(upbeat instrumental music) >> TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (uplifting instrumental music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE Live at MWC '23. I'm Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, our co-founder, our co-CEO of theCUBE, you know him, you love him. He's here as my co-host. Dave, we have a great couple of guests here to break down day one keynote. Lots of meat. I can't wait to be part of this conversation. Chris Lewis joins us, the founder and MD of Lewis Insight. And Sarbjeet Johal, one of you know him as well. He's a Cube contributor, cloud architect. Guys, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me today. >> Lovely to be here. >> Thank you. >> Chris, I want to start with you. You have covered all aspects of global telecoms industries over 30 years working as an analyst. Talk about the evolution of the telecom industry that you've witnessed, and what were some of the things you heard in the keynote that excite you about the direction it's going? >> Well, as ever, MWC, there's no lack of glitz and glamour, but it's the underlying issues of the industry that are really at stake here. There's not a lot of new revenue coming into the telecom providers, but there's a lot of adjustment, readjustment of the underlying operational environment. And also, really importantly, what came out of the keynotes is the willingness and the necessity to really engage with the API community, with the developer community, people who traditionally, telecoms would never have even touched. So they're sorting out their own house, they're cleaning their own stables, getting the cost base down, but they're also now realizing they've got to engage with all the other parties. There's a lot of cloud providers here, there's a lot of other people from outside so they're realizing they cannot do it all themselves. It's quite a tough lesson for a very conservative, inward looking industry, right? So should we be spending all this money and all this glitz and glamour of MWC and all be here, or should would be out there really building for the future and making sure the services are right for yours and my needs in a business and personal lives? So a lot of new changes, a lot of realization of what's going on outside, but underlying it, we've just got to get this right this time. >> And it feels like that monetization is front and center. You mentioned developers, we've got to work with developers, but I'm hearing the latest keynote from the Ericsson CEOs, we're going to monetize through those APIs, we're going to charge the developers. I mean, first of all, Chris, am I getting that right? And Sarbjeet, as somebody who's close to the developer community, is that the right way to build bridges? But Chris, are we getting that right? >> Well, let's take the first steps first. So, Ericsson, of course, acquired Vonage, which is a massive API business so they want to make money. They expect to make money by bringing that into the mainstream telecom community. Now, whether it's the developers who pay for it, or let's face it, we are moving into a situation as the telco moves into a techco model where the techco means they're going to be selling bits of the technology to developer guys and to other application developers. So when he says he needs to charge other people for it, it's the way in which people reach in and will take going through those open APIs like the open gateway announced today, but also the way they'll reach in and take things like network slicing. So we're opening up the telecom community, the treasure chest, if you like, where developers' applications and other third parties can come in and take those chunks of technology and build them into their services. This is a complete change from the old telecom industry where everybody used to come and you say, "all right, this is my product, you've got to buy it and you're going to pay me a lot of money for it." So we are looking at a more flexible environment where the other parties can take those chunks. And we know we want collectivity built into our financial applications, into our government applications, everything, into the future of the metaverse, whatever it may be. But it requires that change in attitude of the telcos. And they do need more money 'cause they've said, the baseline of revenue is pretty static, there's not a lot of growth in there so they're looking for new revenues. It's in a B2B2X time model. And it's probably the middle man's going to pay for it rather than the customer. >> But the techco model, Sarbjeet, it looks like the telcos are getting their money on their way in. The techco company model's to get them on their way out like the app store. Go build something of value, build some kind of app or data product, and then when it takes off, we'll take a piece of the action. What are your thoughts from a developer perspective about how the telcos are approaching it? >> Yeah, I think before we came here, like I said, I did some tweets on this, that we talk about all kind of developers, like there's game developers and front end, back end, and they're all talking about like what they're building on top of cloud, but nowhere you will hear the term "telco developer," there's no API from telcos given to the developers to build IoT solutions on top of it because telco as an IoT, I think is a good sort of hand in hand there. And edge computing as well. The glimmer of hope, if you will, for telcos is the edge computing, I believe. And even in edge, I predicted, I said that many times that cloud players will dominate that market with the private 5G. You know that story, right? >> We're going to talk about that. (laughs) >> The key is this, that if you see in general where the population lives, in metros, right? That's where the world population is like flocking to and we have cloud providers covering the local zones with local like heavy duty presence from the big cloud providers and then these telcos are getting sidetracked by that. Even the V2X in cars moving the autonomous cars and all that, even in that space, telcos are getting sidetracked in many ways. What telcos have to do is to join the forces, build some standards, if not standards, some consortium sort of. They're trying to do that with the open gateway here, they have only eight APIs. And it's 2023, eight APIs is nothing, right? (laughs) So they should have started this 10 years back, I think. So, yeah, I think to entice the developers, developers need the employability, we need to train them, we need to show them some light that hey, you can build a lot on top of it. If you tell developers they can develop two things or five things, nobody will come. >> So, Chris, the cloud will dominate the edge. So A, do you buy it? B, the telcos obviously are acting like that might happen. >> Do you know I love people when they've got their heads in the clouds. (all laugh) And you're right in so many ways, but if you flip it around and think about how the customers think about this, business customers and consumers, they don't care about all this background shenanigans going on, do they? >> Lisa: No. >> So I think one of the problems we have is that this is a new territory and whether you call it the edge or whatever you call it, what we need there is we need connectivity, we need security, we need storage, we need compute, we need analytics, and we need applications. And are any of those more important than the others? It's the collective that actually drives the real value there. So we need all those things together. And of course, the people who represented at this show, whether it's the cloud guys, the telcos, the Nokia, the Ericssons of this world, they all own little bits of that. So that's why they're all talking partnerships because they need the combination, they cannot do it on their own. The cloud guys can't do it on their own. >> Well, the cloud guys own all of those things that you just talked about though. (all laugh) >> Well, they don't own the last bit of connectivity, do they? They don't own the access. >> Right, exactly. That's the one thing they don't own. So, okay, we're back to pipes, right? We're back to charging for connectivity- >> Pipes are very valuable things, right? >> Yeah, for sure. >> Never underestimate pipes. I don't know about where you live, plumbers make a lot of money where I live- >> I don't underestimate them but I'm saying can the telcos charge for more than that or are the cloud guys going to mop up the storage, the analytics, the compute, and the apps? >> They may mop it up, but I think what the telcos are doing and we've seen a lot of it here already, is they are working with all those major cloud guys already. So is it an unequal relationship? The cloud guys are global, massive global scale, the telcos are fundamentally national operators. >> Yep. >> Some have a little bit of regional, nobody has global scale. So who stitches it all together? >> Dave: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. >> Absolutely. >> I know that saying never gets old. It's true. Well, Sarbjeet, one of the things that you tweeted about, I didn't get to see the keynote but I was looking at your tweets. 46% of telcos think they won't make it to the next decade. That's a big number. Did that surprise you? >> No, actually it didn't surprise me because the competition is like closing in on them and the telcos are competing with telcos as well and the telcos are competing with cloud providers on the other side, right? So the smaller ones are getting squeezed. It's the bigger players, they can hook up the newer platforms, I think they will survive. It's like that part is like any other industry, if you will. But the key is here, I think why the pain points were sort of described on the main stage is that they're crying out loud to tell the big tech cloud providers that "hey, you pay your fair share," like we talked, right? You are not paying, you're generating so much content which reverses our networks and you are not paying for it. So they are not able to recoup the cost of laying down their networks. By the way, one thing actually I want to mention is that they said the cloud needs earth. The cloud and earth, it's like there's no physical need to cloud, you know that, right? So like, I think it's the other way around. I think the earth needs the cloud because I'm a cloud guy. (Sarbjeet and Lisa laugh) >> I think you need each other, right? >> I think so too. >> They need each other. When they said cloud needs earth, right? I think they're still in denial that the cloud is a big force. They have to partner. When you can't compete with somebody, what do you do? Partner with them. >> Chris, this is your world. Are they in denial? >> No, I think they're waking up to the pragmatism of the situation. >> Yeah. >> They're building... As we said, most of the telcos, you find have relationships with the cloud guys, I think you're right about the industry. I mean, do you think what's happened since US was '96, the big telecom act when we started breaking up all the big telcos and we had lots of competition came in, we're seeing the signs that we might start to aggregate them back up together again. So it's been an interesting experiment for like 30 years, hasn't it too? >> It made the US less competitive, I would argue, but carry on. >> Yes, I think it's true. And Europe is maybe too competitive and therefore, it's not driven the investment needed. And by the way, it's not just mobile, it's fixed as well. You saw the Orange CEO was talking about the her investment and the massive fiber investments way ahead of many other countries, way ahead of the UK or Germany. We need that fiber in the ground to carry all your cloud traffic to do this. So there is a scale issue, there is a competition issue, but the telcos are very much aware of it. They need the cloud, by the way, to improve their operational environments as well, to change that whole old IT environment to deliver you and I better service. So no, it absolutely is changing. And they're getting scale, but they're fundamentally offering the basic product, you call it pipes, I'll just say they're offering broadband to you and I and the business community. But they're stepping on dangerous ground, I think, when saying they want to charge the over the top guys for all the traffic they use. Those over the top guys now build a lot of the global networks, the backbone submarine network. They're putting a lot of money into it, and by giving us endless data for our individual usage, that cat is out the bag, I think to a large extent. >> Yeah. And Orange CEO basically said that, that they're not paying their fair share. I'm for net neutrality but the governments are going to have to fund this unless you let us charge the OTT. >> Well, I mean, we could of course renationalize. Where would that take us? (Dave laughs) That would make MWC very interesting next year, wouldn't it? To renationalize it. So, no, I think you've got to be careful what we wish for here. Creating the absolute clear product that is required to underpin all of these activities, whether it's IoT or whether it's cloud delivery or whether it's just our own communication stuff, delivering that absolutely ubiquitously high quality for business and for consumer is what we have to do. And telcos have been too conservative in the past. >> I think they need to get together and create standards around... I think they have a big opportunity. We know that the clouds are being built in silos, right? So there's Azure stack, there's AWS and there's Google. And those are three main ones and a few others, right? So that we are fighting... On the cloud side, what we are fighting is the multicloud. How do we consume that multicloud without having standards? So if these people get together and create some standards around IoT and edge computing sort of area, people will flock to them to say, "we will use you guys, your API, we don't care behind the scenes if you use AWS or Google Cloud or Azure, we will come to you." So market, actually is looking for that solution. I think it's an opportunity for these guys, for telcos. But the problem with telcos is they're nationalized, as you said Chris versus the cloud guys are still kind of national in a way, but they're global corporations. And some of the telcos are global corporations as well, BT covers so many countries and TD covers so many... DT is in US as well, so they're all over the place. >> But you know what's interesting is that the TM forum, which is one of the industry associations, they've had an open digital architecture framework for quite some years now. Google had joined that some years ago, Azure in there, AWS just joined it a couple of weeks ago. So when people said this morning, why isn't AWS on the keynote? They don't like sharing the limelight, do they? But they're getting very much in bed with the telco. So I think you'll see the marriage. And in fact, there's a really interesting statement, if you look at the IoT you mentioned, Bosch and Nokia have been working together 'cause they said, the problem we've got, you've got a connectivity network on one hand, you've got the sensor network on the other hand, you're trying to merge them together, it's a nightmare. So we are finally seeing those sort of groups talking to each other. So I think the standards are coming, the cooperation is coming, partnerships are coming, but it means that the telco can't dominate the sector like it used to. It's got to play ball with everybody else. >> I think they have to work with the regulators as well to loosen the regulation. Or you said before we started this segment, you used Chris, the analogy of sports, right? In sports, when you're playing fiercely, you commit the fouls and then ask for ref to blow the whistle. You're now looking at the ref all the time. The telcos are looking at the ref all the time. >> Dave: Yeah, can I do this? Can I do that? Is this a fair move? >> They should be looking for the space in front of the opposition. >> Yeah, they should be just on attack mode and commit these fouls, if you will, and then ask for forgiveness then- >> What do you make of that AWS not you there- >> Well, Chris just made a great point that they don't like to share the limelight 'cause I thought it was very obvious that we had Google Cloud, we had Microsoft there on day one of this 80,000 person event. A lot of people back from COVID and they weren't there. But Chris, you brought up a great point that kind of made me think, maybe you're right. Maybe they're in the afternoon keynote, they want their own time- >> You think GSMA invited them? >> I imagine so. You'd have to ask GSMA. >> I would think so. >> Get Max on here and ask that. >> I'm going to ask them, I will. >> But no, and they don't like it because I think the misconception, by the way, is that everyone says, "oh, it's AWS, it's Google Cloud and it's Azure." They're not all the same business by any stretch of the imagination. AWS has been doing loads of great work, they've been launching private network stuff over the last couple of weeks. Really interesting. Google's been playing catch up. We know that they came in readily late to the market. And Azure, they've all got slightly different angles on it. So perhaps it just wasn't right for AWS and the way they wanted to pitch things so they don't have to be there, do they? >> That's a good point. >> But the industry needs them there, that's the number one cloud. >> Dave, they're there working with the industry. >> Yeah, of course. >> They don't have to be on the keynote stage. And in fact, you think about this show and you mentioned the 80,000 people, the activity going on around in all these massive areas they're in, it's fantastic. That's where the business is done. The business isn't done up on the keynote stage. >> That's why there's the glitz and the glamour, Chris. (all laugh) >> Yeah. It's not glitz, it's espresso. It's not glamour anymore, it's just espresso. >> We need the espresso. >> Yeah. >> I think another thing is that it's interesting how an average European sees the tech market and an average North American, especially you from US, you have to see the market. Here, people are more like process oriented and they want the rules of the road already established before they can take a step- >> Chris: That's because it's your pension in the North American- >> Exactly. So unions are there and the more employee rights and everything, you can't fire people easily here or in Germany or most of the Europe is like that with the exception of UK. >> Well, but it's like I said, that Silicone Valley gets their money on the way out, you know? And that's how they do it, that's how they think it. And they don't... They ask for forgiveness. I think the east coast is more close to Europe, but in the EU, highly regulated, really focused on lifetime employment, things like that. >> But Dave, the issue is the telecom industry is brilliant, right? We keep paying every month whatever we do with it. >> It's a great business, to your point- >> It's a brilliant business model. >> Dave: It's fantastic. >> So it's about then getting the structure right behind it. And you know, we've seen a lot of stratification where people are selling off towers, Orange haven't sold their towers off, they made a big point about that. Others are selling their towers off. Some people are selling off their underlying network, Telecom Italia talking about KKR buying the whole underlying network. It's like what do you want to be in control of? It's a great business. >> But that's why they complain so much is that they're having to sell their assets because of the onerous CapEx requirements, right? >> Yeah, they've had it good, right? And dare I say, perhaps they've not planned well enough for the future. >> They're trying to protect their past from the future. I mean, that's... >> Actually, look at the... Every "n" number of years, there's a new faster network. They have to dig the ground, they have to put the fiber, they have to put this. Now, there are so many booths showing 6G now, we are not even done with 5G yet, now the next 6G you know, like then- >> 10G's coming- >> 10G, that's a different market. (Dave laughs) >> Actually, they're bogged down by the innovation, I think. >> And the generational thing is really important because we're planning for 6G in all sorts of good ways but actually what we use in our daily lives, we've gone through the barrier, we've got enough to do that. So 4G gives us enough, the fiber in the ground or even old copper gives us enough. So the question is, what are we willing to pay for more than that basic connectivity? And the answer to your point, Dave, is not a lot, right? So therefore, that's why the emphasis is on the business market on that B2B and B2B2X. >> But we'll pay for Netflix all day long. >> All day long. (all laugh) >> The one thing Chris, I don't know, I want to know your viewpoints and we have talked in the past as well, there's absence of think tanks in tech, right? So we have think tanks on the foreign policy and economic policy in every country, and we have global think tanks, but tech is becoming a huge part of the economy, global economy as well as national economies, right? But we don't have think tanks on like policy around tech. For example, this 4G is good for a lot of use cases. Then 5G is good for smaller number of use cases. And then 6G will be like, fewer people need 6G for example. Why can't we have sort of those kind of entities dictating those kind of like, okay, is this a wiser way to go about it? >> Lina Khan wants to. She wants to break up big tech- >> You're too young to remember but the IT used to have a show every four years in Geneva, there were standards around there. So I think there are bodies. I think the balance of power obviously has gone from the telecom to the west coast to the IT markets. And it's changing the balance about, it moves more quickly, right? Telecoms has never moved quickly enough. I think there is hope by the way, that telecoms now that we are moving to more softwarized environment, and God forbid, we're moving into CICD in the telecom world, right? Which is a massive change, but I think there's hopes for it to change. The mentality is changing, the culture is changing, but to change those old structured organizations from the British telecom or the France telecom into the modern world, it's a hell of a long journey. It's not an overnight journey at all. >> Well, of course the theme of the event is velocity. >> Yeah, I know that. >> And it's been interesting sitting here with the three of you talking about from a historic perspective, how slow and molasseslike telecom has been. They don't have a choice anymore. As consumers, we have this expectation we're going to get anything we want on our mobile device, 24 by seven. We don't care about how the sausage is made, we just want the end result. So do you really think, and we're only on day one guys... And Chris we'll start with you. Is the theme really velocity? Is it disruption? Are they able to move faster? >> Actually, I think invisibility is the real answer. (Lisa laughs) We want communication to be invisible, right? >> Absolutely. >> We want it to work. When we switch our phones on, we want it to work and we want to... Well, they're not even phones anymore, are they really? I mean that's the... So no, velocity, we've got... There is momentum in the industry, there's no doubt about that. The cloud guys coming in, making telecoms think about the way they run their own business, where they meet, that collision point on the edges you talked about Sarbjeet. We do have velocity, we've got momentum. There's so many interested parties. The way I think of this is that the telecom industry used to be inward looking, just design its own technology and then expect everyone else to dance to our tune. We're now flipping that 180 degrees and we are now having to work with all the different outside forces shaping us. Whether it's devices, whether it's smart cities, governments, the hosting guys, the Equinoxis, all these things. So everyone wants a piece of this telecom world so we've got to make ourselves more open. That's why you get in a more open environment. >> But you did... I just want to bring back a point you made during COVID, which was when everybody switched to work from home, started using their landlines again, telcos had to respond and nothing broke. I mean, it was pretty amazing. >> Chris: It did a good job. >> It was kind of invisible. So, props to the telcos for making that happen. >> They did a great job. >> So it really did. Now, okay, what have you done for me lately? So now they've got to deal with the future and they're talking monetization. But to me, monetization is all about data and not necessarily just the network data. Yeah, they can sell that 'cause they own that but what kind of incremental value are they going to create for the consumers that... >> Yeah, actually that's a problem. I think the problem is that they have been strangled by the regulation for a long time and they cannot look at their data. It's a lot more similar to the FinTech world, right? I used to work at Visa. And then Visa, we did trillion dollars in transactions in '96. Like we moved so much money around, but we couldn't look at these things, right? So yeah, I think regulation is a problem that holds you back, it's the antithesis of velocity, it slows you down. >> But data means everything, doesn't it? I mean, it means everything and nothing. So I think the challenge here is what data do the telcos have that is useful, valuable to me, right? So in the home environment, the fact that my broadband provider says, oh, by the way, you've got 20 gadgets on that network and 20 on that one... That's great, tell me what's on there. I probably don't know what's taking all my valuable bandwidth up. So I think there's security wrapped around that, telling me the way I'm using it if I'm getting the best out of my service. >> You pay for that? >> No, I'm saying they don't do it yet. I think- >> But would you pay for that? >> I think I would, yeah. >> Would you pay a lot for that? I would expect it to be there as part of my dashboard for my monthly fee. They're already charging me enough. >> Well, that's fine, but you pay a lot more in North America than I do in Europe, right? >> Yeah, no, that's true. >> You're really overpaying over there, right? >> Way overpaying. >> So, actually everybody's looking at these devices, right? So this is a radio operated device basically, right? And then why couldn't they benefit from this? This is like we need to like double click on this like 10 times to find out why telcos failed to leverage this device, right? But I think the problem is their reliance on regulations and their being close to the national sort of governments and local bodies and authorities, right? And in some countries, these telcos are totally controlled in very authoritarian ways, right? It's not like open, like in the west, most of the west. Like the world is bigger than five, six countries and we know that, right? But we end up talking about the major economies most of the time. >> Dave: Always. >> Chris: We have a topic we want to hit on. >> We do have a topic. Our last topic, Chris, it's for you. You guys have done an amazing job for the last 25 minutes talking about the industry, where it's going, the evolution. But Chris, you're registered blind throughout your career. You're a leading user of assertive technologies. Talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, some of the things you're doing there. >> Well, we should have had 25 minutes on that and five minutes on- (all laugh) >> Lisa: You'll have to come back. >> Really interesting. So I've been looking at it. You're quite right, I've been using accessible technology on my iPhone and on my laptop for 10, 20 years now. It's amazing. And what I'm trying to get across to the industry is to think about inclusive design from day one. When you're designing an app or you're designing a service, make sure you... And telecom's a great example. In fact, there's quite a lot of sign language around here this week. If you look at all the events written, good to see that coming in. Obviously, no use to me whatsoever, but good for the hearing impaired, which by the way is the biggest category of disability in the world. Biggest chunk is hearing impaired, then vision impaired, and then cognitive and then physical. And therefore, whenever you're designing any service, my call to arms to people is think about how that's going to be used and how a blind person might use it or how a deaf person or someone with physical issues or any cognitive issues might use it. And a great example, the GSMA and I have been talking about the app they use for getting into the venue here. I downloaded it. I got the app downloaded and I'm calling my guys going, where's my badge? And he said, "it's top left." And because I work with a screen reader, they hadn't tagged it properly so I couldn't actually open my badge on my own. Now, they changed it overnight so it worked this morning, which is fantastic work by Trevor and the team. But it's those things that if you don't build it in from scratch, you really frustrate a whole group of users. And if you think about it, people with disabilities are excluded from so many services if they can't see the screen or they can't hear it. But it's also the elderly community who don't find it easy to get access to things. Smart speakers have been a real blessing in that respect 'cause you can now talk to that thing and it starts talking back to you. And then there's the people who can't afford it so we need to come down market. This event is about launching these thousand dollars plus devices. Come on, we need below a hundred dollars devices to get to the real mass market and get the next billion people in and then to educate people how to use it. And I think to go back to your previous point, I think governments are starting to realize how important this is about building the community within the countries. You've got some massive projects like NEOM in Saudi Arabia. If you have a look at that, if you get a chance, a fantastic development in the desert where they're building a new city from scratch and they're building it so anyone and everyone can get access to it. So in the past, it was all done very much by individual disability. So I used to use some very expensive, clunky blind tech stuff. I'm now using mostly mainstream. But my call to answer to say is, make sure when you develop an app, it's accessible, anyone can use it, you can talk to it, you can get whatever access you need and it will make all of our lives better. So as we age and hearing starts to go and sight starts to go and dexterity starts to go, then those things become very useful for everybody. >> That's a great point and what a great champion they have in you. Chris, Sarbjeet, Dave, thank you so much for kicking things off, analyzing day one keynote, the ecosystem day, talking about what velocity actually means, where we really are. We're going to have to have you guys back 'cause as you know, we can keep going, but we are out of time. But thank you. >> Pleasure. >> We had a very spirited, lively conversation. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you very much. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live in Barcelona, Spain at MWC '23. We'll be back after a short break. See you soon. (uplifting instrumental music)

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Mobile World Congress is alive, theCUBE will be there and we'll certainly let you know if it's alive and well when we get on the ground. Now, as we approach a delayed mobile world congress, it's really appropriate to reflect in the state of the telecoms industry. Let's face it. Telcos have done of really good job of keeping us all connected during the pandemic, supporting work from home and that whole pivot, accommodating the rapid shift to landline traffic, securing the network and keeping it up and running but it doesn't change the underlying fundamental dilemma that Telco has faced. Telco is a slow growth, no growth industry, with revenue expectations in the low single digits. And at the same time network traffic continues to grow at 20% annually. And last year it grew at 40% to 50%. Despite these challenges, Telcos are still investing in the future. For example, the Telco industry collectively is selling out more than a trillion dollars in the first half of this decade on 5G and fiber infrastructure. And it's estimated that there are now more than 200 5G networks worldwide. But a lot of questions remain, not the least of which is, can and should Telcos go beyond connectivity and fiber. Can the Telcos actually monetize 5G or whatever's next beyond 5G? Or is that going to be left to the ecosystem? Now what about the ecosystem? How is that evolving? And very importantly, what role will the Cloud Hyperscalers play in Telco? Are they infrastructure on which the Telcos can build or are they going to suck the value out of the market as they have done in the enterprise? Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's Wiki Bond Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, it's my pleasure to welcome a long time telecoms industry analyst and colleague, and the founding director of Lewis Insight, Mr. Chris Lewis. Chris, welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on >> Dave, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. >> It is really our pleasure. So, we're going to cover a lot of ground today. And first thing, we're going to talk about Mobile World Congress. I've never been, you're an expert at that and what we can expect. And then we're going to review the current state of telecoms infrastructure, where it should go. We're going to dig into transformation. Is it a mandate? Is it aspirational? Can Telcos enter adjacent markets in ways they haven't been able to in the past? And then how about the ecosystem? We're going to talk about that, and then obviously we're going to talk about Cloud as I said, and we'll riff a little bit on the tech landscape. So Chris, let's get into it, Mobile World Congress, it's back on, what's Mobile World Congress typically like? What's your expectation this year for the vibe compared to previous events? >> Well Dave, the issue of Mobile World Congress is always that we go down there for a week into Barcelona. We stress ourselves building a matrix of meetings in 30 minutes slots and we return at the end of it trying to remember what we'd been told all the way through. The great thing is that with the last time we had a live, with around 110,000 people there, you could see anyone and everyone you needed to within the mobile, and increasingly the adjacent industry and ecosystem. So, he gave you that once a year, big download of everything new, obviously because it's the Mobile World Congress, a lot of it around devices, but increasingly over the last few years, we saw many, many stands with cars on them because the connected car became an issue, a lot more software oriented players there, but always the Telcos, always the people providing the network infrastructure. Increasingly in the last few years people provided the software and IT infrastructure, but all of these people contributing to what the network should be in the future, what needs to be connected. But of course the reach of the network has been growing. You mentioned during lockdown about connecting people in their homes, well, of course we've also been extending that connection to connect things whether it's in the home or the different devices, monitoring of doorbells and lights and all that sort of stuff. And in the industry environment, connecting all of the robots and sensors. So, actually the perimeter, the remit of the industry to connect has been expanding, and so is the sort of remit of Mobile World Congress. So, we set an awful lot of different suppliers coming in, trying to attach to this enormous market of roughly $1.5 trillion globally. >> Chris, what's the buzz in the industry in terms of who's going to show up. I know a lot of people have pulled out, I've got the Mobile World Congress app and I can see who's attending. And it looks like quite a few people are going to go but what's your expectation? >> Well, from an analyst point of view, obviously I'm mainly keeping up with my clients and trying to get new clients. I'm looking at it and going most of my clients are not attending in person. Now, of course, we need the DSMA, we need Mobile World Congress for future for the industry interaction. But of course, like many people having adopted and adapted to be online, then they're putting a lot of the keynotes online, a lot of the activities will be online. But of course many of the vendors have also produced their independent content and content to actually deliver to us as analysts. So, I'm not sure who will be there. I like you, but you'll be on the ground. You'll be able to report back and let us know exactly who turned up. But from my point of view, I've had so many pre-briefs already, the difference between this year and previous years, I used to get loads of pre-briefs and then have to go do the briefs as well. So this year I've got the pre-brief so I can sit back, put my feet up and wait for your report to come back as to what's happening on the ground. >> You got it. Okay, let's get into a little bit and talk about Telco infrastructure and the state, where it is today, where it's going, Chris, how would you describe the current state of Telco infrastructure? Where does it need to go? Like, what is the ideal future state look like for Telcos in your view? >> So there's always a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to Telco. I think going forward, the connectivity piece was seen as being table stakes, and then people thought where can we go beyond connectivity? And we'll come back to that later. But actually to the connectivity under the scenario I just described of people, buildings, things, and society, we've got to do a lot more work to make that connectivity extend, to be more reliable, to be more secure. So, the state of the network is that we have been building out infrastructure, which includes fiber to connect households and businesses. It includes that next move to cellular from 4G to 5G. It obviously includes Wi-Fi, wherever we've got that as well. And actually it's been a pretty good state, as you said in your opening comments they've done a pretty good job keeping us all connected during the pandemic, whether we're a fixed centric market like the UK with a lot of mobile on top and like the US, or in many markets in Africa and Asia, where we're very mobile centric. So, the fact is that every country market is different, so we should never make too many assumptions at a very top level, but building out that network, building out the services, focusing on that connectivity and making sure we get that cost of delivery right, because competition is pushing us towards having and not ever increasing prices, because we don't want to pay a lot extra every time. But the big issue for me is how do we bring together the IT and the network parts of this story to make sure that we build that efficiency in, and that brings in many questions that we going to touch upon now around Cloud and Hyperscalers around who plays in the ecosystem. >> Well, as you know, Telco is not my wheelhouse, but hanging around with you, I've learned, you've talked a lot about the infrastructure being fit for purpose. It's easy from an IT perspective. Oh yeah, it's fossilized, it's hardened, and it's not really flexible, but the flip side of that coin is as you're pointing out, it's super reliable. So, the big talk today is, "Okay, we're going to open up the network, open systems, and Open RAN, and open everything and microservices and containers. And so, the question is this, can you mimic that historical reliability in that open platform? >> Well, for me, this is the big trade-off and in my great Telco debate every year, I always try and put people against each other to try and to literally debate the future. And one of the things we looked at was is a more open network against this desire of the Telcos to actually have a smaller supplier roster. And of course, as a major corporation, these are on a national basis, very large companies, not large compared to the Hyperscalers for example, but they're large organizations, and they're trying to slim down their organization, slim down the supplier ecosystem. So actually in some ways, the more open it becomes, the more someone's got to manage and integrate all those pieces together. And that isn't something we want to do necessarily. So, I see a real tension there between giving more and more to the traditional suppliers. The Nokia's, Ericsson's, Huawei's, Amdocs and so on, the Ciscos. And then the people coming in breaking new ground like Mavenir and come in, and the sort of approach that Rakuten and Curve taken in bringing in more open and more malleable pieces of smaller software. So yeah, it's a real challenge. And I think as an industry which is notorious for being slow moving, actually we've begun to move relatively quickly, but not necessarily all the way through the organization. We've got plenty of stuff sitting on major or mainframes still in the back of the organization. But of course, as mobile has come in, we've started to deal much more closely, uninteractively in real time, God forbid, with the customers. So actually, at that front end, we've had to do things a lot more quickly. And that's where we're seeing the quickest adaptation to what you might see in your IT environment as being much more, continuous development, continuous improvement, and that sort of on demand delivery. >> Yeah, and we're going to get to that sort of in the Cloud space, but I want to now touch on Telco transformation which is sort of the main theme of this episode. And there's a lot of discussion on this topic, can Telcos move beyond connectivity and managing fiber? Is this a mandate? Is it a pipe dream that's just aspirational? Can they attack adjacencies to grow beyond the 1% a year? I mean, they haven't been successful historically. What are those adjacencies that might be, an opportunity and how will that ecosystem develop? >> Sure. >> So Chris, can and should Telcos try to move beyond core connectivity? Let's start there. >> I like what you did there by saying pipe dreams. Normally, pipe is a is a negative comment in the telecom world. But pipe dream gives it a real positive feel. So can they move beyond connectivity? Well, first of all, connectivity is growing in terms of the number of things being connected. So, in that sense, the market is growing. What we pay for that connectivity is not necessarily growing. So, therefore the mandate is absolutely to transform the inner workings and reduce the cost of delivery. So, that's the internal perspective. The external perspective is that we've tried in many Telcos around the world to break into those adjacent markets, being around media, being enterprise, being around IOT, and actually for the most part they've failed. And we've seen some very significant recent announcements from AT&T, Verizon, BT, beginning to move away from, owning content and not delivering content, but owning content. And the same as they've struggled often in the enterprise market to really get into that, because it's a well-established channel of delivery bringing all those ecosystem players in. So, actually rather than the old Telco view of we going to move into adjacent markets and control those markets, actually moving into them and enabling fellow ecosystem players to deliver the service is what I think we're beginning to see a lot more of now. And that's the big change, it's actually learning to play with the other people in the ecosystem. I always use a phrase that there's no room for egos in the ecosystem. And I think Telcos went in initially with an ego thinking we're really important, we are on connectivity. But actually now they're beginning to approach the ecosystem things saying, "How can we support partners? How can we support everyone in this ecosystem to deliver the services to consumers, businesses and whomever in this evolving ecosystem?" So, there are opportunities out there, plenty of them, but of course, like any opportunity, you've got to approach it in the right way. You've got to get the right investment in place. You've got to approach it with the right open API so everyone can integrate with your approach, and approach it, do I say with a little bit of humility to say, "Hey, we can bring this to the table, how do we work together? >> Well, it's an enormous market. I think you've shared with me, it's like 1.4 trillion. And I want to stay on these adjacencies for a minute, because one of the obvious things that Telcos will talk about is managed services. And I know we have to be careful of that term in an IT context, that it's different in a, you're talking about managing connectivity, but there's professional services. That's a logical sort of extension of their business and probably a safe adjacency, maybe not even adjacency, but they're not going to get into devices. I mean, they'll resell devices, but they're not going to be, I would presume not go back to trying to make devices, but there's certainly the edge and that's so, it'll define in opaque, but it's huge. If there's 5G, there's the IT component and that's probably a partnership opportunity. And as you pointed out, there's the ecosystem, but I wonder, how do you think about 5G as an adjacency or indoor opportunity? Is it a revenue opportunity for Telcos or is that just something that is really aspirational? >> Oh, absolutely it's a revenue opportunity, but I prefer to think of 5G as being a sort of a metaphor for the whole future of telecom. So, we usually talk, and MWC would normally talk about 5G just as a mobile solution. Of course, what you can get with, you can use this fixed wireless access approach, where the roots that sits in your house or your building. So, it's a potential replacement for some fixed lines. And of course, it's also, gives you the ability to build out, let's say in a manufacturing or a campus environment, a private 5G network. So, many of the early opportunities we're seeing with 5G are actually in that more private network environment addressing those very low latency, and high bandwidth requirements. So yeah, there are plenty of opportunities. Of course, the question here is, is connectivity enough, or especially with your comment around the edge, at the edge we need to manage connectivity, storage, compute, analytics, and of course the applications. So, that's a blend of players. It's not going to be in the hands of one player. So yes, plenty of opportunities but understanding what comes the other way from the customer base, where that's, you and I in our homes or outward as an about, or from a business point of view, an office or a campus environment, that's what should be driving, and not the technology itself. And I think this is the trap that the industry has fallen into many times, is we've got a great new wave of technology coming, how can we possibly deliver it to everybody rather than listening to what the customers really require and delivering it in a way consumable by all those different markets. >> Yeah now, of course all of these topics blend together. We try to keep them separately, but we're going to talk about Cloud, we're going to talk about competition, But one of the areas that we don't have a specific agenda item on is, is data and AI. And of course there's all this data flowing through the network, so presumably it's an opportunity for the Telcos. At the same time, they're not considered AI experts. They do when you talk about Edge, they would appear to have the latency advantage because of the last mile and their proximity, to various end points. But the Cloud is sort of building out as well. How do you think about data and AI as an opportunity for Telco? >> I think the whole data and AI piece for me sits on top of the cake or pie, whatever you want to call it. What we're doing with all this connectivity, what we're doing with all these moving parts and gathering information around it, and building automation into the delivery of the service, and using the analytics, whether you call it ML or AI, it doesn't really matter. But actually using that information to deliver a better service, a better outcome. Now, of course, Telcos have had much of this data for years and years, for decades, but they've never used it. So, I think what's happening is, the Cloud players are beginning to educate many of the Telcos around how valuable this stuff is. And that then brings in that question of how do we partner with people using open APIs to leverage that data. Now, do the Telcos keep hold of all that data? Do they let the Cloud players do all of it? No, it's going to be a combination depending on particular environments, and of course the people owning their devices also have a vested interest in this as well. So, you've always got to look at it end to end and where the data flows are, and where we can analyze it. But I agree that analysis on the device at the Edge, and perhaps less and less going back to the core, which is of course the original sort of mandate of the Cloud. >> Well, we certainly think that most of the Edge is going to be about AI inferencing, and then most of the data is going to stay at the edge. Some will come back for sure. And that is big opportunity for whether you're selling compute or conductivity, or maybe storage as well, but certainly insights at the Edge. >> Everything. >> Yeah. >> Everything, yeah. >> Let's get into the Cloud discussion and talk about the Hyperscalers, the big Hyperscaler elephant in the room. We're going to try to dig into what role the Cloud will play in the transformation of telecoms on Telecom TV at the great Telco debate. You likened the Hyperscalers, Chris, to Dementors from Harry Potter hovering over the industry. So, the question is, are the Cloud players going to suck the value out of the Telcos? Or are they more like Dobby the elf? They're powerful, there's sometimes friendly but they're unpredictable. >> Thank you for extending that analogy. Yes, it got a lot of reaction when I use that, but I think it indicates some of the direction of power shift where, we've got to remember here that Telcos are fundamentally national, and they're restricted by regulation, and the Cloud players are global, perhaps not as global as they'd like be, but some regional restrictions, but the global players, the Hyperscalers, they will use that power and they they will extend their reach, and they are extending their reach. If you think they now command some fantastic global networks, in some ways they've replaced some of the Telco international networks, all the submarine investments that tend to be done primarily for the Hyperscalers. So, they're building that out. So, as soon as you get onto their network, then you suddenly become part of that environment. And that is reducing some of the spend on the longer distances we might have got in the past approaches from the Telcos. Now, does that mean they're going to go all the way down and take over the Telcos? I don't believe so, because it's a fundamentally different business digging fiber in people's streets and delivering to the buildings, and putting antennas up. So, they will be a coexistence. And in fact, what we've already seen with Cloud and the Hyperscalers is that they're working much more close together than people might imagine. Now, you mentioned about data in the previous question, Google probably the best known of the of the AI and ML delivers from the Cloud side, working with many of the Telcos, even in some cases to actually have all the data outsourced into the Google Cloud for analytics purposes. They've got the power, the heavy lifting to do that. And so, we begin to see that, and obviously with shifting of workloads as appropriate within the Telco networking environment, we're seeing that with AWS, and of course with Azure as well. And Azure of course acquired a couple of companies in affirmed and Metro switch, which actually do some of the formal 5G core and the likes there within the connectivity environment. So, it's not clean cuts. And to go back to the analogy, those Dementors are swooping around and looking for opportunities, and we know that they will pick up opportunities, and they will extend their reach as far as they can down to that edge. But of course, the edge is where, as you rightly say, the Telcos have the control, they don't necessarily own the customer. I don't believe anyone owns the customer in this digital environment, because digital allows you to move your allegiance and your custom elsewhere anyway. So, but they do own that access piece, and that's what's important from a national point of view, from an economic point of view. And that's why we've seen some of the geopolitical activity banning Huawei from certain markets, encouraging more innovation through open ecosystem plays. And so, there is a tension there between the local Telco, the local market and the Hyperscaler market, but fundamentally they've got an absolute brilliant way of working together using the best of both worlds to deliver the services that we need as an economy. >> Well, and we've talked about this you and I in the past where the Telcos, portions of the Telco network could move into the Cloud. And there of course the Telcos all run the big data centers, and portions of that IT infrastructure could move into the Cloud. But it's very clear, they're not going to give up the entire family jewels to the Cloud players. Why would they? But there are portions of their IT that they could move into. Particularly, in the front end, they want to build like everybody. They want to build an abstraction layer. They're not going to move their core systems and their backend Oracle databases, they're going to put a brick wall around those, but they wanted abstraction layer, and they want to take advantage of microservices and use that data from those transaction systems. But the web front end stuff makes sense to put into Cloud. So, how do you think about that? >> I think you've hit the nail on the head. So you can't move those big backend systems straight away, gradually over time, you will, but you've got to go for those easy wins. And certainly in the research I've been doing with many of my clients, they're suggested that front end piece, making sure that you can onboard customers more easily, you can get the right mix of services. You can provide the omnichannel interaction from that customer experience that everybody talks about, for which the industry is not very well known at all by the way. So, any improvement on that is going to be good from an MPS point of view. So yeah, leveraging what we might, what we call BSS OSS in the telecom world, and actually putting that into the Cloud, leveraging both the Hyperscalers, but also by the way, many of the traditional players who people think haven't moved Cloud wards, but they are moving Cloud wards and they're embracing microservices and Cloud native. So, what you would have seen if we'd been in person down in Barcelona next week, would be a lot of the vendors who perhaps traditionally seems a bit slow moving, actually have done a lot of work to move their portfolio into the Cloud and into Cloud native environments. And yes, as you say, we can use that front end, we can use the API openness that's developed by people at the TM forum, to actually make sure we don't have to do the backend straight away, do it over time. Because of course the thing that we're not touching upon here, is the revenue stream is a consistent revenue stream. So, just because you don't need to change the backend to keep your revenue stream going, this is on a new, it keeps delivering every month, we keep paying our 50, 40, whatever bucks a month into the Telco pot. That's why it's such a big market, and people aren't going to stop doing that. So, I think the dynamics of the industry, we often spend a lot of time thinking about the inner workings of it and the potential of adjacent markets, whereas actually, we keep paying for this stuff, we keep pushing revenue into the pockets of all the Telcos. So, it's not a bad industry to be in, even if they were just pushed back to be in the access market, it's a great business. We need it more and more. The elasticity of demand is very inelastic, we need it. >> Yeah, it's the mother of old golden geese. We don't have a separate topic on security, and I want to touch on security here, is such an important topic. And it's top of mind obviously for everybody, Telcos, Hyperscalers, the Hyperscalers have this shared responsibility model, you know it well. A lot of times it's really confusing for customers. They don't realize it until there has been a problem. The Telcos are going to be very much tuned into this. How will all this openness, and we're going to talk about technology in a moment, but how will this transformation in your view, in the Cloud, with the shared responsibility model, how will that affect the whole security posture? >> Security is a great subject, and I do not specialize in it. I don't claim to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I would say security for me is a bit like AI and analytics. It's everywhere. It's part of everything. And therefore you cannot think of it as a separate add on issue. So, every aspect, every element, every service you build into your micro services environment has to think about how do you secure that connection, that transaction, how do you secure the customer's data? Obviously, sovereignty plays a role in that as well in terms of where it sits, but at every level of every connection, every hop that we look through, every route to jump, we've got to see that security is built in. And in some ways, it's seen as being a separate part of the industry, but actually, as we collapse parts of the network down, we're talking about bringing optical and rooting together in many environments, security should be talked about in the same breath. So when I talked about Edge, when I talked about connectivity, storage, compute, analytics, I should've said security as well, because I absolutely believe that is fundamental to every chain in the link and let's face it, we've got a lot of links in the chain. >> Yeah, 100%. Okay, let's hit on technologies and competition, we kind of blend those together. What technology should we be paying attention to that are going to accelerate this transformation. We hear a lot about 5G, Open RAN. There's a lot of new tech coming in. What are you watching? Who are the players that we maybe should be paying attention to, some that you really like, that are well positioned? >> We've touched upon it in various of the questions that have proceeded this. So, the sort of Cloudification of the networking environment is obviously really important. The automation of the process we've got to move away from bureaucratic manual processes within these large organizations, because we've got to be more efficient, we've got to be more reliable. So, anything which is related to automation. And then the Open RAN question is really interesting. Once again, you raised this topic of when you go down an Open RAN routes or any open route, it ultimately requires more integration. You've got more moving parts from more suppliers. So, therefore there are potential security issues there, depending on how it's defined, but everybody is entering the Open RAN market. There are some names that you will see regularly next week, being pushed, I'm not going to push them anymore, because some of them just attract the oxygen of attention. But there are plenty out there. The good news is, the key vendors who come from the more traditional side are also absolutely embracing that and accept the openness. But I think the piece which probably excites me more, apart from the whole shift towards Cloud and microservices, is the coming together, the openness between the IT environment and the networking environment. And you see it, for example, in the Open RAN, this thing called the RIC, the RAN Interconnection Controller. We're actually, we're beginning to find people come from the IT side able to control elements within the wireless controller piece. Now that that starts to say to me, we're getting a real handle on it, anybody can manage it. So, more specialization is required, but understanding how the end to end flow works. What we will see of course is announcements about new devices, the big guys like Apple and Samsung do their own thing during the year, and don't interrupt their beat with it with MWC, but you'll see a lot of devices being pushed by many other providers, and you'll see many players trying to break into the different elements of the market. But I think mostly, you'll see the people approaching it from more and more Cloudified angle where things are much more leveraging, that Cloud capability and not relying on the sort of rigid and stodgy infrastructure that we've seen in the past >> Which is kind of interesting because Cloud, a lot of the Clouds are Walled Gardens, at the same time they host a lot of open technologies, and I think as these two worlds collide, IT and the Telco industry, it's going to be interesting to see how the Telco developer ecosystem evolves. And so, that's something that we definitely want to watch. You've got a comment there? >> Yeah, I think the Telco developer they've not traditionally been very big in that area at all, have they? They've had their traditional, if you go back to when you and I were kids, the plain old telephone service was a, they were a one trick pony, and they've moved onto that. In some ways, I'd like them to move on and to have the one trick of plain old broadband that we just get broadband delivered everywhere. So, there are some issues about delivering service to all parts of every country, and obviously the globe, whether we do that through satellite, we might see some interesting satellite stuff coming out during NWC. There's an awful lot of birds flying up there trying to deliver signal back to the ground. Traditionally, that's not been very well received, with the change in generation of satellite might help do that. But we've known traditionally that a lot of developer activity in there, what it does bring to the four though, Dave, is this issue of players like the Ciscos and Junipers, and all these guys of the world who bring a developer community to the table as well. This is where the ecosystem play comes in, because that's where you get the innovation in the application world, working with channels, working with individual applications. And so it's opening up, it's basically building a massive fabric that anybody can tap into, and that's what becomes so exciting. So, the barriers to entry come down, but I think it will see us settling down, a stabilization of relationship between the Telcos and the Hyperscalers, because they need each other as we talked about previously, then the major providers, the Ciscos, Nokias, Ericssons, Huawei's, the way they interact with the Telcos. And then allowing that level of innovation coming in from the smaller players, whether it's on a national or a global basis. So, it's actually a really exciting environment. >> So I want to continue that theme and just talk about Telco in the enterprise. And Chris, on this topic, I want to just touch on some things and bring in some survey data from ETR, Enterprise Technology Research, our partner. And of course the Telcos, they've got lots of data centers. And as we talked about, they're going to be moving certain portions into the Cloud, lots of the front end pieces in particular, but let's look at the momentum of some of the IT players within the ETR dataset, and look at how they compare to some of the Telcos that ETR captures specifically within the Telco industry. So, we filtered this data on the Telco industry. So, this is our X, Y graph that we show you oftentimes on the vertical axis, is net score which measures spending momentum, and in the horizontal axis is market share, which is a measure of pervasiveness in the dataset. Now, this data is for shared accounts just in the Telco sector. So we filtered on certain sectors, like within the technology sectors, Cloud, networking, and so it's narrow, it's a narrow slice of the 1500. It respondents, it represents about 133 shared accounts. And a couple of things to jump right out. Within the Telco industry, it's no surprise, but Azure and AWS have massive presence on the horizontal axis, but what's notable as they score very highly in the vertical axis, with elevated spending velocity on their platforms within Telco. Google Cloud doesn't have as much of a presence, but it's elevated as well. Chris was talking about their data posture before, Arista and Verizon, along with VMware are also elevated, as is Aruba, which is HPEs networking division, but they don't have the presence on the horizontal axis. And you got Red Hat OpenStack is actually quite prominent in Telco as we've reported in previous segments. Is no surprise You see Akamai there. Now remember, this survey is weighted toward enterprise IT, so you have to take that into consideration, but look at Cisco, very strong presence, nicely elevated as is Equinox, both higher than many of the others including Dell, but you could see Dell actually has pretty respectable spending in Telco. It's an area that they're starting to focus on more. And then you got that cluster below, your Juniper, AT&T, Oracle, the rest of HPE TELUM and Lumen which is formerly, century link via IBM. Now again, I'm going to caution you. This is an enterprise IT heavy survey, but the big takeaway is the Cloud players have a major presence inside of firms that say they're in the telecommunications industry. And certain IT players like Cisco, VMware and Red Hat appear to be well positioned inside these accounts. So Chris, I'm not sure if any of this commentary resonates with you, but it seems that the Telcos would love to partner up with traditional IT vendors and Cloud players, and maybe find ways to grow their respective businesses. >> I think some of the data points you brought out there are very important. So yes, we've seen a Microsoft Azure and AWS very strong working with Telcos. We've seen Google Cloud platform actually really aggressively pushed into the market certainly the last 12, 24 months. So yeah, they're well positioned, and they all come from a slightly different background. As I said, the Google with this, perhaps more data centric approach in its analytics, tools very useful, AWS with this outpost reaching out, connecting out, and as you'll, with its knowledge of the the Microsoft business market certainly pushing into private networks as well, by the way. So yeah, and Cisco, of course in there does have, and it's a mass scale division, a lot of activity there, some of the people collapsing, some of that rooting an obstacle together, their big push on Silicon. So, what you've got here is a sort of cross representation of many of the different sorts of suppliers who are active in this market. Now Telcos is a big spenders, the telecom market, as we said, a $1.4 trillion market, they spend a lot, they probably have to double bubble spend at the moment to get over the hump of 5G investment, to build out fiber where they need to build out. So, any anything that relates to that is of course a major spending opportunity, a major market opportunity for players. And we know when you need the infrastructure behind it, whether it's in data centers or in their own data centers or in the Cloud to deliver against it. So, what I do like about this as an analyst, a lot of people would focus on one particular piece of the market. So you specialize on handsets, people specialize on home markets and home gateways. So, I tend to sit back and try and look at the big picture, the whole picture. And I think we're beginning to see some very good momentum where people are, where companies are building upon, of course their core business within the telecom industry, extending it out. But the lines of demarcation are blurring between enterprise, Telco, and indeed moving down into small business. And you think about the SD-WAN Market, which came from nowhere to build a much more flexible solution for connecting people over the wide area network, which has been brilliant during the pandemic, because it's allowed us to extend that to home, but be of course, build a campus ready for the future as well. So there are plenty of opportunities out there. I think the big question in my mind is always about from going into the Telco, as I said, whether they wannna reduce the number of suppliers on the roster. So that puts a question mark against some of the open approaches, and then from the Telco to the end customer, because it goes to the Telcos, 30% of their revenue comes from the enterprise market, 60% from the consumer market. How do they leverage the channel? Which includes all the channels, we talked about security, all of the IT stuff that you've already touched upon and the Cloud. It's going to be a very interesting mix and balancing act between different channels to get the services that the customers want. And I think increasingly, customers are more aware of the opportunities open to them to reach back into this ecosystem and say, "Yeah, I want a piece of humans to Telco, but I want it to come to me through my local integrated channel, because I need a bit of their expertise on security." So, fascinating market, and I think not telecom's no longer considered in isolation, but very much as part of that broader digital ecosystem. >> Chris, it's very hard to compress an analysis of a $1.4 trillion business into 30 or 35 minutes, but you're just the guy to help me do it. So, I got to really thank you for participating today and bringing your knowledge. Awesome. >> Do you know, it's my pleasure. I love looking at this market. Obviously I love analogies like Harry Potter, which makes it bring things to life. But at the end of the day, we as people, we want to be connected, we as business, we want to be connected, in society we want to be connected. So, the fundamental of this industry are unbelievably strong. Let's hope that governments don't mess with it too much. And let's hope that we get the right technology comes through, and help support that world of connectivity going forward. >> All right, Chris, well, I'll be texting you from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and many thanks to my colleague, Chris Lewis, he brought some serious knowledge today and thank you. And remember, I publish each week on wikibond.com and siliconangle.com. And these episodes are all available as podcasts. You just got to search for Breaking Analysis podcasts. You can always connect with me on twitter @dvellante or email me at dave.vellante@siliconangle.com. And you can comment on my LinkedIn post, and don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Vellante, for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Be well, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> [Voiceover] Live from Silicon Valley, it's theCube, covering Mobile World Congress 2017. Brought to you by Intel. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here in Palo Alto, California inside theCube's new studios, 4500 square feet in Palo Alto, just opened up last month and excited to be here. Breaking down Mobile World Congress all day, from 8 a.m. to 6, today and tomorrow. As their day ends, we're going to pick up the coverage, do the analysis, get some commentary and reaction to all the news and also the big trends and my next guest here in the studio is Saar Gillai, friend of the Cube, Cube alumni, and former HPE Senior Vice President GM of the teleco business. Ran the cloud, then a variety of things with Meg Whitman at HPE, now he's independent board member and in between gigs on the beach, clipping coupons as we say, Saar, great to see you, looking good. >> Great to be here, nice studio. >> I'm excited that you could come in, this is exactly why we're having our show here in this new studio because a lot of folks that don't take the big trek to Barcelona who don't have to can come in and talk to us and you've been a veteran of Mobile World Congress for many years. Again, you ran, and actually built the cloud biz and also built the, I won't say NFV biz, but essentially the teleco communications division for HPE so you know a lot about what's happening in the industry and more importantly Mobile World Congress. This is the year that all the accelerant is coming to the table, all the rocket fuel is being poured out on to the bonfire, the matches are going to be lit, it's called 5G, it's called IOT, internet of things, internet of people, the devices look good, they all want to be Apple, they all want to be over the top, running entertainment, smart cities, cars, 5G is the holy grail, we're done. But seriously, where is the meat on the bone on this thing? Is it real, is this transformation hype or reality at Mobile World Congress? >> Yes. (laughing) >> Yes, hype or yes, it's real? >> There's a lot of hype, but there's some reality. I mean I think first of all, 5G is the latest thing, it used to be LTE, now it's 5G. What does 5G actually mean? Really, for people, what 5G means is you should have a lot more capacity, right? So 5G talks about even up to one gigabit in certain cases, lower latency and so forth. Now the thing about wireless is you know, there's no secrets in wireless, okay? It's not like... >> It's a physics game. >> ...Yeah, it's physics, it's not like ethernet, where you can go from one meg to 10 meg then all you have to do is run more line and you're good. If that was so easy in wireless right now, we'd all be getting one gigabyte right, but we're not. So the only way you increase capacity in wireless is through smaller cells, and there are some mimo technologies and so forth. You know, 5G talks abouts technologies that will enable you to do that, but it's much more of an evolution than revolution and people need to understand that. There's no fundamental shift, what they're talking about in 5G is adding a lot more bandwidth. Today, most of the frequencies being used are sub five gigahertz, those are great frequencies to go through walls, they're not that great in terms of capacity and there's not that much of them. Like AT&T might have 60 megahertz, that's the entire capacity they have in the U.S. And that's not much. And so they're talking about using millimeter waves, other things like 27 gig, 28 gig, 60 gig. Now, those do have a lot more capacity, they have other problems, they don't go through walls. So, I think instead of thinking about 5G, we need to think about, okay, what problems are we trying to solve? Like, what problems is this going to solve? I think in some sense, it's... ...while everyone wants more broadband, some of it is a solution looking for a problem. >> [John] Yeah, it's a field of dreams too dynamic, build it, they will come. That has been a network operator concept, right? And then we know the operators, and you and I have talked about this on theCube many years, the operators are having business model challenges, problems, challenges, there are opportunities, but at the same time there is a bigger picture I want to get your thoughts on. So in a vacuum, there's limitations, there's physics, but now, you're looking at a connected network, and this is the end to end concept, so under the covers of wireless, assuming wireless has its topology, architectural things you could do, smaller cells, different frequencies, how it's going through walls is preferred, longer distance, longer latency through walls, that's the ideal scenario. But I think there's a bigger picture around the different types of wireless networks, but there's cars, there's mobility, actual true mobility, 60 miles an hour in a car versus walking down the street or sitting in a stadium or at home. These are use cases. How much of it is a wireless problem versus another problem? NFV, end to end, virtualization, help us parse that through, how should we think about this? >> There's two issues, there's a wireless problem, we can talk about the different segments that make sense and don't make sense or how much they have to evolve to make sense. And then fundamentally, the networks are very... ...they're not that agile as we know. Which is why NFV really, if you remove NFV, and you just... ...NFV's about creating agility, and yes their doing for virtualization and yada yada, but it's about creating agility, creating automation, right? You can't have these... ...a lot of these networks were designed years ago even 3GPP, this is a decade old. And so yes, there's a lot of work that has to be done and creating much more agility in a network because the network isn't built for that. Just if you think about even simple things like number of subscribers that can go on and off, right? Okay, if you have a cell phone. Like today, if you look in the world there might be 80 billion subscribers, lets say. If you look at the number of cell phones and so forth. But once you start IOT, you might have 100 billion because every device will be a network. That's a different management system, right? Also, those devices may go on and off every day, right? Because you buy a new device, you plug it in the wall. Okay, phones, you don't start a new phone every day, right? People buy a phone to use it, so, the network becomes much more dynamic, the back end has to be more dynamic, that has a side effect and so there's a lot of work that has to be done on the backend to make it more dynamic. That's the backend problem and then, you know, they are working on it. >> [John] And the bright spots there are what? What are the bright spots happening today, this week at Mobile World Congress and the trends around the backend? >> Well, you know, I mean Mobile World Congress is a show, right? And these are not sexy things, so we probably won't hear a lot about them, but you hear about orchestration, automation, network virtualization, basically moving all this through the cloud paradigm, where you have a lot more flexibility. I mean if you think about what's happening NFV these days for example, you don't hear a lot about it, but what is happening a lot is onboarding work. Okay, we've talked a lot about it, from that hype, now we're into build-out, right? So you hear less about it, but stuff is actually happening. >> [John] So it's operational. >> [Saar] It's operational stuff. >> Yeah >> [Saar] They're modifying the system so that they can be ready to work when you get to that point. On the radio side, I think the important thing to understand is like you said exactly, there's multiple use cases for 5G. The most interesting and immediate one, potentially is to use wireless to compete against cable. Which is fixed wireless access. You know, there, the telecos for years have wanted to do it, there was this whole discussion about fiber, then it turned out fiber's expensive. >> [John] Yeah, you've got to trench it, you've got to provision it to your home, you've got to roll a truck. >> Took Google a few years to figure that out, but even for Google, it's expensive. >> [John] People who have done that said you're crazy, but Google's has had so many deep pockets and Facebook does the same thing with their kind of R&D projects. >> They figured it out, there are technologies, millimeter wave is a bit hard because it doesn't go through walls, but I think when we talk about capacities, it's not for your mobile phone, it's for other things, it's mostly for fixed wireless access. There's a whole discussion about cars, I personally, because we're talking about opinions here, I don't understand the problem so much because the reality is the car's going to be a mobile data center. So 90 percent of the data that's generated by the car will be kept in the car and the car will be sending analytics and metrics up so it doesn't need gigabits. It's not like every time you turn you need to get it an instruction. Maybe that's what the network guys want you to believe because then you need like zero latency. But you don't need that, it's much easier to invest in a better system in the car. So the car's not going to figure out... >> [John] The car is a computer, it's not a peripheral. >> Yeah, it's a peripheral. >> [John] It's a data center to your point. >> [Saar] It's a full data center. It's the edge that computes, so I don't think that's an issue, I think the car will need coverage and so forth. >> But that's a different thing, cars are great examples so let's take on this one. 'Cause this is a perfect mental model. A car is going to have all this capacity like a big computer >> [Saar] It's a data center. >> [John] Or a data center. >> [Saar] A mini data center. >> A lot of things, a lot of instrumentation, a lot of software, glue. >> [Saar] It's going to have 10 computers, big systems, it's like a little data center. >> But it also moves fast, so it's a true mobile data center. So it needs mobility. So mobility has trade-offs, right, with the wireless piece at least. Depends on how you're uploading. >> Again, it depends on the capacity. Mobility has certain elements when you get into Doppler Effect and so on. It's always a capacity trade off. All of you have talked on your cell phone or used data on your cell phone in your plane, we know this. When the plane's landing, that's 150 miles an hour when the plane lands, okay, and it works pretty well. >> We all cheat, don't turn on your cell phones, we're landing. >> [Saar] Yeah, exactly. >> We've all done it. >> So again, if you want to run a gigabit, it's a problem, if you want to run less it's not such a big deal if a car's going 60 miles an hour. So it depends. Now if you define the use cases, I need a gigabit for every car, there's a million cars, that's a problem. If you define the use case, as something else it's not a big problem. There is a problem though, and I think that is something that the 5G is trying to address in terms of more on the backend of density. >> Density in terms of signal, or density in terms of... >> In terms of support, so for example, the one place you can never use a cell phone is in a conference, because too many people are trying to get on at the same time. It's a statistical model. >> [John] A-station issues. >> It breaks, and so with a car also, you're going to have high density because if you have a traffic jam, all these cars are talking or receiving, so that's a bigger issue. And 5G does talk about that as well, but that's a bigger issue than pure capacity. Pure capacity, great, I'll give you this much megahertz... >> [John] I agree with that. >> You can do that on WiFi today. >> [John] I totally agree with that. So let's take a step back I want to get a little color on Mobile World Congress. Talk about what's going on right now. So it's dinner, people at parties, what goes on? People want to always ask me, John what always happens? First of all, Barcelona is a great city as you know, we've been there together for some HP events, as well as for Mobile World Congress. What's happening, you always make the comment it's a Biz Dev show which means it's business development going on. All the top executives go there, deals are being cut, but it's also a large trade show as you will for mobility. >> I think like you said, from my experience, the biggest value of Mobile World Congress is not the show itself, with all due respect to the show, it's the fact that everybody and anybody who is somebody is there, that's why we're not there. So you can meet people. And so if you want to meet a bunch of people, teleco leaders and so forth, that's what you do. This is the place. You all say, okay, we'll meet at Mobile World Congress. So like for example, when I was down there I would basically go back to back from in the morning until 10 at night, in meetings, dinners, whatever with CEOs of various telecos or CEOs of partners and so on. Everybody's there, and I never actually got to see the show because I never got out of a meeting. And most of what happens there is that. That's amazing because again, everybody's there. >> [John] There's a huge ecosystem involved. Talk about that ecosystem because this is the dynamic. And first of all, we don't have to go there because we've got theCube here so we're there virtually, digitally, and that's what we do now. This is great, in the studio, we save ourselves the three day flight to go to Barcelona. It is crazy there, but it is about the community there, because you have that opportunity to get the feedback, do deals. >> [Saar] A lot of deals around there. >> [John] A lot of deals happening, also feedback, trying to connect the dots and having the right product strategies. What are some of the things that you think is happening right now from a business standpoint in these meetings, right now? Are people still scratching their heads on over the top, is it the classic problems, what's the current state of the union? >> Well, you saw Vimpel Com change their name to some other thing, so I think what you're seeing right now, is there's still sort of multiple dynamics going on. One dynamic is there's people maneuvering around how 5G ends up closing and there was some discussions about that, there was some release done about hey we should speed it up and then Enrique said no this is silly. So there are some discussions, there is some maneuvering going on like any time when you're doing a spec, when does it freeze, when does it not freeze? Some of the telecos want this, and so forth. That's sort of in the background going on. They're still trying to figure out, you know, business model is still an issue. The people are experimenting and you're going to see a lot of that, experimenting with apps, experimenting with these monetization strategies. So there's a lot of that going on, trying to figure out, okay, how do we monetize the network in a better fashion? >> What do you think the best path is from your perspective? Just putting your industry hat on, if you had to kind of lay down some epic commentary to the teleco bosses, hey you got to cannibalize your own, get out in front, what would you advise them in terms of what to get out in front of, what to double down on? >> I think some of them are actually doing this, but I think first of all, I think they should forget about worrying about the technology. I mean, technology is very important, we need to take care of that, but really, they need to know what are they good at? What are they strong at? So their strong at a customer relationship, they have customers that they quote unquote have as partners, those customers, and they're very strong so what can you do with that partnership as opposed to all kinds of other random stuff. Now, if you look at what they're doing, they're doing different things. Some of them are like buying different media companies, so there's no easy path, but they're going to have to use their strength as opposed to try to become somebody they're not. They're not going to become Google, they're not going to become Amazon, they're not going to become one of those guys. They do need to become more cloudified just to be efficient, but that's because that's sort of the... ...just to play, you have to pay that card, but they're not going to be better than the existing, but they do have a very strong relationship with customers, they could probably sell them more things if they focus on good customer service. Customers are happy to work with them if they get a good deal and a frictionless environment. So, I would certainly encourage all of them, and I know many of them are focused on this, to improve your frictionless interaction for the customer. If the customer has a frictionless interaction and gets a good deal, they'll do business with them. >> Are you worried about the teleco's customer relationship when they have this decoupling trend kind of happening where the consumers want to take their phone or device and uncouple it from the network and just add more mobility across networks. So if there's better connectivity, I could be able to hop between Verizon, AT&T, whoever, that seems to be something that a lot of folks technically are saying from an architectural standpoint, having that personal centric view versus a network centric tie-in. Is that on the radar at all? Or is that still kind of in a way, fantasy? >> It's like people are still using AOL, right? >> [John] Who? Who? (laughing) >> They voted for Trump then, huh? >> I'm not going there right now, we can discuss that later. The point is, the primary area where there's problems in that area is roaming. And there's a lot of discussion about roaming. 55 or 60 percent of people turn off data when they go overseas because the roaming fares are so incredibly expensive which makes no sense. Why would I have a longer cost because I happen to have an AT&T contract in Europe, I'm not using more data than somebody in Europe and it's going through the backend of the internet anyways. So I think there... >> [John] It's a great way to jack the user with more fees. >> But that's not sustainable. >> Of course. >> I think there, you're going to see pressure of people and there's some companies who provide apps, and cards and sim cards, but there's now soft ways of doing it, there you're going to see pressure and I think eventually that will go the way of the messaging, where... >> [John] Like WhatsApp >> Yeah, they'll come up with something that will allow you to have data at a much cheaper rate, I don't know, does it make sense to switch carriers in the local market if you have a good price? I mean, what's the point? So again it all comes back to, do they give you a frictionless service? If they give you a frictionless service that is at reasonable cost, then you'll use it. So you've got to look at places... ...where their going to have people leave them is where they don't do that. And there are places they don't do that, roaming is one of those places. >> [John] So I've got to ask you about IOT, obviously it's the hottest trend, AI's more of the mental model that people get their arms around, they see virtual reality, augmented reality, they call that AI, it's more of a mental model, it's really not AI, but IOT is really where the action is. People see networks, where devices as you mention are coming on and off, you just don't provision those as static devices. They're very dynamic. Your take on the IOT market, what's your view on that? Because a lot of action happening there. >> I've been involved in IOT and different people have different names for what T means, I won't go there here. >> [John] T and P, things and people. Let it be watch... >> [Saar] Well T could mean things, it could mean other things too, but the point is, IOT ...I was working in a company that was doing IOT when we called machine to machine, if we had called it IOT, it would have been better. The point is IOT is, this is extremely fragmented, it's a super super fragmented market. And it has different ecosystems. The more complex part of IOT is not the front end, it's the backend of how do you manage devices how do you tie them to some app, how do you configure them, provision them? >> [John] 'Cause of the backend, infrastructures are different. Some are IT based... >> Think about it, you've got all these devices how do you upgrade them? How do you make sure they don't start a denial of service attack on their own? How do you provision them, how do you manage their life cycle? HPE has some product in that area, a global connectivity platform, but other people as well. So, this is a bigger problem. The backend is a much bigger problem than the front end. What's the problem? Hypothetically, I can stick a SIM card into anything and it's now a device. Most of these things do not have a high bandwidth. Low bandwidth coverage is pretty good in urban centers, not if you go to Utah, but other places. So, the biggest problem is backend. Now obviously there's a lot of advancements that can be done on the front end too, because of power issues. The biggest problem with IOT is depending what you want, you have a power issue. For example, we used to do this back in the day, you built these little devices, you stick them on containers, and then you can find out where the container is at any given moment. That's great, but how long does this thing last? I think IOT is a very big thing that's happening, I think most of the problem in IOT is not in the front end, it's in the back. >> [John] Yeah, I would agree with that. Also it allows you to get more data too. Another problem is storing up more data which is security, data, IT management, basic stuff. >> [Saar] Very basic stuff, and that stuff is hard to fix because again usually IOT is not a green field that are going to connect to something that exists. You're just augmenting it with IOT like if it's a power meter or something so now you have this existing ecosystem that has to interact with something that is brand new and so there are various companies who build interfaces and how to solve it, there's management issues. But I think IOT is real. >> [John] So let's talk about cloud. So cloud you also had your hand in at HP as well, you had a wireless background, the folks might not know that, going back before then. The cloud really is an opportunity, we see that with Amazon and then Microsoft's now got their stock up and so obviously cloud, it's a bigger game, it's hybrid, it's happening and then you have all these other fringe things developing around the mobility piece. How is the cloud changing the Mobile World Congress game? Because now it's a show that kind of blends. It feels like CES on one hand, it feels like Cloud World on another. It feels like IOT and teleco world, and all these things are kind of in a melting pot. >> Well I think to me, when I look at Mobile World Congress, I think of okay, it's teleco world, really because whatever the telecos happen to be doing is what the show is about, right? If you think about the telecos, we're talking about companies that have a capital like I think AT&T spends like 20 billion dollars a year or something in that range. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of capital budget and whatever those folks are interested in is what shows up in that show. >> [John] So it's still a Teleco show dominant, you don't see that changing at all? >> No, but what teleco is, is changing, right? I mean they have broadcast, so what I'm saying is whatever the telecos are interested in is what shows up in that show. Drones, cars, telecos have their hands in all these things. And that's why it shows up in the show. Because ultimately the show is about the telecom space and the primary players. If you go down there, the booths that are as big as a country club, you know the Ericssons and so forth, it's a teleco show and people who want to be relevant like Intel as they want to be more relevant in wireless is building a bigger and bigger booth over there. But what teleco is really is about connecting things and as there's more things to connect, telecos get involved in other things. If they see a business opportunity, for example drones, lets go back to talk about that because there's a whole drone day and all this other stuff there. I mean drones need higher... ...I don't think they need so much bandwidth although it depends what kind of video you want to do. But they do need reliable connectivity. It's something useful, right? And today, you could argue connectivity it's not super reliable, it's pretty reliable, but we all have dropped calls every five minutes, right? I mean if a drone drops a call, that may not be that easy. There's use cases around these things >> [John] And back to your earlier point, I think this is the most important for the folks to listen to and hone in on is that there's a use case in every corner depending on the view of the market. Drones is one. Take virtual reality, augmented reality, that's another. IT, enterprises connecting, entertainment over the top, smart cities, these are all kind of nuanced areas. >> But when people want to understand, separate the hype from the non-hype, see if you can understand the use case. If you can't understand the use case or if the use case seems out there, then the technology is probably out there. Technology on it's own is fascinating, but if there's no use case that makes sense right here right now like again, for example, if I got a gigabit to my phone right now, would it make a difference in my life? An extra 20 hours of battery life would make a difference in my life more than a gigabit. >> That's a good point, right now battery life is more important than connectivity, but as the network transformation which is a big buzz word for this show is coming to the surface, that's an end to end architecture with software. So we think about traversing cloud, software, delivering of apps and services that's different. Now the apps have more headroom in that case, but then to your point, the backend's got to be... ...under the hood has to be smarter. Or is network transformation not yet there? >> Well I think what's happened is that the OTT, the OTTs started developing 20 years later, and surprise surprise, when you develop 20 years later, you have advantages, doesn't matter who you are, so their backend is a much further generation than the teleco's backend and so that's why when you connect to OTT services, it's consumer experience, it feels seamless and so forth, when you connect to the telecos backend, it's sort of a mismatch. And so they need to sort of fix that and that's part of the NFV transformation they're working on and again it's not because they had any limitations its because they had existing stuff, it's much easier to build from scratch. >> Final comment on Mobile World Congress this year, and outlook for the next year, your thoughts? >> We need to parse out what actually comes out of there. It's still early, I think 5G, 5Gs going to be what people are going to talk about, this is the thing. It means multiple things, but that's because the entire teleco world, if you think about it, if you look at the revenue of the suppliers and so forth who have been in a holding pattern ever since 4G sort of, in China, they finished 4G deployment and so the next big capital spending is going to be 5G, and so you're going to see the providers push anything to get that going. That's just the bottom line. >> Great. Saar Gallai, final comment, what are you working on now? Obviously we got to know you at a personal level with HPE, I've seen your roles, and the last one was really handling that teleco business which you grew up from a handful of people to hundreds of people, thousands of people. You're a land grabber, kingdom builder, empire builder. What are you up to now, what are you looking at for opportunity? I know you're doing some investing, you have some independent boards, what's your world like now here in Silicon Valley, what's your activities look like, and what's your thoughts on the valley in general and entrepreneurship and your activities? >> First of all, what I'm doing, the good news is I'm sitting here in Silicon Valley and so I'm very busy doing various interactions with bbcs, with startups, consulting, looking at different businesses, there's so much interesting things going on. Every morning you can look at new things that people bring over. Whether they're teleco related or not teleco related. Just some amazing things going on. Something from new wireless protocols to cloudification and so on, and I also sit on a few boards so I'm spending a lot of time doing that, looking at different things. >> [John] What's exciting for you right now? What's getting you jazzed up? >> There's so many different things, like I said, I think... >> [John] What's the coolest thing? >> The coolest things, some of the most cool things are.. >> [John] Confidential? >> Yeah, stealthy, I would say. I'm looking at some wireless stuff that's pretty revolutionary that I think could be new protocols that sort of change the whole dynamic of how wireless works, that's pretty interesting. And then I'm looking at some other things that are just how you apply cloud to different problems in the world. If you look at the cloud paradigm, it's existed for a fair amount of time now, but although we talk about it all day, most of the things in the world, most of the apps, most of the problem sets are not leveraging any in the cloud. They're still at best using >> [John] Recycled IT. >> Recycled IT, or sometimes even Windows 98 for all you know, right? In Africa, Africa went to wireless directly, they never did wired. So there may be a lot of industries that never go from Windows to proper data centers. They just go straight from basic Windows directly to the cloud. There's lots of opportunities that are interesting there. I'm looking at a few CEO options. But it's very exciting, there's so much going on. There's just so many things happening. >> [John] Well let's get into that tomorrow, you're going to come by tomorrow at 4:30, folks watching tomorrow at 4:30 Pacific Time, Saar will be back in the studio, we're going to dig in to the entrepreneurial landscapes, I think one of the things that you highlighted that we were talking about earlier is that sometimes you have technology looking for a problem, and the reality is that most of the game changing opportunities come out of left field that no one sees, these are the revolutionary game changers, the new technology, the hard stuff, not just some app that gets built, it's the real hardcore tech that could be applied to some of these real problems. And I think that's going to be the key. Saar Gallai here inside the studio, breaking down Mobile World Congress with theCube here in Palo Alto covering what's happening in Barcelona. We got some still phone-ins, late night in Barcelona, we're going to make those shortly, be right back with more coverage after this short break. (soft music)