a minute. We've
already beaten the hell out of that number.
But that's what's in the specification.
Believe it or not, that's what's in the
six g specification.
Now they're also talking about going back to
the very high frequencies. Now they're talking about
not one gigabit, two gigabit, but they're talking
about speeds between 50 and a 100 gigabits.
There there's not enough spectrum in the world
to do they're gonna have to join together
like all the spectrum there is to give
you a 100 gigabit connection.
And then the backhaul network would be incredible
if I had Yes. You know?
Yes.
But there's not but there's not enough spectrum
bands to tie together to do that. You
know, they've just did some recent tests where
they were doing five gigabit connections
on wireless,
and they had to tie together,
like, seven different bands of spectrum. The fact
is most people don't own that many different
bands of spectrum, even the carriers. It's like,
where are you gonna find the spectrum to
do that with? And on top of that,
what do we need it for?
We've had point to point microwaves for a
long time.
Yeah.
They could do that much bandwidth. It's like,
what you know, and if I if if
one of if one of them is not
enough, put up three of them. It's like,
you know, this is not hard technology to
do. So, you know, this is crazy. And
now we have LIDAR and all sorts of
other things that look to have a whole
lot of promise to do it without all
this crazy
wireless stuff. So it's like it's a so
that's their first big claim is we're gonna
get way faster. But again, they're going back
to these super high frequencies,
which are just not real world friendly.
They don't like rain. They don't like fog.
They don't even like when the wind blows
and there's dust in the air. And the
high frequencies are just very and they're real
world
pain in the ass touchy. They're just not
great things to use in the real world.
Right?
So so but they're but they're making these
claims. They're never gonna do it. They'll do
it as a test every once in a
while to kinda look what we did here
in the lab. Right?
So
they're talking about they're back to this idea
of small cells. They said this is they're
gonna reduce the cost so much that they're
gonna cover the entire world with six g.
Everybody's gonna have it. So somehow, they're gonna
get it to the rural areas now. That
one is beyond me, but they're that's literally
part of the hype now
that they're selling it on. And and it's
like, so are you gonna build more rural
cell towers? Because there's no one who lives
there like there hasn't been for the last
fifty years.
If you couldn't justify a three g or
four g tower, how are you gonna justify
a six g tower? Right? So that one,
I don't get at all. But that's a
big part of their claim is it's gonna
be so low cost,
that it's gonna do it. We're now talking
you're gonna love this number.
The specs says latency between point one and
one milliseconds.
It's not even possible on fiber.
No. It's not even it's no. It's it's
it's really not. About the best you can
do is three. So that's not at all
possible. So clock a you can't clock a
packet onto a circuit in point one millisecond.
No. You can't get it out of the
chip onto the no. So that's crazy. But
that's what that's what it says.
That that if you go go read the
60 specs, the I mean, these are really
fun reading.
You know? They're also, again, talking massive numbers
of devices again, which is they never did
the first time. So that's a five g
claim coming back around again.
And
they're now claiming
IoT again because they're gonna use those massive
number of connections to do
smart city, smart cars,
environmental
marketing, agricultural
sensors. Like, wait. Those were all five g
claims.
It's like, but they're back in they're back
in there again. So they're so they're trying
that one again. Nobody wanted it the first
time. The problem you have with all those
things is
it's not it's not affordable.
The actual agricultural sensor to get a SIM
card in it is way too expensive. And
the electronics and it uses enough power that
it's really hard to keep the darn thing
lit. So you don't wanna have to put
up an expensive solar power. You want the
real little cheap, tiny solar
thing. So that means you need a very
low
you know, you need something that just blips
out data now and then. So so, you
know, cellular is not the right technology for
that. So,
this is crazy. But that's all back in
there again. So we're gonna we're gonna do
all that again. And now we're gonna go
one better because now
we are gonna have,
you know,
way better
advanced stuff. You know, not the three d
glasses. We're gonna have holograms everywhere and and
just all this crazy advanced stuff because six
g has so much bandwidth
that that they're gonna support every possible
advanced technology you could ever dream of.
Again, going,
but I have fiber.
Isn't that good enough to do that with?
I it's like, but who needs this? Right?
They did not. No.
Good news, Tom, is they had did not
mention
remote operations this time.
But but did they do the Internet of
smells?
I don't know.
Actually, I actually, I think they did. Oh,
god. They they what do they call that?
They call that haptic sensing. Right?
I think that's the I think that's the
term for it. So haptic sensing is in
is in one of those. I believe that's
what that term means. So yes. So they
are they are talking the Internet of smells.
Yes.
Yeah. No. Thanks.
Yeah. I I I pretty much make all
the smells I ever need, I think.
I do not wanna be watching a movie
and have the smells of Victorian London
coming through the screen.
Or or even the or even the the
steam locomotive driving by smelling that thing. Yeah.
I don't I don't really need to smell
that.
I I'm pretty I can imagine it without
the without the idea in there.
So, you know, certainly not watching the Nature
Channel. That's for sure.
So
so, anyway, we're we're back to this. It's
honestly it's the same old list.
But somehow they got it's gonna be massively
more energy efficient and massively cheaper.
And
and I don't they don't talk about how
they're gonna do that. I don't know what
what makes any new technology cheaper than the
old one. It's hard to picture
that this this new side or technologies will
be cheaper for six g than they are
for five g. Right?
Yeah. If you're going triple. If you're going
up frequency range,
it actually takes a lot more power into
Yes. Five whatever gig range than it does
to push something at, like, you know,
whatever. But now but now this this stuff
is most this stuff is mostly gonna concentrate
on the
from six to about 20. So it's gonna
be so that's this is a lot of
the stuff is gonna be twelve and and
sixteen gigahertz. It that's that's what they're talking
about using for this stuff.
So that that makes no sense. No. It
doesn't. It doesn't. For for those listening who
don't know this, the general rule of thumb
is is you lose
essentially a log it's a logarithmic scale. You
lose
half your power every wavelength. And every time
you go up frequency,
your wavelength gets increasingly shorter. So, like, if
I'm sending something at 10 meters, I don't
even know what frequency that is, a 10
or 40 meter wavelength,
like, I push a 100 watts behind it,
and I'm still at a watt, you know,
like, way out there
in distance.
If I'm pushing it at six gigahertz
or 12 gigahertz,
oh my gosh. Like Yeah.
It's just you lose all the power in
in a city block. Yeah. No. Exactly. It's
it's it's literally that short of a distance.
They found that those those
those those, can you hear me, Verizon things,
they had to put a cell site every
thousand feet to make those work,
which means they only were carrying 500 feet.
So you had to be within 500 feet
of a cell site. So Yeah. That's that's
crazy. That's real that's really close.
Yeah. It really is.
Wow.
So yeah.
So I don't know.
I think I felt like we've kinda beat
this one to death. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty
much that's a pretty much everything there is
to say about it. But we're right. But
it just it's feeling like deja vu, because
all of this has been talked about before.
But in this country, ten or twelve years
is forever ago and everybody forgot. So it's
fresh again except for except for the people
like us that were annoyed the first time.
It's new.
Wow. So any other questions, Tom, before we
drop off? No. No. No. We're good. Anything
you wanna say, Doug, before we wrap up
and
No. I appreciate you letting me talk about
this because this has been bugging me for
a year. This this is one of this
is one of those topics that just annoy
the hell out of me because,
you know,
there the cellular business has come down to
marketing based on price.
Plain and simple. If there's too much supply
for the demand,
and and it's nothing more than price wars
and packaging wars.
To talk about the need for these two
new technologies makes no sense because they're not
gonna make it any better.
Yeah. You know? No. I don't really care
if six g I already increased from 100
to 300 megabits,
and I don't care if they now increase
it to three gigabits. I I don't need
it anymore than I needed it at a
100 megabits. So so I I don't understand
what this is all about. I don't get
it. And and and we're tech guys. It's
like, if we don't like it, who the
hell is gonna like that?
Yeah. Exactly.
Alright. Well,
Doug, where can people find you and get
in touch if they want to or follow
your work?
Yeah. The easiest way to find me is
on Pots and Pins by CCG.
My email address is on there. So so
I'm I'm easy to find. My company is
CCG Consulting. So if you need engineering or
business market plans, you know, look me up.
So that's what we do for a living.
So,
but I I I think I'm in my
thirteenth or fourteenth year of writing a blog
every day. So it's it's about topics like
that. I've probably written about five g at
least dozen times over the years. Once a
year at least. So
Yeah. Well, we'll get you back on. I
mean, this is this is a fun conversation.
We'll get you back on. It is. This
was a fun conversation. Thank you. And, Tom,
say your word. Go ahead.
LinkedIn.
So okay.
So
that that's Tom Tom's entire
social media spiel, in case you're interested, is
the one word. LinkedIn.
Alright. I'm Russ Weitzk. I'm here at the
hedge, rule eleven dot tech on LinkedIn,
occasionally on x whatever whatever. I'm actually pretty
easy to find. We know we live in
an attention driven economy, so your attention is
what we value here,
and we thank you for listening all the
way to the bitter end of this episode
of The Hedge, and we will catch you
next time.