Hi, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Future of Tech series, and welcome to the 5G panel, titled State of the Union and Key Controversies. I am joined virtually by one of my colleagues, Brandon Nispel, who covers the telecommunication space. Before we get started and with the introductions of the panelists, I did want to let everybody know that if you have any sort of questions during the panel, feel free to submit them at the bottom of your webpage. With that, let me quickly introduce our panelists. We're pleased to have Rick Suarez, who's the Group President of the Telecom Group at MasTec.
We also have Ed Knapp, who is the CTO of American Tower, and we also have Dan Leibholz, who is the CTO of Analog Devices. Well, welcome, everybody, and thank you all for joining us this morning. First topic that we wanted to cover, I think what is very topical on everybody's minds right now, is what sort of impact is the COVID-19 pandemic having on kind of the rollout of 5G? Wanted to talk about what are the impacts near term, tactically, in terms of what you guys are seeing, in terms of any sort of changes, in terms of the pace of the rollout, and then maybe also just longer term. You know, are there any sort of longer-term implications that are emerging as a result of this, you know, pandemic?
Maybe why don't we start with you, Rick?
Good morning. I'll say, you know, in terms of the rollout of 5G and how COVID has impacted, what I, you know, what I would say is, from a production, and our business is the installation services, right? It's building out the network itself, and we do that nationwide and in Mexico. You know, what I would tell you is the pace of the work really hasn't slowed down for us, so we've actually had two really strong quarters of builds. I do think, you know, you have seen pockets here and there where, you know, whether it's OEM equipment, material, supplies, you know, things that come from other countries, where factories may have been impacted.
You know, we've seen some pockets here and there where, you know, there have been a few challenges that I think we've overcome. Obviously, labor is always, you know, something that, you know, paramount in trying to understand, you know, what the impacts of COVID, keeping the people safe so that production keeps flowing. Again, I think industry-wide, most of us have adapted to this remote worker approach to keeping folks safer while keeping the crews as productive as possible. I think in terms of factory production, we've seen that flow very well.
In terms of the customers and their, you know, the impacts of COVID for them, you know, what I, what I would say is, what we've seen, right, is in terms of traffic, in the network itself, the dynamics of that traffic has shifted, right? Where it was very urban-focused before, you know, as folks have moved out, you know, depending on who you believe, 50%-60% of the workforce being remote, you know, what we've seen is, you know, that RF traffic has certainly shifted, right? Now it's more suburban and rural, where we're seeing more traffic changes there.
That may, you know, that may drive the customer to sort of look at the patterns and see from a relief and exhaust standpoint, make some adjustments that, in the past, you know, may have been more focused based on the historical trends that were pre-COVID.
Got it. Hey, Rick, one follow-up to that is one of your peers had made a comment recently that because of the COVID-19 shutdown, that there's less street traffic and people are driving less, that that has made installs actually a little bit easier. Can you comment on that?
Yeah, certainly, you know, I can just selfishly speak for myself, right? My commute to the office is normally an hour, I'm getting to the office in 20 minutes, right? That's certainly. You know, we've seen that benefit for the workforce and having access quicker to get to locations. You know, I mean, everything from safety, you know, has improved, you know, down. Certainly, that has been a benefit that I think we've all, you know, all that have crews out in the fields have benefited from.
Got it. How about you, Ed? What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I think very similar to Rick. I think, you know, we're not seeing a slowdown in the deployment. People are still making applications. I think we've seen low-band roll out over the last year with AT&T and T-Mobile, and now we're seeing the mid-band, the beginning of that, post-merger or acquisition with Sprint, so that part of the network, mid-band, that 2.5, that'll start to pick up here in the second half. The high band still has continued. I think some of the city and urban issues as far as construction. I would assume that, and I'm not close to that part of it, but, you know, getting those sites in place, if you're Verizon, building out those cities might be a little bit easier without the congestion.
You have to look at it across the three different types. On the macro tower, you know, we see that investment will continue. The shift in load, I think, is pretty obvious. If you have a mobile business and people are now at home fixed, as we are right now, you're gonna start using different types of networks. We see it different globally, too. A lot of the pandemic has hit traffic differently depending on the breadth and depth of broadband capabilities around the world. On 5G, though, we see in Europe, the fact that some of the auctions and some of the spectrum has been deferred, so there's a little bit of a slowdown there due to the pandemic.
Overall, I think people in the wireless industry are powering through because this is a fundamental component to being able to do the things we need to do remotely in a digital economy.
Great. How about you, Dan?
Yeah, I would just add on around Asia, since Ed and my colleagues covered North America and Europe. In Asia, we certainly see in China just a real acceleration, if anything, of 5G deployments, and that certainly is foreign of both, whether it's the just the inexorable demand for data and really catching up and playing through where 4G was really not strong enough for them in terms of the available spectrum and the incredible amount of use of mobile technology in China. We have seen some slowdowns and some pauses in Japan and Korea, but we expect that that's going to pick up again in the next year or two. I think that's just sort of financially driven.
The government, encouragement and investment in China has been incredibly strong. Kind of when we look at it on a global average, we've seen this has been a quite a strong year overall for 5G deployments. We see things accelerating next year with North America, with the new C-band, auctions and the clearing of that spectrum. We think that things are actually gonna accelerate into the coming years with North America.
Great. Dan, has anything emerged just in terms of longer term implications? You know, there's been a lot of buzz that, you know, factory automations and the importance of that has started to emerge. Maybe with this work from home environment, does that kind of raise the stature of fixed wireless? Have you seen that kind of flow through with customer conversations and your interactions with the ecosystem?
Well, certainly there's a lot of interest in utilizing mobile technology, 5G technology for applications beyond mobile broadband. We see mobile broadband as a real driver for 5G, but there are a lot of use cases that are industrial, that are infrastructure based, whether it's smart city, vehicle-to-vehicle, Vehicle-to-X, as they call it, and industrial such as IoT types of applications, remote monitoring, drones, non-line of sight control of drones. A lot of technology applications that require not only, you know, good bandwidth, but very, very low latency and a high degree of reliability. What we see is a lot of interest in trialing and prototyping sort of what's happening with COVID.
For example, a lot of factories are dealing with socially distancing the workers or dealing with worker absenteeism. They wanna keep the lines going, and so they're filling in with robots for, you know, picking and packing or moving goods around the warehouse. While today, most of those applications would be using, you know, Wi-Fi or other kinds of narrowband technologies, we believe 5G, the technology protocols built into 5G will be a real enabler of these types of applications. We're seeing a lot of trialing and prototyping for those types of applications.
Okay. looks like we have Brandon back online. Brandon, do you have a follow-up?
Yeah, great. technical error is there. Yeah, maybe, Dan, to follow up on that, how would you compare the pacing of the 5G rollout compared to LTE? You mentioned periods of inflection. If you had to pick a period where, you know, in the next five years you think activity levels for 5G will be the greatest, what would you pick?
Yeah, I'd say from a deployment perspective, I think we've seen the inflection from 4G to 5G really starting around mid-2019. In our business, we see, you know, really strong growth in technologies that are for 5G base stations, 5G infrastructure. 5G is growing very rapidly, and 4G technologies have rolled off. In terms of our business, we're already past that inflection point, and the growth is really going to continue very strongly over the next few years. I think in terms of end user demand and what's driving 5G, I think it is a little bit different than 4G. I believe 4G was really dominated by. It was really device driven, you know, with the iPhone, with the compelling use cases of streaming, of mobile apps, compared to the capacity of the 3G network.
There was just a rush to build out the 4G network, the LTE, and get folks online and really solve an incredibly frustrating experience for consumers. I think with 5G, I think consumers will see really a much improved mobile experience, but the devices, I think, are going to be somewhat, from in terms of the experience, will be incremental at first in terms of what you can do with your device. I think it will be more about, you know, an improved experience rather than one that is an enabling one to start.
Then over time, we'll see devices really taking on a lot of different kinds of characteristics, really taking advantage of the bandwidth of the network. Such things as, you don't have to use your imagination, you know, whether it's mobile gaming or AR and VR or training in factory settings, a lot of education. A lot of different types of applications that we can imagine versus a compelling need today to get that network turned over. I think. Then, as I mentioned before, there are a lot of these industrial use cases which will grow gradually and incrementally as these capabilities are proven out, proven to be reliable, and proven to return something to the, you know, to the factory managers in terms of ROI.
I think we're at an inflection now in terms of investment in infrastructure, but, you know, infrastructure and lead, investments tend to, I think, go a bit slower than ones that are really end customer driven, end customer demand driven. But certainly appreciate that my colleagues are weighing in on this one.
Rick, what about your thoughts on that?
I mean, I agree with Dan, what Dan is saying. I mean, personally, I think also just in the U.S., you know, this C-band auction happening at the end of this year. Now I think, yesterday, we heard about another mid-band, right, grouping, that'll probably be available at the end of next year, that's being freed up. I think that's really gonna be the 5G catalyst in the U.S., right? I think with that mid-band, you know, what we're gonna see is accelerated, right, deployments from the, you know, the big carriers certainly to try to get their capacity, right, covered in these next two, three years, right?
I do expect, you know, growth in, certainly in 2021, and more so in 2022, in the type of work we do already on the macro side and certainly on the small cell side, as a result of those bands becoming available. I think this whole COVID, you know, has really, you know, surfaced a bunch of new use cases that I think will also drive incremental growth in the business, like Wi-Fi, right, as an example today, right? You know, we're all learning now that doing video at home via Wi-Fi doesn't work, right? I think, Brandon, you just sort of suffered some of that, right, yourself.
I do think we're gonna see a, you know, a renewed effort, you know, certainly on the fiber side, to reinforce, at the suburban, you know, rule. Also in this fixed wireless world, right? Which is gonna be a quicker way to sorta get capacity out to consumers, you know, at their homes. That's gonna drive, I think, opportunities in terms of work in the workforce. I see the same thing international. I mean, you think about just call centers, right? You know, whether it's in India, Philippines, you know, We all suffered through this COVID when they shut down and people went home, and they couldn't work, all right?
I think this has opened the eyes, right, of the, you know, certainly the carrier business, both cable and wireless, where they're seeing this opportunity for a new land grab again, to try to get access quicker to consumers at their homes.
Ed, I wanted to get your perspective on this. You might have a slightly different view than these other panelists.
Well, I know, I think it's, you know, consistent, but I'll add a couple of thoughts from my experience. One of the things that I'd say in 5G is look at the device side. I think typically in every G I've experienced, from the beginning of, you know, 1G and analog, devices were the lagging factor. You didn't have the device, but you had networks being built. Infrastructure always led by a while to get the coverage you needed to have a service. Because of the way 4G and 5G kinda interplay, you kinda also had a lot of 5G devices in the marketplace early on, without maybe the network, requisite network coverage. We look at the 5G infrastructure. That was one difference that I think was clear here.
Remember, in some of the 2G and even 3G cases, devices lagged by a while relative to infrastructure. Most infrastructure, too, was built with macro first, right? That was always the case, and we believe it's fundamental to delivering the coverage. We have an early adoption plan in the U.S., where we leveraged the millimeter wave, so it was kind of, you know, doing more of a limited build in terms of coverage with millimeter wave. The way I looked at the build-out and the infrastructure, you have to think of it as three waves. We talked about inflection points and some of the things that we'll see over the next few years. The first phase, we did have some high-band deployments, right?
We had folks going in, deploying millimeter wave, and that led some of the early fixed wireless use cases and things like that. The second part was, you know, trying to take a low band, 600-700 MHz, and adding what now is considered a dynamic spectrum sharing. Now you're trying to build out coverage for as many users as you can. First, we were talking about really high-performance gigabit rates, then we're talking about, you know, wide area coverage. That was the second wave, and the third wave is really this mid-band. All the spectrum that's coming online now, that we are in the middle of the, sort of this, CBRS auction for PAL as we speak, and then we see the C-band coming out later this year, and then more recently, this other 100 MHz that came in.
You'll see several different waves, which is a little more complicated than in the past with what we have today in 5G. I also just think the infrastructure is lagging a little bit behind where the device capabilities are, because they're so intimately tied to where we were with 4G. Also, the Non-Standalone, Standalone issue, you know, really enables a lot of these use cases. We saw I mean, the iPhone didn't come out initially, that was one of the device gaps, potentially in the U.S., that maybe held back folks from buying the phones, even though they existed. We're going to see all that stuff come together later this year, and I think you'll see 2021, it start to really take off, because you'll have the coverage, you'll have DSS and low-band, and the mid-band will be building out.
would be hundreds of megabits of capable, of bit rate on the networks. I think that's a great, sort of evolution that we have ahead of us, between these different bands and their applications.
Maybe that's a good segue, too, in, into really our next topic on spectrum. There's multiple new spectrum bands coming online, as you all mentioned, whether it's C-band, CBRS, millimeter wave, or the new band that was identified earlier this last week. Is there one band in particular that you're excited about in terms of the impact on your business? Maybe Dan, why don't you start?
Yeah. Understanding that, you know, the deployments globally are in lots of different bands, and there's a lot of. I'll talk about my remarks around sub-6 GHz first, and then talk about millimeter wave. Within that sub-6 GHz, you know, we've for some time evolved to a very flexible architecture for the kinds of technologies that we develop, and so we have this software-defined capability and can be very agile in terms of responding to a given deployment at different customers' products, where they can use our product and then marry it up to the band-specific technologies, such as power amps and the antennas, of course, that are not part of our company's offerings. From our perspective, we're somewhat agnostic and have a flexible architecture.
Now, that said, the millimeter wave is a very, very different type of technology. The architectures are very different, and the types of components that we offer and we supply for millimeter wave are quite different and augmented to what we do in the low bands, in the sub-6 GHz. The best way to think about it is, you have to take all that data, and you have to shift it up into, you know, microwave frequencies. These millimeter wave radios for infrastructure have hundreds and hundreds of very, very tiny antennas that work cooperatively to steer a beam of information to a, to an end user.
There's this electronic steering and coordination of all these channels that require a lot of technology that we provide, and we embed in our circuits, in our chips. That's a really new and challenging type of problem for us. The another kind of contrast is at the lower bands, you might have, you know, at the traditional macro that would sit on a tower, you might have sort of tens of watts of power coming out of each antenna. There might be one or two or four antennas per sector.
In millimeter wave, you might have a quarter watt or a tenth of a watt coming out of each one of these antennas, so it's a very different type of powering, and that allows us to embed that type of technology in our circuitry as well. We're very excited by the technology requirements are growing very quickly. We're very excited by the, you know, what we can offer in that space. I think with respect to how customers would experience millimeter wave, my best analogy would be, you know, if you have really great Wi-Fi in your home, the sub-6 GHz will give you that experience, you know, on the road, walking down the street, you know, in a building, with 5G.
If you with millimeter wave, you have the experience as though you're directly plugged into your, the fiber that wire, you know, wired into the fiber in your home. The use cases, the types of things that you can do when you're plugged in, but you're with as though you were plugged in, but you're really, you know, on the street, in a stadium, that's a really tremendous amount of bandwidth and a tremendous amount of capability. I think this is where, you know, we'll see incredible advances in what the devices can do for our customers, and that will. True, we'll get the 5G radios, you know, in devices in the next couple of years, I think the devices themselves will change very substantially to take advantage of that type of technology.
Ed, how would you answer that question? I think, you know, American Towers called out CBRS in terms of an opportunity, but also, like, in the midband, what are your thoughts?
You know, I think all spectrum is good spectrum. You find ways, if you have the component technologies from ADI and others, to turn them into product and teams like MasTec to help build it. You know, from my perspective, midband is really the sweet spot, right? You know, when we look at the sort of low band, we're really kind of incrementally 4G, and low band being like, say, sub-2 GHz. You know, we're taking our band FDD channels, and we're just trying to change the waveform from 4G to 5G. You're gonna get wide area coverage, maybe you get some IoT. When you switch to Release 16, you can get low latency, depending on the architecture. That's kind of what most of cellular was, you know, for the last, let's say, three, four decades, right?
When we get to midband, the game shifted, and we start to look at, with CBRS in building neutral hosts, we have new entrants into the marketplace, potentially, that could use that spectrum. Instead of doing it with unlicensed technology, they're doing it with standard cellular technology and put together a plan to be able to coordinate that through the SAS and some of these other techniques that the FCC and the various standards bodies have enabled. We're really excited about that. More importantly, macro towers and the fundamental architecture of coverage and capacity, the Goldilocks spectrum is midband, right? If you start looking at the 100 MHz from 3, 4, all the way up to potentially, you know, the 3...
let's say, 3.9 or 4 gig, you know, we think the C-band, satellite P [uncertain ] to 80 MHz over a couple of years of tranches. We have, obviously, Sprint, T-Mobile, taking advantage of wider band channels in TDD at 2.5.
We have potentially the PAL auctions ending in the next few weeks or months, and that turning into potentially rural applications and other models that will drive the deployment of essentially macro tower deployments of massive MIMO, right? Which will provide the balance between all the antennas that Dan talked about in millimeter wave, and the balance between doing those at mid-band to get either beamforming gain or to get capacity at a, let's call it an MU-MIMO massive, a multi-user MIMO with a massive MIMO antenna. That's a fundamental transformation that we think will really enable wide area coverage, high performance, hundreds of megabits of capable 5G throughout, you know, the country.
Rick, what are your thoughts? I haven't heard a lot about maybe small cells in millimeter wave, but what are your thoughts more broadly?
Yeah, I mean, certainly in line with what Ed is saying, right? On the mid-band side, we're extremely excited, right? Because every one of those bands is gonna take a new radio and, you know, possibly a new antenna, right? You're talking about climbs at, you know, every one of the sites, right? Which is new attachments for the tower companies, but certainly for us, it's a great deal of activity to try to, you know, bring that together. On the millimeter side, you know, I think we all sort of agree, right, that, you know, the strategy involves all three, right? The narrowband, the mid-band, and the high band.
That's still gonna be a, you know, an important component, a tool, you know, a tool in a toolbox for the carrier to bring it into, you know, the high density areas, to bring together the experiences that Dan's speaking to, that are gonna be necessary for these services that are gonna be here in the next couple of years. That one continues to be the same in the sense that it, you know, it still has the permitting challenges, you know, the application, you know, challenges. What we see is that pipeline is growing. It's taken a while to develop because we all started with the same challenges of trying to get those NTPs. What we see is, you know, those are starting to come together, right?
That, that work will start to grow, you know, more and more in the next year and the year. You know, it's almost doubling year over year, over year, as the access points are becoming available to go construct, right? It's still gonna be very focused on the millimeter wave side, but we see the momentum there, and it's actually driving incremental fiber growth as well. It's triggering other work streams that are necessary. I think that's, millimeter wave is good, you know, in terms of growth. I think this, these mid bands are even gonna drive, and I'm sure Ed can speak to that, is, you know, even more, you know, even more macro sites, right?
That are gonna be necessary to get to these rural areas and be able to apply that in the way that it will, right, in these years to come. It's all positive.
Got it.
Great. I had a follow-up, but before I do, there is a question from the audience. The question is: What timeline do you see for C-Band Alliance spectrum at 3.7 to 3.98 GHz to become available for 5G? Assuming the auction goes off as planned in December, don't the incumbents have until the end of 2024 to vacate the spectrum? Anyone want to take that?
I could take a try at it. My best understanding is that the 1st 100 MHz should be cleared, or there's a good understanding that it should be cleared by the end of 2021, and the subsequent 180, the balance there, would be cleared by the end of 2023. In terms of deployments, you know, best case, you know, carriers would be, you know, that purchase part of that spectrum would be building out and deploying infrastructure in anticipation of that spectrum being cleared and being available in those two tranches. Whether they actually go ahead and do that's, you know, obviously, that's their, you know, that's their decision.
I agree with my colleagues that this C-band is going to be the workhorse, this mid-band is the workhorse for 5G in North America. It solves, you know, a huge number of problems, and it's going to be. There's a lot of, you know, incentive to really upgrade the networks for all the reasons that we've talked about. I think in terms of the millimeter wave, I think that's going to be, it's sort of still in trialing. I think if you go and look at Verizon, they can show you the coverage maps of what's out there today in millimeter wave. It's really, you know, some trials in different cities. I think they've shown some really positive results.
As you know, not as many folks in the cities these days as there were a year ago, but hopefully there will be next year. I think sort of proving that out, and really, really demonstrating the value, that's gonna probably be, in my opinion, maybe take a bit more time, and there'll be more focus on getting this mid-band, this C-band deployed, in that timeframe that I mentioned.
Great. Thanks, Dan. Just to follow up on that, I mean, as you guys all know, millimeter wave is a controversial topic within the industry. There's obviously a lot of skepticism, just given the technical issues that people have been having with it. What I'm hearing today is that, you know, potentially with the C-band auction coming, does that kind of make millimeter wave more of a niche case scenario? Are the operators potentially just using this as a potential stopgap measure, or is there real significant longer-term opportunities for millimeter wave? Why don't we start with Ed on that?
First of all, the short answer is yes, there's long-term opportunities. millimeter wave spectrum has a role to play, and I think that the operators will, and the community of innovation will drive use cases that will take advantage of that. If you get large parts of cities, covered at the street level, you can offload certain parts of the traffic, you can increase the demand on the street. Obviously, in-building is a different challenge for millimeter wave, so you'd have to look at the capital to getting that signal indoors. But outdoors and also with IAB, which is another technology that folks are looking at, Integrated Access and Backhaul, it will help relieve some of the fiber constraints and costs that may come with small cells having deployed. You can deploy some mesh technologies associated with...
I think there's repeaters that people are working on that help feed the signal in a fixed wireless application to work around foliage and other challenges. I think we've also seen in stadiums and in indoors, in arenas, where millimeter wave can provide significant capacity for fan use. Obviously, we're not in that situation today with the pandemic, but I think, obviously, we believe all that will come back. I think there's tremendous opportunities in AR/VR and some of those use cases in those open arenas that will take place, and I think Verizon's led that effort for sure. I think there's a long-term, you know, view that millimeter wave will play an important part of the 5G experience for sure.
In the case of, you know, sort of mid-band, you know, we still see that that's the fundamental, you know, the sort of workhorse or Goldilocks spectrum to take wideband TDD channels and make that available everywhere. Then you have technologies like Dual Connectivity, right? You can now connect. You don't have to have Carrier Aggregation, where you're all coming from the same tower, and you're just aggregating spectrum. You can aggregate at the radio on the device, different locations. Think of it as like Spider-Man, where I can basically grab RF and the beams that are being formed in millimeter wave or maybe an MU-MIMO channel, and I can combine those into a traffic capability that different use cases might be served by different access points.
I kind of feel like the complexity of the network and how a device interacts with the network will also take advantage of millimeter wave when it's available and when it's near you, and you can turbocharge your experience.
Okay. How about you, Rick? Are you kind of indifferent between millimeter wave versus sub-6 on your end, or does this impact you?
No, I mean, first of all, I think all spectrum is necessary, right? I think it's all gonna get utilized. Like I said before, I think this millimeter wave, you know, it's just another tool in the toolbox. Ultimately, the use cases for the services to come, it will need millimeter wave, right? Whether you're talking about the smart grids or, you know, the, you know, the vehicles, smart vehicles. If anything, it may be early. I think Dan spoke to, you know, now it's being tested and piloted, and certain use cases are being adopted. What Ed said about equipment is paramount, right?
I think these repeaters, you know, some of the technology, the antennas that are going to come with it are still early on. I think those will catch up, and then it'll get consumed because it'll be something that, in the next five years, will be necessary to achieve the speeds that are that the consumer is going to demand.
Okay. How about you, Dan? It sounds like you feel, you know, millimeter wave post the C-band auction is maybe gonna be confined to more niche applications, or is there still the potential for killer applications to be developed with millimeter wave?
Yeah, you know, I'm a believer in, you know, faster computers, better devices, and more spectrum. I think that, you know, I think that the, you know, the opportunities that we use our imagination around what could be possible if your device was 100 times faster, if the network were 100 times faster, 10 times more reliable. You know, we're actually seeing apparent, and I was a bit surprised, but apparently, the, some of the performance metrics or measures on millimeter wave 5G, show actually some really good results around battery life and around the energy required to receive, you know, bits of information. I think there's. I'm optimistic about the, you know, the imagination of the technology world to find really interesting applications and build really compelling devices.
I think we're all in agreement that the, you know, millimeter wave is very, very short distance, and so you need a lot of infrastructure. It needs to be very dense. You know, if you look at those maps on Verizon, you can see, you know, you need, you know, a bunch of access points or radios mounted on lamps or on streetlamps or on tops of buildings just for a, you know, a very, very, you know, very, very confined area of a couple of city blocks. You know, we're talking about thousands to cover New York, Boston, D.C.
Then if you think about the challenge of extending that outside of a, of a metro core or stadiums into, or, you know, very, very small areas into, you know, the suburbs and beyond, I think it's a real stretch of the imagination to see that millimeter wave will be ubiquitous and everywhere. I really would challenge that assertion. I think we'll see it as in urban cores and areas of concentration, in public squares, public spaces. I think for coverage at high performance and reasonably high capacity, that will be the domain of sub-6 GHz of these workhorse technologies that we've discussed.
Okay, great. Just to close things out, we're gonna move into the quick-fire section of our panel. I've got three questions that I'm gonna go in kind of rapid-fire order. Basically looking for just kind of a quick response and kind of what your just quick thoughts are. The first question is five years from now, what do you guys see as being the top use case for 5G? With that, why don't we start with you, Ed?
Yes. I would say that as we build out the network, get the latencies down, the consumer side should drive some things. Obviously, there's a lot of enterprise opportunities. Enterprises will take some time, except maybe on the factory store. I think AR/VR gaming, that would be probably the main driver that most people will see the value in 5G.
Okay. Dan?
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think in fice years, that will be dominant. I think we'll start to see some of these applications that can really benefit from the low latency and the reliability, whether it's logistics and drones and some of the IoT types of applications really starting to emerge over that, you know, once the technology is deployed and proven out.
Okay. Rick, top use case for you for 5G?
Yeah, I think just to add, I would just say I would add telemedicine to that, right? The virtual doctor right at home will be, you know, I think one of the, you know, one of the real beneficial use cases from it in the next five years.
Okay. You guys are basically just telling me we all have no clue what's gonna be the top use case, so basically. Okay, next question. Winners and losers. Within your sub-sector or looking at the ecosystem more broadly, the one rule is you cannot name your own company. Who do you think will be the biggest beneficiary associated with the rollout of 5G? Conversely, you know, who could be seeing more headwinds or be a little bit more challenged? Looking for one winner and one loser. Why don't we start with you, Dan?
Sure. I would say the technologies that we see being required for 5G are ones where we integrate at the system level. We're building more capability into our chips because we've got to drive the power out and the number of channels that are supported up, whether it's for massive MIMO in sub-6 or millimeter wave. I think the technology companies that integrate a lot of functionality and do so in a very flexible way, we talked about the range of spectrum, the range of applications, requires a lot of flexibility in the devices, and really what we call software-defined devices. I think companies that lead with that will be the winners.
I think, obviously, you know, we see that inflection point, it's the companies that have focused on sort of macro tower-based 4G. Those will probably, you know, those will probably roll off somewhat and be replaced by the massive MIMO tower base, as well as the, and in the future, the millimeter wave.
Okay. How about you, Rick? One winner, one loser.
Yeah, I would say on the service side, companies that can really bring end-to-end services and turnkey on these builds will certainly be winners because the complexity of the builds in the future will just require that integrated view and support to bring the economies of scale that are needed for price points. You know, in terms of, I'm not sure that I see losers, you know, because I just see this as such a hot industry in the next five years, that I think those that stay progressive will do well.
Okay. Ed?
Yeah, I kind of feel like some of the folks that will continue to benefit are the folks that we see today as the cloud folks. As we start to have networks become more software-oriented, we see virtualization, Telco Cloud occurring, and we see the Mobile Edge Computing moving the functionality that may start at consumer, but enterprise becoming more distributed. Those folks are gonna have a big role to play in the future. I kind of feel that the rich get richer in that sense. There are gonna be opportunities, right? A lot of innovation will break up some parts of the network, and what used to be monolithic, end-to-end designs, there'll be pressure on some of the traditional OEMs.
As we look at O-RAN, I think that some of the things we're seeing in the marketplace today is will parts of the network be unbundled and disaggregated in ways that could create opportunity for smaller companies to innovate? Will some of the other folks that currently do that, how do they defend their franchise?
Great. Okay, then last question. Bold predictions. What could happen over the next three years that could be most surprising? Any bold predictions you think could occur within your sub-sector or kind of the overall 5G industry over the next three to five years? Disruptions, consolidations, you know, feel free to think outside the box here. Rick, why don't we kick things off with you?
... You know, I certainly think CBRS can bring about some real innovation and new entrants into the business that are not the traditional carriers. I think there's an opportunity there for, you know, a rising star to innovate and sort of capture a lot of, whether you wanna call it private networks. I think that's the only one. You know, I also like the, you know, the O-RAN, right approach to the future. I mean, I didn't see it with SONET back in the fiber days. There was a lot of talk, it never materialized. We'll see now with O-RAN, I think that could certainly, again, bring about, you know, a whole new opportunity for those that are not the traditional OEM types, right?
I think those two areas are gonna be interesting to watch.
Right. Ed?
I'll get really bold here and say, I'll push you out a few more years, not 3, but say 2025, the smartphone is no longer the platform of choice, right? That particular device is gonna break out. You're gonna have probably no display. You'll have a modem, maybe you'll have a camera that's for core , if you will, and then you're gonna have a series of wearable capabilities that are gonna Natural Language Processing to enter your data, to visualize things through glass and other means, where you could project what's happening on a broader display or any environment that you're operating in. I kinda see that smartphone peak is kinda where we are, and then eventually, it's gonna take all that functionality that's getting harder and harder to squeeze into that form factor.
It's gonna break out. We've already seen a watch, and I think there'll be a lot of innovation in the device side, particularly with some of the IoT and sensors that we can build as a little, let's say, a PAN or Personal Area Network around that core modem, which would be, let's say, a combination of millimeter wave, as we discussed, but most likely, it's gonna be driven by the wide area coverage of mid-band in 5G. That's my view.
I like that. I look forward to connecting with you and Vail in five years to see if that comes true. Dan, you get to close things out here.
I think, you know, I mentioned some of these applications. I think I look at, you know, us on a Zoom and a teleconference as sort of the kind of the video equivalent of text messaging, and see where we've gone with social networking from text to live streaming. I think the ways that we'll interact with each other through new devices, through Augmented Reality. Being able to do that from anywhere, that's gonna require, you know, the network uptime, the reliability, the bandwidth of infrastructure, but it will require, you know, devices and software and management layers as well.
I think that, you know, one of these big disruptions has been just the rapid adoption and acceptance of visiting customers virtually, engaging in these kinds of discussions, virtually visiting with our friends, socially, virtually. Those experiences are going to really transform. I was on a partner meeting with a technology company, and they couldn't do it live this year, so they sent everyone VR goggles, and we all wore our VR glasses for the keynotes, and it actually worked. It was actually a much more immersive experience. I gotta tell you, I paid more attention to the speaker because I couldn't be on my device checking my emails at the same time.
Even just the experience today with, you know, technology that's, you know, really in its early days, it is a different level of experience. I think we'll see these improved networks and improved devices, give us a whole new set of ways to interact, and they'll become much more commonplace.
Great. Okay, it looks like we're over time. I wanted to thank all our panelists for a great conversation this morning.
All right.
For joining us, everybody.
Thank you.
Take care, everybody.