XC Webcast 2024-Mobile Future Forward Recap (with Chetan Sharma)

In this episode of the neXt Curve reThink podcast, renowned industry and tech analyst, Chetan Sharma, joins Leonard Lee of neXt Curve to recap the 15th annual installment of Mobile Future Forward 2024, which brought together industry leaders to discuss the intersection of technology curves, such as 5G and AI, and their impact on the ecosystem. The event’s theme, “Quantumverse: Navigating Exponential Frontiers,” focused on how leaders can navigate the turbulent waters of exponential growth and build ecosystems and partnerships.

The summit focused on automation at scale, exploring its progress and challenges. The industry faces bottlenecks in storytelling and implementation, hindering the realization of 5G’s potential.

Find out more about Mobile Future Forward at https://www.mobilefutureforward.com/

Chetan & Leonard discuss the following topic that mattered from Mobile Future Forward 2024:

• What is Mobile Future Forward? (2:05)
• Quantumverse explained (6:04)
• Navigating exponential frontiers (8:10)
• The key themes of Mobile Future Forward 2024 (9:20)
• The challenge of storytelling in telco and 5G (17:30)
• Has 5G been a failure? (20:35)
• The future of the RAN: AI-RAN? (22:02)
• Key findings from Mobile Future Forward 2024 (24:55)

Connect with Chetan Sharma at www.chetansharmaconsulting.com. Hit both of us on LinkedIn and take part in our industry and tech insights. 

Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout - https://nextcurvepodcast.buzzsprout.c... - or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.  

Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights that matter.

Chapters

• 2:05 What is Mobile Future Forward?
• 6:04 Quantumverse explained
• 8:10 Navigating exponential frontiers
• 9:20 The key themes of Mobile Future Forward 2024
• 17:30 The challenge of storytelling in telco and 5G
• 20:35 Has 5G been a failure?
• 22:02 The future of the RAN: AI-RAN?
• 24:55 Key findings from Mobile Future Forward 2024

Transcript

Leonard Lee: 0:06

NextCurve. Hey, everyone. Welcome to NextCurve Rethink Webcast, where we cover the tech and industry topics and happenings that matter. And I'm Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst at NextCurve, and today, I'm joined by the Honorable Chetan Sharma of Chetan Sharma Consulting. And you know what? You have the privilege and we have the privilege actually of having the man on the show. He is the man to share key insights and takes from one of the premier gatherings of telco and tech leaders in any year. He's been doing this for how many years, Chetan? 16? now?

Chetan Sharma: 0:51

15. We just completed the 15th

Leonard Lee: 0:52

year. 15 years of Mobile Future Forward, which took place last month, on the 5th of September, actually, to be very specific, in Seattle. And so, hey, Chetan, my friend, welcome! It's so good to have you back. Oh my gosh, it's been so long.

Chetan Sharma: 1:11

Thanks, Leonard, for the warm welcome. Yeah,

Leonard Lee: 1:13

of course. So, what have you been up to?

Chetan Sharma: 1:17

Oh, just catching my breath after the event and just trying to figure out where things are likely to land in the next 12 months. And so, just absorbing what transpired at MFF and then making sense of the world.

Leonard Lee: 1:34

Yeah, you were in DC, right?

Chetan Sharma: 1:35

Yeah, I was in DC this week, yeah.

Leonard Lee: 1:37

Yeah, so wonderful. Hey, before we get started remember to like, share and comment on this episode. Subscribe to the Rethink Podcast here on YouTube and on Buzzsprout. And take us on the road and on your jog, on your drive, on, listen to us on your favorite podcast platform. And Chet and Sharma, he will be providing his information toward the end of the Podcast so stay tuned all the way through. Okay, and so with that chetan I really want to delve into mobile future forward you never invite me so I do my feelings do get hurt But I understand. I understand. Okay. It's your show. And man, how do you bring all these people? That are just luminaries in the industry. Industry leaders. technology leaders together in one place. I mean, I think a lot of folks that I've spoken to in the industry are pretty astonished by how you've put this program together. That really is that singularity, you know, that's that annual gathering of the people that are the movers and shakers in the industry and the tech that's involved.

Chetan Sharma: 2:56

Thank you. Well, first of all, I wanted to congratulate you to On, having such a good streak of next curve it's not easy to put it together week after week. And so you've done a tremendous job of sticking with it.

Leonard Lee: 3:09

Yeah, that's that's rule number one, right? That's the first thing you have to do. You have to stick with it. Yes. Thank you. But this is about you, my friend. We want to know the secret.

Chetan Sharma: 3:20

Sure. It's, you know, I've been in the industry for 30 years. And I've been there since the. Early days of one G. It was not even called the G. Then it was amps. But analog mobile. And I've seen the changes through every cycle. And so if you stay with an industry long enough, you understand it's dimensions. You understand what makes it tick? What's likely to succeed? What's likely to fail? Uh, you become friends with players in the ecosystem because they, you are growing up with them in the industry. So as such our goal has always been to bring thought leaders to really brainstorm what's on their mind. Right? It's not a summit where you do come in and have marketing pitches or product pitches. It's really to come and share what's on your mind. And we've been fortunate that people. Respect that and adhere to the guidelines in terms of no matter who it is on the stage. They try to share what's on their mind and which is critical to understand and separate the hype from reality in terms of, because people are spending billions of dollars into pursuing their directions. But sometimes they might be based on false assumptions or you might require some course correction, minor or major. And it's important to hear Several peers talk about how technology is progressing, what they're learning from it, the areas of collaboration, the areas which need more work how these technologies are going to be consumed by others. Are there fundamental misconceptions in the industry or there's something not breaking through? And so to do that, you need to provide a platform where people can Comfortable discussing that we're not focused on gotcha questions. We're not focused on, just the marketing or the corporate pitches. We are really interested in understanding what's on your mind. Like, what goes on in your boardrooms? What's going on? How are you thinking about the larger picture? Of where the industry is and that leads to very interesting conversations and that attracts a lot of the senior leaders year after year. Yeah,

Leonard Lee: 5:34

yeah congratulations 15 years. That's pretty amazing and to put together a sustainable agenda and purpose for an event like that is no easy feat. And it's really admirable. That you've been able to put this program together for this community of leadership in the ecosystem, as you put it and I know that that, it's high, it's a very highly regarded event. So, congratulations on that, but. Oh, what was the theme about? What was the theme of this year? Yeah, sure. Future forward 2024.

Chetan Sharma: 6:12

Yeah. So it was quantumverse navigating exponential frontiers. And so maybe I'll break it down as to what it means. And so quantum verse comes from the era of quantum leaps. Yeah. And so our thesis has been for a few years that it is really the intersection of Technology curves or technology growth areas that create disruption and we have quantified that. We have really studied that in depth. And so we feel that just like LTE smartphones and cloud led to a significant disruptions over the last, 10, 15 years probably more precise we think the same thesis will apply going forward. And so we have been on the journey of understanding what that means and how should senior leaderships across the ecosystem, both inside the wireless world, as well as the industries that take advantage of it. Should come to understand it and so by technology curves, I mean, the synchronous curves like curves that grow simultaneously, right? Like 5G, like AI, like robotics and edge computing and so on and so forth and what they tend to do is they intersect and they pull each other up. And they impact other the growth of other segments, and that's what leads to all sorts of new startups, new ideas. And now we are living in the era where AI is a fundamental layer that's still being formed. But then you have other things like 5G is a fundamental layer connectivity is a fundamental layer to be more precise. Yeah. And Industries are taking advantage of it. New categories are being formed in that environment of quantum worse. Leaders have a unique opportunity as well as challenge as to how do you navigate? How do you write the ship? How do you change direction? How do you build ecosystems and partnerships? And that's where the navigating the exponential frontiers come from exponential frontiers is something clearly. Is happening in front of our eyes, we are in the middle of it. So we don't appreciate it. How fast it's happening, but if you step back and see the progress of the last 1 year, 2 years, 3 years that it has been just off the charts. And so it requires. A very singularly focused leadership to navigate this turbulent waters. And so what does it take to really navigate these exponential frontiers? That's where quantum was exponential front frontiers comes from.

Leonard Lee: 8:42

But Chetan you might want to be careful here, because if you hang out with the folks in the generative AI supercomputing realm, they might be telling you, you need to upgrade exponential to logarithmic. So, you know, well, it's, yeah, yeah,

Chetan Sharma: 8:58

it is actually we have studied that as well as to what happens then it is, we, we have termed it deterioration effect. Okay. And where the curves grow faster than exponential because of the synchronous S curve effect.

Leonard Lee: 9:10

Okay. Yeah. No, it's been a while since we visited this topic and you and I've had conversations about this before. But this year, what are some of the themes? The themes are changed this year in terms of the, I guess the topics, because you usually have a set of topics that you're saying with the leadership and it's also informing the agenda that you put together. And and were there any changes and what were some of the key topics that you guys were these curve topics, if you will, as curve topics that you guys discussed.

Chetan Sharma: 9:42

The main kind of if I have to just sum it up. The entire summit as to what the focus area was, it was around automation at scale. And all of these things lead to automation. Automation, humans have been trying for a thousand years, but how do you do automation at scale of very rapid pace? And these are the tools that are just technologies that are described. These are tools to help you achieve that. And where are we in that progress of automation at scale is the, that's what we wanted to dig in more. And so we talked about cognitive platforms how do you unlock new categories of revenue for the operators and the larger ecosystem? How do you use the underlying AI layer to enable things in the radio network, things with the radio network? How do you expose these capabilities to applications and services? How do you use fixed wireless fiber? And just look at, what does it take to scale in the enterprise realm is the bottom line, because that's where the bulk of the revenues are going to be going forward. And so we were just like, looking at what factors are there? Are there some use cases that inform us? Is that the right strategy? And so we had some really awesome speakers and leaders from the Yeah. Scott Lawrence from Verizon Han from Nokia, Erica k from Ericsson Wolf, from T-Mobile and Gil Rosen from, so these guys laid the foundation of how the ecosystem should think about progress and what they are themselves seeing and investing in. Progress and so the broader picture was laying out what does it take to automate at scale or in multiple dimensions, like, how do you automate the network management piece that itself is like a day long conference, right? If you go in the nitty gritty. But then how do you do you know, if you're talking about, say, industries ports manufacturing, how do you really automate? It's one thing to provide connectivity in a factory. It's another thing to build applications that can help you automate safety, compliance fall detection, anomaly detection, fixing of falls and things like that. And so this automation at scale. That is pretty much the whole value chain in different ways. Now you could be automating at scale at the computing layer. You could be automating at scale at the network layer privacy and security layer, or the application layer. But it's moving beyond the POCs and really going and going from Tens of millions of dollars to tens of tens of thousands of billions of dollars.

Leonard Lee: 12:18

So where, what state are we in? If we were to, if we were to look at automation as a progression, obviously I think everyone's trying to move toward some form of, or degrees of auto. Mm-Hmm. autonomous automation. Mm-Hmm. or what sort, what's this consensus? In terms of where. Where we are, I mean, there's so many different domains, so I'm sure that's a really difficult question to answer. But what is that feeling in terms of the frontier and the opportunity versus where. These leaders feel that we are at the moment,

Chetan Sharma: 12:58

so there are bits and pieces of progress. And so if you look at just the foundation layer you know, the same day, Verizon announced the acquisition of frontier to bolster their fiber offerings talk quite a bit about the success they are seeing with fixed wireless access. And you're clearly seeing the connectivity layer playing a significant role. But then on top of that and there was a whole discussion around AI in operations and AI in networking and how does that inform the 6G path that we are on right now, starting to figure out what 6G means. But then we had discussions around autonomous systems. Their companies are using either robots or drones or delivery vehicles. They're completely autonomous to and to automate functions. Like there's a faction company called faction and that has automated the. The delivery function using these small vehicle, not cars, but small vehicles that can go and deliver to customers. Now, it requires integration of several technologies together to make that happen. But they are operating in 2 or 3 cities in Texas now. And they're learning from it as to how to scale nationwide. Right. And so then there are people who are building, we had a very interesting panel on deep tech. Problems that are not easily solvable, how do you put a crack team on it to go do things that are three to five years out? And by the time we get to three to five years, it's normal technology workflow. And so we talked about security, we talked about doing research in satellites and space labs new building, new space stations. And so I think technology is like multidimensional, but then at the end of the day, the customer cares about how do I move my business forward? Does having us something in space help me with something here on the ground? If it is connectivity, that's one, but is it like, can you do some fundamental research that can be only done in space? But the output I can benefit on the planet earth. And so that's what the new space station is all about. And then so there are different dimensions. So let's talk about connectivity first, which is fixed wireless is one of the biggest success stories in the US which is on target to generate a 10 billion in aggregate which is the fastest growth of any new category in the wireless industry ever by as much as two X faster. And it continues, right? It's not slowing down. It's T Mobile just announced that they will up their target to 12, 13 million households. The Verizon has done going the same path, and so it's not slowing. The fixed wireless train is not slowing down. We talked quite a bit about the progress in China with respect to how they. Are truly seeing the massive growth in the enterprise sector and we can take some data points from that market in terms of how automation of their ports, which are fully automated automation and healthcare facilities, automation and smart city projects. And how do we move from this perpetual. P. O. C. Mass to actual deployments. What does it take? Why are we not able to get out of this? Having being doing these P. O. C. S. Private networks form another layer of connectivity that is starting to take off in the Western markets. But it's 10 times in China in terms of size. And so I think there are data points, both in the U S and in China, unfortunately not much in Europe. And a lot of data points in India. And I think these three markets are the main drivers of the industry. What happens in US, India and China will pretty much define what happens in the world in the next decade or so.

Leonard Lee: 16:59

So what were some of the bottlenecks that you ended up discussing with some of the participants and attendees? There must be some high level challenges, right? Things that, that create the I guess the perceived lack or Progress, you know, um,

Chetan Sharma: 17:23

So we had a fascinating panel with Gil Rosen, CMO of MDocs on the art of storytelling. And I wanted to have that discussion because I feel like industry doesn't do a good job of telling its story. And mdocs, I think has done a very good job of telling its own story. So we want, I wanted the audience to learn from their experience as to how they came about and. Um, their make it amazing campaign is just so well done and it has changed the perception of MDocs in, in terms of employees, their partner, their customers, and so on and so forth. And I think we suffer from some of the same issues like not being able to articulate that benefits of 5G. We get stuck in kind of the marketing land and not being able to tell the 5G story very capably, even the senior most leaders in the industry are guilty of that. And so we wanted to expose that and say, Hey, guys, you need to do a better job of how you tell your own story, focus on what's real, what's tangible versus, the use cases that will not come to fruition anytime soon. And so that gives more credibility to your story versus trying to do something 5g is not. And that overshadows what because from a technology point of view, 5G has delivered whatever it promised now it's up to the implementation. It's up to how you sell it. How you expose it and all of that. But that's not the problem of 5G. It's the problem of how you communicate and how you implement and how you execute.

Leonard Lee: 18:56

Yeah I totally agree with that. There's a lot of folks nowadays talking about how 5G has failed or it's not delivering to promises. And I agree and disagree. I disagree that 5G as a technology and roadmap has failed because it's a roadmap. It has. Certain sequence of features and technologies that get infused into it to enable a progressively more advanced set of capabilities, but then also new architectures. And but yes the hype has totally failed. The entire industry and I agree with you that storytelling and I don't, and one of the things that I think I want to get your take on this, we need to move away from narratives because the thing is that's the problem we need to. Narratives are stories that you can concoct any kind of stuff.

Chetan Sharma: 19:54

Well, that needs to be realistic. That needs to be grounded in reality.

Leonard Lee: 19:58

Right. And it needs to be based on, I think, value propositions that, that a, your customer who is going to be more likely an operator is going to be able to extract value out of. In one way or the other in the near term, even if it's a, if it's an ambitious motion that they're pursuing to have that first grounding. So, uh, but I don't know, it sounds like you're on this, that is like what you guys are talking about. But

Chetan Sharma: 20:29

yeah, if you look at You know, whenever I ask a question, somebody says, Oh, 5G has been a failure. What are you measuring? Like one, what dimensions, right? And if you're measuring on hype stuff then maybe I can grant you some points. But if you look at the revenue side, it has generated. More same or more revenue that for you generated in the same amount of time. So it was 4g a failure. It has completely created a new category of fixed wireless that completely is decimating the cable industry. That's not a failure. China is generating billions of dollars in the enterprise segment from 5g. That's not a failure. India has grown 250 million subs in record time. That's not a failure. Now that doesn't mean everybody is succeeding. And there are equal number of operators who have deployed 5G and their ARPU has not moved at all and even declined. And so clearly that is a problem, but that doesn't mean 5G has been a failure. So I think it's just that reminds me of that story of the lion man and the elephant that depending on what narrative you want to stitch, you will find a story there. But, and very few. People, especially journalists, take a more comprehensive look at the evolution. Same like AI either is going to kill humanity or it's the, the next best thing that has ever occurred. Truth is always in the, in somewhere in the middle.

Leonard Lee: 21:56

Yeah, absolutely. I know that you've been getting pretty involved in the AI as it relates to the network the RAN and everything else. And so I suspect that was a topic of conversation as well, right?

Chetan Sharma: 22:12

Yeah, we went really deep into because one of the things that I've been highlighting and pushing the industry to rethink is the APEX. Yeah. Dilemma and without fixing the optics problem, you do not have enough cash flow to invest in new ideas, new categories of services and so on and so forth. So unless we really attack the OPEX issue there's a challenge. And so we had some really bright people talking about how they are looking at OPEX and what's actually working. And so AI plays a critical role in understanding network planning and management and drive testing. Closed loop anomaly detection traffic management, video traffic management. And so the number of areas where AI helps you figure things out much faster. In some cases it is a closed loop system where AI figures it out, fixes things as they come along and manages it. In other areas, it is human in the loop or it could be early days of figuring it out. Like, you know, network GPT type of solutions where it's still early to train from the data, which is very operative specific. And then you have the whole category of and these are all linked, a whole category of customer service churn management, fraud detection, and so on and so forth in a perfect world. All these will be linked in a way that. A customer experiencing some problems, they get fixed. If they don't get fixed, they get escalated. So that churn stays down and marketing offers get passed on and so forth. Right now, they're very discrete events. And so people are seeing pockets of success in these individual discrete functions. And they're trying to connect the dots in the whole operation. Layer right. And so and then the whole category of energy management is a new area that where is helping where you figure out when to light up the cell site and when and to turn it down in the effective way without compromising the user experience.

Leonard Lee: 24:16

Right.

Chetan Sharma: 24:16

Yeah.

Leonard Lee: 24:18

Yeah. It's old and new at the same time right now. Obviously the generative AI stuff is

Chetan Sharma: 24:23

generative, AI is new. Yeah. My first job I was, we were doing machine learning Yeah. To detect detect fraud in the analog system. So ai. Machine learning or they used to, we used to call them neural nets at the time, but it's essentially the same principle use the data to train and then use that to run decisions. Right. Exactly. And that was like 30 or 30 years ago.

Leonard Lee: 24:46

They're calling the decision engines back in, for all the front office stuff, the CRM stuff. So, yeah. Now, what about some key findings, overarching findings from the discussions and maybe things that you would want to share or tell the ecosystem at large?

Chetan Sharma: 25:10

So, I think the biggest opportunity stays in the enterprise. That's the, one of the biggest takeaways from the discussions how do you get there? That's, it's not straightforward. A lot of things have to align. We do have to be better at telling our story. In terms of, you cannot, if you're trying to sell a technology, generally. Falls flat that you cannot go up at the enterprise door and say, Hey, I have technology, a, B, and C to sell you. But if you say, let's figure out what you need for the next 5 years and what your roadmap looks like, and then figure out how to use the various state of the art technologies, then the conversation is better. And so it requires some learning to make that shift. But it was clear that's on everybody's mind, like, how do you make that shift and talk to the enterprise in the way they like to be talked to? And so that's very Second nature to the tech industry, but it's not second nature to the telecom industry in the U. S.

Leonard Lee: 26:06

I don't know. I wouldn't say that. I think I guess people who

Chetan Sharma: 26:10

are work. Yeah. Who are working with the enterprises directly. I mean, generally, that has to be the system integrators who do the requirements work and sure. The work that. Really understanding, you know, what the requirements are. Uh, uh, but then it feeds into other tech partners like Microsoft's and Cisco's of the world.

Leonard Lee: 26:27

Yeah. The interesting thing is this, a lot of what we're dealing with, especially along the frontiers that you, I think really fostered discussion in a lot of it is net new. So I think it, My observation is tough for everyone and having, been, I'm, I was a partner principal at IBM, PwC, all the SIs that you're talking about consulting firms, and it's not easy. There's a learning curve and everyone goes through that, so I think that's the interesting thing about the topics that you talk about,

Chetan Sharma: 27:01

yeah,

Leonard Lee: 27:02

or future forward. Yeah. You know, the things that I deal with a lot as a handless consultant.

Chetan Sharma: 27:08

Yeah, and one of the things we try to do is bring in the enterprises as well. Yeah, I noticed that.

Leonard Lee: 27:14

Costco, right?

Chetan Sharma: 27:14

Yeah, we had Costco. We had the LA Olympics. And so we have the, one of the biggest hospitals, you know, State of Washington Healthcare, the chief digital officer from there. And so we try to bring in enterprise. And have the suppliers and the vendors talk to them and understand their requirements. And where the industry might be falling short and those are very healthy conversations that lead to actual deals and partnerships at forward. Yeah.

Leonard Lee: 27:43

Yeah. That I mean, that's wonderful. I hopefully 1 of these days you allow me to attend. Just kidding. No it's pretty remarkable that you put together such an amazing program for the folks who attend the companies and the leaders who attend, but chatting, I really want to thank you for jumping on. It's a real pleasure and privilege and, I want to give you an opportunity to share with our audience how they can get in touch with you, how they can engage with your research, how they can engage with your consulting, and most importantly, mobile future forward.

Chetan Sharma: 28:26

Well, there are just two. Thanks for the opportunity. Two straightforward websites, sherman.com and mobile feature power.com. You'll find all the information you need.

Leonard Lee: 28:36

It's short and sweet. I like that. Okay, well, you know what? Hey everyone, thanks for, tuning in and please subscribe to the next Curve YouTube channel. Easiest thing to do is to subscribe to the next curve research portal and media center@www.next curve.com. For a constant diet of the tech and industry insights that matter. And with that Chetan, once again, thank you so much for jumping on and sharing your insights and sharing the outcomes and your takes from Mobile Future Forward 2024. Hey Leonard, thanks for having me.