(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, Lisa Martin here with you on theCUBE Live from Mobile World Congress '23 in Barcelona. We're having a great day at the show. We hope you are too. I've got two guests here with me next. We're going to be talking about telco's 5G, all that exciting stuff. Please welcome Jason Inskeep, the AVP 5G, and Private 5G Center of Excellence at AT&T Business. And Doug Lieberman is here as well. Senior Director, Global Solutions Co-Creation Services at Dell Technologies. Guys, it's great to have you on the show, live from the show floor, talk to me about what's going on, how are you? >> Hey, thanks for having us on. It's a great show, I'm happy to be back here this year and really looking forward to the conversations that are going on and really continuing these partnerships that Dell has with companies like AT&T to truly drive the realities and the benefits of 5G. >> Absolutely, Doug, talk to me a little bit. You have an interesting title, Director of Global Solutions Co-Creation Services at Dell. Tell me a little bit about your role, what you're responsible for, and then Jason we'll have you do the same. >> Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. So, I have a very interesting role and a very exciting role at Dell because we have a unique organization that I run globally whose job it is, is to work with telcos to co-create services for enterprise and jointly go to market with those. So that basically take the combined power of AT&T and Dell and bring that to enterprise customers and other telcos so that enterprises can realize the value of, and truly leverage and harness the capabilities of 5G for private mobility and Mac and IOT and connected devices. >> Jason, let's bring you into the conversation now. You have an interesting title as well. You're with the 5G Center of Excellence at AT&T. Talk a little bit about your role and that COE. >> Yeah, thanks for having me again as well. The role with my team at AT&T is we're on the cutting edge. We're sitting in between our customers and our product houses that are working with folks at Dell, really helping putting our products together in the space of 5G. A lot of open opportunities here, a lot of things changing really fast. So my teams are off as well as putting this stuff in customers production sites it's also taking and capturing that information, working with my internal partners, both on the technology side, on the product side, and partners like Dell who are coming in helping us enabling those products and services that we can take and scale out through the different opportunities that we're seeing in this space. >> Let's double click on that partner angle, Jason, will stay with you. The 5G revolution, it's here, we are all excited about it. There's so much potential that will come from that. Let's talk about the AT&T/Dell partnership. How are you guys working together to deliver 5G globally? Jason, we'll start with you and then Doug will go to you. >> Yeah, at the core of it, when we started looking at 5G and seeing the changes that were happening, one of the biggest changes is it became software defined. So, the way we could deploy the hardware with the software becomes a whole new conversation. And what we saw coming out of that is it's not going to be a single winner and loser to really execute the way it's necessary for the experiences of tomorrow. It has to be an ecosystem that comes together. Dell creates a great opportunity for us from the hardware perspective to move those services around, to scale those services ultimately to all kinds of site types up to cities right down to small offices. And those different form factors that they bring with the software and the network pieces that we're adding on top of it help to streamline the flows and processes and really gets to that next generation that we see happening, which is this converged architecture. This meeting of network and application, creating a whole new skillset along with products. So we're at the very top we've got Dell/AT&T, at a partner level, it gets at a granular level too. The users and the developers underneath are starting to change as well, so very interesting dichotomy happening right now. >> Right, Doug, what's through Dell's lens? Tell us a little bit about the partnership and how you're working together to deliver 5G and really unlock its potential globally. >> Yeah, thank you, I'd love to bonus off of what Jason was saying, for Dell, what we look at is through the lens of an enterprise. An enterprise needs to execute their business function, their outcome, their mission that they need to operate. And so therefore they have workloads that they need to run. And 5G is an enabler for that technology, and there's lots of other enablers but the key piece is how can they get their business work done better, faster, cheaper, more efficiently, more securely? And the combination of AT&T and Dell truly is a combination that brings in a partnership that brings together a full breadth of those capabilities, with understanding what those enterprise workloads are and how they work and how an enterprise would leverage these capabilities. And then bonus on top of that and merge together with that the capabilities of AT&T. And when you look at 5G, there's a lot of people that talk about 5G being the enterprise G. And a lot of that is because of things that Jason mentioned. As we move to a disaggregated stack where you have software-defined aspects of it, and the ability in the underlying definition of what 5G in the specifications to allow much more customization. It means that enterprises now cannot just take connectivity as it is and use it however it comes but actually work with a telco and work with Dell to customize that connectivity in a way that better meets their requirements. Whether that be with slicing or private mobility or roaming between private and the public network and things like profiles and being able to have different views of how different users and devices connect to that network are all key in truly harnessing the power of that connectivity to have always on, always connected, always integrated systems from the edge, the core, to the cloud. >> Always on, always connected. That's what we all expect these days. Wherever we are in the world, whatever we're trying to do. But to be able to take advantage of all that 5G offers for all of us, telcos have to create infrastructures that can support it, let's double click guys on the infrastructure that Dell and AT&T have put in place to enable this. Jason, I want to get your perspective first and then Doug will go to you. >> Yeah, I mean, it's foundational, the things that we're trying to do and build out here and there's a lot of complexity in it now that we didn't have before because of the flexibility in it. It's one of those things like the good news in software is you can do whatever you want. The bad news in software is you can do whatever you want. Once you have that foundation there though in terms of infrastructure, which for us is really air to glass. Fiber through the spectrum on top. But underneath of that, we have the servers, we have that infrastructure where those fibers come together where that air meets the radios and so forth. And we've got to have that great foundation. So working with Dell and getting those spaces built together preps the area as needed so that there's additional place now for compute and scale at that new converged meet-me point. And that's going to be the opportunity that we're trying to think about really to get that foundation in a way that maximizes capacity and maximizes control for the customers and enterprises in particular. And more importantly, maximizes the time horizon. Because if you're putting in a foundation like this, you're not looking at two to three years. You're trying to skate beyond, skate where the puck is going, look at five, 10 years out, set that foundation. And that's what we're trying to look at with Dell. What can our network do already? Where can we push it? In return, they're going to build their solutions to help maximize that potential. >> From an infrastructure perspective, Doug, I want to understand really where Dell is really shining there but also what are some of the differentiators that Dell brings to this foundational infrastructure that to your point, is built for scale? >> Yeah, so it really all comes down to as we start to see this transition that's been happening for years, but it's accelerating because of always-connected devices and everything connected and the great proliferation of data at the edge. As we move assets from the data center and out to the edge we introduce new challenges that have to be overcome. You have things like security, automation, infrastructure cost, maintenance, day-one operations, day-two operations, all of these things are new complexities which enterprises want to enable their workloads, enable the outcomes that they want to generate. But they need to make sure that they're not taking a step backwards when it comes to things like regulations. In Europe, you've got GDPR, and in the US you've got different security regulations. No one wants to be the next front page headline about their company being attacked and having a ransomware attack. And so as we spread out these assets, what Dell is here to do is to work with AT&T and enable enterprises to effectively build their virtual enterprise around the world where those assets, whether they're at the edge or the core or in the cloud, are all managed with the same profiles and the same security features and the same automation that they have in a core data center. So my ability to deploy an edge cloud so that I can leverage AT&T's network and have end-user devices do things like gaming or connect to video services or get directed retail advertising to you are not basically introducing new vectors for security vulnerabilities into that network. And so Dell has worked really hard and is a leader in the industry in providing automation and lower cost of ownership and security for those solutions. So it's not just about putting a server out there but it's about putting an infrastructure and a cloud that is connected by AT&T's backbone and to a central core of automation management and orchestration capabilities so that I can leverage those assets securely and efficiently. >> That security element that you bring up, Doug, is so incredibly critical. We talk about it at every event, we talk about it every day. We've seen such dramatic changes in the threat landscape in the last couple of years with covid and things like that. So that security element isn't trivial, it's essential for every type of enterprise regardless of where they are. I want to talk a little bit now about best practices. And Doug, go back to you, looking at what AT&T is achieving, the 5G COE, what you're doing with Dell. From your lens and your experiences, what are some of the best practices for telcos deploying secured network and connectivity at the edge? >> Yeah, well, I think the first one is that automation and that orchestration, right? The answer is that you cannot have snowflakes at every single ag point. You need to make sure that those infrastructures are consistent and compliant with the integrations and with the policies that have been set across the network. The second thing is that you want to make sure that the connectivity is monitored and metered and managed so that we know whether, for example that endpoint is there and it's not there, if it goes offline. And ensuring the end-user experience is consistent throughout. And so what we are seeing is that it's really important that we provide an implementation where the enterprise can get a consistent and a predictable outcome for what they're trying to accomplish. What they don't want to do, what enterprises hate and is really bad for them is when they provide an inconsistent or inappropriate results to their users, to their customer base. So if your website goes offline or you're a gaming platform, if people can't get to your game you're going to lose customers, you're going to lose business you're going to have people lose faith in your network. And so our partnership with AT&T and with other telcos is about ensuring that we have all those aspects covered, day zero, day one, and day two, as well as the security aspects. And that back haul is an essential piece of that because as we get more and more devices and more and more edge devices set up, there's more sprawl. And so the complexity goes up substantially, but what really wins is when you can take that complexity and use it to your advantage and be able to manage and deploy those systems as though they were all within your virtual enterprise. >> Using complexity to your advantage. That's an interesting one, Doug, that you're bringing up. Jason, I want to know, what does that mean for you and how is AT&T leveraging complexity to its advantage for its customers all over the globe? >> You know, first thing is if you're thinking about, we're a network company we're not just a 5G company, so we're wireline, we're wireless, we're global in terms of the amount of fiber we have in the ground, the amount of in the US, domestic sailor deployments, our investments in FirstNet, is our first responder network here in the US. So we have a big portfolio inclusive of IOT. That is a global brand as well. That, if you look at it through the outside lens, that's super complex, all over the planet. So when we're talking to our customers now in this new world, which is very much, "Hey, you can do these things on your own." We go back and the bigger, obviously have the products, and the network and the tech but now that customers can take advantage of it and take things that Dell have rolled out, they need that new new age expertise. You also got the Dell expertise of building these platforms from maybe a software level, from an orchestration level, those kind of things. And at the edge that's creating a new type of person and a new type of workflow, a new type of way to respond and work. So that combination of those two is going to be that new skillset. It's in small pockets now, it's growing in how that looks because it's a little combination of both the app developer and the network developer, that's coming together. Our footprint and in terms of what we provide in there is not just 5G, it's 5G, it's fiber, it's all of those pieces together. And that's what's going to super enable that experience that Doug talked about when you're thinking about gaming or transportation, it's not just the network performance, it's the roundtrip, so we're really trying to focus on that and educate our customers in that way with the expertise that we bring over years and years of building these things. >> And if I could just jump in there. I'd like to just emphasize something Jason just said. When we look at workloads at the edge, very rarely are those workloads uniquely just an edge workload, there are components. The example I like to use is video surveillance. If you are a big box store and you have video surveillance inside your store, there is a set of workloads and outcomes you need for immediate response at that edge. You want to know if there's a safety hazard, if there is a theft or those things. Those things need to be processed real time in the store before the thief leaves the store. But then there's a set of connectivity as well where you want to process that data up in the cloud to get long-term analytics and data off of that information. What's my average store density on a Thursday afternoon in November when it's 20 degrees out. Because that would drive how many employees I have, how much inventory I carry, et cetera. And that combination is a factor that drives all the different aspects of AT&T's network. We need the connectivity in the store for the practicability and the spectrum for the cameras that talk to a central server. We need the high-speed backup and throughput in order to provide cyber recovery as well as point-of-sales services so that they can do credit card transactions flawlessly, which is using a lot of wireline services for AT&T. And together with their cloud and their other capabilities, an enterprise needs all those different aspects to work, both the edge, the core and the cloud coming together to form an outcome from one piece of input. So that one piece of input, that video stream is used in multiple different ways and because of that, that network that AT&T brings can support the end-to-end outcome and use cases for that implementation, as an example. >> That end-to-end roundtrip that you guys talked about is essential for every type of enterprise. A lot of great work that Dell and AT&T are doing together to really enable enterprises to really capitalize on all that the new technology that 5G has the potential to deliver. So I got to wrap things up, Jason, with you. From a business-customer perspective, what's next for AT&T? What can those business customers expect? >> Just continued to scaling because you're looking at a space that's evolving rapidly. It's evolving rapidly, there's a lot of opportunity. You look at the private wireless space in particular, it's nascent, but growing rapidly with the customers having their ability to do this on their own. So for us, and really where we're starting to think now is we're seeing the things move from POC, starting to move to production, customers are starting to think about what's next. For us, we're trying to skate ahead of that knowing how we built our own networks, knowing how we engaged in our own partnerships like with Dell and trying to bring that expertise back to the customer, because it isn't cookie cutter anymore. There's a lot of flexibility and each input creates a different output. So it's up to us to at least help them balance that. Define what I like to affectionately call, "Find their Goldilocks." What is that just right for them? >> Great point, Jason, it is no longer a cookie cutter. Cookie cutter isn't going to cut it. Jason, Doug, thank you so much for joining me on theCUBE today from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We appreciate thank you all of your insights. Sounds like some great work that AT&T and Dell are doing together. Enterprises have a lot to look forward to. Thank you again for your time. >> Thank you very much, >> Thank you. >> Looking forward to seeing you at the show. >> I'm Lisa Martin from theCUBE at Mobile World Congress '23 in Barcelona. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering AT&T Spark. (bubbly music) >> Hello! I'm Maribel Lopez, the Founder of Lopez Research, and I am here today at the AT&T Spark event in San Francisco and I have great pleasure and honor of interviewing Mazin Gilbert, who is the VP of Advanced Technology and Systems at AT&T. We've been talking a lot today, and welcome Mazin. >> Thank you, Maribel for having us. >> We've been talking a lot today about 5G, 5G is like the first and foremost topic on a lot of people's mind that came to the event today, but I thought we might step back for those that aren't as familiar with 5G, and maybe we could do a little 5G 101 with Mazin. What's going on with 5G? Tell us about what 5G is and why it's so important to our future. >> 5G is not another G. (Maribel laughs) It really is a transformational and a revolution really to not to what we're doing as a company, but to society and humanity in general. It would really free us to be mobile, untethered, and to explore new experiences that we've never had before. >> Do I think of this as just faster 4G? Because we had 2G, then 3G, then 4G, is 5G something different? When you say it allows us to be mobile and untethered, don't we already have that? >> No we don't. There are a lot of experiences that are not possible to do today. So imagine that having multiple teenagers experiencing virtual reality, augmented reality, all mobile, while they are in the car all in different countries; we can't have that kind of an experience today. Imagine cars as we move towards autonomous cars, we cannot do autonomous cars today without the intelligence, the speeds and the latency with 5G, so that all cars connect and talk to each other in a split of a second. >> See, I think that's one of the real benefits of this concept of 5G. So when you talk about 5G, 5G is yes more bandwidth, but also lower latency, and that's going to allow the things that you're talking about. I know that you also mention things such as telemedicine, and FirstNet network, any other examples that you're seeing that you think are really going to add a difference to peoples lives going forward as they look at 5G? >> 5G is a key enabler in terms of how these experiences are going to really be transformed. But when you bring in 5G with the edge compute. Today, think of compute, and storage, and securing everything, is sitting somewhere, and as you're talking, that something goes to some unknown place. In the 5G era, with the edge, think of computer storage as following you. And now-- >> So you're your own data center. (laughs) >> You're pretty much your own data center. Wherever you go with every corner, there's a data center following you right there. And now add to that, we're transforming our network to be programmable with our software-defined network, and add AI into that, bringing all of this diamond together, the 5G, the edge, programming the network with software-defined, and AI, and that is what the new experiences is. This is when you'll start seeing really an autonomous world. A world in which that we're able to experience drones flying and repairing cell sites, or repairing oil tanks, without us really being involved, from being in our living room watching a movie. This is a world that is extremely fascinating, a world in which that people can interact and experience family reunion, all virtually in the same room, but they're all in different countries. >> I do think there's this breakthrough power of connectivity. We've talked about it in the next generation of telemedicine, you mentioned some of the dangerous jobs that we'd be able to use drones for, not just for sort of hovering over peoples gorgeous monuments or other things that we've seen as the initial deployments, but something that's really meaningful. Now I know the other topic that has come up quite a bit, is this topic of opensource, and you're in the advanced technology group, and sometimes I think that people don't equate the concept of opensource with large established organizations, like an AT&T, but yet, you made the case that this was foundational and critical for your innovation, can you tell us a little bit more about that? >> Opensource is really part of our DNA. If you look at the inventions of the Unix, C, C++, all originated from AT&T Labs and Bell Labs, we've always been part of that opensource community. But really in the past five years, I think opensource has moved to a completely another level. Because now we're not just talking about opensource, we're talking about open platforms, we're talking about open APIs. What that means is that, we're now into-- >> A lot of open here. (laughs) >> Everything open in here. And what that really means is that we no longer as one company, no one company in the world can make it on their own. The world-- >> K, this is a big difference. >> It's a big difference. The world is getting smaller, and companies together, for us to really drive these transformational experiences companies need to collaborate and work with each other. And this is really what opensource is, is that, think of what we've done with our software-defined network, what we called ONAP in the opensource, we started as a one company, and there was another, one of the Chinese mobile companies also had a source code in there. In the past one year, we now have a hundred companies, some of the biggest brand companies, all collaborating to building open APIs. But why the opensource and open API is important, enables collaboration, expedite innovation, we've done more in the past one year than what we could've done alone for 10 years, and that's really the power of opensource and open platforms >> I totally agree with you on this one. One of the things that we've really seen happen is as newer companies, these theoretically innovative companies have come online, cloud native companies, they've been very big on this open proponent, but we're also seeing large established companies move in the same direction, and it's allowing every organization to have that deeply innovative, flexible architecture that allows them to build new services without things breaking, so I think it's very exciting to see the breadth of companies that you had on stage talking about this, and the breadth of companies that are now in that. And the other thing that's interesting about it is they're competitors as well, right? So, there's that little bit of a edgy coopetition that's happening, but it's interesting to see that everybody feels that there's room for intense innovation in that space as well. So we've talked a little bit about opensource, we've talked about 5G, you are in advanced technology, and I think we'd be remiss to not talk about the big two letter acronym that's in the room that's not 5G, which would be AI. Tell me what's going on with AI, how are you guys thinking about it, what advice do you have for other organizations that are approaching it? Because you are actually a huge developer of AI across your entire organization, so maybe you could tee up a little bit about how that works. >> AI is transformational, and fundamental for AT&T. We have always developed AI solutions, and we were the first to deploy a AI in call centers 20 years ago. >> 20 years ago, really? >> 20 years ago. >> You were doing AI 20 years ago? >> 20 years ago. >> See, just goes to show. >> 20 years ago. I mean AI really, if you go to the source of AI, it really goes in the '40s and '50s with pioneers like Shannon and others. But the first deployment in a commercial call center, not a pilot, was really by AT&T. >> An actual implementation, yeah. >> With a service, we called it how may I help you. And the reason we put that out, because our customers were annoyed with press one for this and press two for billing, they wanted to speak naturally. And so we put the system that says "How may I help you?" and how may I help you allowed the customer to tell us in their own language, in their own words, what is it that they want from us as opposed to really dictating to them what they have to say Now today, it's really very hard for you to call any company in the world, without getting a service that uses some form of speech recognition or speech understanding. >> Thankfully. (laughs) >> But where we're applying it today and have been for the past two, three years, we're finding some really amazing opportunities that we've never imagined before. AI in its essence, is nothing more than automation leveraging data. So using your data as the oil, as the foundation, and driving automation, and that automation could be complete automation of a service, or it could be helping the human to doing their job better and faster. It could be helping a doctor in finding information about patients that they couldn't have done by themselves by processing a million records all together. We're doing the same thing at AT&T. The network is the most complex project ever to be created on the planet. And it's a complex project that changes every second of the day as people move around, and they try different devices. And so to be able to optimize that experience, is really an AI problem, so we apply it today to identify where to build the next cell sites all the way to what's the right ad to show to the customer, or, how do we really make your life easier with our services without you really calling our call center, how do I diagnose and repair your setup box before you're calling us? All of that foundation is really starting to be driven by AI technologies, very exciting. >> Well I'm actually very excited to see where AI takes us, and I'm excited to hear about what you're doing in the future. Thanks for takin' the time to come here today, >> It's my pleasure. >> And be with us on theCUBE. Thank you. >> It's always a pleasure talking to you, thank you very much. >> I'm Maribel Lopez closin' out at AT&T Spark, thank you. (bubbly music)

>> From the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering AT&T Spark. Now here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at San Francisco, at the historic Palace of Fine Arts, it's a beautiful spot, it's redone, they moved Exploratorium out a couple years ago, so now it's in a really nice event space, and we're here for the AT&T Spark Event, and the conversation's all around 5G. But we're excited to have our first guest, and he's working on something that's a little bit tangential to 5G-related, but not absolutely connected, but really important work, it's Chris Sambar, he is the SVP of FirstNet at AT&T, Chris, great to see you. >> Thanks Jeff, great to be here, I appreciate it. >> Yeah, so you had a nice Keynote Presentation, talking about FirstNet. So for people I've missed, that aren't familiar, what is AT&T FirstNet? >> Sure, I'll give a quick background. As I was mentioning up there, tomorrow is the 17-year Anniversary of 9/11. So 17 years ago tomorrow, a big problem in New York City. Lots of first responders descended on the area. All of them were trying to communicate with each other, they were trying to use their radios, which they're you know, typically what you see a first responder using, the wireless networks in the area. Unfortunately challenges, it wasn't working. They were having trouble communicating with each other, their existing wireless networks were getting congested, and so the 9/11 Commission came out with a report years later, and they said we need a dedicated communications network, just for First Responders. So they spun all this up and they said, we're going to dedicate some Spectrum, 20 megahertz of D-Class Spectrum, which is really prime Spectrum. Seven billion dollars and we're going to set up this Federal entity, called the FirstNet Authority, and they're going to create a Public Safety Network across America. So FirstNet Authority spent a few years figuring out how to do it, and they landed on what we have today, which was a Public/Private Partnership, between AT&T, and Public Safety throughout America, and we're building them a terrific network across the country. It is literally a separate network so when I, I think of wireless in America, I think of four main commercial carriers, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint. This is the 5th carrier, this is Public Safety's Wireless Network just for them. >> So when you say an extra network, so it's a completely separate, obviously you're leveraging infrastructure, like towers and power and those types of things. But it's a completely separate network, than the existing four that you mentioned. >> Yeah, so if you walk into our data centers throughout the country, you're going to see separate hardware, physical infrastructure that is just for FirstNet, that's the core network just for this network. On the RAN, the Radio Access Network, we've got antennas that have Band 14 on them, that's Public Safety's Band, dedicated just for them when they need it. So yeah, it's literally a physically separate network. The SIM card that goes into a FirstNet device, is a different SIM card than our commercial users would use, because it's separate. >> So one of the really interesting things about 5G, and kind of the evolution of wireless is, is taking some of the load that has been taken by like WiFi, and other options for fast, always on connectivity. I would assume radio, and I don't know that much about radio frequencies that have been around forever with communications in, in First Responders. Is the vision that the 5G will eventually take over that type of communication as well? >> Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the evolution of First Responder, and Public Safety Communications, for many years now they've used radios. Relatively small, narrow Spectrum bands for Narrow Band Voice, right, just voice communications. It really doesn't do data, maybe a little bit, but really not much. Now they're going to expand to this Spectrum, the D-Class, the D-Block Spectrum, excuse me, which is 700 megahertz, it's a low-band Spectrum, that'll provide them with Dedicated Spectrum, and then the next step, as you say, is 5G, so take the load off as Public Safety comes into the, the new Public Safety Communications space, that they've really been wanting for years and years, they'll start to utilize 5G as well on our network. >> So where are you on the development of FirstNet, where are you on the rollout, what's the sequence of events? >> The first thing we did, the award was last year in March 2017. The first thing we did was we built out the core network. When I talked about all that physical infrastructure, that basically took a year to build out, and it was pretty extensive, and about a half a billion dollars so, that was the first thing we did, that completed earlier this year. >> Was that nationwide or major metro cities or how-- >> Nationwide, everywhere in the country. >> Nationwide, okay. >> So now what we're doing is, we are putting the Spectrum that we were given, or I should say we were leased for 25 years, we're putting that Spectrum up across our towers all over the country so, that will take five years, it's a five-year build-out, tens of thousands of towers across America, will get this Public Safety Spectrum, for Public Safety, and for their use. >> Right. Will you target by GEO, by Metro area, I mean, how's it going to actually happen? That's a huge global rollout, five years is a long time. How you kind of prioritize, how are you really going to market with this? >> The Band 14 Spectrum is being rolled out in the major, the major dense areas across the country. I will tell you that by the end of the rollout, five years from now, 99% of the population of America, will have Band 14 Spectrum, so the vast majority of the population. Other areas where we don't roll it out, rural areas for example, all of the features that Public Safety wants, we call them (mumbles) and priority, which is the features to allow them to always have access to the network whenever they need it. Those features will be on our regular commercial Spectrum. So if Band 14 isn't there, the network will function exactly as if it were there for them. >> Right. Then how do you roll it out to the agencies, all the First Responders, the Fire, the Police, the EMTs, et cetera? How do they start to take advantage of this opportunity? >> Sure, so we started that earlier this year. We really started in a March-April timeframe in earnest, signing up agencies, and the uptake's been phenomenal. It's over 2500 Public Safety Agencies across America, over 150,00, and that number grows by thousands every week. That's actually a pretty old number but, they are signing up in droves. In fact, one of the problems we were having initially is, handling the volume of First Responders that wanted to sign up, and the reason is they're seeing that, whether it's a fire out in Oregon, and they need connectivity in the middle of nowhere, in a forest where there's no wireless connectivity at all, we'll bring a vehicle out there, put up an antenna and provide them connectivity. Whether it's a Fourth of July show, or a parade, or an active shooter, wherever large groups of people, combined together and the network gets congested, they're seeing that wow, my device works no matter what. I can always send a text message, I can send a video, it just works. Where it didn't work before. So they love it, and they're really, they're really signing up in droves, it's great. >> It's really interesting because it's, it's interesting that this was triggered, as part of the post 9/11 activity to make things better, and make things safer. But there was a lot of buzz, especially out here in the West with, with First Responders in the news, who were running out of band width. As you said, the Firefighters, the fire's been burning out here, it seems like forever, and really nobody thinking about those, or obviously they're probably roaming on their traditional data plan, and they're probably out there, for weeks and weeks at a time, that wasn't part of their allocation, when they figured out what plan they should be. So the timing is pretty significant, and there's clearly a big demand for this. >> Absolutely. So that example that you sight is a really good one. Two weeks ago, there was a lot in the news about a fire agency in the West, that said they were throttled by their carrier. It was a commercial carrier, and commercial carriers have terms and conditions, that sometimes they need to throttle usage, if you get to a certain level. That's how commercial networks work. >> Right, right. >> FirstNet was built with not only different technology, hardware, software, but with different terms and conditions. Because we understand that, when a First Responder responds to your house, we don't want that to be the minute in time, when their network, their plan got maxed out, and now they're getting throttled. >> Right. >> So we don't have any throttling on the FirstNet Network. So it's not only the hardware, software, technical aspects of the network, but the terms and conditions are different. It's what you would expect that a First Responder would have and want on their device, and that's what we're providing for them. >> Right, and the other cool thing that you mentioned is, we see it all the time, we go to a lot of conferences. A lot of people probably experience it at, at big events right, is that still today, WiFi and traditional LTE, has hard times in super-dense environments, where there's just tons and tons and tons of bodies I imagine, absorbing all that signal, as much as anything else, so to have a separate Spectrum in those type of environments which are usually chaotic when you got First Responders, or some of these mass events that you outlined, is a pretty important feature, to not get just completely wiped out by everybody else happening to be there at the same time. >> Exactly. I'll give you two quick examples, that'll illustrate what you just said. The first one is, on the Fourth of July, in downtown Washington D.C. You can imagine that show. It's an awesome show, but there are hundreds of thousands of people that gather around that Washington Monument, to watch the show. And the expectation is at the peak of the show, when all those people are there, you're not really going to be sending text messages, or calling people, the network's probably just not going to work very well. That's, we've all gotten used to that. >> Right, right. >> This year, I had First Responders, who were there during the event, sending me videos of the fireworks going off. Something that never would've been possible before, and them saying oh my gosh. The actually works the way it's supposed to work, we can use our phones. Then the second example, which is a really sad example. There was a recent school shooting down in Florida. You had Sheriffs, Local Police, Ambulances. You even had some Federal Authorities that showed up. They couldn't communicate with each other, because they were on different radio networks. Imagine if they had that capability of FirstNet, where they could communicate with each other, and the network worked, even though there were thousands of people that were gathering around that scene, to see what was going on. So that's the capability we're bringing to Public Safety, and it's really good for all of us. >> Do you see that this is kind of the, the aggregator of the multi-disparate systems that exist now, as you mentioned in, in your Keynote, and again there's different agencies, they've got different frequencies, they've got Police, Fire, Ambulance, Federal Agencies, that now potentially this, as just kind of a unified First Responder network, becomes the defacto way, that I can get in touch with anyone regardless of of where they come from, or who they're associated with? >> That is exactly the vision of FirstNet. In major cities across America, Police, Fire, Emergency Medical typically, are on three different radio networks, and it's very difficult for them to communicate with each other. They may have a shared frequency or two between them, but it's very challenging for them. Our goal is to sign all of them up, put them on one LTE network, the FirstNet Network, customized for them, so they can all communicate with each other, regardless of how much congestion is on the network. So that's the vision of FirstNet. >> Then that's even before you get into the 5G impacts, which will be the data impacts, whereas I think again, you showed in some of your examples, the enhanced amount of data that they can bring to bear, on solving a problem, whether it's a layout of a building for the Fire Department or drone footage from up above. We talked to Menlo Park Fire, they're using drones more and more to give eyes over the fire to the guys down on the ground. So there's a lot of really interesting applications that you can get more better data, to drive more better applications through that network, to help these guys do their job. >> Yeah, you've got it, the smart city's cameras, don't you want that to be able to stream over the network, and give it to First Responders, so they know what they're going to encounter, when they show up to the scene of whatever issue's going on in the city, of course you do, and you need a really reliable, stable network to provide that on. >> Well Chris, this is not only an interesting work, but very noble, and an important work, so appreciate all of the efforts that you're putting in, and thanks for stopping by. >> I appreciate it Jeff, it's been great talking with you. >> Alright, he's Chris, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts, at AT&T Spark. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (bright music)