>> Announcer: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCube's first day of coverage of MWC 23 from Barcelona, Spain. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson. I'm literally in between two Daves. We've had a great first day of coverage of the event. There's been lots of conversations, Dave, on disaggregation, on the change of mobility. I want to be able to get your perspectives from both of you on what you saw on the show floor, what you saw and heard from our guests today. So we'll start with you, Dave V. What were some of the things that were our takeaways from day one for you? >> Well, the big takeaway is the event itself. On day one, you get a feel for what this show is like. Now that we're back, face-to-face kind of pretty much full face-to-face. A lot of excitement here. 2000 plus exhibitors, I mean, planes, trains, automobiles, VR, AI, servers, software, I mean everything. I mean, everybody is here. So it's a really comprehensive show. It's not just about mobile. That's why they changed the name from Mobile World Congress. I think the other thing is from the keynotes this morning, I mean, you heard, there's a lot of, you know, action around the telcos and the transformation, but in a lot of ways they're sort of protecting their existing past from the future. And so they have to be careful about how fast they move. But at the same time if they don't move fast, they're going to get disrupted. We heard some complaints, essentially, you know, veiled complaints that the over the top guys aren't paying their fair share and Telco should be able to charge them more. We heard the chairman of Ericsson talk about how we can't let the OTTs do that again. We're going to charge directly for access through APIs to our network, to our data. We heard from Chris Lewis. Yeah. They've only got, or maybe it was San Ji Choha, how they've only got eight APIs. So, you know the developers are the ones who are going to actually build out the innovation at the edge. The telcos are going to provide the connectivity and the infrastructure companies like Dell as well. But it's really to me all about the developers. And that's where the action's going to be. And it's going to be interesting to see how the developers respond to, you know, the gun to the head. If you want access, you're going to have to pay for it. Now maybe there's so much money to be made that they'll go for it, but I feel like there's maybe a different model. And I think some of the emerging telcos are going to say, you know what, here developers, here's a platform, have at it. We're not going to charge you for all the data until you succeed. Then we're going to figure out a monetization model. >> Right. A lot of opportunity for the developer. That skillset is certainly one that's in demand here. And certainly the transformation of the telecom industry is, there's a lot of conundrums that I was hearing going on today, kind of chicken and egg scenarios. But Dave, you had a chance to walk around the show floor. We were here interviewing all day. What were some of the things that you saw that really stuck out to you? >> I think I was struck by how much attention was being paid to private 5G networks. You sort of read between the lines and it appears as though people kind of accept that the big incumbent telecom players are going to be slower to move. And this idea of things like open RAN where you're leveraging open protocols in a stack to deliver more agility and more value. So it sort of goes back to the generalized IT discussion of moving to cloud for agility. It appears as though a lot of players realize that the wild wild west, the real opportunity, is in the private sphere. So it's really interesting to see how that works, how 5G implemented into an environment with wifi how that actually works. It's really interesting. >> So it's, obviously when you talk to companies like Dell, I haven't hit HPE yet. I'm going to go over there and check out their booth. They got an analyst thing going on but it's really early days for them. I mean, they started in this business by taking an X86 box, putting a name on it, you know, that sounded like it was edged, throwing it over, you know, the wall. That's sort of how they all started in this business. And now they're, you know, but they knew they had to form partnerships. They had to build purpose-built systems. Now with 16 G out, you're seeing that. And so it's still really early days, talking about O RAN, open RAN, the open RAN alliance. You know, it's just, I mean, not even, the game hasn't even barely started yet but we heard from Dish today. They're trying to roll out a massive 5G network. Rakuten is really focused on sort of open RAN that's more reliable, you know, or as reliable as the existing networks but not as nearly as huge a scale as Dish. So it's going to take a decade for this to evolve. >> Which is surprising to the average consumer to hear that. Because as far as we know 5G has been around for a long time. We've been talking about 5G, implementing 5G, you sort of assume it's ubiquitous but the reality is it is just the beginning. >> Yeah. And you know, it's got a fake 5G too, right? I mean you see it on your phone and you're like, what's the difference here? And it's, you know, just, >> Dave N.: What does it really mean? >> Right. And so I think your point about private is interesting, the conversation Dave that we had earlier, I had throughout, hey I don't think it's a replacement for wifi. And you said, "well, why not?" I guess it comes down to economics. I mean if you can get the private network priced close enough then you're right. Why wouldn't it replace wifi? Now you got wifi six coming in. So that's a, you know, and WiFi's flexible, it's cheap, it's good for homes, good for offices, but these private networks are going to be like kickass, right? They're going to be designed to run whatever, warehouses and robots, and energy drilling facilities. And so, you know the economics I don't think are there today but maybe they can be at volume. >> Maybe at some point you sort of think of today's science experiment becoming the enterprise-grade solution in the future. I had a chance to have some conversations with folks around the show. And I think, and what I was surprised by was I was reminded, frankly, I wasn't surprised. I was reminded that when we start talking about 5G, we're talking about spectrum that is managed by government entities. Of course all broadcast, all spectrum, is managed in one way or another. But in particular, you can't simply put a SIM in every device now because there are a lot of regulatory hurdles that have to take place. So typically what these things look like today is 5G backhaul to the network, communication from that box to wifi. That's a huge improvement already. So yeah, my question about whether, you know, why not put a SIM in everything? Maybe eventually, but I think, but there are other things that I was not aware of that are standing in the way. >> Your point about spectrum's an interesting one though because private networks, you're going to be able to leverage that spectrum in different ways, and tune it essentially, use different parts of the spectrum, make it programmable so that you can apply it to that specific use case, right? So it's going to be a lot more flexible, you know, because I presume the needs spectrum needs of a hospital are going to be different than, you know, an agribusiness are going to be different than a drilling, you know, unit, offshore drilling unit. And so the ability to have the flexibility to use the spectrum in different ways and apply it to that use case, I think is going to be powerful. But I suspect it's going to be expensive initially. I think the other thing we talked about is public policy and regulation, and it's San Ji Choha brought up the point, is telcos have been highly regulated. They don't just do something and ask for permission, you know, they have to work within the confines of that regulated environment. And there's a lot of these greenfield companies and private networks that don't necessarily have to follow those rules. So that's a potential disruptive force. So at the same time, the telcos are spending what'd we hear, a billion, a trillion and a half over the next seven years? Building out 5G networks. So they got to figure out, you know how to get a payback on that. They'll get it I think on connectivity, 'cause they have a monopoly but they want more. They're greedy. They see the over, they see the Netflixes of the world and the Googles and the Amazons mopping up services and they want a piece of that action but they've never really been good at it. >> Well, I've got a question for both of you. I mean, what do you think the odds are that by the time the Shangri La of fully deployed 5G happens that we have so much data going through it that effectively it feels exactly the same as 3G? What are the odds? >> That's a good point. Well, the thing that gets me about 5G is there's so much of it on, if I go to the consumer side when we're all consumers in our daily lives so much of it's marketing hype. And, you know all the messaging about that, when it's really early innings yet they're talking about 6G. What does actual fully deployed 5G look like? What is that going to enable a hospital to achieve or an oil refinery out in the middle of the ocean? That's something that interests me is what's next for that? Are we going to hear that at this event? >> I mean, walking around, you see a fair amount of discussion of, you know, the internet of things. Edge devices, the increase in connectivity. And again, what I was surprised by was that there's very little talk about a sim card in every one of those devices at this point. It's like, no, no, no, we got wifi to handle all that but aggregating it back into a central network that's leveraging 5G. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. >> I think you, the odds of your, to go back to your question, I think the odds are even money, that by the time it's all built out there's going to be so much data and so much new capability it's going to work similarly at similar speeds as we see in the networks today. You're just going to be able to do so many more things. You know, and your video's going to look better, the graphics are going to look better. But I think over the course of history, this is what's happening. I mean, even when you go back to dial up, if you were in an AOL chat room in 1996, it was, you know, yeah it took a while. You're like, (screeches) (Lisa laughs) the modem and everything else, but once you were in there- >> Once you're there, 2400 baud. >> It was basically real time. And so you could talk to your friends and, you know, little chat room but that's all you could do. You know, if you wanted to watch a video, forget it, right? And then, you know, early days of streaming video, stop, start, stop, start, you know, look at Amazon Prime when it first started, Prime Video was not that great. It's sort of catching up to Netflix. But, so I think your point, that question is really prescient because more data, more capability, more apps means same speed. >> Well, you know, you've used the phrase over the top. And so just just so we're clear so we're talking about the same thing. Typically we're talking about, you've got, you have network providers. Outside of that, you know, Netflix, internet connection, I don't need Comcast, right? Perfect example. Well, what about the over the top that's coming from direct satellite communications with devices. There are times when I don't have a signal on my, happens to be an Apple iPhone, when I get a little SOS satellite logo because I can communicate under very limited circumstances now directly to the satellite for very limited text messaging purposes. Here at the show, I think it might be a Motorola device. It's a dongle that allows any mobile device to leverage direct satellite communication. Again, for texting back to the 2,400 baud modem, you know, days, 1200 even, 300 even, go back far enough. What's that going to look like? Is that too far in the future to think that eventually it's all going to be over the top? It's all going to be handset to satellite and we don't need these RANs anymore. It's all going to be satellite networks. >> Dave V.: I think you're going to see- >> Little too science fiction-y? (laughs) >> No, I, no, I think it's a good question and I think you're going to see fragments. I think you're going to see fragmentation of private networks. I think you're going to see fragmentation of satellites. I think you're going to see legacy incumbents kind of hanging on, you know, the cable companies. I think that's coming. I think by 2030 it'll, the picture will be much more clear. The question is, and I think it's come down to the innovation on top, which platform is going to be the most developer friendly? Right, and you know, I've not heard anything from the big carriers that they're going to be developer friendly. I've heard "we have proprietary data that we're going to charge access for and developers are going to have to pay for that." But I haven't heard them saying "Developers, developers, developers!" You know, Steve Bomber running around, like bend over backwards for developers, they're asking the developers to bend over. And so if a network can, let's say the satellite network is more developer friendly, you know, you're going to see more innovation there potentially. You know, or if a dish network says, "You know what? We're going after developers, we're going after innovation. We're not going to gouge them for all this network data. Rather we're going to make the platform open or maybe we're going to do an app store-like model where we take a piece of the action after they succeed." You know, take it out of the backend, like a Silicon Valley VC as opposed to an East Coast VC. They're not going to get you in the front end. (Lisa laughs) >> Well, you can see the sort of disruptive forces at play between open RAN and the legacy, call it proprietary stack, right? But what is the, you know, if that's sort of a horizontal disruptive model, what's the vertically disruptive model? Is it private networks coming in? Is it a private 5G network that comes in that says, "We're starting from the ground up, everything is containerized. We're going to go find people at KubeCon who are, who understand how to orchestrate with Kubernetes and use containers in microservices, and we're going to have this little 5G network that's going to deliver capabilities that you can't get from the big boys." Is there a way to monetize that? Is there a way for them to be disrupted, be disruptive, or are these private 5G networks that everybody's talking about just relegated to industrial use cases where you're just squeezing better economics out of wireless communication amongst all your devices in your factory? >> That's an interesting question. I mean, there are a lot of those smart factory industrial use cases. I mean, it's basically industry 4.0 use cases. But yeah, I don't count the cloud guys out. You know, everybody says, "oh, the narrative is, well, the latency of the cloud." Well, not if the cloud is at the edge. If you take a local zone and put storage, compute, and data right next to each other and the cloud model with the cloud APIs, and then you got an asynchronous, you know, connection back. I think that's a reasonable model. I think the cloud guys figured out developers, right? Pretty well. Certainly Microsoft and, and Amazon and Google, they know developers. I don't see any reason why they can't bring their model to the edge. So, and that's really disruptive to the legacy telco guys, you know? So they have to be careful. >> One step closer to my dream of eliminating the word "cloud" from IT lexicon. (Lisa laughs) I contend that it has always been IT, and it will always be IT. And this whole idea of cloud, what is cloud? If AWS, for example, is delivering hardware to the edge where it needs to be, is that cloud? Do we go back to the idea that cloud is an operational model and not a question of physical location? I hope we get to that point. >> Well, what's Apex and GreenLake? Apex is, you know, Dell's as a service. GreenLake is- >> HPE. >> HPE's as a service. That's outposts. >> Dave N.: Right. >> Yeah. >> That's their outpost. >> Yeah. >> Well AWS's position used to be, you know, to use them as a proxy for hyperscale cloud. We'll just, we'll grow in a very straight trajectory forever on the back of net new stuff. Forget about the old stuff. As James T. Kirk said of the Klingons, "let them die." (Lisa laughs) As far as the cloud providers were concerned just, yeah, let, let that old stuff go away. Well then they found out, there came a point in time where they realized there's a lot of friction and stickiness associated with that. So they had to deal with the reality of hybridity, if that's the word, the hybrid nature of things. So what are they doing? They're pushing stuff out to the edge, so... >> With the same operating model. >> With the same operating model. >> Similar. I mean, it's limited, right? >> So you see- >> You can't run a lot of database on outpost, you can run RES- >> You see this clash of Titans where some may have written off traditional IT infrastructure vendors, might have been written off as part of the past. Whereas hyperscale cloud providers represent the future. It seems here at this show they're coming head to head and competing evenly. >> And this is where I think a company like Dell or HPE or Cisco has some advantages in that they're not going to compete with the telcos, but the hyperscalers will. >> Lisa: Right. >> Right. You know, and they're already, Google's, how much undersea cable does Google own? A lot. Probably more than anybody. >> Well, we heard from Google and Microsoft this morning in the keynote. It'd be interesting to see if we hear from AWS and then over the next couple of days. But guys, clearly there is, this is a great wrap of day one. And the crazy thing is this is only day one. We've got three more days of coverage, more news, more information to break down and unpack on theCUBE. Look forward to doing that with you guys over the next three days. Thank you for sharing what you saw on the show floor, what you heard from our guests today as we had about 10 interviews. Appreciate your insights and your perspectives and can't wait for tomorrow. >> Right on. >> All right. For Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's day one wrap from MWC 23. We'll see you tomorrow. (relaxing music)