 Welcome to the RF elements of my podcast. We're back again. My name is Caleb. And of course with always we've got Toss us over here. So hi Toss us. What's up? Hi Toss us. And today we're joined by Jorge all the way from also RF elements. Hello to one. Thank you for having me to take it. So quick music intro GM and then we'll get to it. All right guys. So we are back back again 2023. So we've been a little slower or podcast updating schedule yet last year. In the last year was kind of crazy. You know we had what's up. Which is always just chaos. Got back from that. We had Titan Fest the holidays and then now we're really just kind of want to wrap up you know what what we saw last year what we're looking forward to this year. And we're talked with Jorge. He's got some cool new stuff coming up focusing on our Latin American market. So it'll be a good time. Good time. So I guess as we get into it Toss us you want to give the good people out there they're called action. Yeah absolutely. Don't forget to like listen and subscribe to our channel right here on YouTube or anywhere you download your audio podcast like Apple Google or Spotify. Cool. Cool. All right. So I guess looking back you know last year we don't want to spend too much time in memory lane but you know it was a pretty active year in the old West market a couple of things going on. I mean you know obviously still kind of working through the mass chaos from the covid times that seems to have pulled back got a little bit towards a normal or whatever we want to consider normal. Definitely way more normal. Yeah definitely. So but you know we've seen a lot of like really cool potential things you know working way through of course. And we have a number of podcasts last year about all the craziness and you know government funding competition. I mean we talked about CVRS stuff a lot. We talked about Toronto coming up a lot and what that's doing in the market. Let's see what else. Of course six gig you know six is a big one. We want to throw some information out there this week. Talk about six gig where we are now kind of what we're looking forward to on six gig. But you know I guess from a summary perspective man like you know anything we want to really hit up in great detail here. Yeah I mean it would definitely six gig. I think there's quite a bit to talk about that's getting kind of exciting here. You know Cambium is now releasing their hardware so like the 4600L 4600 series radios are out in the market. So a lot of people are testing the feedback looks pretty promising so far as far as speeds reliability and stuff like that even its ability to handle a noise which is really exciting. You know our horns are current five gigahertz horns actually quite a few of our antennas already work in the six gig range. Quite a few whists are already trying out are like symmetrical 30 degree horn. Our ultra dishes and ultra horn are all performing really well in six gig. Clearly we have you know we will have brand new skews for six gigahertz so the whole line of symmetrical and asymmetrical that's specifically made from you know the six to seven or maybe five nine to seven one. I'm not sure what that exact spec is going to be but that's going to be really cool. We've already seen prototypes and you know they're itty bitty. They're much smaller than the original ones you know because the wavelength is smaller so the antennas get a little bit smaller so that's kind of cool. But yeah I'm really excited to you know what I'm seeing already in six gig especially with our horns and I think what we're going to see in the future. Yeah for sure. I mean the testing we've seen in six gig with the forty six hundred stuff like really noisy here is like point to point links you know people are just killing it especially using the ultra horn. You know not a lot of noise in six gig yet obviously but we've had some people kind of generate their own you know in these test areas just to see what is it going to do. You know the results are having really cool. I'm starting to see some of the then just insane seeds what we're pulling on the access points and everything. So to put a little more color on the two so you know the new products that we are releasing so we're definitely releasing new horns for six you know that's definitely coming. Those will be closer to more release info and data once the AFC gets a little bit closer right. So when is that was a hashtag soon. Who knows. Yeah. Yeah. Hashtag who knows right. So maybe later. Yeah some time later. So I don't know what we're here now is probably going to be Q3 you know in the Q2 the AFC people get set up ready to go and wait for the SSE do their stuff. But I mean again this has been you know two quarters three quarters away plus plus we just add a quarter every quarter we go into. Well that's a lot more details as to what those new products keys are all look like specs and pricing and all that stuff a little bit further down the road. But we do want to point out how this stuff's coming. We get a lot of questions now again like I said for the ones that are testing now. So we specifically went and tested several products that we knew that would work in this upper band to get some official specs. So the Symmetric 30 horn the ultra dishes and the ultra horns we have tested they're good up to 60 70 75 which covers most of that outdoor range. Beyond that you really don't want to really run it beyond that a pattern is fall apart VSWR gets too high so on and so forth. But for those three lines we've updated we've updated the spec sheets as well. So if you don't remember just look at spec sheets are up to date those new ranges are shown in that spec sheet as well. So if you're testing the stuff it is definitely available and give it a shot. Let us know like we'd love to hear the feedback and stuff right things. Especially if you know folks start testing like the split sector functionality again really see how this doing for speed. We've got a lot of interest people looking to use the ultra dish with the 4600 C and our EP and P2K adapter. You know those are those that already works with that right. So same for a factor as some of the other variants before. So what we're waiting for now is sort of some long distance results or running this really high SMRs right. So if you're wanting to run this 1024 qualms 496 qualms leagues you're definitely going to need a really high SNR. And one of the best ways to do that is with high quality 27 dbi dish and running with that TPA and let us know. And we're super excited to kind of see what those results are going to look like. So we've got that looks like the 5 gig stuff is going to be coming just down the road before too much longer as well. We're excited to see what those results are going to be especially noisy areas. You know there's there's tons of noise and 5 gig to play around with. And I'm really excited to see how well that AX platform works in those noisy 5 gig areas. Especially can then do a like for like comparison against an existing system. You know I'll get 3000 or a prism or something like that. So you know it's not necessarily magic. But there's a lot of really cool stuff in the AX protocols that they're utilizing in here that should give us some really cruel crazy kind of performance for sure. So yeah. What do you see Lord eight like in in Latin America. I mean do you have a six gig out there. I mean I know there's a lot of Mamosa customers that they use Mamosa out there because it goes up to 6.4 exactly legal right or whatever. But what's the 6 gig spectrum. Is there any talks in Latin America for that stuff. Yeah. There are actually Brazil was the first one already that they did the first outdoor test for the six gigahertz already. So in Brazil is definitely moving forward with Camille and on the rest of the countries. Mexico for example which is one of our biggest markets down there. It's definitely they said that by the end of February and beginning of March. They should be already publishing the whole regulation of the six gig. But it's going to be the same. They follow the FCC basically. So it's going to be as you guys do in the U.S. they will do that in Mexico as well. So definitely that country is going into a six gig very hard. Also Colombia will be the other player there that also they have very advanced regulations. So any moment should be released and the rest of the countries are quite smaller. But also picking up on this throughout last year was very promising December and that very well with this six gigahertz. So we are expecting this quarter actually very big revelations like approvals finally testing all these things. So not that far behind I would say that'd be interesting to see how it plays out. But we also look I said you know 5 gig right to this AX stuff is coming in 5 gig as well. So that's that would be exciting for everybody for sure for sure. So and that's kind of the way you know across the world globally. I think on most countries now have opened up the indoor bands you know to cover the six gig range you know that came with the 60 part of the standards. So you know everyone's sort of done that in a lot of places internationally are going to be kind of following the the lead as to what the U.S. and the FCC does with AFC right. Some art of course is just kind of independent. So look at the rules for your region. You know some are going to have pretty heavy ERP limitations. Some are going to have application limitations. Some will just follow in lockstep with us and implement very similar systems which I'm sure will just be spin off of the existing systems right. So if you've got a Qualcomm AFC or federated or something I'm sure they're going to be duplicating these for these regions as well because most of the work's already done. So again most of this coordination exists because it's mainly to just not interfere with the existing license links that are in this band. You know in the U.S. for sure there's a ton of these microwave links that are in that lower part of six gig and a good number that are in the upper part of six gig. And this AFC is basically trying to or will be preventing the radios that we're using in our space for broadcasting and interfere with those license links right. So if we're not seeing the test results have been really positive like you know one of the big fears is it's going to block out whole giant areas where you're not going to use it. But from everything I've seen so far it's really promising instead of you know it'll cut out a couple of slices here where you can't use but then you've got the whole rest of the band to use. So at least here in the U.S. you know we're talking 850 megahertz of spectrum that's opened up for outdoor use. So you know it's a tremendous amount of spectrum. Again we're very excited. We've talked about this in the past a few times as well because we're we're plumped in. Now the equipment is like now people are actually starting to test this stuff and see what it's starting to do. Now it's like all right time to get excited guys. Let's see what things are going to do. Yeah that means you see what other hardware vendors do. I mean obviously you know most are already as they're A6 platform haven't really heard much about that and you know how well it's doing and who's really testing it. But even Toronto right they'd be interesting to see if Toronto goes the 6 gigahertz route because right now it's just CVRS 5 gig they're kind of quiet on what you do on 6. I don't know if it was part of their original plan to have 6. Is it something that they're like maybe hey we just have to do it now. I mean it could take a year or two just to get a CC certification for the hardware and 6 gigs if they're just starting now. So it'd be interesting to see where that goes as well. Yep yep yep for sure for sure. So we got that coming of course. There's the band part of it. The new tech part of it's coming is really cool. What are some other stuff we've been talking about? I guess also just to add something on a 6 gig. Definitely the most important thing that we follow as a company is like you know speak to people, teach them not to make the same mistakes that they did in 5 gig. Tell me about it. Really make sure that they deploy the right gear for what they need to avoid of course all the issues with noise and all these things in towers. All the you know all the negative stuff that we learn already from the 5 gig. We should not do it in 6 so part of our work is also to teach the people speak to them also. Be there you know as a manufacturer. We definitely did a lot of that obviously in 5 gig and that's why you know we made 5 gig and we're so successful. Yeah we saved 5 gig from itself you know. But yeah I know in the early days I mean again I saw some I think it was like some Mamosa testing you know with Omnis and I'm just like here we go again. Yeah. It's unfortunate that most of the most of the technology that's coming out now for 6 gig and you know I mean this is just the way beamforming goes is you know all built again on patch array antennas right which have all these side lobes. And although you know they they people like to say that they use the side lobes for beamforming but that's not really how it works you know the the the the side lobes that are created are really creating noise and dirtying things up. So yeah that's how they kind of use the beams to kind of focus and shoot some over here shoot some over there. But you got to remember there's they like to show in their spec sheets or in their and their representations of how it works this nice little perfectly elliptical node going here or here. And they don't show all the side lobes that are around that you know making all that noise. So you know horns will be fantastic with this you know new stuff you know beamforming doesn't always have to just happen with a patch array antenna. Hopefully Wisps will see that early and not like you said not destroy the spectrum. Especially with the fact that you know they're starting out everybody wants to run hundred and sixty megahertz channels you know that's ready. I'm dying a little bit inside every time I hear somebody want to do that you know. But that's that's the thing I you know I was reading some blog that somebody wrote was Matt Larson right he wrote a really cool cool blog. And one of the things he was talking about like the first step is like stop chasing the hype right this this fucking you know everybody's racing for this gig to the home kind of a thing. And yeah I mean some people need it but that's not what everybody needs. What we need is good reliable you know sustainable and you know stable internet is what people need. Of course speed is part of it right you know we can't be selling one or two five make packages anymore. You know you're selling twenty five fifty hundred make packages. I mean that's like 90 plus percent of the people that's more than sufficient for. You know if you looked at the the pre-sum report you see that the average house of that average person still utilizes like seven bags. That's it you know and we're selling them gig plans and stuff like that. So you know if we if we use spectrum you know properly then we'll be around for a long time to use. And I mean five gig is not dead. I mean it's still it's still very you know feasible to utilize it. Like I said I'm excited for the cambium forty five hundred a piece or forty five hundred series basically the five gigahertz AX stuff. I really can't wait to see that stuff come out and see what we can still do in five gig because you know the AX protocol has that you know spectrum piercing or something where like you know it just has like little five megahertz slots that go across the entire spectrum to dance around noise and that's that's going to be really cool stuff to see how that works. Yeah it's going to be really adaptive and I think we're going to see a re vitalism rejuvenation. That's the fancy five dollar word I was looking for right there. Rejuvenation of the band you know and just being able to pull a lot more speed and capacity versus what we were before. So then in six you know I mean I think we're going to see a ton of usable 80 megahertz channels. I think is where folks are going to settle in on you know so yeah 80 is real sexy 160 320 you know. Okay it's a little crazy right. But you know there's enough spectrum and if we use it smartly and don't just shoot ourselves in the foot then we've got a wide number of 80 mega channels that we can very easily sell you know 100 megahertz along and have good capacity have good ROI and like all these you know things you need to be successful in this. So it's going to be going to be real fun times looking forward to it. Yeah I mean honestly I mean we can go beyond 100 meg on an 80 megahertz channel right. Yeah sure. So I mean at 1024 at 1024 quam that's 800 meg right of basic and an 80 megahertz channel that you that you get right. So you can easily sell 200 even 300 meg packages on an 80 meg channel. Obviously how many is another story but with multi user MIMO and stuff like that it really becomes a possibility in both five and six gig and moving out to start talking about you know some of the hardware like the cambium things to 450 V that will basically do like almost carrier aggregation right. You'll be able to do five and six gigahertz at the same time. So if you that's the best way to run 160 megahertz channels like 80 mega and five gig and 80 mega and six gig you know none of this. All all your eggs in one spectrum basket. Yeah there's going to be some long time. So yeah a lot of really cool stuff to look forward to earlier for sure. So getting lots of funding opportunities kind of looking outside just banned stuff. I'm kind of excited to see you know a lot of what Wisp has been doing lately just trying to get people on a more sort of unified footing. I mean that's always been the goal right and like it grows and progresses. I think what I see we've seen real recently is a lot more push and focus sort of on the state level advocacy and grouping and stuff. So like they just did this recent show here in Milwaukee. The toss us was that. So very good show. Yeah. Yeah. Cause Milwaukee in January. Excellent. Excellent timing guys. But it was it really wasn't that cold. I mean honestly it's I saw it's like in below zero now. Right. I was in the 30s and I was there. So it was perfect. It was perfect weather. But you know that's where a lot of these like battles are really going to be one in thought. You know because it's like you know there's some doom and gloom about a lot of the funding and competition and stuff like that. But I mean realistically we've beat on this so many times in the past is you know if you get to understand what your state level folks your county even your local municipality level folks are doing. You're going to find that they're going to be a lot more willing to work with a local operator that understands the area understands their constituency. My constituency. Oh yeah. Such good money. But um anyways um and you know it's going to be willing to work with you and get past a lot of those pain points then dealing with just some you know multinational conglomerate juggernaut for sure. So. And that's that's where I mean a lot of it is flowing in actually that was some of the stuff. But again this you know you're like chasing the gig thing I think is really from the federal level all that federal money but now all that again that federal money is going down to the state level to dole it out. It's actually sounding like you know those gig to the home thing is really not what the states want. Right. Or at least you know the local players you know the local municipalities you know are able to get around that kind of thing and say look we just need to deliver. Good internet we need to deliver it now we need to deliver it to everybody so there the state funded money is really where you want to go because that's where you're able to just do what's best and and you know do it your way rather than. You know the way some bureaucrats in the federal government have told you it has to be you know that probably have people clicking the mouse for them you know they didn't even know how to use the Internet but anyway. Yeah it's just it's a state level stuff that's really exciting and I think that's where we're really going to make a difference to kind of bridge just digital divide that everybody keeps talking about you know. Yeah so. There'll be a lot more conversation on that at Wisp America which is like it's a month or not basically. Yeah. Time keeps on ticking baby. Yeah so that'll be Louisville Kentucky of course we'll be there full force doing our thing for sure so it'll be it was like did we just do a show like I don't know what it was five months ago. I'm telling you it's flown so fast how about you Jorge is the year just like since last year just boom it's gone and you know it seems like almost the end of the year is going to come again soon. You know. It's very quick definitely the time is flowing like really fast. Do you guys see any do you guys see any like is there any government funding in Latin America as well is there any money flowing into Wisp's or into Internet at all from the you know the government level. Not really not really the way the operator is different is mostly just private companies putting money into some of the selected operators in different countries. But the government in that part is just create their own stuff. They don't really fund like operators in the middle of nowhere or in rural areas. So no no funding. Sorry guys we've done a terrible job introducing we're here so I apologize. It's never too late. Yeah. The guy I've worked with for a couple years now everyone knows him too. Yeah. So Jorge handles. He's one of our product managers. He handles a lot of the social media stuff. So you'll see him in all of our Latin American videos. He's the all the YouTube stuff and everything you know he's the one doing the main presenting the webinars and stuff like that has a lot of social media. But there's also does a lot of the account management and service and stuff. I mean for Latin America in general. So and anywhere where they speak Spanish very handy. Yeah. Jorge if you want to give us a little bit of your background. How long have you been here kind of you know what's your background in the space and stuff. Yeah. Talk about kind of what you've got coming up in relation to podcast stuff and things like that. Yeah definitely. Well I I mean this wireless thing for a little bit over a decade now. I started with this basically with my first router was like this WR-T54. And the link sees that everybody knows which one it is. Yeah. And then I used basically all the technology step-a-link then UBNT and etc. I used to have a run a Wisp in my country for more than a decade there until I basically joined our filaments and then I just left that to somebody else. So I had plenty of experience in device configurations installing devices in towers because we used to do our own towers. And we installed our own devices. So I climbed towers many times as well. What was that like I mean because for people we don't know I mean his home country is Cuba right. Yeah. It was pretty interesting there. Yeah. Yeah. It was a really a boom after 2010. Yeah. I don't know how but devices just started entering the country in huge amounts. Yeah. So we have all the UBNT all the microdic lines were really there. Actually microdic found out about that and they decided to do a moon in Havana in 2016 which is where I met one of the sales person of our filaments. So we started there and basically was our own private thing. I remember the first network I had was computer to computer you know one LAN cable 50 meters across the neighborhood. Everything started like that. At the end of the day we had a tower with dozens of AP's there. So we had all the suites of devices you can imagine there. And we really test them to the limit because since we didn't have more devices to keep growing we started doing like more optimization of the network we had. And that's how we learn all the microdic all the you know router OS how to really go deep into the network and make it more stable with what we had. So at the end of the day we were offering packages that were almost 20 megs per customer. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody was living fairly close I would say no more than three kilometers. Yeah. So and we also did install a few horns as well that they're actually working there. Yeah. Now it's very good. Yeah. So just to follow up then basically I finished my university in 2018 and then I got the opportunity to come to work with other filaments. I met our filaments in 2015 was the first time online in online presence. And then I started to really interact with what you were doing because we were facing the same issues. You know this amount of devices deployed we were having noise issues all the time. But we didn't know what it was. So watching the webinars that Tassos was doing I learned that you know hey we were facing that you know. And then I slowly start investing more time into our filaments. I got to know some of the people online. I started to work in the in the early stages of the other filaments Spanish group at that point was newborn. Let's call it this way. And then I had the opportunity to come here to Slovakia where I am now. So which is very cold by the way. After buying many jackets and sweaters. Oh boy. There are no idea. I look like an alpinist in the mountain with the amount of layers. Like you're climbing Everest and it's like fall. Yeah. There's no palm trees here. Yeah. I miss the palm trees definitely. So tell us about your podcasts. I mean so I mean how do you see it developing there for Latin America. Yeah well first let's let's say that there's going to be a podcast. Yes. We haven't actually gotten that far yet. So so we're talking internally and you know Tassos now have been doing us for a little while now. But just to the nature that we're both based in the States you know and this is where our entire experience has been. You know it's easy for us to be sort of you know US centric right just a nature of you know where we are. A lot like the the technical RF side doesn't really change at all obviously right. But you know a lot of times when you start dealing with funding and regulations and stuff like that. You know a lot of the stuff that necessarily apply to the rest of the globe. So we talked about it and we decided we'd like to open up the podcast to do for Latin America regions. And you know a native Spanish speaker obviously helps without tremendously. So we're going to be watching another version of the podcast or an offshoot. Well we're going to have some mechanics here very soon. Yeah we're working on it. We'll make those details clear when we have details details right. Yeah so and basically it's going to be Jorge just on you know kind of tell us what you're thinking so far. How you're going to attack it how you approach and grow it out. Well first of all we have a massive crowd in Latin America. There's thousands of followers there. And we're going to start basically interviewing people as well. And then also inviting them to share not only what they have been doing with our followers but also their experience in a wireless market because there are many of them that easily can be or have been working for over the two decades. So I want that knowledge also to be transmitted to the rest of the crowd because as we know many people that are really still lacking you know a little bit more of education. So this is another mean that our followers will use basically to get to those people you know. We understand that people are really overloaded with the online webinars and the things we used to do which were very successful the last two years. So now we are going to go also on these formats and prepare the content in a different way. The idea behind that is basically the training of people and teaching them you know the right how to deployments based not only from our point of view but also from their colleagues in the field you know from people who are there also installing the same devices they're using. Maybe they are living in the same country so they will familiarize quickly with them. So we have a bunch of people waiting to participate so we're going to definitely set up all the details and I guess we will start very soon with this episode as well. Real soon. Real soon not us hashtag sayings. Real soon. The interview format I think we found it and our listeners find it to be extremely helpful. I mean we're going to be doing a lot more of this this year as we've kind of got this thing cranked back up on our side. We're just getting a lot of interviews and stuff scheduled out. Hey if you want to be a part of our version the current version of this now or you want to be interested in talking to Jorge for his version of the podcast please reach out to us. I mean we can be found everywhere. Any platform. Yeah any platform. Any platform social media we are paying close attention to what's going on. Yep so RF elements English RF elements Espanyol. Espanyol. Yeah there's a ton of folks there so you can also find us I mean Tazos and then I you know super easy to find so. Very cool I'm looking forward to that I think it's going to be a great experience for everyone and we'll see where it goes from there so. I will definitely put the sherry on top of the cake here to basically say a quick message to our perhaps viewers in Spanish in this podcast right so I open parenthesis now. Amigos bueno todas las personas que nos están escuchando por acá en este podcast en inglés por favor estén atentos vamos a estar lanzando un podcast en mi idioma español si están interesados en contar su historia su experiencia en el terreno va a ser muy valioso para los demás amigos que están también en la misma línea de esta telecomunicación entonces por favor contacte nos si desean participar muchísimas gracias. Awesome. Basically it's an invitation letter. Yeah so very cool. Well that's all I've got right now Tazos anything else you really want to give them to now like I said we've got a lot coming up this year in the podcast I mean we use a lot of really cool stuff so looking forward to it. Yeah I mean basically just whisper America right so looking forward to that coming up here soon hopefully we see a lot of you out there like Caleb said you know where we're building our list of people to be on the show so I mean if you're in Kentucky for whisper America stop by our booth if you want to be on the show let us know we'd love to have you on. Alright alright anyone else that won't be there where can I find this Tazos. They can find us everywhere on social media Facebook Instagram they can find information and contact information on our website RFelements.com you can go and reform RFELab.com or in our Facebook groups like RFelements English Espanyol and RFelements proper. Alright alright well good to be back and I guess we'll be talking to everyone here again real soon so until then y'all be good. See you next time. Thank you everyone. Thank you take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Adios. Adios amigos. Bye.