Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
From WiMAX to CBRS & 5G: A Wireless Journey | Also, Electromagnetic Vortex Cannons
Ever wondered how private cellular networks are reshaping the wireless landscape? In this captivating episode, we bring in special guest Mark Houtz, a network engineer with deep expertise in cellular and cell technologies, to explore the latest advancements and trends. We celebrate a milestone achievement of reaching 1,000 YouTube subscribers and take you on a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about WiMAX, LTE, and CBRS. Mark shares fascinating insights from his recent projects, including the complexities of testing Wi-Fi performance in challenging environments like high school football fields.
Shifting our focus to the CBRS spectrum, we dive into the real-world challenges and performance aspects of deploying this technology. From the intricacies of spectrum allocation services (SAS) to practical scenarios involving service outages at major companies like Amazon and Google, we provide invaluable insights into the deployment of CBRS in both urban and rural settings. Our discussion also covers the pros and cons of using CBRS for outdoor connectivity in spaces such as parks and stadiums, all backed by experiences from testing at the Bonneville Salt Flats.
But that's not all—current industry trends and future innovations are also on the agenda. We discuss the anticipated impact of Wi-Fi 7 with the new iPhone 16, the evolving role of tech influencers, and the exciting developments coming out of Mobility Field Day. From the potential pitfalls of user-mounted devices to groundbreaking technologies like an electromagnetic vortex cannon, this episode is packed with information that will keep you informed and entertained. Plus, get a sneak peek into upcoming events and projects, including an ambitious engineering venture in Alaska. Don't miss out on this treasure trove of networking wisdom and entertaining anecdotes!
you well. Hello. Good morning, what's up, dude. How's it going, mark? Great how you doing, man, fantastic. Welcome everybody. My name is drew lenz, I'm the wireless nerd and today I've got my special buddy mark on with us. You know, I figured every week right, I just sit here and I crank out the little podcast. I have fun talking to myself and and it's okay, you know. But then it's like, why not invite someone else? Whoa look at that? Why not invite?
Speaker 1:someone else to come join the join the fun. Especially. I feel like I've been talking a lot about 5g and cbrs and lte and all those things. I was like dude, you posted trim this light down a bit. You posted something this past week out, like with fernet or something on a one wheel, and I was like dude, what the hell anyway? Uh, welcome everybody. Thanks again for tuning in a huge celebratory week for me.
Speaker 1:Crossed a thousand subscribers on youtube and like cue the applause. I, you know I gotta get my stuff together and like figure out little but bit of the noise. Anyone who knows me, uh, who has listened to the podcast or seen me you know be obnoxious wherever it is knows that I had a bet with my wife and she said if you can cross a thousand subscribers on YouTube, I will buy you a trip to Mexico. So Mexico, here I come. I told her this weekend I was like there you go, babe, we're going to mexico. So, uh, I'm gonna post waves from the waves. I think I'm gonna do cancun. I think that's anyway nice.
Speaker 2:So lots of fun stuff to cover this week.
Speaker 1:But first mark, I want you to introduce yourself to anyone who does, who may not know you. Who are you, what do you do, where you're from, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:Etc everything about mark house. Um, uh, I am a network engineer for a bunch of school districts up here in utah um, that's how I know for nay and keith um, I live about an hour from both of them, so, but I have gotten heavily into the private cellular world. Um, that's where I've got a lot of my followers is in the private cellular world, but I am also cwne 500.
Speaker 1:That was pretty yeah, it shows on your little uh, on your little LinkedIn badge there it says CW and E five. Love it, man.
Speaker 2:So I I've been in the, I've been doing the wifi thing for since about 2007. So I've been in wifi for a lot longer than private. So there, obviously, but we got some, I got started in private, so there it in private cellular before cbrs was really a thing.
Speaker 1:So you know, and playing with all the waves dude for real and you know it's, I find that. I find that there's people who who have been playing in the space as long as we have and you know, we, we do a lot in wi-fi right, and so every day I feel like we're just surrounded by wi-fi people talking about Wi-Fi stuff and there's so much more out there. My background, in case anyone cares, or whatever, is I started building Internet service providers and then started doing wireless Internet service providers and doing point-to-multipoint and WiMAX. And I got to mention a word that I hadn't used in years the other day on a phone call. I was talking about Navini and our deployment of Navini down in South Texas. So when you talk about WiMAX and LTE and all that, it's so much fun.
Speaker 1:And then Wi-Fi is just like this tiny little piece that everybody uses. But there's so much more out there and I think, as we see, you know, as we see, the convergence actually now finally really starting to happen. It's so intriguing to me because I I'm seeing two worlds come together right, and cbrs did a lot with that. I mean they, there was a lot to do with, with opening up those frequency bands, opening up band 48, figuring out how to onboard devices you know into, in, you know onto the infrastructure. But now I mean I love the idea. I don't think we'll ever see a single device that does everything. I mean we probably won't see a Wi-Fi device that does CBRS, but we'll probably see a CBRS device that does Wi-Fi. I would imagine that would come first.
Speaker 2:Well, this in your pocket does both.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean like a base station or an access point I'm like there's clients out there.
Speaker 1:So, real quick, there are some things I want to talk about that are happening this week. But first, look, so I'm using, I'm using, I like restream, I always use restream. So if you're listening restream, feel free to give me a free subscription because it's expensive but it's totally worth it. But so I'm trying to figure out the little studio thing, what. I'm going to jump on your LinkedIn real quick and I want to show what it is that. Let me see that I was looking at from you. Let's see, all right, where was it? You show all posts. Let's see if I can find out what's going on with you here. Where is that picture there, there? Okay, I've got brought up. I don't you know. Hopefully anyone who's watching can see that. Dude, tell me, what the hell were you doing like? What tell me about? Tell me about this set of pictures what is this cow and uh and what is this spectrum?
Speaker 2:tell me, tell me what's going on in these photos, man, so so back about two years ago, fernay and Keith kind of got me onto this whole idea. They were doing some Wi-Fi surveys at a high school football field here in Utah in the Salt Lake Valley and they were just wanting to test some different things and they kept getting reflections off the bleachers and off buildings and stuff, some different things. And they kept getting reflections off the bleachers and off buildings and stuff, and so they they kind of had they. They didn't get a real great coverage of how far an AP went. So they came up with this idea to take it out to the salt flats, which the great salt lake, um, just West of salt lake city, um, if you keep going West of that, just before you reach, uh, nevada, wendover, nevada, there's a big flat uh lake bed that they call the Bonneville salt flats. Around the world there's multiple salt flats that are very similar, some bigger ones in other countries, but um but um but uh, so the salt flats are just a big flat area of salt. It's miles and miles and miles of just flat.
Speaker 2:So for name, keith test several years ago tested out wifi and then about two years ago I chatted with for name, we went back and we're testing wifi then and but after that. But at the same time I was like, let's test CBRS out there as well. And so a buddy of mine in Infernae and his kids and some other friends, we went out there and did some testing with CBRS. We had the radio about 15 feet off the ground, so the Fresnel zone was getting was hitting the ground. Not a great setup, but we didn't have. It was a last minute plan planning and things, so we we didn't get very far. We got about two miles out of this radio. It was crazy. On our drive back we have a school district that has one on top of it. We got about 12 miles out of that one, which is we're like, how do it was crazy.
Speaker 2:But uh, we wanted to go back and test and so we had this has been two years in planning a buddy of mine at Murray School District A lot of people in the private cellular world know him, but he bought this trailer that has a 60-foot map. Oh, that's the cow, that's the cow. And so we're like this will help us set things up quicker. We'll be able to set it up quicker instead of cause last time it took us like all day just to get the thing set up. We had like two hours to just do any testing. This time we had it up and had a lot more time to be able to test, but so we stuck to CBS radios on there. We were going to test band 41 as well. We have a license for band 41 for the area Um, but we didn't get to that. We ran out of time for that. But we were able to test two CBS radios, I think they were both by cells. One might've been Nokia, I can't remember Um, but we got four miles out of those across that salt flats.
Speaker 1:So, man, and what? So? What was the client device that you guys were using when you were testing these out?
Speaker 2:So we had a Nokia phone. It's basically a big Android phone but it was pretty. It was actually a pretty rugged eyes, really nice device. We were we were testing 5g. One of the radios was 5g, the other one was LTE, so we were testing 5g. One of the radios was 5g, the other one was lte, so we were testing both um, but this device was 5g. We had some other devices we're going to test, but we they didn't end up working in the moment, so we had issues with them, but I I took the um, uh, spectran v6, the the device.
Speaker 2:So I captured, I that. In that that one of those pictures, it's me. They're holding this, the Spectran V6. Yeah, let me see as I'm driving along, as my buddy's driving along, the side by side, so I'm holding it, and so I captured for five miles, um, the spectrum, that's awesome, as the signal slowly decreased, decreased, decreased, decreased, decreased, until it was barely visible.
Speaker 1:How far do you think? What was the maximum amount that you got out of it? Like speeds, no, no, no. Distance, oh distance.
Speaker 2:So just past four miles is where it kind of started to drop. Is it usable, though? Just past four miles is where where it kind of started to drop. We, we, we had.
Speaker 1:Is it usable?
Speaker 2:Four miles was usable. Yeah, we were doing speed tests at four miles and it was usable and that's 30.
Speaker 1:That was CBRS bands 3,600, 3,650 CBRS bands Wow. We have five miles an iPhone, but it was not usable.
Speaker 2:So flat surface, yeah, five miles An iPhone still had signal, but it was not usable.
Speaker 1:Flat surface. 15 feet, though, is what you said.
Speaker 2:Huh, this time it's 60. 60 feet off the ground.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Wow 15 feet, we got two miles. Man, that's awesome. And I think when I've used it obviously not in that environment, but when I look at the environments I've put it in where it's like in cities or school districts or whatever we see, maybe with a, with a, buy sales like a four, 36, I think we'll and a and a standard UE like a standard phone, we'll see, maybe, you know, maybe a mile you throw some trees in there, it's like half a mile, something like that. So we draw a cell size about a mile from edge to edge. You know, but yeah, I can't imagine. And I live in South Texas, right, so flat but lots of trees and lots of low brush. So you know, it shows you how much not interference, but how much physical structure makes a difference and things like that.
Speaker 1:What were some of the lessons learned? Okay, was there anything surprising about that test? Because I mean it's. It's very rare that you get a chance to just go out and spend a day just messing with stuff and having a good time. Was there anything that you brought back from that? And you're like dude, that's like I. I'm so glad I did it, because the I mean in the erronea product you're using.
Speaker 2:That's awesome height definitely helps. Um, the antennas higher, yeah, um, that is, that is a big thing. Getting it 15 feet off the ground, going to 60, you can double your distance. Wow, that's a big thing. So get it high as possible. Um, I other the thing about private cellular, if you're trying to reach kids at home or things like that. Um, the reason they have towers so high on the the carrier side, um is you're trying to go through the roof, not through the side of the wall. A little more. You're trying to get it through the roof because it's a little less.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, there's not great. There's not brick up there. Maybe it's well, it depends. I mean, it depends on the, the material. Now here's another question. Jeremy's asking on on the chat what was the noise floor there versus downtown slc?
Speaker 2:uh, I mean on the flats was neg 105, I think I remember right awesome was the noise floor. It was like great. Nothing, no signals any, anything at all.
Speaker 1:So yeah, oh, he also I'm sure it's much much lower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, you know, we saw, when I deployed cbrs here in in mcallen, we put up 24 bay stations of cambia and we did a thousand street lights, uh, with subscriber units on them and our noise floor is in three. In the cbrs spectrum was in the night, you know, in the high 90s, um it was, you know it was like 90, I mean 94 to 96, I would say was pretty average. We did have some areas, uh, where it dipped, where it changed a little bit. You know, 89 to 94, um, not not a lot of traffic. We would see it as we got closer to the border we'd see more traffic, more bleed over traffic from what was happening in mexico, because I'm, you know, 89 to 94, um, not not a lot of traffic. We would see it as we got closer to the border we'd see more traffic, more bleed over traffic from what was happening in mexico, because I'm, you know, I'm 10 minutes away, five minutes away, but even at that, uh, it always you know the conversation about how well does spectrum allocation services work, right, how well does the SaaS work?
Speaker 1:And I, the only problems that we experienced after running that network for two years and and having it fully deployed didn't have anything to do with spectrum. It had to do with when Amazon had the outage, when federated had the outage, you know, when Google had the outage. It was like that was. The problem is, all of a sudden, no frequencies were getting allocated, all the equipment started freaking out. The problem is, all of a sudden, no frequencies were getting allocated, all the equipment started freaking out. So hopefully that's been. You know there's a path to resolution there, but did you see? You know, did you see anything? Anything that was concerning other than you know? You talked about the happy part, but did you see anything concerning where? You're like ooh, I got to watch for that. Also, I need to get these cups printed, so my logo is on the on the other side. When I drink, I'm like, yeah, you do oh things sorry.
Speaker 2:What was the question?
Speaker 1:did you see anything? First, it just made me think of a talk show, so I need to send you a mug now that you've been a guest. Since I have mugs, I'm going to send you a mug. Um, did you see anything concerning where you're like? Oh, that's something I definitely have to watch out for, where next time you deploy, what's going to pop into your head.
Speaker 2:Going back to your original thing there with SAS. Sas is really there to protect incumbents. It's not really there to protect the GAA people. It is a little bit but not really. And so, as I've learned and played with this stuff over the last four years, it's. It's kind of, if you're doing ga, it may take you some time to get a grant but you most likely will get at least some of a grant, especially with how limited private sellers cbrs still is deployed. Um, in a lot of areas like bigger cities it's deployed a lot more. But in smaller rural areas like where I live in these areas there's nothing in that band and so the SAS is kind of not. There is more there to protect incumbents and so you're kind of guaranteed not guaranteed, but have a better opportunity to get a chance to get Spectrum. Have a better opportunity to get a chance to get spectrum. Um.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, things we learned out there, um, um. It works great at speed. Um, you can keep things going super fast. That's one of the benefits of this is you get distance and speed. Um, the salt flats is known for speed records. Yeah, I saw a Bonneville salt flats salt flats man, the good year.
Speaker 1:What was the name of that car it's. I was a guinness book of world records nerd when I was a kid and it was like the good year. It was the fastest vehicle ever made and it was done on the bonneville salt flats, like that's where people test, where they test the racy cars, you know.
Speaker 2:But the week. Last weekend, before we went out there, they uh had a local group out there doing some speed tests. They came and picked up the porta potties and the garbage bins and all that stuff while we're sitting there. But uh, so it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's definitely a good place to test speed 763 miles per hour set by thrust sC in 1997. Yep.
Speaker 2:That's where I was, was that place, so forget about it. If you need, if you need speed, so there's a way to go. Wifi absolutely can't, can't keep up because you have to hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. Yeah, well, okay.
Speaker 1:So for that, okay. So in small, in close proximity, though, if you're not at Bonneville Salt Flats, if you're in an office space and you've deployed less 5G than you have Wi-Fi, for example, one device for every five or ten or whatever your magic formula is. There is no magic formula. Sorry, if anyone was looking for that magic formula. There's no magic formula. Use cases vary. But if you have less deployed and you're trying to do more with less, that's where I would say, well, I don't know, it depends on what your deployment technique is.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you another question, because I got asked this this week and I didn't want to answer. I tried to dodge the question because I didn't just didn't want to say, I didn't just want to flat out say no. Deploying CBRS for UE connectivity outdoors. What are your thoughts with that? Where it's and what I mean by that is and I'm sure you know, you know. But for anyone who doesn't know what I mean by that deploying a CBRS outdoor base station to connect to mobile phone devices, outdoor base station to connect to mobile phone devices, uh, what are your thoughts of of doing that, like in a park or in an outside area or a stadium, or to cover a courtyard or something like that, something to do or something to stay the hell away from um, if you're, it all depends on if you have control over the ues.
Speaker 2:If it's just general public, neutral, host is still. It's it, as you talked about last week, it's, it's coming, yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1:Let's say that neutral host is there. Let's say that there is an equipment, that the equipment does support neutral host and I can walk outside and and this is leading into questions I have for you about helium and x net is helium outdoor deploying a bicell space station, turning it on? X net just announced that their partnership with a carrier. And then you scroll back and you see everything says AT&T on their website or on their Twitter. But you deploy XNet outside and it's in your neighborhood and now you've got people walking in your neighborhood using AT&T over CBRS offloaded to XNet. I am not a fan of that model. Um, I think that there's too much. There's just a lot there, man, and and I'm a little, I'm a little curious how that's going to work out. Is that something you would do or is that something you stay away from? And also, do you have any experience?
Speaker 2:I've been approached by the xNet guys to design something in downtown Salt Lake with Jeremy there.
Speaker 1:Him and I were approached.
Speaker 2:I turned it down for that kind of reason. The issue. So, Paul and Mobile was another big kick. One of these guys Ah, I forgot about them that were very, very heavy did a lot of stuff. We're really trying to push this and build this off the crypto wave and then they partnered with T-Mobile. How they partnered with T-Mobile, devices could join T-Mobile or could join you, so if you're in an area that has T-Mobile coverage, the device is never going to join you at that point, and so once that happened, everybody dumped their base stations onto eBay. I bought a bunch of them off eBay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were off eBay Because all of a sudden, they were making this crypto that had very little value and suddenly they weren't getting their money back, and so I'm not saying X net's going to have the same issue. Um, these guys are trying trying to avoid following the same path, but, as they part the benefit, if they partner with at&t and you have these base stations in areas where at&t has coverage, you're definitely going to potentially have some issues with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that. So that raises the question right. And and there's, there's so much that has to be done from a coordination perspective. And I I remember the first some of the first reasons I got involved in doing this were to set it up and to see how difficult is it to set up, and also, as someone who's deployed a bunch of CBRS, understanding all of the things that are involved to do that, I was like what is the process for setting it up and how are they protecting that? Like, if I'm setting up a CBRS base station and I have to say this is where it's installed, and lock in the GPS and take three pictures and an azimuth and a picture with a calculator or a compass or whatever it is, they make you do all these things to deploy it. You know then and that's great, but the guardrails are then that you have said that this is where it's deployed. But what if the local holiday parade happens down the street for me and I go hey, here's a great opportunity for me to earn some token. I'm just going to stick that thing in the trunk of my car and drive down to the holiday parade and light it up, and sure as shit, everybody jumps online and then someone makes a 911 call and then what? And so I look at what they're doing and I look at what. And kudos to them. I'm not trying to naysay, I mean I love it. I'm an early adopter, love it, think it's a great idea. I just see that there's so many things that have to happen for that to work successfully that it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:And then you look at what Helium's doing, and again with XNet, where they essentially you set up a base station and in XNet's case you have to buy their equipment. Right, doesn't work on anyone else's equipment yet except for theirs. So you purchase their equipment, you turn it on, you activate it and the more people that use your network they give you money in the form of their token, so that you earn token, the more people that use your stuff and it gives you a certain rate. You know, I don't know what it's at right now, but they pay you at a certain rate worth of their token, something, apparently, somewhere. And that's a way that you can say hey, I can justify deploying all this equipment because now I'm earning money for the people that are using this stuff. But is that? I mean, how? How far will it go.
Speaker 1:I wrote down two things on a phone call I was talking about, you know. One of them is is who's got the liability for e911 when someone moves their base station? Right, because keep in mind that people are gonna going to be deploying tens of thousands of these things, hundreds of thousands of these things. There's going to be people that just move it. There's going to be, especially if they see a chance, inevitable, yeah. And then I have no idea what I wrote. I don't know what letters these are. I can't read my own handwriting, but you know, oh, traction, it says traction. But what do you think the traction is going to be? As things, now that at&t and x-net have talked, or now x-net has talked about having a partnership that we're assuming is at&t, do you think, how well do you think that that's going to take off? Any ideas?
Speaker 2:thoughts on those guys indoors. As jr put a good, good comment there. He said outdoor isn't the play with seabreast, in his opinion. I, yep, I agree. It depends, your use case depends. I'm like private seller, non outdoor absolutely yeah, neutral host outdoor is not your play carriers, unless you're in a rural area where there's no coverage of anybody or your specific carrier, then maybe.
Speaker 2:But he says macro networks are not the problem. Indoor is the problem Indoor? If you have a building where coverage does not penetrate down the basement or something, a basement or something. This absolutely, as you said, as you talked about last week, with um neutral host and replacing your um dashes absolutely this could be a big play for those sites at scale in a big stadium or something absolutely go with a dash.
Speaker 1:Still, because you're using carrier spectrum, you don't have as much spectrum with cbrs, but with cbrs in a small building or in a basement or something, this absolutely could be a good partnership with at&t to help provide coverage yeah, and I think and I love what, uh, I love what mr ali was saying here, where he says I've been successful on the wi-fi side with at&t and timo waiting on this uh, other vendor just to be holding out, you know, and that's the same thing i've've. It works great right now on the wifi side. The Passpoint stuff that we're doing, the Passpoint stuff that Ameriband is doing, that we're doing with Signal Roam, we're having such a good time with that. You know, I've been fielding phone calls and emails left and right since I pushed that video about Ubiquity. It's like, dude, I've been stacking up and it's really, really cool. I'll have to throw in a. I'll have to throw in a signal room sticker for you and your coffee mug, but, yes, I'll throw in an ap.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I've been playing with it too, so it's so cool, it's just so cool and so easy, you know, and I look at, I look at the three tiers, this and this is what I talked a little bit about last week where you've got daz, you know, as you mentioned, fantastic, get the signals, bring them back in, but the expense that's involved with that is so, so high, you know. And then you look at what private cellular offers and you look at how that ties to neutral hosting. There's a really to me that was that's really the promise of on-go and they're having their meeting next week. So lots of cool news is going to come from that. Case studies and whatnot are coming from the OnGo Alliance meeting next week in Dallas. It's going to be really neat to see how that's progressing.
Speaker 1:I'm super excited because I remember laying eyeballs on this thing when I was at Facebook and seeing it work on the Facebook campuses, going oh my God, you're doing this with Airspan equipment and infinity and this is awesome and Joel has continued to push that and doing incredible things with it. And now you know I was super excited. You know, I think I went back and watched. I had to go back and watch the video cause I didn't want to screw something up in a conversation. I went back and watched our video from a Billy field day and and it was when, uh, memet from salona started talking about moxon and about, you know, neutral host and what they're doing and it's going to come soon and whatever, I was like, yes, finally, like so, you know, it's so cool to see the traction happening in the industry and I'm super, super, super excited for it. But I, you know the way I see the pieces of the puzzle, right, is you've got Cisco and Meraki doing the Cisco Meraki thing and not a clearly defined play for private cellular, private 4G, private 5G, they have things, but you know whatever.
Speaker 1:And then you have Juniper, right, and you know I feel like I'm talking at the WLPC crowd right, you have Juniper, where Bob shows up and has a great time and says everything that he does. And then you see this partnership forming with Salona and Juniper and you're like, oh man, that's, that could be something. And then all of a sudden, hpe pops out and you know they had this deal where they, where there was the uh, you could purchase Salona on the Aruba parts list. We're like, oh, okay, well, maybe that's happening. And then they're like Athonet and you're like, whoa, what? Okay, here comes Athonet and you're like, all right, that's happening here. Cisco still hasn't figured out what they're doing there yet.
Speaker 1:And then you've got Juniper and you're like, okay, well, maybe Juniper is going to get into that. And then it's. There's so many things happening in that space where I'm looking at it right now and I'm going, man, there's, I see so many moves happening where it's like Wi-Fi, it's like, yeah, wi-fi seven. But I'm looking over here and I'm going, what's, what's all that activity happening on the other, on the other side? So what's your take on on kind of the state of the industry right now coming from from the 5G side?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's, it's definitely in flux. Um, we're still early days with private solar. Um, we're four years in from since cbrs was released, right before covid, and I've definitely been oh, I'm excited. Everything's been going to be awesome, amazing, we're going to make millions. And then, oh, I don't know if this is going to actually happen, and it's. It's just been this back and forth, back and forth it's been. I have a buddy, um, he's a sales guy for for um, somebody, somebody, one of these companies, and I've chatted with him many times and they're like, yeah, cbrs is kind of like this, it's you know, there's like there's bumps in it.
Speaker 2:You know it's like little bumps, but it's, it's it's not this big growth yet. And so it's like know there's, like there's bumps in it. You know it's like little bumps, but it's, it's, it's not this big growth yet. And so it's like is this going to be a big industry? And then ai came in and took all the fun, a lot of the funding and and different things, and so it's like this is gonna this, it's, it's growing. It's definitely on the incline. Um, the last few, the last few months have definitely had some big bumps that have helped it kind of grow a lot more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, there's, I would agree there's, and I think that there's there's been some uptick in, there's been some press releases and announcements that go out, where some universities have adopted it, different organizations have adopted it. You know, verizon made their announcement with cummins saying hey, we can, we can do it, you know, and if you want Verizon, you have to buy Verizon and we'll throw in AT&T and T-Mobile, but Verizon still. No one has been able to pin Verizon down on neutral host for any other product yet. So it's like all right, when's that going to happen? And as soon as we get that three carrier load in the US, that's going to be great. What about international, though? I mean the amount of email that I have gotten from people asking me about Signal Roam internationally has been insane, and it's great. Australia, new Zealand, germany, uk, spain. They're like when can you do this with what we have? I'm curious. You're not working on anything international, though, right?
Speaker 2:I'm not international, but I've been watching international. My first talk at WLPC Prague.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Back in the day I talked about what Salona was kind of doing internationally. There's a couple options. Salona had a big graph. Good one there, jr.
Speaker 1:It's true, wi-fi will never be accepted. Wait a minute, I guess. But the question is are we there yet, right, or how? How close are we? Because I'm, I'm. The problem is, uh, is that I get? Is this the force through the trees mentality, because I'm looking at it right now. Is it just like, oh my God, everything's going great? Or are we really looking at this from an industry going, it's coming, it's closer than coming?
Speaker 1:And I love the HPE announcement about Athonet and about bringing it together under Central, because for the first time it seemed like single pane of glass to do everything. And if you take that a step further and you look at hp aruba and then you know, not no official word, right? This is the beauty of of not working for anyone right now except for myself is that I can say stuff like this and and it's not tied to a vendor. It's like you look at hp aruba and the juniper thing and you go well, dude, if you guys can use marvis to tie all of this stuff together, that would be so badass, like, like, bring it all in everybody like four years ago.
Speaker 2:Four years ago I was chatting with bob friday I was in a customer advisory call and, um, I randomly threw out cbrs. Bob called me like has called me so many times like I would.
Speaker 1:I'm like you need to bring private seller into marvis, and so hopefully finally we're getting that with hpe well, oh, yeah, okay, hopefully finally we're getting that in two years when everything's done, assuming, regulate ah, damn it, damn it, like you're so close. So you know, and I look at that and and uh, there's I just there's things that. There's things I'm aware of that I can't talk about, that, I shouldn't talk about, that, I won't talk about. But there's also things that are happening in the industry, where, where people are making big moves. So I would encourage anyone who's interested in seeing how these come together to just go look at the companies you're interested in, especially in the Wi-Fi space, and see who's hiring who, because if you look at that, it's very easy to see wait a minute, why is this person, this person's moving over here, this person's moving, what's going on? So I think that, looking at that and understanding where it is, there's so many great things that are that are moving along in the in the industry. Oh my God, okay. So that went way longer than I thought.
Speaker 1:I try and keep the podcast like 20 minutes and here we are at 45 or whatever it is. Um, let's jump. Look, I want your opinion on some of these things. So I've got you know. I, I appreciate, I know that you listen to the podcast. I do appreciate that. You know one out of 999 listeners, apparently, but so let's see what's going on this week. Man, you know I've got all these browser tabs open and eventually I will. If I can start monetizing YouTube, then maybe I can finally buy a teleprompter.
Speaker 1:Like Keith Parsons keeps telling me. He's like you gotta look at the screen, drew, you're dumb, you look weird. You didn't tell me I'm dumb, but he's like you keep looking off to the side. He's like why don't you look at the screen? So, keith, someday, my friend, okay, first thing, I got on the news. You ready for this? This from linkedin three. Uk's embrace of 5g fixed wireless access for broadband continues to deepen as it launches the market's first 5G outdoor hub solution. So this was 3UK was talking about their outdoor hub. It can be wall-mounted, pole-mounted, window-mounted or placed in a temporary stand, and I'll share this on the screen If you hadn't seen this. This is what I'm looking at. That's still you, let me Yay.
Speaker 2:Hold on, let me at, that's still you.
Speaker 1:let me uh, yeah, hold on, let me find the right. Keep sharing that stuff with me, right? Yeah, right, let me see. I'm trying to figure out a learn use this for the first time. Hang on, let's replace that with uh. Let's see screen share. And let's go over here to this post on linkedin. Here you go. So I saw this. I was man. That's kind of cool. You know, the ability to have a 5G device that can be stuck on your window or attached to a pole mount. I love the mounting options of this. But it said either side of the Atlantic to sell FWO's comprehensive home broadband solution continuous drain. Start with US Champions, verizon, t-mobile, bundlingling extensive content subscriptions and other perks. But from a cpe perspective, this is so terrifying to me, having worked in the industry, having worked in the industry for so long, and giving giving end users the option to mount things in different locations to me is always like oh god, why would you do that? Because the second you do that, they're going to mount it in the place that it's least likely to work.
Speaker 2:Um, so I saw that basement yeah, yeah you know, this goes back to that.
Speaker 1:This goes back to that ye old rule that I always use with wi-fi. People ask me where do you get good wi-fi? And I'm like, think about it like a light bulb and imagine your room is dark or your house is dark. Where would you put that light bulb to make sure you have enough light? And they're like in the closet, in the utility closet, where the guy ran all the cables for the internet. I just put it in there and it's like that's never going to work.
Speaker 1:In the garage, in the garage, oh my God. Okay, hey, do you want to get into some high-stakes drama? Oh, sure, to get into some some high-stakes drama? Oh sure, okay, so not drama, but something that I really look, you can see who I was looking at. Uh, high-stakes drama of, of, uh, of this man. Let's just, let's just jump into it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, I think she's live right now. Also, I think she's doing a, a deal. Yeah, she's doing a how to navigate, being laid off. Yes, uh, sorry, alexis, she's talking right now, it looks like, and she has way more viewers than we do.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, but holy moly, um, you know my drama man look, you're right I you know, I worked at cisco one time and I'm not the biggest influencer in the world I don't have nearly as many people as she does and even in that role I was like, well, if you're gonna lay me off, I mean like I, at least look for a media job, or you know?
Speaker 1:it's like dude, are you like leverage this group of people? I have, and I didn't take any offense to it because, whatever I mean, I totally understand the layoffs and whatnot, and I understand her position as well, where you know, apparently she was, she moved in and and she was told, hey, you have to find something else because this position terminates on the state. She didn't find anything else and that was terminated. But, holy moly, you know our, our dear friend, alexis, uh, is now on the open market. Oh my god, who's gonna snap her up first?
Speaker 2:that's the question yeah, it's crazy the people on the market right now, so there's a lot of opportunity to get some high quality talent out there right now we may be few, but we're damn pretty yes yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I tagged that because it's my question around. This is it has influencer marketing reached a point that no one cares anymore? That's my, that's my question, because if cisco is willing to let go of probably arguably the number one tech influencer in the industry period, number two behind uh lexi yeah, I think lexi's gotta be listen, if alexis starts licking stuff, I'm going to be very upset.
Speaker 1:But you know, either way, top 10 influencers, top five influencers and Cisco's like hey, that's cool has influencer marketing reached a point where it's just irrelevant in the tech industry? And you know I struggled with this when we were doing the, you know, when I did some of the stuff with with HPE and we did their influencer marketing and and with Cisco, and you know we still do the Cisco champions thing and that's cool. But it got to a point where it was like I don't know what value and you know, I don't know what value I'm bringing to the table other than I open it up to the audience. But I don't know how many people have actually purchased an Aruba access point because Drew was like, hey, man, this thing's pretty cool, you know? Um, so I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know how that fares, but when you see something, yeah, when you see something like that from someone that we know, that we respect, that we actually like that's fun and outgoing and easy to communicate with and tells a good story, and it's like that's, in my opinion, that's fun and outgoing and easy to communicate with and tells a good story, and it's like that's, in my opinion, that's exactly what the industry needed was someone sharing that message. You know I'm too old to to do it. Clearly, I don't. You know, I need to start saying you know like you talk about my sigma access points, right, but it's. It was such a. It was such a letdown, I feel, for all influencers of any way, shape or form, to see what happened to alexis, because it was like wow, they just really didn't give a shit, like just bye, you know, yep and they're like good luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you do that? How do you, how do you do that? I just don't, I don't understand that. So I thought that that was. I at least want to talk about it. Um, you know, I would say, you know, the best of luck and all those wonderful things for, but I don't think she needs it. I think she's going to be able. She's doing such a tremendous job creating content. That it's you know. I'm just excited to see where she goes next.
Speaker 2:So she's not going to go into one little thing.
Speaker 1:She's got options galore yeah, and I mean I sent her a message asking her something and she pops up and she says she's like man, I'm so sorry I haven't responded, I'm just inundated with stuff. I was like that's so cool, you know, and then her car got stolen like three days later. It's like dude, oh well, anyway, what else do we have going on here? Let's see Wi-Fi 7 on the new iPhone 16. What are your thoughts on that, mr Mark?
Speaker 2:Ooh, I'm like this iPhone 15.
Speaker 1:Pro, I'm debating. Bye. Oh no, I've been debating. I got to go get a new one.
Speaker 2:Wi-Fi 7 was the one thing I was like. If they don't have Wi-Fi 7, absolutely not, I'm not buying a new one. They put Wi-Fi 7 in it and so I'm like damn On all models.
Speaker 1:I thought I was really happy to see that it was across the board and I'm interested to see how that fares into the amount of utilization that is had on these devices and what we're going to see on networks that is had on these devices and what we're going to see on networks.
Speaker 1:When we deployed Signal Roam or as my kids call it, sigma Roam just for all the gats out there, for all the little kids, little freaking brain rot generation, I love it when we deployed Sigma Roam at a local school district, everything was working great and all of a sudden I get this phone call and they're like hey, we had to turn it off. And I said, oh dude, why? What happened? Was it not working? They're like nah, man, just everyone jumped on this one AP. We weren't expecting it and we didn't have any balancing across the network and limited number of devices connected and we hadn't really done our homework on on leveling out the network. And then we just deployed passpoint for t-mobile and at&t and, like, all of a sudden, aps get inundated you join the first ap.
Speaker 2:They walk past when they enter the building right yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering I'm happy to see wi-fi 7 on that note. Some some cool stats. Check this out. I saw that one this morning skyrocketing usage data from uh, from our friends over at rcr, wireless news intelligence on all things wireless, miss miss katherine nin says. According to the cti report, americans use more than 100 trillion megabytes of wireless data in 2023. The cti found the demand for wireless data in the us has skyrocketed, with americans using more than 100 trillion megabytes per second or no, not megabytes per second. Meg or no, not megabytes per second megabytes total representing the largest single-year increase ever recorded. For reference, 2023 saw a 36% increase to 26 trillion megabytes, an increase over 22, and now over 100 trillion megabytes of wireless data. Man, and that's CTIAti right, so that's over the carrier networks. I wonder, does that include wi-fi offload?
Speaker 1:I wonder maybe well, I mean, are they counting? Let's see, 5g is increasingly embedded into the way americans live and work. Nearly 40 of all wireless devices have a 5g connection. Okay, 34 over increase over 2022. Total number of wireless connections of 558 million, more than 1.6 wireless connections for every american. Wow, yeah, so lots, lots going on there, man. So cti with some, with some great numbers for everyone. Um, what do you think? You think wi-fi 7 is going to increase the number of people to connect to networks? Got?
Speaker 2:to have Wi-Fi 7 AP. Got to have Wi-Fi 7 client.
Speaker 1:It's going to take a few years. It's coming, so check this out. On another note, look at this thing. Look, that's still. I got to figure out those little screens, man, hold on. I think I almost got it. Let's see if I go replace and then I click on here. This is the part that I have to edit out from the audio version of the podcast drew not knowing how to screen share properly on a presentation. Dude, check this. Did you see this? This week, chinese scientists get out of here have developed an electromagnetic vortex cannon. What, what's up? Yeah, man, look at this thing. I don't know what's going on in the corner over here.
Speaker 1:Vortex rings in air and electromagnetic waves are fascinating structures. Okay, this is like if you ever smoked a cigar or a cigarette and you blow smoke rings. So this is the same thing. So I've got one of those big air cannons Like you can pull back and shoot and it like shoots invisible air, yeah, so it took me a second to figure out why this was important. I'm not going to lie. I was like what the hell are these guys talking about? Dude, are you, have you read about this? I have not. It's the first time I'm hearing this. Vortex rings blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They wirelize those vortex rings, a mysterious and fascinating natural phenomenon, displayed breathtaking structures. But the key here is Hold on Is the word that I don't know how to pronounce God. I wish there was someone who could help me out with this.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, there's an air cannon, here's an electromagnetic cannon, and they they're not called sky rims, what are they called? They're called something else, but they use these vortex pulses to do this, and the idea, is it disruption? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Higher levels of modulation, okay, oh, wow, because now you're not just modulating on an XY axis, right, you're modulating on a rotating XYy axis. So, yeah, so check it out. So let's see if I get this right. So they shoot this, this, this elect this. Yeah, I'm imagining a smoke ring, right, they shoot the smoke ring and it's no longer just vertically and horizontally polarized, it's rotating, vertically and horizontally polarized. So if, if you can stack bits per Hertz, not just like this, but as it moves, now you have the ability to crank more data out of it. It's, it's not I forgot what it's called, it's not Skyrim. Hold on, it's in here somewhere, electromagnetic vortex cannon.
Speaker 1:You know, these are the things you find only on the waves. Wireless podcast generates an instantaneous, instantaneous pressure difference. It forms vortex rings which maintain their shape and energy over long distances. So imagine this, this infinite smoke ring cruising, and imagine you have a way to modulate on that electromagnetic pulses with complex topological features. There, there it is skyrims. He says skirmions, skirmions. I I've never heard anyone use this word, dude. Someone give me a, someone give me a uh, a pronunciation on this. But they make these things that showcase remarkable resilience and self-healing properties during propagation vast and exciting high capacity communication systems. These vortex pulses could revolutionize how we transmit information by operating efficient, robust methods of data encoding. The unique spectral and polarization characteristics of the vortex rings allow them to carry more information compared to today, compared to traditional waves, making them ideal candidates for next generation Dude, and they maintain structural integrity in the presence of environmental disturbances. It's a valuable tool in remote sensing and targeting detection.
Speaker 2:Like I'm blown away with this just because the picture was like that looks pretty cool, Anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So now, how do we get so who's going to be the first manufacturer? We've got wi-fi 7 that does mlo. We've got wi-fi 8 that does multi-ap and ml, mlo on multiple aps. How do we get an ap that does mlo, multi-frequency electromagnetic vortex aggregation, so that, like when the two vortex you send it here and it meets right there, right where you need it, when you need it let's go, man, let's go.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh yeah it sounds stupid that we're laughing at it. Look, reference this podcast in you know uh, 9, 13, 20, 31 and tell me how dumb it sounds then. Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool, dude, that was a much more complex.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think those were the main stories that I had this week. I don't know if you know, but I do want to end a little bit on a sad note the passing of someone named Jim Hong and I don't know if you ever got a chance to work with Jim, but Jim Hong was. I met him when he was with Orthogon Systems before their acquisition by Cambium Networks, and Jim was one of the smartest people I ever knew and one of the best people I ever got to work with, and I'll never forget. He always had three things that you could find with Jim Hong, and anyone who knows him knows what they are, and I'm not even sure that I should say them. So if you remember Jim, just remember the three things that he always used to carry with him, and I always thought that that was hilarious. So condolences to his family. There is a memorial service going on for him, and another person I found out had recently passed away, which is Mr Drew Mooney, who I met at Motorola also. So Drew Mooney and Jim Hong, there's a memorial service planned for them at Wispapalooza this year. So if you're going and you want to spend some time reliving some great memories about the Honger and Mr Mooney. Drew Mooney was like I remember one time funny story about Drew Mooney.
Speaker 1:I remember one time I was applying for a job and going through the whole process and I found out that the person that I was talking to didn't know they were talking to Drew Lentz. They thought they were talking to Drew Mooney and they're like man, I love you and we're interviewing this other guy and I think he's got the same name, but we really like you and you're the candidate we want to go with. I was like, oh, that's great. And I found out later that it was meant for mooney and I was like son of a bitch, like I was like wait a minute, I don't have any experience working at alcatel, lucent or wherever it was, and so, uh, unfortunately sad, sad to know that those two guys are gone, but glad I got to spend some time with them. So, um, shout out yeah, total bummer man.
Speaker 2:But he was over.
Speaker 1:Yeah good guys. Anyway, hey, I really appreciate you joining me, mark. I know we had a great time at Mobility Field Day and it's great to catch up. I mean, you got anything going on. Anything you want to chit-chat about?
Speaker 2:I will be at Edge Field Day next week. Oh nice, yeah, I got invited to that one with those guys.
Speaker 1:Sweet.
Speaker 2:Nice, yeah, I got invited to that one with those guys, with Steven. So, talking about edge stuff, less wireless, more wired yeah, there is. There is possibility with like private cellular stuff with some edge things so well yeah, yeah, that's a.
Speaker 1:that is an interesting I don't know who's presenting at that, I haven't, I haven't looked it up, but I know that, if you look at the thing that that piqued my interest a couple of weeks I guess months back now is the new 700 series from aruba and being able to run container uh, containerized applications and, and you know, cisco falling suit with some of their 9100s and you know, I think that's, I think that was something that they had mentioned is being able to run edge services on those devices and what the benefit to it is, not just from an AI perspective, because everyone can build AI into whatever the hell they want, but like from a real world operations perspective. You know, is uh, any, is there anyone presenting in that does wireless also? Um, no, that I, not that I know of that.
Speaker 2:does wireless also? No, not that I know of.
Speaker 1:So Zendaya, Damn it Hollingsworth. I know right, Get your shit together.
Speaker 2:I went to Edgefield day one and they had a network company.
Speaker 1:They weren't wireless yeah they got you right there, right, and then they just dropped it. They just terrible joke.
Speaker 2:But I'm like I'm hoping I'm going to push and see they're more of the data center controlling the Kubernetes and the Dockers containers and stuff. They could work with the Wi-Fi or the cellular people or whoever, but they're more focused on that side. We'll see how that goes. Nice, after that is MeterUp. I will be there with you.
Speaker 1:Yes yes, meter up. I have high expectations for meter up. Um, it's gonna be, it's gonna be great to be around uh, around you all and around a bunch of bunch of other fun folks. Um, if you don't know what meter up is, go, look at, go to metercom, look, look for their events called MeterUp. It's happening October 2nd in San Francisco and it's there's an open invite that's out there. You have to apply, you, you, you ask for a seat and if they give you a seat, then you come join us. But that's going to show us the entire world of meter in one day which I've seen with and it blew my mind and it I was, so I was so blown away. So I don't know if you noticed, but I went there the day before mobility field day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1:And I was like everything you guys are showing me sucks Compared to what I just saw. Like this is like M and M like tell me something about me, I don't know already you know. And so I walked in with this completely jaded mentality. That's not true. I walked in being exposed to some things that I was like wow, it really put life in a different perspective. And now that Command has come out, now you can understand why. I was just like okay, tie this to three years from now. So it was great. It's going to be great to see Meter doing that.
Speaker 2:And then WLpc. Are you going to prague?
Speaker 1:I am supposed to, I'm still figuring a few things out, that's.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I'm like, I'm presenting, so I better go right. Yeah, well, I'm looking to go. I, I have a. I have a request out for someone to sponsor the waves podcast at wlpc prague. If you know anyone who wants to sponsor the waves podcast, either at at WLPC Prague or anywhere else, drop me a line. Uh, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm actually dude. I'm doing some sick stuff. You, if you happen to find yourself in Alaska next week, I'm going to Alaska to uh, to do some engineering and design for a port in Alaska, for communications, for wifi. No-transcript minute.
Speaker 1:It's a tablet. The tablet isn't the fun part. It's got a cool little case on it. It's not the tablet that makes makes it fun, it's this little guy right here. There it is, and so there, my Zoom's all messed up. So shout out to my peeps at IB Wave. This is actually a really easy to use device. It's a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I've got a full review of it coming up soon. It works really well to show me what's going on in the cell spectrum and the cbrs spectrum, and they have been very patient because they sent that and I said well, I want to use it on my trip to alaska and they said, all right, fine, we'll wait. So shout out to the team at ivy wave for being patient.
Speaker 1:Um, and then, what else? Ces is coming up? Um, the things conference. I, I tweet and retweet and repost about the things Conference that's coming up and I think that it's. When is that? Oh man, it's probably this week. I can look it up. It's. Let me see.
Speaker 1:The Things Conference. I want to go to this thing so bad and I've always wanted to go to it ever since I learned about it. The Things Conference is this huge Laura, when it's a 2526 September, so it's in 12 days it's in Amsterdam and it's all things IoT and Laura when, and it is like it is so much fun to watch what they do there, all the postings that pop up. So if you don't know about it, just look for the hashtag the things conference and if you have any interest in IoT or any interest in Laura when, that is definitely the spot to be at it's. There's such a good group of people and they always have the coolest toys. And then what else we got coming up? Um, wlpc February, ces in January. I love CES. Um, I don't know, man, busy, busy calendars, busy schedules.
Speaker 2:WLPC is open for presentation. Call for presentation.
Speaker 1:Yes, WLPC Phoenix is open for presentation. The call for papers is out right now. If you have always wanted to present at WLPC and you didn't know how, this is the first step. You submit an abstract. You go on the website, go to WLPC and look up WLPC and find it, and you submit your abstract and then they turn on community voting and people vote for the presentations that they want to see. So if there's something that interests you, it probably interests someone else. Get online, post about it, don't be scared. It's not scary, it's scary to think about. And then you get there and you're just like these are all my friends, like these are all people I know, or these are all people that I've seen online, or these are all people that are genuinely interested, because by the time you make it to the stage, you got to realize that everyone has already told you how much they want to see you present. So there's nothing to be terrified about.
Speaker 2:Yep exactly how it goes. And then you become more well known, you get your name out there and then you get end up on the waves podcast here, yeah, there you go, speaking of if anyone wants to join.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, I'll start bringing on some guests here and there, but I think, uh, I think, mr muhammad's gonna be the next one. I think, you know he, he chimes in enough. But if anyone wants to join the waves podcast, let me know. I think that's it. That's for this week. Man, is this an hour and seven? It's the longest waves I think I've done, but we're gonna go ahead and push it and have some fun with it. We've had, we've we've held on to about 100 viewers this whole time, which is great. So I appreciate everyone listening and tuning in. I've tried to answer all the questions in the little chat overlay. It's been very busy. Uh, let's see, there ain't last words on there that I didn't, that I didn't post up, but that's it, man. That's all I got. Have a wonderful weekend. Mark dude, thank you for joining.
Speaker 1:Great to catch up, man um awesome yeah, pay attention, dude, you've got, you've got social media stuff, right, yeah, I got markoutscom.
Speaker 2:so my blog is where I post most of my stuff and linkedin and you do you do write some you do a very, very good job blog.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy reading your articles and and if no one's following you on linkedin, please go follow. Follow mark on linkedin as well. Okay, that's it. That's all I got. I hope everybody has a wonderful week. From everyone, the Waves Podcast, which is me, and Mark, have a wonderful week and we will see you all next time. Bye.
