Wavelengths: What Does the Future of 5G Really Look Like?

Welcome to Wavelengths, a podcast with Amphenol Broadband Solutions. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Wavelengths on Amphenol Broadband Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b. And folks, thanks so much for joining us on another episode of the show. We appreciate you joining us for some broadband and telecom industry thought leadership. As we explore today's topic and technologies, make sure that you're subscribing to wavelengths on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Just hit that subscribe button, and you'll have a full catalog of previous conversations as well as notifications when we drop new ones. And also make sure you're going to our website, amphenol broadband dot com. Again, Amphenol Broadband dot com for more information on some of the tech and trends you'll hear about today and also for more Amphenol Broadband content, including podcasts, videos, articles, and more. So on today's episode of Wavelengths, we're peering into the telecom industry's crystal ball, and we're predicting the future of connectivity networks, their technologies, breaking down some challenges and solutions, and predicting some broader industry impacts. But more specifically, we're getting an update on global five g rollout, implementation, and installations, and then using this to frame five g's future impact. So here to give us some more insights is senior VP of Amphenol and recently inducted into the Cable TV Hall of Fame, mister Zak Raley, who's bringing more than twenty five years of telecom experience to our conversation today. Zak Raley, great to have you on. How are you doing? Great. Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate appreciate the time, and I look forward to joining the discussion. Absolutely. Yeah. Real pleasure getting to chat. Looking forward to pulling from your deep experience in the space and getting a real lay of the land for how far along we are in five g rollout, what some of the opportunities and barriers are, how this is happening at a global scale, and what we can expect moving forward. So I wanna start with that twenty five years in telecom. That's a long career in this industry. How does the five g rollout compare to some other generations of network improvements that you've worked through over the years and you've seen take hold? Sure. You know, five g really is a sea change of a number of technologies that are going to become inherent in the communication space. And I think the best way for those that are not familiar with it to contemplate what five gs means, it essentially is creating a massive, wide scale, very low latency network that will connect more devices than there are people on the planet. And there are some industry estimates that, you know, talk about the interconnectedness of twenty five to forty billion devices. Obviously, with the planet population being much lower than that, it really is going to be a network of communications that will be very much all IP based that really will interface with every aspect of everyone's daily life, whether it be in business, whether it be in education, whether it be in farming, whether it be in the automobile. It's just going to be a ubiquitous network that really takes us to the next level of communications and and the interconnectedness of many, many things. And if we look at five g rollout, at least here in the US, and use that as, I guess, a metric for how far along we are, we can see that T Mobile holds the largest and the most robust five g network in the US. So for a little more context there, most of the US already has T Mobile extended range five g, and a few dense urban pockets get to boast ultra capacity five g. So as Verizon and AT and T, the other major players here expand their own coverage as the big three players and then with the merger of Sprint and T Mobile that brought Dish Network into the picture and they're still in the long term process of developing their own infrastructure. How does all of this pose competition around five g rollout? And based on how far along five g is for T Mobile and the other players, do you think they have a chance at matching T Mobile's reach anytime soon? So I think there would have to be really that that true definition of five g to answer that really expressly. But, you know, T Mobile certainly has a timing advantage and a bit of a spectrum advantage over some of the other players. Their their, you know, low band, mid band spectrum for five g was just better optimized with what they picked up in the Sprint acquisition. And, of course, you know, depending on which industry publication you read or or which company publication or presentation you read, right, there's lots of arguments about who has the most five g. But, you know, the reality is that five g really is very nascent in the US. And by nascent, it's not necessarily nearly as ubiquitous as four g or four g enhanced. I would say that, you know, if you had to sort of ballpark the footprint of coverage of five g in the US in the aggregate, including the big players in the space, it probably only covers effectively about twenty five percent of the national footprint. So there's a lot that still has to be done. You know, it is probably more in the marketing stage in terms of the people that actually are connecting to a five g a true five g network. And, you know, there there's a lot of still ground to cover, I would say, in terms of that that five g rollout. Certainly, with the most recent auctions in C band, where both AT and T and Verizon picked up a lot of debt certainly and and quite a bit of spectrum, you know, that that is going to enhance this five g rollout much more aggressively. You mentioned in the question, you know, the the sort of the dense urban areas, ultra capacity. You know, that that we can talk a little bit about later in terms of the spectrum utilization. But, you know, the the dense urban areas, I think if you think about the impact of COVID, right, if I'm a wireless operator and, you know, New York City has been a ghost town and, you know, San Francisco has been a ghost town and all of these major metropolitan areas where a lot of the population really exited during COVID, you know, there was a bit of a pause, I think, in the in the deployment profile. So I would say that, you know, yes, T Mobile certainly has a bit of a lead on this, but you'll see Verizon and AT and T really aggressively going out with their builds over the next couple of years. The new players like Dish Networks are are extremely aggressive in their rollout plan. So all of this competition in five g is really going to start getting significant here, over the next, bit of time. And, look, I the reality is, right, as five g develops, maybe T Mo takes a little bit from Verizon, and then Verizon takes a bit from T Mo, and AT and T takes a bit from from, you know, from whoever else, and Dish comes in and takes a few more subscribers. So there's gonna be a lot of back and forth over the next number of years as that five g network really gets built out. Yeah. And I'm definitely gonna be keeping my ear to the ground to see whether or not that timing advantage from T Mobile is really going to give them an overall differentiator in the long term. And we're gonna get into some of the different types of spectrum that you've already expanded on a bit, but, you know, using that as a point of contention as well for potential competition in the space. Before we do that though, you know, once the major players all do have comparable five g speeds and coverage, because I think it's pretty fair to say that at least those big three and then eventually dish will probably all have a significant five g footprint. So once they're all kind of on the same playing field, where do you think the key differentiators in quality of solution will be, and how do you think this competition will then shape future technical innovation and rollouts in five g? Sure. I you know, I would maybe harken back a little bit to, the four g, transition when we went from three g to four g. And that that really was, you know, what will be the killer app at the consumer level. This is not necessarily at the enterprise or the industrial level, but certainly at the consumer level. Right? What is going to be the key killer app that drives utilization on five g? As I mentioned earlier, five g latency, which is the the speed at which you can connect and communicate over the Internet, and certainly then the speed of communication to the handset, in this case mostly, it will, obviously, wearables and other type of applications could be in this space. But really, you know, what is gonna be that that killer app that drives the need for faster communication and certainly more speed? So I envision this as really, you know, the fastest low latency network that allows people to, you know, in three to five years have a handset that is, you know, on par with today's generations of gaming devices, Certainly, you know, very dense four k video streams, all of the over to over the top transmission of video to the handset. I think all of that is going to be very much connected to success for the operators in terms of that differentiator. So I think the the lowest latency, fastest network will probably enable the next generation of high speed killer app. And that high speed killer app is still a little bit yet to be, I think, described. But, you know, if you can envision today that the handset will probably be able to throughput as much content as sort of, say, an Xbox or a PlayStation does today in the next two to three years, that hooks into a virtual or an augmented reality headset. Right? You're gonna need a really solid connection for people to be able to use that. So that that that network that provides that type of service, right, that, you know, back in the three g world when you drive down the road and you don't have your your call drops out, you know, you people get frustrated. I I think it really is going to be the robustness of the network that allows for for a much bigger transition to some of those higher use type of applications. So I think the differentiator will certainly be that on the network and which network can perform the best, which has the fastest speed, the lowest latency, the least amount of dropout, the least amount of packet loss. And then I think, you know, and as always a question, right, price and how much you eat at the buffet. Right? I mean, if you think of yourself as a consumer, if you paid fifty bucks a month and you got an all you can eat buffet on data that was really fast, really low latency, it allowed you to use your, you know, next generation Oculus headset with your phone to go out and do whatever you want on on sort of an augmented reality platform, you know, you probably as a consumer will want that. So I think there will be some price that comes into this and either price or, you know, the the lack of data capping. I think data capping will be a major major differentiator here as time goes on. So that that'll that'll drive, I think, some of that who who will have the most successful experience as a as a supplier, so to speak, on five g. And then this competition, you know, for me, is really gonna drive lots of innovation. If you think about what four g did for us as a as a consumer in the North American market, certainly, you know, all of that access to new applications, whether that be, you know, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, video, YouTube videos, TikTok. Right? All of that stuff was built off of the ability of that four g network to really work. So what will it shape the next technical innovation profile? I think part of that is going to be very much dependent on what that killer app is, but I personally believe that the interface to virtual augmented reality is going to be a huge part of that. And and there's lots of different iterations of what that could look like. But, you know, all of that will require quite a bit of quite a bit of connectivity and and that high speed, low latency type of network that will will happen in the space. Expanding on some of the different spectrum options for five g, and you kinda mentioned this earlier, it's hard to answer questions about, you know, how can x y z company compete against x y z other company with their five g offerings without identifying that there are different levels of five g that are being rolled out all simultaneously, and they all provide different use cases and are being leveraged differently in the rollout. So I wanna break those down more. There's three key types of spectrum right now that are being, utilized. We've got low band and that's, five g for long distances usually. There's millimeter wave spectrum. That's gonna give supercharged speed, but for considerably shorter distances than low band. And then there's a mid band spectrum, which right now T Mobile is really maximizing its scale, and they're one of the few that are doing that in the US. And this is supposed to be a compromise of distance and speed. So with these three key types of spectrum, do you think that these three will continue to make up a larger five g ecosystem of various types of five g spectrum? Or as five g deployments get more robust, do you think one spectrum will take over most of the data flow for any particular reason? So I I it's a great question. I think that that certainly all of those types of spectrum will be continued and will be continued to be used in five g. So, you know, the reality is that, yes, T Mobile has certainly a bit of a lead in the mid band, but with the recent c band auction, certainly T Mobile or certainly AT and T and Verizon will begin, you know, their their sort of approach in the mid band space. They already have quite a bit of low band, But that's gonna give them that that really positioning on the mid band for higher speed and not quite as much distance as, you know, for example, a six hundred megahertz signal might be. So anything that's over that that three gig area, two point five to three gig area gigahertz, I should say, that that will be used for that mid band. And, you know, the the reality of low band, it still can be very serviceable, not obviously as high speed, but, you know, low band is gonna be when you're driving across Kansas on I seventy, you know, probably not gonna have a millimeter wave spectrum that does much for you, but, you know, will it provide enough bandwidth for what you need to do for the self drive car vehicle, that type of thing? Yeah. It probably will be very effective for that. So there is a lot of, I think, use case scenario for each of those spectrums. I do think that, you know, millimeter wave tends to probably be much more applicable in a suburban and urban environment. The transmission is very sensitive to any sort of blocking in the way. I mean, you can literally, look at cases, and certainly, other YouTube videos that have been made available online of testing data where, you know, you can stand under a millimeter wave antenna from one of the providers, get an incredibly fast signal, walk fifty feet down the street where there's a tree, and the leaves dissipate the millimeter wave signal and your speed drops in, you know, half, if not if not three quarters. So it's a very sensitive spectrum. But, you know, for certain high bandwidth urban environments where you can get better line of sight, certainly, that'll be certainly, that'll be possible. So I think all three bands will continue to be very much part of that larger ecosystem. They almost have to be. And all of that, I I think, will sort of gel into what five g will really be. So you will have, you know, variable speed in five g where, you know, your low band will not nearly be as high as what you get in millimeter wave, but mid band spectrum will provide better throughput, better latency than you would get certainly in the low band. But all of those will sort of aggregate into a faster experience than what we have today. So I I don't see that really shifting and changing anytime soon. I think that everyone will continue to invest in that and all of those frequencies that they try to build this out for for certain use cases and in certain, you know, certain environments that they exist, whether they be, you know, very rural environments, whether they be suburban, whether they be urban. As we continue to weigh these various spectrums and rollouts from different companies, and in just different areas across the US, what would you say are some of the most exciting business prospects of five gs connectivity as it does become more accessible? And if you wanted to get more specific, which industries stand to benefit in really holistic ways and why? Yeah. I I would honestly say that there will not be an industry that is not impacted by five g connectivity. And, you know, the the the use cases are so broad and so substantial that I I would struggle to probably say that there would be an industry that does not have an impact by that is not impacted by this. So, you know, it is becoming a real focus for lots of industries. All of the major carriers have, you know, enterprise and industrial engagement teams that are talking about putting, for example, five g interconnectivity in highly robotic factories, putting five gs in mining operations, putting five gs in hospitals. And so I think that there really would be very few, if any industries or or even, you know, organizations that would not be impacted by this. So, you know, frankly, I I do think that, you know, it is going to be probably a very broad and very ubiquitous type of impact profile. And, you know, you can almost sit back and say you know, you would have to probably say what things would not be impacted by five g and start with a very small list. And, you know, I have a very difficult time coming up with what that would be. I mean, let me let me use a simple example. Right? So in in the Pacific Northwest in the spring, there is a large number of people that go out and collect wild mushrooms. Those wild mushrooms are used in culinary, very high end restaurants. They're very hard to find. I could see an environment where literally the person or people that go out to collect these mushrooms are feeding real time data back to the restaurateur and bidding online in an auction format as they are in the middle of the forest. And so, you know, rather than packing these mushrooms up, putting them in a bag, and taking them on the road to go sell to restaurants. Right? So it is I I for me personally, I just don't see that there is not gonna be every aspect in of our lives and industry that's not gonna be impacted by this network. It is just that transformative. And the more you read about it, the more you think about it, it becomes that that ubiquity of interconnectedness that I think we we got a bit of in four g, and and we will see expand much more dramatically in terms of the five g impact. So could spend probably all day on every use case you could think of there, but it is going to be pretty dramatic across, almost every aspect of of the world that that that we live in today. And what's exciting about five g and potentially also a bit of a headache is that it enables a lot of IoT launches at scale. Not that IoT isn't already maximizing four g and, you know, just WiFi connectivity, but the wholesale rollout of five g will definitely see an increase in very robust, smart integrations. And so, as more companies take advantage of five g, and as more end users do as well, what kind of user experience connectivity expectation do you think this is going to build in conjunction with some of those other IoT technologies? And how do you think this will shape or maybe place some pressure on five gs rollouts and the expectation for how the connectivity should work and to what degree it should enable, you know, that next level of connectivity? Sure. You know, I I would maybe again harken back to the four g world. Right? And and, every single time, and this applies to three g as well, but every single time we have gone through a generational change in the wireless connectivity space. The consumer always, and there's just no data that speaks to the contrary, the consumer, and whether that be a consumer like you or I, whether that be an enterprise consumer, whether that be an industrial consumer, the consumer always finds a way to use more data. And that is just the trend that we have seen. The technology as well pipes more and more data into the devices that would be connected to this network. So my expectation, you know, is where where today on average you see utilization at the consumer level, let's just say, of twenty five to forty gigabits a month is kind of an average normal utilization profile across the US today if if you take, you know, sort of the major averages, that's gonna probably double or triple. And, you know, that's gonna be where your wearable device on your wrist is connecting to that five gs network. It's feeding real time health data back to the hospital, to your doctor, your physician, your clinic. It's monitoring your blood sugar levels. It's monitoring your oxygen saturation. It's advising your physician when something looks wrong. You know, it's detecting potential, you know, new pathogen outbreaks. You know, there's just that this connectivity is just gonna be in everything that we have. And I think because of that, you know, that that is gonna push a lot of pressure on these networks to, you know, just continue to add capacity. It's multiplexing up of the utilization and the use cases of utilization of the network. And I think that will place some pressure on it as it starts to get built out. But it will also, I think, require a lot of investment in the space for many years to come. So, you know, it is a very it is a very strong expectation, I think, that people will have as you start to use it. You know, I think, you know, maybe maybe just to to put it in context. Right? If you as a consumer, your, connection on your phone, your data connection, not your voice connection. If your data connection on your phone stops functioning for twenty minutes, it literally is life changing. Like, you can't do what you have expected to do, whether that's check Google Maps, whether that's, you know, get on OpenTable to book a reservation, whether that's shop for, you know, groceries delivered to your home. So, you know, that expectation will be very, very high, and and it will be much broader because it will be many more devices that are gonna be connected to this network. And, you know, that will that will shape expansion. That will shape the need to continually invest in the networks and certainly, in certain cases, put pressure on this network. So that will will definitely be an interesting an interesting dynamic as we come into this. But just back to that original statement of, you know, not just, you know, millions and millions of devices connected, but, you know, tens of billions of devices connected to that network, you know, that changes the dynamic. And it changes the expectation of us as a consumer, whether we be, you know, at the consumer level, the enterprise level, or the industrial level to connect to that network. I wanna intersect your experience in the space into the conversation a little more granularly again. You have a lot of experience in international telecom deployments as well. For some context for our audience, you began your path in the industry with sales management in Asia, and then over the years have participated in many industry events based out of Asia, but more specifically, out of Japan over the last twenty five years. So if we own into Japan to get a bit of that global context, right now, they have three main players leading the five g charge. NTT Dokomo, KDDI, and SoftBank. And they all launched their five g networks almost days apart. It was literally one after the other after the other in a matter of three to five days in March of twenty twenty. So since then, it's been about a year, how are five g rollouts shaping up in Japan compared to in the United States? And what learning lessons can we take from how they've maneuvered integration and any bandwidth challenges, for as, you know, we continue to, maneuver our own? Sure. So in Japan specifically, I would probably rank them behind the United States in terms of how broad those networks have been deployed. They are starting to do some initial five g rollouts, But actually, in comparison to what we are seeing, particularly in the US and in China, you know, Japan's a little bit behind in terms of timing, I would say, you know, anywhere from six to twelve months. So Japan is certainly an interesting case, you know, that that if you look at the average price the Japanese consumer pays for four g service, it's dramatically lower than the US. And by dramatically, it's anywhere from forty to seventy percent cheaper for a comparable data plan slash voice plan in Japan on four g than it is in the US. So the economics are a bit different there. Certainly, the densities are very high in in the major Japanese cities, but it is a very different economic environment. So they are they are slower to to deploy it just because of, I think, that economic differential, which is very similar in Europe. Again, the European cost of connectivity is is much lower than it is in the US. So it does have a it does have a driver, I think, economically as to, you know, how fast the Japanese will deploy those networks. But that being said, what's interesting is aside from the companies you mentioned, NTT, KDDI, and SoftBank, Rakuten, which is a Japanese analog to Amazon, is launching its own five g network, but on a very different type of platform. So Rakuten is gonna be deploying what they call an open RAN network, which is essentially a, for lack of a better word, a white box type of network that uses common components and and common software that will be much less expensive to deploy than, you know, other closed type networks that you see from some of the other major OEMs in the space from an equipment standpoint. So Rakuten is gonna really drive a very different model there. So that that will be interesting to see how that open RAN, that open network type structure develops in Japan over time, which would you know, which implies kind of a lower cost network deployment and potentially a bit of a change there to the economics that might exist. So, you know, I I think there's they're really it's hard to say, you know, how we learn from those challenges on that on that build out because it is a little bit slower than what we've seen in some other markets. But, clearly, Japan, you know, will be, you know, one of the top three players in the five g rollout space. It may take a little more time for that to get going. But, you know, if you if you look at who is really focused on five g deployment now across the globe, clearly, it's the US, China, and Japan. They're they're the ones that will be, definitely leading the pack, and we'll probably have a lot to learn as that starts to coalesce and, you know, we see some we see some hard and concrete developments coming out of that out of that particular rollout. And let's look over at China as well. I wish I had some more information here to tee you up, but, you know, it's safe to say China is definitely trying to make its technological dependence on, you know, US supply chains less so. We've seen that over the years, and I think part of that is going to be developing and launching a lot of their own proprietary five gs networks, and trying to do everything from designing to manufacturing, and integrating that within a, you know, Chinese only manufacturing hub and supply chain. So with that in mind, how are we seeing five g rollouts impact the Chinese market? And are there any learning lessons for what has worked or hasn't worked there that we can also take to our budding industry here in the US? Sure. You know, it's an interesting dynamic and and, you know, irrespective of some of the trade tensions that exist currently with China that, you know, we we we have had the back and forth on over certainly the last number of years between the governments. You know, it has really shifted the dynamic from one of more of a global type of platform rollout for five g to one that tends to be more insular. And by that, I mean, you know, with all of the restrictions, with the tariffs, with the technology transfer restrictions that have been put in place going into China, it they've really had to shift gears. And by that, you know, whether it's from the silicon, that is to say the processors, the power amplifiers, all of that board level silicon that goes into building a five g network to, you know, all of the equipment that goes into the site that enables five g, China's having to really do you know, find their own path. They're not allowed to use silicon from a Broadcom, from a Qualcomm, from an NGX. It's it's been very restricted. So I think that you'll see China really home grow its own five g. They have very big companies that are providing hardware for that that are indigenous to China. But I do think you'll see some variation in terms of what that technology looks like just because of the fact that the technology really has been clamped down in terms of what we have here on the US side and supply side that could be going to China. So what does that mean? I think it means that China will very aggressively develop its own five gs network. They will be very aggressive in putting their five g supply base in place and and growing that to to be a a very much a a homegrown type of structure without reliance on exterior supply. It will certainly follow still some of that five g sort of basic precepts in terms of the technology, but it will be you know, they'll have their own variant of that. And that's gonna be interesting to see how it develops and what they are able to do certainly in terms of that network deployment. You know, they China is very aggressive at expanding into this. They're they're, you know, pushing very hard for their own indigenous equipment manufacturers to come up to speed. And I think ultimately they will. So, you know, we'll it'll create a divergence. And then separately, what does that really mean for the rest of the world? I think China will partner with certain parts of the world very effectively. They will continue to to expand their their flavor and certainly their equipment base of five g across certain certain national nationalities and environments. And that'll be interesting to see as well as it sort of competes with the US slash European version of five g. So it is going to be a a bit of a horse race there, I think, for some time. But I think that, you know, ultimately, you know, China will, you know, if not lead five g, they will be at the forefront of five g development just because they they recognize the benefits of the of the network. They recognize the need to have that and to be a technological leader in the space. So, you know, it will it it's a very different environment than it was, you know, four to five years ago. So that's gonna be an interesting development to watch and see what happens as they really start to deploy their five g networks across China. So taking all of that into account and weighing some of the impacts of five g on businesses, on end users, etcetera, I feel like sometimes the domino effects of something like five gs of a total network overhaul are kind of hard to visualize beyond some of the immediate improvements to data speed and the business cases for, yes, this speed will create efficiency in this way. Sometimes there are a few things, you know, three or four dominoes down the line that can also be incredibly impactful, but that are harder to see on first glance. So do you have any surprising use cases that really illustrate the scope of five g's impact and how domino effects start to build on each other and create a total transformation? Sure. You know, maybe just to to go to sort of a very a very baseline type of use case. And by baseline, you know, something that would not be, you know, normally what you think about. Right? When you think about streaming Netflix in four k, you know, that's kind of an obvious use case. Right? But but there are some that I think are very unique. And I'll use an example on on some projects that we worked on with some of our customers on a on a five g test bed. And this actually was enabling a very interlinked five g system for a hog farm. And this hog farm was set up where the the the farm structure and the and and our one of our big telecommunications partners provided this, built out an entirely censored network system for a hog farm. And they had multiple drones that were always in in flight monitoring where the hogs were in pens, where they were in, you know, in in loading docks, where they were in feed site feed stations. They were monitoring temperatures across all of both animal as well as feed areas. They were looking at, you know, water discharge and, you know, what the effluent water quality was coming out of the hog pens. They were monitoring, you know, almost real time food intake and weight of the hogs. So if you think about all of all of the things you would need to raise an animal. Right? And raise an animal from, you know, from small to large, whether that be, you know, temperature in the pens, whether that be the the amount of food going into the pens, measuring, you know, the quality of water going into the pens, measuring, you know, data where, you know, you're you're looking at the hogs from a bird's eye view, making sure that, you know, you don't have don't have some getting out, you don't have some, you know, creating problems with other ones. It was just a really overlaid system of both sensors, and visual monitoring that you would never think about before. And so, you know, it it really can touch many of these aspects where, you know, literally, the the farm that that, they deployed this on, there was a network operation center that the farmer was using every day, day in, day out to monitor all of those things I just mentioned and more. I mean, I'm not covering everything they were doing, but certainly every aspect of raising that animal as a business was really networked into this entire five g structure. So, you know, you think about something as simple as as, you know well, it's not simple because it is hard work, and, you know, doing that is certainly something that takes a lot of knowledge and expertise. But, you know, something as simple as a farm can can really benefit from all of these impacts of five g. And and I think be able to to really start thinking about that ubiquity of use case that, you know, could apply even to the most the most simple of things that we might think about, not a Netflix and not a self driving car and, you know, not a self driving excavator at a construction site, but really just, you know, into the basics. So, you know, it is an example, I think, of how broad this network could potentially be and and how it's gonna just touch every aspect of of our lives here, you know, certainly in North America and across the planet. Zak, I really appreciate your insights so far. And as we wrap up the conversation, what I wanna do is intersect Amphenol a little bit more and get a lay of the land for how your company is playing into this five g rollout and some of the ways that you're trying to stay ahead of the trends and be a, you know, a major player in new integrations. So what do you see as Amphenol's central role in helping craft this five g future, and what role are players like Amphenol, in your opinion, needing to play to support five g? Sure. So, you know, we we're in a very unique position from an Amphenol perspective. We're we're the largest manufacturer of small form factor antennas that go into wearables and handsets. That that that antenna that goes into the device that you hold in your hand and you use every day, that's what's enabling that communication path. And, you know, that that communication path, you know, goes from the phone over the wireless airwaves, over radio frequency to the devices that, you know, receive and transmit that signal. We're very deeply embedded in all of those devices from both the RF side, but as well the high speed side and into the power side that enable the radios that will allow five g to to connect. At those sites that transmit, we build all the cables that carry the signals, whether they be optical or RF, and and into the enclosures. We we build all of the physical enclosures that hold the equipment that provides that signal and that connects to the optical backbone network that goes into the data centers. In the data centers, we provide all the interconnectivity and the high density racks and frames as well as transmission devices, you know, optical transceivers that that move that data around. So, you know, we're very deep in the network on all aspects from, you know, the point where you as a consumer are receiving a signal at your handset to, you know, all the way back to the data center where all of those ones and zeros are moving around in optical transmission to to get that data back to where it needs to go. So we're we're really very deep in that. And then separately, you know, all of the sensors that go into that five g world, You know, whether they're, you know, temperature sensors, speed sensors, pressure sensors, all the stuff that you're utilizing to measure that data, you know, humidity sensors in a washer dryer, all that stuff, you know, we're really playing to enable all of these different use cases that come up in that space, whether it be in the consumer's home, whether it be in an enterprise, know, building setting, whether it be in industry, whether it be in farming. So we we really have just a broad range of, you know, endpoint applications and products that fit into that five g world that connects everything. So it is a I think we're in a very unique space for that. And, you know, I think it it I would be remiss to say that in a five g network, there won't be something that doesn't touch an Amphenol product on a daily basis. It would just we we are so broad in the sense that we cover all of those two potential use cases, and we have all the products that fit into that. It'll be just a very broad footprint in in electronics. I mean, this is all enabled by electronics, and, you know, we're one of the largest players in electronic interconnect and sensing that that exists in the planet today. So really puts us in the forefront in a lot of ways to to be able to be a part of crafting that five g future. As we continue to look ahead, even with the wide coverage we already see from, you know, T Mobile's five g and coming expansion from Verizon and AT and T, what challenges to widespread adoption still exist? Anything from infrastructure to regulatory issues to, you know, market challenges, supply chain challenges, whatever you're seeing that's still impacting widespread adoption. And then with that, what kind of impact is this then having on the utility of five g, and where does Amphenol fit in trying to overcome any of these issues? Sure. I I think, you know, the the widespread adoption really is, you know, how broadly the network can get built and how quickly it can get built. You know, it is still a very physical process to put equipment out in the field and to have the teams of contractors at the service provider level that have to do this. So, you know, it it's really a speed of deployment, I think, you know, will will somewhat gate the widespread adoption. You know, the the handsets and the chipsets are already available from the manufacturers to be able to deploy this at the consumer level. You know, there's always a question of, you know, how much of this COVID world we've lived in for, you know, the past past bit of time has impacted that deployment. But I do think that, you know, once those networks are really start to get deployed on a broader scale, you know, I don't think it's an adoption of the five g technology. It's more just getting the network built. Once the network's built, you know, the equipment will flow in terms of both the devices as well as, you know, what will enable, for example, the smart factory of the future. And that'll that'll really happen. I I don't see that there will be any reticence to the adoption of five g. Certainly, there's there's been, you know, a lot of rhetoric bouncing around in in areas where five g is, you know, people think five g is bad and it's evil and it's causing all these negative things. But the reality is that that just is not the case. And, you know, the reality of five g is something that, it is it is a safe platform for telecommunications. It is one that will be, adopted very broadly as the network gets built out. And I think that it will be something that we see over time, you know, really replacing that four g network. And, you know, I think two to three years down the road, you know, you won't know a person who doesn't have a five g connection. It just that's just where we're gonna be. So I think it's more just getting that network built and, you know, getting getting the hands getting the devices and and the the the utility applications and all of the enabled all the enabled equipment out into the field to take advantage of the network. Alright, Zak. We're gonna close the conversation with a final hot take. So get opinionated with me here. What's your biggest and boldest prediction about the impact of five g moving forward and why? So my biggest prediction and boldest prediction on five g is that I I think it will be something that will touch every aspect of our lives at every minute of the day. It is so broad. It is so scope delimited in terms of what it can do and what it can connect to, that it will just be a part of everything we do as we go forward. And that that is a that's a very broad and bold prediction. But the reality is that they're just you know, I wouldn't say obviously, you couldn't say that there's an infinite number of use use cases, but I would say there's a Googleplex of use cases that clearly will allow just things to happen that we've not even envisioned today on a network that is truly optimized for the next few decades, and that will be something that that really impacts every aspect of our daily lives as a consumer. That impacts every aspect of of our daily lives in business. That impacts every aspect of our daily lives, you know, in in everything we do. So I know that's a broad and and very, you know, wide scope, but I just I just think back to what we talked about earlier, I have a very difficult time not thinking of something or thinking of something where five g couldn't have an impact. I I just can't come up with it, and I've thought about it a lot. So I really do think it is gonna be something that just touches every aspect of of everyday life that people people don't even think about today. I love the big picture analysis, and I think I'm gonna have to agree there. I think as we look at five g, and the way that different industries are preparing for its use, it really signals that most every industry is beginning to identify, yes, five g is going to be beneficial to my operations, And I think end users aren't gonna pass up five g connectivity, especially at a cost effective price point. So with all of that in mind, I think we are gonna continue to see five g proliferated at a scale that maybe folks didn't even expect. And as we maneuver that, we're gonna continue our conversations and continue to judge the state of five g's rollout, where the opportunities are, where it's suffering, and what Amphenol can do to help fill the gap there. Thank you so much, Zak, for your insights today. It's really been a pleasure. Again, we've been chatting with Zak Raley. He's senior vice president at Amphenol. He was also recently inducted to the Cable TV Hall of Fame, twenty five years in the industry. Zak, it's really been a pleasure today. Thank you. Great, Daniel. Thanks so much. Appreciate your time. And real quick before we close out, if folks wanna find out more about how Amphenol is supporting five g rollout, learn more about your tech, or just get in touch, how can they do so? Sure. You can look at our website, w w w dot ampanol dot com. We have a number of aspect points to five g that you can learn about and really drill into all the application specific solutions that we've got in the space. I encourage people to have a look at that and certainly can go to that area and learn a little bit more about what touches this next generation of the communications network. Perfect. Zak Raley, thank you again for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you everyone for listening to today's episode of Wavelengths on Amphenol Broadband Solutions Podcast. If you like what you heard and want to listen to previous episodes, make sure that you're heading to our website, amphenolbroadband dot com. Again, amphenolbroadband dot com. And make sure that you're subscribing to wavelengths on Apple podcasts and Spotify. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of b to b. Till next time.