 theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Hi everybody, we're back at the FIDA in Barcelona, winding up our four-day wall-to-wall coverage of MWC23. theCUBE has been thrilled to cover the telco transformation Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. Really excited to have NTT on. Shahed Ahmed is the group VP of New Ventures and innovation at NTT in from Chicago. Welcome to Barcelona, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me over. So really interesting title you have. People might not know NTT, huge, Japan telco, but a lot of other businesses, explain your business. So we do a lot of things. We are, most of us are known for our dokomo business in Japan. We have one of the largest wireless cellular carriers in the world. We serve most of Japan. Outside of Japan, we are B2B systems integration professional services company. So we offer managed services, we have data centers, we have undersea cables, we offer all kinds of outsourcing services, so we're a big company. So there's a narrative out there that says, 5G is a lot of hype, not a lot of adoption, nobody's ever going to make money at 5G. You have a different point of view, I understand. You're like leaning into 5G and you've actually got some traction there, explain that. So 5G can be viewed from two lenses. One is just you and I using our cell phones and we get 5G coverage over it. And the other one is for businesses to use 5G. And we call that private 5G or enterprise grade 5G. Two very separate distinct things, but it is 5G in the end. Now, the big debate here in Europe and US is how to monetize 5G. As a consumer, you and I are not going to pay extra for 5G, I mean, I haven't. I just expect the carrier to offer faster, cheaper services. And so would I pay extra? No, really. I just want a reliable network from my carrier. Paid up for the good camera though, didn't you? I did. I'm waiting for four cameras now. So the carriers are in this little bit of a pickle at the moment because they've just spent billions of dollars, not only on spectrum, but the infrastructure needed to upgrade to 5G. Yet, nobody's willing to pay extra for that 5G service. All right. So what do they do? And one idea is to look at enterprises, companies, industrial companies, manufacturing companies who want to build their own 5G networks to support their own use cases. And these use cases could be anything from automating the surveyor belt to cameras with 5G in it to AGVs. These are little carts running around warehouses picking up products and goods, but they have to be connected all the time. Wi-Fi doesn't work all the time there. And so those businesses are willing to pay for 5G. So your question is, is there a business case for 5G? Yes. I don't think it's in the consumer side. I think it's in the business side. And that's where NTT is finding success. So you said how they going to make money, right? You very well described the telco dilemma. We heard earlier this week, well we could tax the OTT vendors, like Netflix of course shot back and said, well we spent a lot of money on content. We're driving a lot of value. Why don't you help us pay for the content development which is incredibly expensive. I think I heard we're going to tax developers for API calls on the network. I'm not sure how well that's going to work out. Look at Twitter. We'll see. And then yeah, there's the B2B piece. What's your take on, we heard the orange CEO say, we need help maybe implying when it attacks the OTT vendors, but we're for net neutrality, which seems like it's completely counterposed. What's your take on fair share in the network? Look, we've seen this debate unfold in the US for the last 10 years. Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman started that debate and they made great progress in open internet and net neutrality. The thing is that if you create a lane, a tollway, where some companies have to pay toll and others don't have to, you create an environment where the innovation could be stifled. Content providers may not appear on the scene anymore. And with everything happening around AI, we may see that backfire. So creating a toll for rich companies to be able to pay that toll and get on a faster speed internet, that may work. Some places may backfire and others. It's, you know, you're bringing up a great point. It's one of those sort of unintended consequences. You got to be careful because the little guy gets crushed in that environment. And then what, right? Then you stifle innovation. So, okay, so you're a fan of net neutrality. You think the balance that the US model for change, maybe the US got it right, instead of like GDPR sort of informing the US on privacy, maybe the opposite on net neutrality. I think so. I mean, look, the way the US, particularly FCC and the FTC has mandated these rules and regulation, I think it's a nice balance of TCs all looking at big tech at the moment, but- Well, you know, Khan wants to break up big tech. I mean, for, you know, you big tech boom, break them up, right? So, but that's, you know- That's a whole different story. Yeah, right, right. We could talk about that too if you want. Right, right. But I think there are, we have a balance approach, measured approach, asking the content providers or the developers to pay for your innovative, creative application that's on your phone. You know, that's asking for too much, in my opinion. You know, I think you're right, though. Government did do a good job with net neutrality in the US. And I don't, I mean, generally, I'm just going to go to my high horse for a second. So, forgive me. Go for it. Market forces have always done a better job at adjudicating, you know, competition. Now, for companies in monopoly, in my view, they should be, you know, regulated or at least penalized. Yeah, but generally speaking, you know, the attack on big tech I think is perhaps misplaced. I sat through, and the reason it's relevant to Mobile World Congress or MWC is, I sat through a Nokia presentation this week and they were talking about Bell Labs. When the United States broke up, you know, the US telcos, Bell Labs was a gem in the US. And now it's owned by Nokia. Right, so you got to be careful about, you know, what you wish for with breaking up big tech. You got AI, you've got, you know, competition with China, so. Yeah, but the upside to breaking up Ma Bell was, not just the baby bells, and maybe the stranded orphan asset of Bell Labs, but I would argue it led to innovation. I'm old enough to remember. I would say it made the US less competitive. I know, I know. You were in junior high school, but I remember as an adult, having a rotary dial phone, and having to pay for that access. But they all came back together, the baby bells are now, they got all got acquired in the cable company, it was no different, so I don't know. Do you have a perspective on this? Because you know this better than I do. Well, I think, look at Nokia, just they announced the whole new branding strategy and new brand. I like the brand. It looks cool. But guess what? It's B2B oriented. It's no longer consumer, because they felt that Nokia brand phone was sort of misleading towards a lot of business to business work that they do. And so they've oriented themselves to B2B. Look, my point is, the carriers and the service providers, network operators, look, I'm a network operator too in Japan. We need to innovate ourselves. Nobody's stopping us from coming up with the content strategy. Nobody's stopping a carrier from building an interesting new over the top app. In fact, we have better control over that because we are closer to the customer. We need to innovate. We need to be more creative. I don't think putting taxing the little developer that's building a very innovative application is going to help in the long run. NTT Japan, do they have a content play? I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with it. Is that, are they strong in content? Like Netflix-like? We have relationships with them and you remember iMode? Yeah, yeah, sure. You remember the old days? I mean, that was a big hit, right? I mean, that was actually the original app marketplace and the application store. So of course we've evolved from that and we should. And that's, this is an evolution and we should look at it more positively instead of looking at ways to regulate it. We should let it prosper and let it see where it is. Why do you think the telcos generally have failed at content? I mean, AT&T is sort of the exception that proves the rule. I mean, they got some great properties, obviously, CNN and HBO, but generally it's viewed as a challenging asset and others have had to diversify and sell the assets. Why do you think the telcos have had such trouble there? Well, Comcast owns also a lot of content. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is definitely a strategy that should be explored here in Europe and I think that has been under explored in my opinion. I believe that every large carrier must have some sort of content strategy at some point or else you are a pipe. Yeah, it lose touch with the customer. Yeah, and by the way, being a dump pipe is okay. No, it's lucrative business. It's a good business. You just have to focus. And if you start to do a lot of ancillary things around it, then you start to see the margins erode. But if you just focus on being a pipe, I think that's a very good business and it's very lucrative. Everybody wants bandwidth. There's insatiable demand for bandwidth all the time. Enjoy the monopoly, I say. Yeah, well, so capital is like an organism in and of itself. It's going to seek a place where it can insert itself and grow. Do you think that the questions around fair share right now are having people wait in the wings to see what's going to happen? Because especially if I'm on the small end of creating content, creating services and there's possibly a death blow to my fixed costs that could be coming down the line, I'm going to hold back and wait. Do you think that the answer is let's solve this sooner than later? What are your thoughts? I think in Europe, the opinion has been always to go after the big tech. I mean, we've seen a lot of moves either through antitrust or other means. Or the guillotine. That's right, guillotine. Yes, and I've heard those directly. I think, look, in the end, EU has to decide what's right for their constituents, their, the countries they operate and the economy. Frankly, with where the economy is, you've got recession, inflation, pressures, a war, and who knows what else might come down the pipe. I would be very careful in messing with this equilibrium and this economy until at least we have gone through this inflation and recessionary pressure and see what happens. I, again, I think I come back to markets ultimately will adjudicate. I think what we're seeing with chatGPT is like a Netscape moment in some ways. And I can't predict what's going to happen, but I can predict that it's going to change the world. And there's going to be new disruptors that come about. That just, I don't think Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple are going to rule the world forever. They're just, I guarantee they're not. They'll make it through, but there's going to be some new companies that might be open AI, might not be. Give us a plug for our NTT at the show. What do you guys got going here? Really appreciate you coming on. Thank you. So, you know, we're showing off our private 5G network for enterprises, for businesses. We see this as a huge opportunities. If you look around here, you've got Rode and Schwartz, that's the industrial company. You've got Airbus here. All the big industrial companies are here, automotive companies and private 5G, 5G inside a factory, inside a hospital, a warehouse, a mining operation. That's where the dollars are. Is it a meaningful business for you today? It is. We just started this business only a couple of years ago. We're seeing amazing growth and I think there's a lot of good opportunities there. Shahad Ahmed, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you. Really a pleasure. Thanks for having me over. Good questions. All right, for David Nicholson and Dave Vellante. We'll be back right after this short break from the FITA in Barcelona, MWC 23. You're watching theCUBE.