The neXt Curve reThink Podcast
The official podcast channel of neXt Curve, a research and advisory firm based in San Diego founded by Leonard Lee focused on the frontier markets and business opportunities forming at the intersect of transformative technologies and industry trends. This podcast channel features audio programming from our reThink podcast bringing our listeners the tech and industry insights that matter across the greater technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector.
Topics we cover include:
-> Artificial Intelligence
-> Cloud & Edge Computing
-> Semiconductor Tech & Industry Trends
-> Digital Transformation
-> Consumer Electronics
-> New Media & Communications
-> Consumer & Industrial IoT
-> Telecommunications (5G, Open RAN, 6G)
-> Security, Privacy & Trust
-> Immersive Reality & XR
-> Emerging & Advanced ICT Technologies
Check out our research at www.next-curve.com.
The neXt Curve reThink Podcast
Top Insights from Mobile World Congress 2025 (with Earl Lum and Marc Pous)
Welcome to the neXt Curve reThink series that focuses on the present and the future of mobile wireless technologies and industry - The Radio to the RIC.
In this installment of the Radio to the RIC series, Leonard and Earl and special guest, Marc Pous, the IoT Giant, provide their full recap of their puts and takes from Mobile World Congress 2025 held in Barcelona. The trio just finished grueling week of analyst briefings, interviews, dinners, and receptions settling at Fonda Peppa, a wonderful restaurant by a Michelin-star chef to enjoy good food and drink while synthesizing thoughts on the key takes and insights from #mwc2025
The trio talk about:
* (3:11) Initial impressions
* (8:02) What is the state of AI-RAN? Is it Open RAN Season 2?
* (12:51) Has GenAI hype been hiding good stuff happening in AI for telco?
* (15:54) The year of some strange geopolitics that trouble the industry
* (19:02) 10 years of IoT Stars! Congrats!
* (23:18) A MWC 2024 retrospective. How did we do?
* (30:29) The GSMA seems to have learned its lesson - Connectivity First!
* (37:11) Where will we land at MWC 2026?
* (44:56) Delusions of grandeur
Feel free to comment and share your disagreement and argumentation. We are happy to learn from you.
Remember to like, subscribe to the neXt Curve reThink YouTube channel. Also, follow neXt Curve by subscribing at www.next-curve.com.
Check out EJL Wireless Research at www.ejlwireless.com and contact Earl Lum for his new Radio report.
Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst at NextCurve. And, uh, we are here at a restaurant called Fonda Jeppa, which is muy delicioso. Delicioso. Right? Right? This is a very, very special episode of the NextCurve Rethink Podcast. And, um, this is going to become a Annual tradition, every single time we come to MWC, we're gonna have a nice dinner, right? And we're gonna have some nice wine. See, this is beautiful wine, by the way. Not AI wine, eh? As they say in Spain. Yeah, he just took the trash out, so don't mind him. It happens. It happens. Okay. We're trying to keep this all natural organic because we're going to have a natural and organic conversation about. The world Congress. Marvel or Congress, right? And so we're. Errol and I have been here since Saturday, and, um, it's been a crazy week. It's always a crazy week, right? I don't even think we need to say this next year, because you can all assume it was just a crazy week. So, anyways, I'm here with my co host for this annual MWC recap. 2025. Barcelona, right? Not Barcelona, Barcelona. And we have Mark Post, and I pronounced it correctly this time. Last time, I didn't. I discovered how to pronounce his name, and he was very happy, and I'm very happy that he didn't crush me because, you know, he is very big. And then I'm here also Burl Lum of EJL Wireless. He is the master of the antenna, the radio, and the DU, right? And so, any of you folks out there that want to know When are the radios going to come back, right?
Earl Lum:When are the antennas going to
come back? When are the antennas going to come back? You're going to call him. And if you want to learn why the antenna matters, you're going to call him. So, let's get started, gentlemen.
Marc Pous:So No, I'm worried. The antennas are going to come back. Why? Sure,
Earl Lum:they never run away. So, so,
Marc Pous:so, so we didn't, no, no
Earl Lum:kidding. You will be wearing a colander on your head to protect you from the electromagnetic waves. Yeah,
so, um, hey, what did you think about this year's event? I think
Earl Lum:there was some surprising, uh, observations regarding booth sizes. Regarding some major countries, I mean companies, that had downsized their booths. And I think there was obviously this whole, uh, the two letters of AAN I plastered in every hall from number 1 all the way to number 8. 1. And at the end of the day, I think a lot of the companies that were there, at least the ones that I saw, Uh, feel pretty good about where they're going to be, uh, in 2025 and beyond because they make hardware. I don't know about the other companies that are not making hardware, but at least the ones that I talk to, and where they're focused on right now, uh, things are starting to look good and better from where they were maybe a year ago or two. Oh,
okay. Well, they're kind of looking It was kind of looking kind of Rim, right? It was. Okay. So I think things have bottled out
Earl Lum:and now we're at a point where, as we look at this next phase, before we get to 5G advance, before we get to whatever 6G will be, how do we continue to upgrade the network, add more capacity, etc.
Awesome. So what about you Mark? Yeah, AI was everywhere. It was too much for me. Kind of disgusting, it's disgusting the word that you would use to describe it.
Marc Pous:And then we were, you know, we were mentioning, you know, the mix of smart and AI in the same sentence. I mean, it's too much. Smarter AI. No, no, but I
thought we made this clear, Mark. There is incredibly dumb AI, okay? You do AI wrong, it's incredibly stupid. Yeah. And it causes a lot of problems, right? The, the, the thing is, is it still an ai, right? So, yeah, no, or not, maybe not, but, well, from a marketing perspective, I think it was a,
Marc Pous:but now I have very clear, so we have been now through these hype from iot to today, so I have very clear that AI will be the same. And in the future, in no question, five, 10 years, AI will disappear from the vocabulary. Yes, IMT disappear, right? Um, it's not disappearing, not disappearing, but Tesla doesn't say that it's an
IOT car, right? Well, yeah, because what, what have, what have we been saying? What have I been saying for seven years? Stop talking about IOT. It's all about value. It's about the application. Understand that it's an aspect of a business solution, right? And you know, the irony is that I say that all the time. I know it's like frigging hard, right? It's not an easy thing to do. That's why, you know, on IOT coffee talk, IOT stars, you know, it's something that we always talk about because that's something that we try to promote within the IOT community, but we also know that how difficult it is for companies that are simply doing hardware or they're just focused on the connectivity and, you know, um, but. I think, you know, quite honestly, I'll tell you something. I think there's going to be a bit of a resurgence of IoT in the coming future because I think You know, one of the things that you really good at get a good impression of is the fact that, um, like AI and to very, to be very specific, not generative
Marc Pous:AI,
the ML stuff, you know, the more, um, uh, what do you call it? Classical type machine learning, the things that people have been working on forever in the embedded world, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, that's going to become, um, that's going to become more powerful, number one, closer to the edge, closer to the sensor. And I think that's going to create some new opportunities. And you know, it's all about perception. You know, who is it that said Remember, Oh, no, it was somebody on stage that says, um, what's that? Yeah. He said, IOT is about collecting data. Yes. Sensors and collecting data. It's as easy as that. Right. And, you know, of course we have to give a lot of credit to the godfather of IOT, Rob Tiffany. Where are you? Where are you? How can you know what I can't understand is how IDC can hold that guy back from being here. It's ridiculous. IDC, you must unleash the Tiffany every MWC. But, um, anyways. Okay. So what did you think about? AI. AI RAN. Let's talk about AI RAN because that's about as relevant as AI is to Earl Lum of EJL Wireless.
Earl Lum:The AI IN RAN or the AI 4 RAN, and certainly the AI 4 RAN, not the number 4, but F O R.
Yeah.
Earl Lum:I think a more realistic approach to look at what could be done with the RAN instead of having a three letter acronym beginning with the letter G and ending in U, that is going to be an edge macro site and that is going to consume kilowatts of power that the site does not have. So, the potential incremental benefits. of saving money, not making money for AI in RAN, uh, has to be really considered. I think everyone under, everyone understands how AI saves money, improves efficiency, uh, and all of that. But making money is a completely different story that I, I think there is no tangible. Evidence of how that could be done at this point.
And I think that's like a consistent message that we heard across the board. And it's one of the questions I was asking. Or, you know, it's not even a question I was asking. I was You know, well, no, it was a question, sorry. I have to ask a question to get an answer, right? Well, consistently
Earl Lum:Unless you ask yourself.
Yeah, yeah. It's late. Like I said last year, we worked hard for you to bring these insights, you know, and how many steps did you put in?
Earl Lum:One day I put in 13, 000 and 55, which is about 3. 37 miles. And that was the day I unfortunately had to go near Hall 8, which I regretted.
Yeah. Well, you know, as they say in American, holy moly. That's like, that's a bad man. Yeah. Holy moly. A robin. Yeah. I mean, they, they speak American. So, um. They speak English. No, they speak American. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the, the monetization piece is this thing that everyone claims is revenue. Nobody knows. No one.
Earl Lum:Right, but if it knows about saving money,
you can do it. Saving money, right. But one of the things that's quite evident, and it's the, it's the design decision that RAN engineers have to make is figuring out, as they look at AI, how do you balance the benefits with the cost of intelligence? Like what you're saying, right?
Earl Lum:And does it need to be Analyze in real time, or Once every hour, once a day, what is it that you're trying to look at that is causing a problem in your network?
Yeah.
Earl Lum:It could be a cluster of cells, it could be a few issues with the actual PCI codes and the other things that are in the network. Maybe a bunch of things. So the question is, is what do you want this thing to be looking for in this pool of data that's been collected across the network to find and improve specific tangible functions?
You know what? I discovered just now that I speak a hell of a lot better after a couple of glasses of wine. Isn't that strange?
Marc Pous:It is for you. Yeah, but you drank more than a couple, so what happened after that?
It
Marc Pous:was
the mix of the white and
Marc Pous:the red. Oh,
maybe.
Marc Pous:You know that Don't out
me like that ever again,
Marc Pous:okay? But, you know, in computer science there is as well a theory that if you There is a specific moment of drinking alcohol that you program You write code better.
Earl Lum:You're in the zone.
Marc Pous:Exactly, but you don't need to drink more. Because then
Earl Lum:you're out of the
Marc Pous:zone.
Earl Lum:Exactly.
Marc Pous:Really? I don't remember the name of that theory, but yeah, maybe you
are
Marc Pous:in
the
Marc Pous:zone.
It's called the scaling law of logarithmic exponential coding efficiency, right? Yeah. I don't know. I don't either. Well, I'm
Earl Lum:a hardware
guy. Anyway. Uh, so yeah, that, that, that, that, that's one of the big realities. I don't think, um, the hype has factored that in and, you know, like my, my, you know, Impression of this year's event was this, just like at AWS re invent there's this huge layer of marketing nonsense AI stuff, generative AI, okay, that is super unsubstantial. That hides a lot of really good stuff. Like, well, I went to the AWS booth this year, and when I was at reInvent, it was so hard to observe their, their solutions that they, you know, the practical stuff. Because they had to overlay so much, like, generative AI junk, narrative junk on top of it. This, you know, here, At MWC, they took some of that stuff off and you can actually see what they were talking about. You know, like the stuff that's really gonna benefit the operator. So like, one of the things that they, they were getting really excited about was were, um, these knowledge graphs that you created, network, and you know, they call it digital twin. I don't really call it digital twins, more like, um. It's more like a model, right? Yeah. So, you know that you can use run simulations on Yes. It's hydrated by digital twin. Like we always talk about our iot coffee talk, but um, it can give you a sense of the state, of the, the network and then you can do an analytics and simulation on top of it. And, um, yeah, you could see it And you, and you know, the funny thing is, is that degenerative AI piece was just a thin veneer of, uh, interface. And quite honestly, I don't think that's a friggin big deal. It's insignificant. And I think that's what vendors have to realize. You know, you have to very quickly understand the value of a technology and how it's applied in a fit for purpose way. And the hype right now of generative AI is so detached from Where these things are landing in a practical sense, even with agentic AI, agentic AI is becoming super narrow task level, not process level task level. And you literally have to make it so specific that it loses the general, this promise or expectation that it's going to be a general AI for agentic. And so, you know what we're back to. It's like friggin basic RPA, like what we were talking about on IOT comedy, what I've been talking about for two years, it's like friggin ridiculous. What do you think?
Earl Lum:Am I talking too much? No. You're talking about stuff that I don't care about that it has that, let's just be up front. No,
Marc Pous:let me point something that, uh, I seen that I had never seen before in Mobile World Congress. A lot of people talking about geopolitical decisions that they will need to take in the near future.
Earl Lum:Right. Where is your factory located? Where do you potentially have to move it? What region does it have to have an assembled in or made in sticker with a certain country attached to it on the carton or on the actual label of the unit itself? All these things are becoming extremely important. So is the supply chain risk for every company now? Is I think starting to rise to the
Marc Pous:top. So that's something that I never seen before But I mean, yeah, maybe German companies not preferred specific countries to buy instead of others But I saw that more general this year. I don't know.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, um We had incidents before the week started. Yeah. And, you know, um, you can definitely tell that there was a disruption in the quote unquote trust fabric, the geopolitical trust fabric. And I think, um, the reaction, uh, from a lot of Europeans that we spoke to was, um, um, pretty severe. Right. And so we'll see how that works out. But, yeah, definitely, um, It's going to be a bit disruptive, yeah? Yeah, it's disruptive. I think the response is still, the reaction is still in process.
Earl Lum:But it's not going to be over quickly. It's going to have a long tail. Yeah.
Marc Pous:Yeah, I know. It's a good point. We don't know. Yeah. We don't know, but it's there. It's an elephant in the room, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But before we go any further, I want to thank all the engineers and the product teams that spoke with us. Um, no special appreciate appreciation for these folks because, you know, um, you know, I'll say it again. I CEOs and C level folks. No offense to any of those that I spoke to. It's just, we get it. You got to say what you got to say, but it's, it's people who are in the trenches, the folks who are working the technical details and doing the hardcore engineering who actually know the nuances. They can tell you. Yeah. Super appreciate you guys not
Earl Lum:having any filtering at all and seeing everything that's on your mind.
Yeah. Yeah. And hold on. We gotta do, we gotta do this. Come on guys. I'm really bad at this and I'm, I'm really bad at this and I'm Korean. I wanted
Marc Pous:to, yeah, no, you wanted to do these.
I know. I already did it. So in other words, we love you guys. All right. Um, so what, uh, so IOT, did we cover IOT? No, IOT stars.
Marc Pous:Yeah. We had 10th anniversary folks. Yeah. 10th anniversary. And it was, uh, an event that straight down with the speaker's dinner. I think we had like decent amount of people. We had fun. I think the content was good. It was great. We had like two profitable IOT companies on stage talking. Well, probably more than two, right? Probably. Yeah. Nordic and Mongoro and, uh, zero, I dunno, a satellite communication company if it's profitable yet or not, but, but, uh, yeah, it's something that it didn't happen before, right? Yeah. It, it's hard to see a profitable company, you know, in the ID space It's, I think that's, uh, that's, uh, an interesting Yeah. Landmark. Well, yeah. That there's hope. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think that the companies who, who were able to reach this point. It can have like a bright feature. Absolutely. Um, I'm really happy that, yeah. I, I'm sad that I couldn't make it happen with my company, but yeah, it's, it's cool that the iot, it's getting in. No, it's, it's, it's just a feature on, on a lot of products now.
Okay. Yeah. And, and you know, like what you're saying, I mean, it's, you know, these hype cycles. More than scaling laws of, you know, generative AI ridiculous computing, uh, is much more a law. Then any of these like hypothetical, you know, uh, convenience based, uh, scaling laws. Right. And we're seeing them like decompose very quickly. And um, and, and, you know, honestly, this is why we're analysts. This is why Mark is whatever the hell you are. What are you? You're not an analyst. I'm the developer. Yeah. He's the IOT giant. The reason why we do this is because, you know, when you, you go up this proverbial hump of nonsense, yeah, sure, you're excited, right? Of course. And you think that, yeah, right, bright and shiny, all this, you're in love, right? You're in love. And everyone has their little Amoy, Kumbaya, you know, uh, until you discover the crazy. And then reality hits you very quickly. And then. Yeah, I mean, it, it becomes a dire situation pretty quickly, right? Should happen soon. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why it's so much, it's important to be grounded constantly. And you know, the, it's interesting in my observation, the people who are grounded are very much the minority. Yeah. Here's
Marc Pous:what we were telling, uh, we were talking before about four years from now. No. Yes. Did you see all of this started when I was saying me as a startup, I prefer to be selling right instead of talking with and pitching in front of
Earl Lum:and spending money to have a kiosk or a pod or whatever, all eight and 8. 1.
Marc Pous:Yeah. No, 8. 0, which is even worse. Did you go to 8. 0? It was, uh, you had to go downstairs. I don't go to 8. 8.
Earl Lum:X I don't go to, unless I'm leaving the FIRA.
Marc Pous:No, I was surprised at that 8. 0. So you had to go downstairs. Uh, it was, there were a lot of people. So they put their health companies and I don't know what else. Oh, the wearables and
Earl Lum:everything?
Marc Pous:Or. Uh, it was the startups, but at least I met a friend who has a health startup and she was there. Uh, I don't know what else, something else was there, but it's, it's interesting that they did the categorization as well. So people could focus on, it was, there were a lot of people on Wednesday. So I was surprised because eight zero, it's like, you never go, you never go to eight zero.
No, there were a lot of people there. There were a lot of people even today.
Marc Pous:Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Yeah, you know what? Uh, let's let's talk about what we talked about last year that I mean, I think we were like pretty on hip From our chat last year, talking to the Mirror, if you recall, and, uh, and, uh, di Yeah. Or that's not how it's spelled, but I guess that's how you, the gar of Yeah, the dus. Yeah. Wine. Wine. Yeah. So what we, we, we, we talked about the, the open ran squid game. Right? How'd that go, by the way?
Earl Lum:Um, well, for those people that are still alive and in the game, I think they are. Uh, they're waiting to find out if they're going to sink to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Yeah. Or, uh, are they going to survive? And if they do survive, are they going to find land, but it'll be a deserted island? Or they find land in this civilization again? Yeah, so I think there's a lot of radio companies, there's a lot of small cell companies, there's a lot of companies that are trying to still do private 5G in whatever way, shape or form. And then we have the, uh, the hopes and dreams that Vodafone will save them or, uh, some other major operator here in Europe that will believe that there is a time and a place for Open RAN to be employed across their networks.
Okay, cool. Uh, yes, um, OpenSquid Game Season 1 is over. And we're looking forward to Season 2. And it should be just as dramatic if not.
Earl Lum:Season 2 could have some characters that die. Oh my
gosh. That didn't die during the season 1. Pearl is Mean.
Marc Pous:Anyway. This is what we talk about, IOT companies, right? Yeah, and it's, this is what's going to happen in the three seasons of with AI companies,
right? Yeah. So that's why you have to watch IOT coffee talk. We get ridiculous and silly, but there is, there is sarcasm is a distilling force, you know, and an outcome of sarcasm is a bit of truth. Yeah. So, oh, the other thing. Last year, MWC was about future firsts. Remember what we said about future firsts? You know, before you worry about the future, aspire to the future, frigging deal with the present and all the challenges that we have in the present. And, you know, like one of the things I want to tell our audiences, this is that the reason why you look to the future is because you either don't know how to deal with the present. Or you don't know, um, you, you don't want to deal with the president or you don't know how to deal with the president or both. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. That's the only reason problem solvers, innovators know how to figure out how to get from point a, which is the present to the next step innovation. It doesn't get you to X unless you have a series of innovations to get to that, you know, horizon. And that is the big problem with this industry, right? Is we have a bunch of people going around floating metaverse, blockchain, gen AI, agentic, blah, blah, blah. Without focusing on what really needs, what's essential for the industry today. And I think one of the positive things that we saw, at least on the stage, is they put AI as a sub bullet on the presentation. And they talked about more grounded things, like more, like reasonable priorities about how to move the ball, get European operators in the European telco industry, um, you know, better poised to move forward, especially with 5G. So, you know, the priority is 5G SA. Once you do that, you can unleash a lot of capabilities that are pent up right now. And that's been my big message, um, this year. And, um, that, and so it does frustrate me that we still have these folks going out, literally undermining, undermining the industry by constantly feeding. The industry with distracting hype, and we see the consequences of it constantly and, you know, Hopefully the audience and you guys that are listening to this Reject that stuff or at the least if you're in it start asking tough questions because some of these people who are pumping the hype They are not doing the industry a favor and there's tons of evidence for it And if you want evidence just watch our show Because we call it, we call it every year. It's like, and this is not rocket science, it's just a matter of asking the question, essential questions. You should, you should be asking,
Marc Pous:this is one of the best advices I heard this year. So I think, yeah, if you are watching this, yeah. Oh yeah. If you are watching this and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get into this rabbit hole of trusting people selling you the hype.
Yeah. Cause the only reason why they do that is because they're not, they're not innovators. They're not problem solvers.
Marc Pous:They pretend to, or they, they are not.
Yeah. I tell people all the time, I can imagine the craziest stuff. I can come up with the most outrageous, semi technology based, you know, fantasies. It's easy.
Marc Pous:What's, what's the name of this tale? Like the king is naked, no, or no, that, uh, that some people, yeah, try to sell like a dress. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. This is the translation that we have here. That's
close enough. King of snakes. Yes. Okay. So yeah, yeah, yeah. AI is hard. It's not easy. It's not magic. You know, people who have been working with it, they know this already, you know, and so these folks that go around making technology like an easy thing, you know, they're distracting the industry from funding things that are important that get you to the next step. And I, so hopefully this year, um, the industry, especially Europe. It's starting to look at what do we need to really practically do to get to the next step. And, you know, I noticed this, it was only the Chinese that came in into the keynote sessions with like outrageous AI, you know, stories and hype. Messages. And, uh,
Marc Pous:what was the motto this year of Mobile World Congress?
You know? Oh, it's, uh, something like feel the power of connectivity or something? Yes. Connectivity.
Marc Pous:Experience the power of connectivity. That sounds to 2010, right?
That's
Marc Pous:good. Yeah, maybe. No, it is good. They want like a stable, uh, technology that, that it's a reality today, right? Exactly. Today. Yeah, that's the future of connecting what you were telling and
GSMA you, uh, you, you probably saw our video. No doubt. You guys saw our video last year and they said, Hmm, these guys might be onto something, but. Look so we're not haters, right? No, we love the fact that you guys brought connectivity back to the center of the Conversation because that's the important thing. We are missing the exactly what we said last for the two years We've been saying that right as you know Metaverse the metaverse nonsense was playing out and then now it got hijacked by generative AI You know, and all you're doing with those investments is discovering that these pipes are not what they're cracked up to be. And what a waste of time, right? And so congratulations for getting back to connectivity.
Earl Lum:A waste of a lot of money, not just the time. It's the money, and it's not your money that you wasted. You wasted an investor's money, and they're not going to be happy. And they're not going to give you more money. So, I think that's just like, maybe, maybe, but unlikely. I guess the thing is, from my perspective, what I saw. I want people out there to remember this phrase that the antenna is the most important element of a mobile network.
Without
Earl Lum:it, you don't have a network. You don't have any communication. You don't have any connectivity. So respect the antenna. Respect
Marc Pous:the antenna. And I always have this discussion with engineering firms that when they design a hardware, like an IT device. Antenna is the last thing to put into the schematics. Right.
Earl Lum:It's not that little upside down triangle with a little line that goes to the receiver.
Marc Pous:UFL connector.
Earl Lum:Yeah. Right.
Marc Pous:Come on guys.
Yeah, so let's give a little shout out to our friends at Ignion, right? Yeah. Yop and his crew over there. Yeah. Doing some cool. Yeah. They focus on the
Marc Pous:antenna, right? Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, super interesting software as well to help companies to, to design the right antennas for their hardware. Uh, on the other hand, it's, it's good to have seen them growing in the IOT stars because this year they didn't, they didn't talk, but we were in negotiations about them on IOT stars because in, after pandemics, they presented like the idea of. Uh, of these antenna that can work in multiple technologies, uh, then, uh, two years after they presented, uh, like probably there will be a massive project with massive amount of devices with our antennas. And this year they are presenting, you know, their, their project with like, uh, I think last December they, they saw like 8 million of antennas just for one project.
That's awesome.
Marc Pous:So it's congratulations guys succeeding. Yeah,
yeah. Yeah. So I think it's time for us to consider wrapping up because our audience is getting bored and they have a what? 15 second attention span. So if you've made it this far, you are part of a statistically insignificant of course, you are the most significant group of people, but statistically. You are the most unlikely to have made it this far, but yeah, let's your what do you think is going to happen next through the course of this year that's going to shape where MWC 2025 should be because we don't know what GSMA is thinking, who knows, there may be quantum nonsense that starts, which is already brewing up. So people early warning, ignore that crap. Okay. Okay. Don't even waste your time. Focus on connectivity and GSMA, don't play that game. What do you think?
Earl Lum:I think that uh, if we look at All throughout this year, there's going to be a lot of speculation on timing, the money that's going to be involved in 5G advance, how long do I need to wait before I want to do something. But I agree with you, what you said earlier, you can't make money until you get the SA. So for those operators that have not had a chance to really look at the strategy and how they're going to do it. Maybe you don't do the entire network. Maybe you do it in pockets where you have money or, you know, you're going to make money. And that's certainly an area where private 5g wireless is low hanging fruit because it's on prem. You don't have to go to the cloud. You put the core there, you could have a completely essay, and now you have an ability to add and 5g had promised our many years ago.
Marc Pous:Um, it's a really hard question. I think we are going to see. I don't know, more, maybe innovations, more tangible innovations on thin cards, right? All the, uh, I see in whatever, I think that's going to be relevant next year. I think this multiple connectivity is at the same time available on IoT devices or maybe on mobile phones. Like it's working on, um. On, on 4g, 5g, whatever. But if it is, there is no going to be, it worked with satellite communication for specific things. I hope that this is going to happen and hopefully we are going to see like successful use cases or success stories or profitable business cases for AI, uh, in telecommunications, uh, ecosystem hopefully. And I hope that all of these, uh, I don't know, I have mixed feelings about all of the geopolitical thing. So I hope that, yeah, I don't know, something crazy happens that makes the world run again. Hopefully peacefully.
Yeah, in that regard, maybe, you know, the theme for next year, because we might be looking at a mobile industry that's bifurcated or even becoming increasingly fragmented. Um, a good thing might be, and this might be aspirational at that point, global first. Because mobile is supposed to be, all the energy that's been put into the mobile industry. And the standards, 3GPP, and everything that we've been trying to do is to have a global standard, right? A global industry. And now that's become, come under
Earl Lum:threat. And so I think that, that notion of global is, how do you define global? Is it global without China? Or is it global with China? No,
we're, we're talking about global with China, right? Wow.
Earl Lum:Well, we, well, you know, come on. Talk about, yeah. Realism is that, well, that's a global without China. From a manufacturing and supply chain and everything else, uh, there's going to be two numbers that everyone looks at from a market perspective. One where you actually get to sell and participate in China, and one where you don't. That is the reality today, and it's been that way for a while.
Okay. Yeah. And, um, you know, you mentioned eSIM and a lot of these, um, cross network technologies, network APIs. That was a big thing for me this year. And a shout out to Ericsson for inviting me out to speak. Eric, hopefully you recovered from your experience having a one on one conversation with me. I'm
Earl Lum:talking to Leonard. Yeah.
Unscripted. Unscripted. You know how I am. I'm unscripted. We're, this is all unscripted. We have, we had no idea what we're going to talk about. But of course, all of this is like golden stuff, right? Yeah, it's stuff that only the stuff that matters folks. But, um, I think that's an interesting domain to look at. And, you know, that could dovetail really well into this idea of global first. And like you said, is it a, is it a Um, global with China or without China or without the United States now, or with the United States, because, you know, I think there's going to be sort of the semi neutral zone and then you're going to have the United States and China and how you transfer transfer, you know, verse these geopolitical domains could be really important. And I think network API's, especially with, uh, You know, these exchanges are, I think, are going to become trust brokers because communication, that's how we, it's essential for society, economy, and something else that doesn't come to mind at the moment. Can you help me out here? No, no. Okay.
Marc Pous:But maybe that makes sense, right? You have two profiles on your system of communication, no? Yeah. U. S. and the rest of the world, or China and the rest of the world, right? Right, right. Three,
Earl Lum:China, by itself, U. S., and then the rest of the world.
Marc Pous:Oh, yeah? You predict that?
Earl Lum:I don't know, but I know that, uh, if you haven't If you have accepted the reality that there is this split market there, then you're probably a Chinese supplier supplying into China because the rest of us who aren't supplying into China have already accepted that.
Marc Pous:I mean, for people who have never been in China, so I mean, going to nowadays, not 2025, if you go to China to big city, even a city that you never listen about it. And then you go to the U. S. I think China, it's maybe 50 years advance, right to the U. S. Can you, can you, could you please confirm that?
Don't don't tell that to an American.
Marc Pous:No, no, no, no, no. I accept the innovation and the technology that they have. It's maybe because they. They jumped, so they didn't go through all the steps, exactly. They leapfrogged. So that's easy. I mean, that's easy,
Earl Lum:but the leapfrogging also is dependent on the foundation that the government is supporting all of the innovation and backing everything and actually enabling it all to be deployed. And it's not just a completely private capital.
Marc Pous:No, no, I'm not a pro China or against the U. S. or whatever. But I
Earl Lum:think you will see, you will always see things in the Chinese market that will not port and export out to other regions and other countries because of the fact that It's his own market. And the clearest example of that is the look at how the emerging airspace industry in terms of under 1000 feet or under several thousand feet, where you have drones that are doing delivery services and all these other things, uh, where it's being managed by the mobile operators. And now we have to look at how do we air traffic control all of these drone technologies that are out there to actually enable, uh, a financial revenue stream to be emerging that will be unlikely seen in other regions around the world. Absolutely.
And, you know, I think speaking of leapfrog, that's why the European Union in particular really needs to consider the future of its competitiveness.
Marc Pous:Huh? More bureaucracy?
No.
Marc Pous:Oh, okay. No, no. More
leadership. More leadership, decisiveness, commitment, because, you know, what China has done is what South Korea did, what Japan did in. Basically taking that opportunity to, um, advance in leading edge technologies, committing to that, deploying it, and then leapfrogging ahead. And China is doing that now, and that It presents a significant competitive threat
Marc Pous:in Europe. In Europe, we have been so naive with China. We thought that China were only manufacturing cheaper clothes or cheaper shoes, but then they discover now how to make technology and how to now how to make software, how to make expensive cars. Then all in record time. Yeah. And all this technology that Europe, we thought that we were the best doing. Yeah, we discovered that we cannot, Mercedes cannot sell expensive cars to China anymore because they want their expensive electric cars instead of the German cars. So yeah, we are just waking up realizing that yeah, we need to, that we are in front of a huge challenge.
Yeah.
Marc Pous:Um,
and yeah. Let's see. Yeah, and, and, you know, fix that, the worst response is to hate
Marc Pous:Yeah.
Hate on somebody because they, they played you better. They played the game better than you did. We've ne I I, I've never seen anybody win and the blame the other guy. Game. It's all about focusing on you and what your priorities are. And that's, you know, I don't think there are any excuses. And so all of you who think that, you know, China have never been, you don't know China, right? And you never been. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, no. I hear some of the most antiquated notions about China. They don't innovate. They only steal. They only, it's like, look guys, they used to maybe, well, you know, arguably they might still do some of that, of course, but the fact of the matter is, is they've gone beyond the Western state of art and that's not stealing. That's called innovating and the delusion. It can be your enemy and being able to really motivate your, your economy, your society and competing and, and like we always say, you know, hype is delusion. Yeah, this is a similar type of thing. It's you know, um, just holding on to certain types of antiquated stereotypes This is also another form of delusion, right? Yeah, don't be Cleopatra the queen of denial Okay on that note Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in again. If you've made it this far You are like the zero 0. 001 percent of like, you're in the 15th
Marc Pous:Sigma category. I
mean,
Marc Pous:write Cleopatra in the comments, please.
Earl Lum:Hashtag Cleopatra.
Yeah. If you've made it this far, then we'll know. Then we'll know you hit. The magic word
Earl Lum:we're going to do a session on Baker is
we'll give you a free one hour consultation. Uh, free. Yeah, absolutely. Free. So, you know what? Uh, thanks, uh, for watching. Remember to like, share. Share your comments, subscribe, but most importantly, share your perspective. We really appreciate it. And remember to subscribe to the NextCurve Rethink podcast at www. next curve. com. We're on YouTube and Buzzsprout. Also, make sure that you follow the IoT giant over here, Mark Post. Just bug him on LinkedIn. And then of course, uh, the illustrious and quite gritty and, you know, frigging sarcastic as hell. Yeah. Uh, Earl Lum at EJL wireless at EJL wireless. com. He made it really easy and we'll see you next year. Okay. Remember, we are only about the stuff that matters. Take care. Bye. And I'll see you next time.
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