 theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's day three coverage of MWC 23. Lisa Martin here in Barcelona, Spain with Dave Nicholson. We're going to have a really interesting conversation next. We're going to really dig into MWC, its history, where it's going, some of the controversy here. Please welcome our guests. We have Jim Harris, international best-selling author of Blind Sided, and Carolina Milanesi is here, president and principal analyst of Creative Strategies. Welcome to theCUBE, guys. Thank you. Thanks, so great to be here. So this is day three, 80,000 people are shown. You guys have a lot of history at this event. Carolina, I want to start with you. Talk a little bit about that. This obviously the biggest one in quite a few years. People are ready to be back, but there's been a lot of news here, but some controversy going on. Give us the history and your perspective on some of the news that's coming out from this week's event. It feels like a very different show. I don't know if I would say growing up show, because we are still talking about networks and mobility, but there's so much more now around what the networks actually empower versus the network themselves. And a little bit of, maybe that's where some of the controversy is coming from, Kerry is still trying to find their identity, right? What their role is in all there is to do with a connected world. I go back a long way. I go back to when Mobile World Congress was actually called GSM and it was in Cannes. So we went from France to Spain, but just looking at the last full Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona in pre-pandemic to now very different show. We went from a show that was very much focused on mobility in smartphones to a show that was all about cars. We had cars everywhere because we were talking about smart cities and connected cars to now a show this year that is very much focused on B2B. And so a lot of companies that are here to either work with the carriers or also talk about sustainability, for instance, or enable what is the next future evolution of computing with XR and VR. So Jim, talk to us a little bit about your background. You, I was doing a little sleuthing on you. You're really focusing on disruptive innovation. We talk about disruption a lot in different industries. We're seeing a lot of disruption in Telco. We're seeing a lot of enemies going on. Give us your thoughts about what you're seeing at this year's event. Well, there's some really exciting things. I listened to the keynote from Orange's CEO and she was complaining that 55% of the traffic on her network is from five companies. And then the CEO of Deutsche Telekom got up and he was complaining that 60% of the traffic on his network is from six entities. So do you think they coordinated pre-show? But really what they're saying is these OTT, you know, Netflix and YouTube, they should be paying us for access. Now, this is killer funny. The front page today of the show daily, the co-CEO of Netflix says, hey, we make less profit than the Telcos. So you should be paying us, not the other way around. You know, we spend half of the money we make just on developing content. So this is really interesting. The Orange CEO said, we're not challenging that neutrality. We don't want more taxes, but boom. So this is disruptive, huge pressure. 67% of all mobile traffic is video, right? So it's a big hog, a bandwidth wise. So how are they gonna do this? Now, I look at it and the business model for the Telcos is really selling sim cards and smartphones. But for every dollar of revenue there, there's five plus dollars in apps and consulting and everything else. So really, but look at how they're structured. They can't take somebody who talks to the public and sells sim cards and turn them into an app developer. So how are they gonna square this circle? So I see some, they're being disrupted because they're sticking to what they've historically done. But it's interesting because at the end of the day, the conversation that we're having right now is the conversation that we had 10 years ago where carriers don't want to just be a dumb pipe, right? And that's what they are now returning to. They tried to be media as well, but that didn't work out for most carriers, right? It's a little bit better in the US. We've seen some success there, but here it's been more difficult. And I think that's the concern that even for the next evolution, that's their role. So how do they balance this dumb pipe idea with the fact that if you make the toll high enough, being a dumb pipe is actually a pretty good job? You know, sit back, collect check, go to the beach, right? So where does this end up? Well, I think what's going to happen is if you see five to 15x the revenue on top of a pipe, you know, the hyperscalers are going to start going after the business. The consulting companies like PWC, McKinsey, the app developers, so how do you engage those communities as a telco to get more revenue? I think this is a question that they really need to look at, but we tend to stick within our existing business model. I'll just give you one stat that blows me away. Uber is worth more than every taxi cab company in North America added together. And so the taxi industry owns billions in assets in cars and limousines. Uber doesn't own a single vehicle. So having a widely distributed app is a huge multiplier on valuation. And I look to a company like Safari and Kenya, which developed M-Pesa, which Pesa means it's mobile money in Swahili. And 25% of the country's GDP is facilitated by M-Pesa. And that's not even on smartphones. They're feature phones, Nakia phones. I call them dumb phones, but Nakia would call them feature phones. So think about that, like 20, now transactions are very small and the cut is tiny. But when you're facilitating 25% of a country's GDP, tiny over billions of transactions is huge. But that's not the way telcos have historically thought or worked. And so M-Pesa and Safari shows the way forward. What do you think on that? I think that the experience and what they can layer on top from a services perspective, especially in the private sector, is also important. I never believe that a carrier, given how they operate, is the best media company in the world. It's a very different world. But I do think that there's opportunity, first of all, to actually tell their story in a different way. If you're thinking about everything that a network actually empowers, there's a lot there. There's a lot that is good for us as a society. There's a lot that is good for business. What can they do to start talking about differently about their services and then layer on top of what they offer a better way to actually bring together private and public network. It's not all about cellular, Wi-Fi and cellular coming together. We're talking a lot about satellite here as well. So there's definitely more there about quality of service. Is there, though, almost a biological inevitability that prevents companies from being able to navigate that divide? Look at when we went from high definition 720p, we're exciting, 1080p, 4K. Everybody ran out and got a 4K TV. Well, where was the best 4K content coming from? It wasn't the networks. It wasn't your cable operator. It was YouTube. It was YouTube. If you had suggested that 10 years before that that would happen, people would think that you were crazy. Is it possible for folks who are now leading their companies, getting up on stage and daring to say, this content's coming over and I want to charge you more for using my pipes? It's like really, is that your vision? That's the vision that you want to share with us here. I hear the sound of dead people walking. When I hear comments like that. My students at Wharton and the CTO program who are constantly looking at this concept of disruption would hear that and go, ooh, gee, did the board hear what that person said? I, you know, am I being too critical of people who could crush me like a bug? I mean, it's better that they ask the people with money than not consumers to pay, right? Because we've been through a phase where the carriers were actually asking for more money depending on critical things. Like for instance, if you're doing business email, they were going to charge you more than if you were a consumer. Or if you were watching video, they would charge you more for that. They may understood that consumer would walk away and go somewhere else, so they stopped doing that. But to your point, I think, and very much to what you focus from a disruption perspective, look at what chat GTP and what Microsoft has been doing. Not much talk about this here at the show, which is interesting. But the idea that now as a consumer, I can ask new Bing to get me the 10 best restaurants in Barcelona, and I no longer go to Yelp or all the other businesses where I was going to before to get their recommendation. What happens to them, right? You're moving away and you're taking eyeballs away from those websites. And I think that, you know, your point is exactly right. It's about how, from a revenue perspective, you are spending a lot of money to facilitate somebody else, and what's in it for you. Yeah, and to be clear, consumers pay for everything. Taxpayers and consumers always pay for everything. So there is no, well, we're going to make them pay so you don't have to pay. And if you're not paying, you are the product. Exactly. Carolina, talk a little bit about what you're seeing at the event from some of the infrastructure players, the hyperscalers, obviously a lot of enterprise focus here at this event. What are some of the things that you're seeing? Are you impressed with their focus in Telco, their focus to partner, build an ecosystem? What are you seeing? I'm seeing a lot of talk about sustainability and enabling Telco to be more sustainable. You know, there's a couple of things that are a little bit different from the U.S. where I live, which is that Telcos in Europe have put money into sustainability through bonds. And so they use the money that they then get from the bonds that they create to supply or to fuel their innovation in sustainability. And so there's a dollar bound on sustainability. There's also an opportunity, obviously, from a growth perspective. And there's a risk mitigation, right? Especially in Europe, more and more you're going to be evaluated based on how sustainable you are. So there are a lot of companies here, if you're thinking about the Cisco's of the world, Dell, IBM, all talking about sustainability and how to help carriers measure and then obviously be more sustainable with their consumption and power. It's going to be interesting to see where that goes over the years as we talk to every company we talk to at whatever show has an ESG sustainability initiative and many of them only want to work with other companies who have the same types of initiative. So great that there's focus on sustainability, but hopefully we'll see more action down the road. I wanted to ask you about your book. The name is interesting, blindsided. Well, I just want to tag on to this. Sure. One of the most exciting things for me is fast charging technology. Xiaomi, a smartphone maker from China, just announced yesterday a smartphone that charges from zero to 100% in five minutes. Now this is using GANFest technology and the leader in the market is a company called Navitas. And this has profound implications. It starts with the smartphone, but then it moves to the laptops and then it'll move to EVs. So as we electrify the $10 trillion a year transportation industry, there's a huge opportunity. People want charging faster. There's also a sustainability story to Carolina's point that it uses less electricity. So if we electrify the grid in order to support transportation like the Tesla Semi's coming out, there are huge demands over a period. We need energy efficiency technologies like this GANFest technology. So to me, this is humongous. And we only see it here in the show in Xiaomi saying five minutes and everybody, the consumers go, oh, that's cool. But let's look at the bigger story which is electrifying transportation globally. And this is going to be big. Yeah, and to double click on that a little bit to be clear, when we talk about fast charging today, typically it's taking the battery from a, not a zero state of charge but a relatively low state of charge to 80%. Then it tapers off dramatically. And that translates into less range in an EV, less usable time on any other device. And there's that whole linkage between the power in and the battery's ability to be charged and how much is usable. And from a sustainability perspective, we are going to have an avalanche of batteries going into secondary use cases over time. They don't get tossed into landfills contrary to what people might think. In fact, they are used in a variety of ways after their primary lifespan. But that in and of itself is a revolutionary thing. I'm interested in each of your thoughts on the China factor. Glaringly absent here from my perspective as sort of an Apple fanboy, where are they? Why aren't they talking about their course of, they must feel like, well, we just don't need to. We don't need to. We just don't need to. And then you walk around and you see these company names that are often anglicized and you don't necessarily immediately associate them with China, but it's like, wait a minute, that looks better than what I have. And I'm not allowed to have access to that thing. What happens in the future there geopolitically? It's a pretty big question for a short little tech show. But what happens as we move forward? When is the entire world going to be able to leverage in a secure way some of the stuff that's coming out of, if they're not the largest company in the world yet, they shortly will be. What's the story there? Well, it's interesting that you mentioned first Apple that has never had a presence at Mobile World Congress. And fun enough, I'm part of the GSMA judges for the Global Awards. And last night I gave out best mobile phone for last year, and it was to the iPhone 14 Pro. And best disruptive technology, which was for the satellite function feature on the new iPhone. So Apple might not be here, but they are. Okay. And so that's the first thing. And they are as far as being top of mind to every competitor in the smartphone market still. So a lot of the things, even from a design perspective, that you see on some of the Chinese brands really remind you of Apple. What is interesting for me is how there wouldn't be, with the exception of Samsung and Motorola, there's no one else here that is non-Chinese from a smartphone point of view. So that in itself is something that changed dramatically over the years, especially for somebody like Meva. Still remember Nokia being the number one in the market. Guys, we could continue this conversation. We are unfortunately out of time, but thank you so much for joining Dave and me, talking about your perspectives on the event, the industry, the disruptive forces. It's going to be really interesting to see where it goes, because at the end of the day, it's the consumers that just want to make sure I can connect wherever I am, 24 by seven, and it just needs to work. Thank you so much for your insights. Thank you. Lisa, it's been great, Dave, great, it's a pleasure. Our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live and emerging tech coverage coming to you day three of our coverage of MWC 23. Stick around, our next guest joins us momentarily.