>> Announcer: Live from Silicon Valley it's theCUBE! Covering Mobile World Congress 2017. Brought to you by Intel. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Palo Alto for special Mobile World Congress 2017 coverage. Mobile World Congress is happening in Barcelona, Spain and we are covering it here in Palo Alto and covering all the action as day two of Mobile World Congress winds down. We have reporters, analysts in the field in Barcelona calling in, we have Peter Jarich coming up soon, a call in. We've had Scott Raynovich, analyst, called in earlier. We have reports: go to SiliconANGLE.com for all the action. Go to Cube365.net/MWC17, that is our new Cube365 software, a digital hub to aggregate all the top stories, all the signal from the noise at Mobile World Congress and that site is sponsored by Intel. I want to thank Intel for allowing us to do 30 great interviews here in studio as well as a variety of great content that we're getting in from phone-ins and friends on the ground in Barcelona to get you all the top stories, and of course we'll bring you commentary and analysis here inside theCUBE. I had a chance to talk to Intel at 1:30 this morning, in California time, early morning Tuesday time here, Tuesday time in Barcelona. Had a chance to talk with Sandra Rivera, who's the Corporate Vice President/General Manager of Intel's Network Platforms Group. She is in charge of the Intel Technology Group that brings the end-to-end transformation. Really getting 5G ready, part of the Intel brain trust and the leader and really taking the world by storm. 5G obviously the top story and underneath the hood of 5G is the network transformation. I had a chance to ask some very pointed questions, like, "Is 5G ready for prime time?" and, "What's it going to take to change the game "to bring a new business model to power "all the new use cases like autonomous vehicles, "smart cities, a new kind of media and entertainment "landscape as well as smart homes "and smart businesses?" So, let's hear what Sandra had to say, and here's my interview from this morning in Barcelona." >> Sandra: Well, I would certainly say it's revolution not evolution. If you look at all the previous generations of radio technology, 2G, 3G, 4G, it was largely driven by connecting people to other people, and of course the voice era with the 2G and 3G, came the app revolution, and us connecting with our loved ones over social media and all of the new capabilities that we found on the Internet. 4G then became about more capacity and coverage and faster upload and download speeds. With all of the, again, social media and video and media processing. But 5G is fundamentally different because it really brings together the computing and communications paradigm. It is truly that convergence of both computing and communication, and so, in addition to the billions of people that we've been connecting and all the other generations of radio technology, we are now connecting tens of billions of things in that era of 5G. And a lot of what we're seeing here on the ground is just some of those use cases are starting to merge in terms of once you really converge computing and communications, what is possible? What is possible to do? >> John: The big conversation that we've been having yesterday on theCUBE was the confluence between consumer technology and enterprise technology from a business model standpoint. We hear the word "digital transformation," that's the business model for pretty much the global business landscape, but really there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood around, you guys are calling, network transformation. Your CEO was talking on Fortune before the show started about this end-to-end architecture. >> Sandra: Yes, so when we talk about end-to-end, we do talk about every every point of either accessing or delivering information at the end either between people or between things. So it's from the jump-on point, if you will, on the network and the access layer and so of course it's all the new radio technologies up to the edge of a network where a lot of the decision points and the data analytics live and exist, up to the core of the network, which again, is the workhorse of where things are routed and where traffic is steered and what is the different types of traffic that you're trying to get from the source to the endpoint, and then of course back into the data center in the cloud, which is the place where most of the content is either originated or stored or served up. So when we talk about end-to-end, we do talk about every point in that continuum, and the need to have programmable, intelligent computing and communications capability which is very very different from what we've had historically from a network infrastructure perspective. So network transformation is all about embracing server-based technologies and the volume economics benefits that that brings for its relation technology and the fact that you can pool assets and use 'em across many different users and use cases, and of course cloud as both a technology and a business model and the idea that you can lease an asset and afford to lease almost unlimited compute capability, and then release it when you're done. So that end-to-end view and that transformation of the underlying infrastructure is really what we talk about when we talk about network transformation and because 5G requires that programmable computing capability all across that continuum, and in particular being closer and closer to those endpoints, whether they're the autonomous car, or they're drones, or robots, or of course the things that we're quite familiar with in terms of tablets and laptops and smartphones, that is really what we're now enabling under that umbrella of network transformation and 5G is accelerating. >> John: And for the folks watching and listening, we had a great interview with Lynn Comp, who went and did a drill down on NFE and some of those cool tech behind that. On the business model, kind of the landscape question, you mentioned drones, certainly hot. People can look at drones, they see the autonomous vehicles. This is an environment where these new applications and use cases are emerging. So there always seems to be the challenge, and we had an expert discussion this morning in theCUBE here in Palo Alto, around the trade-off between bandwidth and true mobility, and sometimes there is some trade-offs. And not one technology or partner will win it, and you guys are a big part of that. What is your view and Intel's view on the kinds of robust, diverse technologies that are needed to balance the many use cases, and at the same time, create an open ecosystem around fostering this new future growth, which seems to be a big wave we haven't seen since the iPhone in 2007. This is a really game changer. How do you guys view this multitude of technologies and diverse ecosystem and how do you guy foster that? >> Sandra: As Intel, we are a technology innovator and a technology leader and of course that clock never stands still, right? So you need to innovate (laughs) on the technology front and bring out new capabilities, and in particular as that computing and communications world come together, we know that we need to integrate more of the network and wireless IP into the standard roadmap of processors and capabilities that we bring to the market, both in hardware and software ingredients. But as we do that, we are trying to protect the software investment that the developers make in bringing new and emerging applications to market. So while we have, of course, huge CPU assets within Intel, we also have SCGA assets for use cases that would involve changing algorithms, whether they're security algorithms that are deployed differently in different parts of the world, different countries, or of course artificial intelligence, which is again an emerging field with new algorithms and new computational requirements, or on the radio side where the 5G wireless standards are going to be taking route and solidifying over the next several years and continue to evolve. You want to have that programmability so the SCGA assets come into play. And then we leverage that even further with some of the ASIC competency that we have, where you really do work in a hardened piece of silicon, on the ability to run very very fast calculations, many many times over, and to do it in as efficient possible way, both from a cost and count perspective. But all of that underlying hardware and silicon architecture choice really needs to be served up to a broad ecosystem through a software framework that is consistent and undeterministic in where you have a very robust toolchain which is really what Intel invests in. So we invest in robust and comprehensive software tools and frameworks so that we can tap into the very broadest application developer ecosystem that exists in the world. And that's how we see the capabilities that we bring to market tapping into our technology innovation in silicon and software ingredients, but then tapping into, again, something that we believe deeply in, which is a broad ecosystem, and the more market participation you have, the faster that innovation curve that you can drive. >> John: "Rising tide floats all boats," I love that saying, I think that seems to be the case here. Sandra, I want to get your thoughts on the business model on telcos and the industry. People know Mobile World Congress is the big show, but it's also where everyone who's anyone in the business goes, it's a lot of business conversations. I'm sure you're backed up between meeting and meeting after meeting because you got a lot of customers there. Take us through some of the hallway conversations you're having or specific business conversations that you're meeting with customers. What's the buzz in the hallways and what specific conversations are you having with the customers around commercializing, not just accelerating, but commercializing the business models that are going to emerge from these new use cases? >> Sandra: Yeah, well you know actually that's a great question because I've been coming to Mobile Congress for many many years and a lot of the network transformation discussions, and a lot of the discussions even around NFE and FEN in years past, have been rooted in the desire to try to achieve the lower cost point, a total cost of operation that was lower, when you move from fixed-function, purpose-filled, can't reprogram, reprovision the hardware to do anything other than what it was originally designed to do, even though the asset utilization on that investment was very low, 20% maybe 30% at best. So it was this desire to move to, again, volume economics and server-based technology and the benefits of virtualization and pooling. So it started in a cost-optimization type of conversation, but the map moved in the last year, certainly with 5G, into much more, "Well how do we innovate "services faster? "How do we bring new capabilities to market? "And how do we really help to grow the top line, "not just manage our costs?" And I think that's what you're seeing at this event this year, is the excitement around virtual reality and augmented reality, the excitement around a smart home and all the capabilities that you'll have in your appliances and in your infrastructure in your own home and how you run your household. Seeing all of the innovations that we've got in smart cities, so smart lighting, smart water systems, smart meters, and smart parking, another thing that we're seeing here in terms of a set of use cases that we're enabling. Of course, no trade show event that you're talking about in terms of new use cases and new experiences is complete without an autonomous car, so we have a beautiful BMW 7 Series auton. vehicle that we're showcasing here, but again, this is part of what we're enabling in terms of new use cases when you have virtual unlimited computes being brought to the edge of the network with all new radio technologies to address a lot of that bandwidth, a lot of that latency, highly sensitive type of ultra-reliable capability that you need for an autonomous car. So what you're seeing is these smart cities and virtual reality and autonomous driving and smart home, and how all of the underlying technologies make that possible. And from a business perspective, all those new services are clearly what the communication service providers are trying to deliver to the market and trying to do it in a way that embraces cloud business models but also working with all of the enterprises and that traditional business, whether it's an automotive industry or whether it's an industrial automation industry or even all of the appliances that go into your home. All these traditional businesses really disrupting themselves to embrace technology and to bring many more capabilities that, again, have never been possible before. >> John: Yeah the car really brings this data center to the edge in full light for the consumer. It's a moving data center, needs to talk to a base station, needs to talk to the network. And really, this is the new normal. You see Alexa in the home and the voice activation, all the coolness going on there. And a lot of folks have criticized the telcos in the past for being very good at turning on subscribers and billing them as their core competency. But now with IOT, you have literally, you know, provisioning that's happening so fast and so dynamic, you have literally anything with a SIM card is now on the network. This kind of changes the notion of a subscriber. So, moving from that bill to operational in this new thousands of things and people on the network, it's not as clean as it was in the old days. Are the telcos on this? Do they get this concept? I mean, this changes the requirements for the network to be more dynamic and manage the technologies. >> Sandra: It's a fundamental transformation that they're going through, rooted in an urgent business problem that they have, which is that the more data that is created and consumed, the more they have to build out the capacity, but they have to do that in an affordable way, and they can't do it when they're provisioning new services and capabilities and hardware, and particularly in hardware that only does what it was originally intended to do, and they're now moving to a model that is software-defined, where you are able to innovate and provision and deploy at the speed of software, not being anchored in hardware. But they really are absolutely welcoming that opportunity, again, to bring those new services and capabilities to market when they can create a network infrastructure that becomes a platform of innovation, where they can attract developers to imagine new use cases and applications and capabilities that they themselves have the DNA to do but they have such unique assets. They have spectrum, they have contextual information about network bandwidth and conditions. They have customer profile information. They have a billing relationship. >> John: They need security, too, as well. >> Sandra: They have security and reliability, and I mean, all of those assets, if they can tap into that and serve that up, as again, a platform upon which innovation can happen, then that's really their endgame. So while, to your point, they may have been criticized as being kind of slow moving, we really do see them embracing fully this idea that, in order to grow their top lines, and in order to innovate faster in terms of services that, embracing again this fundamental different architectural model of computing and communication converging the server-based and cloud-based technologies, is the wave of the future. And you know 5G just put the nice bow on it, right, because it just makes everything go faster given that all these new use cases that we're looking to enable. >> Producer: Hey John, you only have one question left, so key money question if you want. >> John: Great, my final question. Sandra, my final question is: what's the bumper sticker this year for Mobile World Congress?" If you had to put the bumper sticker on the car, what would it say this year to encapsulate Mobile World Congress? >> Sandra: So for me, it's "5G Starts Today." Because, in order to be ready for all those drones and robots and autonomous cars and all of those immersive experiences in your living room, you really have to transform the network infrastructure today, and that composability of the network infrastructure of the ability to capture a slice of the network and optimize it in realtime for your use case, all that requires programmable, scalable, flexible computing that is secure, that's reliable, and that embraces cloud architectures and cloud business models. And so that is happening today to get ready for 2018, 2019, 2020, when you see many more of those endpoints, those end devices, and those use cases come to be realized, you need to get started today. So 5G is absolutely on its way, and we're very very excited to be a key enabler of that vision. >> John: Sandra Rivera, thanks so much. Corporate Vice President/ General Manager of the Network Platforms Group at Intel. Really bringing the end-to-end technology enabling communications service providers to take their networks to the next level. Getting ready for 5G and bringing the performance to the edge of the network. Thanks for taking the time on theCUBE, calling in from Barcelona, really appreciate it. Have a great day. >> Sandra: Thanks, John, you too! (pulsing music)