The Next Gen of Wireless Connectivity Part 2 of 2

Hello, everyone. It's your host, Daniel Littwin, the voice of B2B, and welcome to another episode of Wavelengths, an Amphenol Broadband Solutions podcast. If you're tuning in to today's episode, alert alert, you're tapping into a part two of two. So if you missed part one of our conversation with our guest, Alan Proithis, you're going to want to go ahead and pause here, go listen to part one, and then loop back around. But if you've already heard part one, then welcome back to our conversation here on the wireless revolution and how it is shaping and reshaping. The broadband industry. So on this episode of wavelengths, we've been discussing how the foundational next-gen wireless technologies, namely Wi-Fi six and six e and five g and a little bit of six g, how they are sort of reshaping the foundations of services solutions, innovative use cases for wireless broadband, and then how that is impacting broadband companies and players at large. How should they strategize around these changes and make the most of these innovative use cases that are taking place in smart agriculture, manufacturing, smart cities. You name it. Right? Now we're gonna pick back up where we left off and talk a little bit more about these technologies in an IoT context because IOT and industry four point o at large is really at the forefront of validating, some of the use cases for various different wireless broadband networks. We're also gonna learn a little bit more about GSE's cellular solutions and how they fit into this evolving ecosystem. So coming back for more, because he couldn't get enough is mister Alan Preuth, the CEO of g x c. Alan, thanks for coming back for part two, man. How you doing? Well, thanks for having me for this y wireless mini series here, David. Yeah. You know, we didn't intend it to be a mini series, but there's just too much to talk about. So two parts it is. But, yeah, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate you rejoining us and digging in a little bit more. So let's go ahead and jump back in. What I wanna do now is talk about we've kind of already been talking about this, but the application of those networks, in one of the sort of, I guess, leading initiatives shaping, how wireless broadband providers, you know, approach their services, and, you know, one of these buckets of change that are defining industry four point o, and that would just be the proliferation of IoT ecosystems and IoT technologies, public ones, private ones, all that good stuff. So I wanna highlight another few stats here just to sort of set the stage. But we'll start with the technology itself IOT because I'm curious how you see it interacting with, the ecosystem of next-gen wireless network. So, you know, when IoT first started taking off, in the early twenties, it was 2g and 3g that dominated sort of the network infrastructure for it. But as of, you know, about twenty-nine teen. It's actually MB IoT that now leads with four g kind of in second and five g inching up, and this is just for cellular IoT modules. This is data, coming out of IoT analytics dot com if folks wanna reference it. What are your thoughts there? You know, how is MB IoT, you know, as, a foundational ecosystem, comparing to trying to connect IoT over wifi six, over five g over, you know, preparing it for four for six g or even just sticking with four g. And How is that defining, you know, how wireless broadband providers are maneuvering the IoT ecosystem as it evolves? So again, it really the answer depends upon the use case and, how much data the device is generating. The majority of IoT devices actually don't crank up that much data. And so would drive someone to a cellular connectivity solution versus a non cellular connectivity solution, not just Wi Fi, but like, Lara is probably the best, non cellular, you know, lower data solution. It's about COBIOT in terms of the data it can support. But you have batteries that can last for many years, and it's, it's it's a more inexpensive protocol to deploy. But where cellular really shines is when things move around a lot because you're always gonna have a cellular network. And, and really, the end we started really going down the MBIOT path, really to balance out the threat coming from, noncellular technologies like Lara and some others. But once they started getting out there, you know, they started falling back more on caught m, than MB IoT. And because kind of, the coverage is much more ubiquitous. The costs have really come down. You know, so it's gonna be incredibly competitive. With almost every other technology, and because it's everywhere. But again, it's really about, the movement of stuff And e and even the answer, whether it stops roaming within the city, a state, a country, a region, the answer changes very quickly, because even though it still may be cellular, the bands you have to support around the world change with cellular as well. There's no, like, It's not like Bluetooth. Anywhere you go on Bluetooth is gonna run two point four. It's one of the very few things. Once you get into all these other things, there'll always be some overlap, and then you have to part multi bands based on, you know, where you're going. So that's why people, a lot of times, for, like, campus load data stuff, you'll have like a Lara type of technology, which is the perfect technology for a lot of this low data stuff because it batteries just last and lasts for many years. You can gather stuff up. And frankly, that's where private say there really shines because what you can do is you can have all that data, you can have a master umbrella network over a campus. So all your data from that corporate app you're walking around on inside, outside seamless roaming on your own network that you keep the data. And then let's say you have a bunch of legacy WiFi stuff Lara stuff, Bluetooth stuff, whatever it is. Doesn't matter. By the use of gateways, you can have all that still use the overlying umbrella private cellular network, as backhaul for all that. So you still keep it within your own house before you take it somewhere else. And then finally, for things that need to move around outside of that campus because you have a cellular capability built in certain things. You can have it. So it can roam onto public networks if you wanted to do so, or roam between other private networks. And so again, it comes down to a really good use case definition. And figure out how it works altogether. And, you know, we're seeing the IoT market continue to grow including despite some economic downturns over the last year or so. And the share of where you know, that market is growing is also pretty diverse. Right? IoT hardware, services, software, and even IoT security is carving out a significant slice, and appears to continue to carve out a significant slice through at least twenty twenty-seven. So this IoT revolution isn't slowing down. Right? And we're starting to see different approaches to, like you were saying, defining that IoT ecosystem. There's another, you know, very high profile one that I wanna get your thoughts on, but that's Amazon sidewalk. Which is operating its own low bandwidth long-range wireless network. It's a nine-hundred megahertz spectrum. Where do you see that kind of network technology fitting into the rest of the wireless revolution is that an example, you know, in your opinion of, you know, a a a quality sort of private deployment of an IoT ecosystem, and what can we learn from seeing this launched at scale? So two questions there. One about industry growth, one about, sidewalks. So the first one about growth, you know, I make the joke of remember about twenty years ago, if you're old enough, when people were hiring the head of internet, And then, you know, about seven, eight years ago, people were hiring the head of IoT. And we sort of are getting through the phase of hiring the head of digital, whatever that means. Because what happens is You know, we don't have a head of wifi. We don't have a head of, you know, Intel CPU machines in Office. They're just one tool in the bag that you're applying to your business, and you become familiar enough with it, where it's not its own thing. It's how it really works with everything else. Some of the best industry stats, IoT and analytics guys do a nice job. One of my favorites is actually the transformer insight guys. In the UK, living around forever. Really understand this. I was just having a conversation with them recently, because there is no hockey stick in IoT. It's kind of thing that'll grow at about fifteen percent a year till the end of time. And there'll be verticals and segments and use cases that'll hockey stick. But overall, but everything is just gonna keep steadily growing because with COVID and automation and digital transformation, However, we define it. You just need more data to control stuff, and that's what IoT is in the end of the day. So I think, I think you'll see a very above average growth rate, but it's not gonna be, like, one day it doubles. It's gonna be a very steady fifteen ish percent across the whole market with pockets of of spurts that continue to grow. Regarding the Amazon stuff, you know, it's It's interesting because it's been around a number of years now. They were actually based in originally on the lower technology. And the using the ISM band, which in the US, is in the low nine hundreds, which anybody can, again, it's a shared band in Europe. It's eight sixty-eight, and it works similarly. And, they took the Lara technology, and they tweaked it, a little bit. And they started baking it in all the consumer products. So If you have a ring doorbell, if you, you know, a smart speaker, you know, it's default is that it's on. So you basically have multiple networks based in. And so they've because they sell so many units, they've created this, really impressive, network, but the network is basically what I'd call an inside out now. Work. It's not like a big macro network where you're driving on a highway, you're gonna have coverage. It's a network based on the installed footprint of all their existing products. And so, I think they're getting very aggressive finally in terms of making it available for people to use. And so I think it's something worthy of a hard look. But the question then becomes how what use cases are best suited for it If it's basically all tagging on, like, in home devices, how do you get coverage around enterprise? How do you get coverage out in the wild? And I know They are looking at quite a few things and coming up with, you know, their own gateways you can deploy and things like that. But they did such a good job on the inside deployment. It'll be interesting to see what they do on the outside deployment. And today also, I think they started by deploying it, anybody to use it for free, which is great. You know, in a new gas station event on the street last month, you got free coffee for two weeks. After that, the free coffee goes away. And so the question is, what does a free coffee go away on the sidewalk network? And I just don't know the answer Yeah. It's still in a pretty nascent stage. So I was gonna be curious to see how, you know, their iteration of a low, you know, a low bandwidth long range, private wireless network, seeing how that's gonna develop and either set standards or, you know, be examples for, you know, how to iterate on that approach moving forward by other players, I wanna develop their own private, long range low bandwidth networks. Yeah. And by the way, the the lower standard and the modified sidewalk standard does go a long way. All those kind of because ISM band, you know, it's lower since it's nine hundred megahertz. So know, you put it on top of the roof of your house, you're gonna get probably a mile or two out of that easy. But who's gonna climb on the roof, right? Right. Yeah. And that's another layer too. Right? The community involvement will that be a a good motivator for launching and sustaining these, networks at scale. I'd like to think yes, you know, I'm typically community oriented, solutions I don't know. I'm just talking kinda esoterically, but they are pretty successful. You know, they create some sort of shared ownership and a vision for how to make the most out of a technology, you know, or whatever. But in practice, we'll have to see, you know, if that approach works Well, you know, what what does that even mean, right, when you have a community oriented solution? I mean, you know, I can I was a beta user on ring before Amazon ever bought them? And you know, I I still get those weird ring notifications about, you know, somebody lost a dog in your neighborhood. I'm like, okay. And was that my problem? You know, I'll keep my eye out for spot, but, you know, what else to do about that? You know, it's it seems like, the granularity or the filtering isn't there. On the flip side, though, everybody has sort of a crowdsourced network that's providing some level of neighborhood coverage pretty well. And what if you started putting up these little battery operated panic buttons, you know, in certain neighborhoods? Were you know exact where that alert was coming from, alerted the police, alerted neighbors, you know, gunshot detectors, you know, the the analysis that can happen now, even some of the audio stuff, if a crash happens or a screen. So you can do all kinds of cool stuff once you have this kind of network with enough density, but, you know, you gotta sort of prime the pump a little bit. Alright, Alan. We're approaching the end of the conversation here. I wanna take some time to, you know, really focus on GSE here and its place in the, you know, varied ecosystem of wireless networks. So GSE offers a cellular mesh technology, which is pretty unique in the marketplace. It's a private cellular solution for enterprises. Can you explain some of the differences here, right, between a cellular mesh network and, some of the other next gen wireless technologies that are shaping the broadband industry. Sure thing. We're and first off, we're one of the only providers, one of the very, very few that have a turnkey private cellular solution. So what, in most cases, there's a lot of good individual gear. You buy a gateway here. You buy the sauce of different different chunks of software. You need to control it from other places. Then you have to integrate it and then what happens, you have to scale it. It's not really designed for enterprise to scale. And so first off, we have a turnkey system. Everything's pre-integrated, ready to rock. You put up a couple of the lunch boxes with antennas, and you're rocking and rolling, basically. And then on the mesh side, we're the only people in the world that have a mesh cellular technology. So it's sort of like at home now that any WiFi you buy for your house, you have one box you plug in your back hall too, and then the other box is just plug in the power. And that's what we can do with sailor because if you think about how much it costs to extend fiber for backhaul in some situations, whether it's in a big industrial building, a campus. Think about a port that's running twenty-four-seven. You're not gonna get a backhoe in and dig across, you know, a couple football fields of concrete. Just to run fiber. It's cost prohibitive. It's disruptive to the business. So basically, the core network will deploy the traditional backhaul. We already have it. And then we can extend that network and even flex the network, with our mesh nodes, just like you would with mesh Wi-Fi at home. So it really reduces the cost of deployment, the disruption, and future proof is to some extent. We had one, one deployment we're just starting here this month that, you know, they're they're a large, manufacturer of some, building products where they often use different areas of these large campuses to store stuff. And There's no coverage. WiFi doesn't work outside. And the idea that they can simply find power plug it in, and all of a sudden now they can keep all the data on their own network. Is really exciting for them. Because right now, they have to have a cellular connected tablet with a corporate application, VPN app, and it's sort of going through a public and then back in the corporate network, and it creates all kinds of problems for them. So, so we help eliminate a lot of these challenges with the mesh solution. Interesting. And, you know, to reiterate what I mentioned in my intro, GSE focuses it's services on a lot of heavy industry, including extractive industries, manufacturing, and, you know, the supply chain, the various touch points, across the the, you know, logistics, the larger logistics industry. Break down your view on how cellular mesh compares to trying to launch other private networks, and Do you see cellular mesh being sort of the future for these industries compared to five g private networks, six g private networks, or, you know, a private wifi network, WiFi six or higher, or is each one sort of playing its own role within these heavy industries? What are your thoughts? You might have a little wifi hanging on the private cellular network because of legacy devices. But generally speaking, you're gonna you're not gonna pull fiber a mile in a mine. You know? Think the trucks might flatten that out pretty quickly too. You're not gonna pull fiber across miles of farmland. You're not you know, even pulling it in the warehouse, can be really expensive. We would one person, one GM of this plants just spent twelve million dollars pulling fiber for trying to put up a, network. This is just one manufacturing, heavy manufacturing plant. So, so again, it's it's the combination with the conventional network with the mesh, that's the magic, but, you know, You're gonna need some combination of this to really get full market adoption because just like we started out by saying, you know, it's not that any technology is great or bad. It's how well it fits a particular use case. And, again, mesh isn't made for every last use case, but for what it does best, you know, was just not practical for backhaul. You need flexibility, future proofing, and and just it's just not realistic to put in fiber economically. It really, really shines. And that's, I would say it's an accelerator in a lot of these situations. So let's end on a big picture note, looking at some of the challenges that are gonna shape the industry. So basically every major telecom player has some kind of wireless broadband solution, and they have a suite of broadband, excuse me, wireless broadband solutions, right, five g Wi Fi, you know, looking into six g, private versus, you know, deploying public networks, What are some of the challenges in any of those buckets that the most important ones that you see, wireless broadband providers facing in the near future? This could include things like spectrum availability, network congestion, you name it, and what are your thoughts, tips, and strategies for maneuvering some of these major coming challenges? Again, it comes down to the use case. You know, what is the need today? What's the need tomorrow? Really being able to plan out specifically, what are the use cases that are driving a business case? And I think what we're gonna see is the wifi technologies will continue to do their thing very well. They'll continue to evolve and get better. But we'll continue to know, everything new will have all the new technologies in. You know, had a really interesting conversation a couple weeks ago with a Let's say top five exec from a mall former top five exec with a multi-billion dollar tech company who told me that even after a year of war, you crane, the Russian is still having cracked the cellular network. And, you know, I think security just given all the crazy going on the road with China with Russia, other bad actors. Security is stepping up in, concern with all our enterprise customers. I think we've gotten three requests for sort of, you know, very detailed security analysis just in the past couple weeks. So luckily we've done the analysis. But, so I think, you know, security was always something people talk about but never focused on, it's really becoming important. And so I think that's also gonna drive some of these decisions of where you put WiFi versus cellular. Because the idea that you can really raise your security level, you can control your data, and you're taking stuff off a public network, is a really compelling, story for a lot of companies these days. And then what's the most exciting thing that you're looking forward to for industry. Right? It could be anything. It could be a development to a technology. It could be a particular use case. It could be an industry, but what's getting you jittery, for the future of this sort of next generation of wireless technologies in, the broadband industry You know, I'm a sucker for some of the visual stuff, like the augmented reality stuff. Not, you know, Obi-wan, you're my only hope kind of stuff. But, But really more about, you know, we we think about the baby boomers now or retiring at a rate that's never been experienced before. And sort of capturing and this is, I think, some of the critical goals of digital transformation is knowledge capture from this generation that's sort of starting to exit it in a hurry. And you really benefit from some of these advanced connectivity technologies, to enable some of this you know, augmented rally AR XR in terms of training, maintenance, you know, the some of the studies I'm seeing show that when you do the knowledge capture right, it was super duper compresses the time it takes a new person, even the first time they're doing a new task. It's really amazing what these technologies, you know, terminal mode, you know, that layer of information on top of, the world. I'm not as big a fan as a VR, You know, the total virtual world, although it has this place for some training applications, but AR, I think, is enabled by some of these connectivity technologies is, is really exciting. And then the other one I throw out is automation. We've been talking about automation for years, about, you know, you can't go a day without seeing some robotic lawnmower robotic dog, robotic this, robotic that. You know, I I can't get my wife to get the roomba in the house. Right? But, although to be fair, they were selling all the mapping data of your house to third parties. But, I really think some of these new connectivity technologies finally make these autonomous robotic use cases a reality. And given also the second demographic trends of lower birth rates. You know, we're we're at only the beginning of a really massive employee shortage, where we have less implore less potential people of, of working age every year. And so these sort of automation technologies people are worried, oh, they're taking all the jobs. That's not the issue. The issue is there may not be enough humans to even keep the machines going. And So I think these connectivity technologies are really critical, to enable these robotic automation technologies. Well, we'll definitely have to keep an eye out for, both of those developments, and we'll have to have you back on as soon as there's something juicy to break down till then. Alan, I think we'll go ahead and call it here. Alan Proithis, the CEO of GXC, a cellular mesh solutions company. Thank you so much for joining us, giving us your perspectives here on the wireless revolution. I was reshaping the broadband industry, giving us some actionable insights, analysis, and, some tips and strategies. As well for broadband players to maneuver all of these changes and how to make the most of each technology. Right? Because I think, the core takeaway here really is know, pick the right technology for the right use case. These are all going to play a synergistic role in connecting our increasing number of of wireless connected devices. And so I think as, as broadband players, bigger, small, start to develop their, you know, a more concrete solution, portfolio for how to maneuver WiFi, how to maneuver five g, six g, you know, IoT ecosystems, private or public, you name it. I think remembering that right, that each technology is playing a specific role rather than one necessarily supplanting the other and becoming the primo tech, is gonna be important for being intentional. With, you know, strategizing and supporting and users and clients as well. So, again, Alan Proithis CEO of GXC. Thank you for your time and if folks want to find out more about GXC and your cellular mesh, solutions, how can they get in touch? Where can they learn more? I really see gxc.Iogx c dot I o, and you'll find everything there. Perfect. Alright, Alan. Thank you so much for your time. It's really been a pleasure. I'm looking forward to chatting more in the future. So We'll have you back on sometime soon till then. It's really been a pleasure. Alright. Thank you. And thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of Wavelength. An Amphenol Broadband Solutions podcast. If you like what you heard and saw today, then you wanna catch up on all of our previous conversations or wanna make sure that you don't miss out on future hard-hitting thought leadership on the evolving telecom and broadband industries, make sure that you're heading to our website and broadband dot com. Again, amphenalbroadband.com, and make sure that you're subscribing to Wavelengths on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'm your host Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Wavelengths.