 The CUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Hey everyone, welcome back to the CUBE's first day of coverage of MWC23 from Barcelona, Spain. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson. I'm literally in between two days. We've had a great first day of coverage of the event. There's been lots of conversations, Dave, on disaggregation, on the change of mobility. I want to be able to get your perspectives from both of you on what you saw on the show floor, what you saw and heard from our guests today. So we'll start with you, Dave V. What were some of the things that were our takeaways from day one for you? Well, the big takeaway is the event itself on day one. You get a feel for what this show is like now that we're back face to face. Kind of pretty much full face to face. A lot of excitement here, 2,000 plus exhibitors. I mean, planes, trains, automobiles, VR, AI, servers, software, I mean everything. I mean, everybody is here. So it's a really comprehensive show. It's not just about mobile. That's why they changed the name from Mobile World Congress. I think the other thing is from the Kinos this morning. I mean, you heard, there's a lot of, you know, action around the telcos and the transformation. But in a lot of ways, they're sort of protecting their existing past from the future. And so they have to be careful about how fast they move. But at the same time, if they don't move fast, they're going to get disrupted. We heard some complaints essentially, you know, veiled complaints that the over-the-top guys aren't paying their fair share and they should be able to, telcos should be able to charge them more. We heard the chairman of Ericsson talk about how we can't let the OTTs do that again. We're going to charge directly for access through APIs, to our network, to our data. We heard from Chris Lewis. Yeah, they've only got, or maybe with Sarbjit Johal. They've only got eight APIs. So, you know, the developers are the ones who are going to actually build out the innovation at the edge. The telcos are going to provide the connectivity and the infrastructure companies like Dell as well. But it's really, to me, all about the developers. And that's where the action's going to be. And it's going to be interesting to see how the developers respond to, you know, the gun to the head. If you want access, you're going to have to pay for it. Now, maybe there's so much money to be made that they'll go for it, but I feel like there's maybe a different model. And I think some of the emerging telcos are going to say, you know what? Here, developers, here's a platform, have at it. We're not going to charge you for all the data until you succeed. Then we're going to figure out a monetization model. A lot of opportunity for the developer, that skill set is certainly one that's in demand here. And certainly the transformation of the telecom industry is, there's a lot of conundrums that I was hearing going on today. Kind of chicken and egg scenarios. But did you had a chance to walk around the show floor? We were here interviewing all day. What were some of the things that you saw that really stuck out to you? I think I was struck by how much attention was being paid to private 5G networks. You sort of read between the lines, and it appears as though people kind of accept that the big incumbent telecom players are going to be slower to move. And this idea of things like OpenRAN where you're leveraging open protocols in a stack to deliver more agility and more value. So it sort of goes back to the generalized IT discussion of moving to cloud for agility. It appears as though a lot of players realize that the wild, wild West, the real opportunity is in the private sphere. So it's really interesting to see how that works. How 5G implemented into an environment with Wi-Fi. How that actually works. It's really interesting. Oh, it's obviously, when you talk to companies like Dell, I haven't hit HP yet. I'm going to go over there and check out their booth. They got an analyst thing going on, but it's really early days for them. I mean, they started in this business by taking an x86 box, putting a name on it that sounded like it was edge, throwing it over the wall. That's sort of how they all started in this business. And now they're, you know, but they knew they had to form partnerships. They had to build purpose-built systems. Now with 16G out, you're seeing that. And so it's still really early days. Talking about O-RAN, OpenRAN, the OpenRAN Alliance, you know, it's just, I mean, not even, the game hasn't even barely started yet. But we heard from Dish today, they're trying to roll out a massive 5G network. Rakuten is really focused on sort of OpenRAN that's more reliable, you know, or as reliable as the existing networks, but not as nearly as huge a scale as Dish. So it's going to take a decade for this to evolve. Which is surprising to the average consumer to hear that, because as far as we know, 5G's been around for a long time. We've been talking about 5G, implementing 5G. You sort of assume it's ubiquitous, but the reality is, it is just the beginning. Yeah, and you know, it's got a fake 5G too, right? I mean, you see it on your phone and you're like, what's the difference here? And it's just- Yeah, what does it really mean? Right, and so I think your point about private is interesting. The conversation, Dave, that we had earlier, I had throughout, hey, I don't think it's a replacement for Wi-Fi. And you said, why not? I guess it comes down to economics. I mean, if you can get the private network price close enough, then you're right. Why wouldn't it replace Wi-Fi? And now you've got Wi-Fi 6 coming in. So that's, you know, Wi-Fi's flexible, it's cheap, it's good for homes, it's good for offices, but these private networks are going to be like kick-ass, right? They're going to be designed to run whatever, warehouses and robots and energy drilling facilities. And so, you know, the economics, I don't think are there today, but maybe they can be at volume. Maybe at some point, you sort of think of today's science experiment becoming the enterprise-grade solution in the future. I had a chance to have some conversations with folks around the show. And I think, and what I was surprised by was, I was reminded, frankly, it wasn't surprised, I was reminded that when we start talking about 5G, we're talking about spectrum that is managed by government entities. Of course, all broadcast, all spectrum is managed in one way or another. But in particular, you can't simply put a sim in every device now because there are a lot of regulatory hurdles that have to take place. So typically, what these things look like today is 5G backhaul to the network, communication from that box to Wi-Fi. That's a huge improvement already. So yeah, my question about why not put a sim in everything? Maybe eventually, but I think there are other things that I was not aware of that are standing in the way. You're point about spectrum is an interesting one, though, because private networks, you're going to be able to leverage that spectrum in different ways, you tune it essentially, use different parts of the spectrum, make it programmable so that you can apply it to that specific use case, right? So it's going to be a lot more flexible that because I presume the needs, spectrum needs of a hospital are going to be different than an agribusiness, they're going to be different than a drilling unit, offshore drilling unit. And so the ability to have the flexibility to use the spectrum in different ways and apply it to that use case, I think it's going to be powerful, but I suspect it's going to be expensive initially. I think the other thing we talked about is public policy and regulation. And Sarbjit Johal brought up the point is telcos have been highly regulated. They don't just do something and ask for permission, they have to work within the confines of that regulated environment. And there's a lot of these green field companies and private networks that don't necessarily have to follow those rules. So that's a potential disruptive force. So at the same time the telcos are spending, we'd be here a billion, a trillion and a half over the next seven years, building out 5G networks. So they got to figure out how to get a payback on that. They'll get it, I think on connectivity because they have a monopoly, but they want more. They're greedy, they see the over, they see the Netflixes of the world and the Googles and the Hamasons mopping up services. They want a piece of that action, but they have never really been good at it. Well, I've got a question for both of you. I mean, what do you think the odds are that by the time the Shangri-La of fully deployed 5G happens, that we have so much data going through it that effectively it feels exactly the same as 3G? What are the odds? That's a good point. Well the thing that gets me about 5G is there's so much of it, if I go to the consumer side, when we're all consumers in our daily lives, so much of it's marketing hype and all the messaging about that, when it's really early innings, yet they're talking about 6G. What does actual fully deployed 5G look like? What is that going to enable a hospital to achieve or an oil refinery out in the middle of the ocean? That's something that interests me is what's next for that? Are we going to hear that at this event? I mean, walking around you see a fair amount of discussion of internet of things, edge devices, the increase in connectivity, and again, what I was surprised by was that there's very little talk about a SIM card in every one of those devices at this point. It's like, no, no, no, we got Wi-Fi to handle all that, but aggregating it back into a central network that's leveraging 5G, that's really interesting. That's really interesting. I think the odds of your, from you go back to your question, I think the odds are even money, that by the time it's all built out, there's going to be so much data and so much new capability, it's going to work similarly at similar speeds, as we see in the networks today, you're just going to be able to do so many more things. You know, your video is going to look better, the graphics are going to look better, but I think over the course of history, this is what's happening. I mean, even when you go back to dial-up, if you were in an AOL chat room in 1996, it was, you know, yeah, it took a while, you're like, eh, the modem and everything else, but once you were in there, it was basically real time. Yeah. And so you could talk to your friends in a little chat room, but that's all you could do. You know, if you wanted to watch a video, forget it. And then early days of streaming video, stop, start, stop, start. You know, look at Amazon Prime when it first started, it was not that prime video, it was not that great. Sort of catching up to Netflix, but so I think your point, that question is really prescient because more data, more capability, more apps mean same speed. Well, you know, you've used the phrase over the top, and so just so we're clear, so we're talking about the same thing. Typically we're talking about, you've got, you have network providers outside of that, you know, Netflix internet connection, I don't need Comcast, right? Perfect example. Well, what about the over the top that's coming from satellite, direct satellite communications with devices? There are times when I don't have a signal on my happens to be an Apple iPhone, when I get a little SOS satellite logo, because I can communicate under very limited circumstances now, directly to the satellite for very limited text messaging purposes. Here at the show, I think it might be a Motorola device. It's a dongle that allows any mobile device to leverage direct satellite communication, again for texting back to the 2400 Bod modem, you know, days, 1200 even, 300 even. Go back far enough. What's that going to look like? Is there, is that too far in the future to think that eventually it's all going to be over the top? It's all going to be, it's all going to be handset to satellite, and we don't need these rands anymore. It's all going to be satellite networks. I think you're going to- You want to see science fictiony? No, I think it's a good question. I think you're going to see fragments. I think you're going to see fragmentation of private networks. I think you're going to see fragmentation of satellites. I think you're going to see legacy incumbents kind of hanging on, you know, the cable companies. I think that's coming. I think by 2030, the picture will be much more clear. The question is, and I think it's come down to the innovation on top, which platform is going to be the most developer friendly? Yeah, right? And, you know, I've not heard anything from the big carriers that they're going to be developer friendly. I've heard, we have proprietary data that we're going to charge access for, and developers are going to have to pay for that. But I haven't heard them saying, we, developers, developers, you know, Steve Baum are running around, like bend over backwards for developers. They're asking the developers to bend over. And so, if a network can come, let's say the satellite network is more developer friendly, you know, you're going to see more innovation there, potentially. You know, or if a dish network says, you know what, we're going after developers, we're going after innovation, we're not going to gouge them for all this network data, whether we're going to make the platform open, or maybe we're going to do an app store-like model where we take a piece of the action after they succeed, you know, take it out of the back end, like a Silicon Valley VC, as opposed to an East Coast VC, you're not going to get in the front end. Well, you can see, you can see the sort of disruptive forces at play between OpenRAN and the legacy, call it proprietary stack, right? But what is the, you know, if that's sort of a horizontal disruptive model, what's the vertically disruptive model? Is it private networks coming in? Is it a private 5G network that comes in that says, we're starting from the ground up, everything is containerized. We're going to go find people at KubeCon who understand how to orchestrate with Kubernetes and use containers and microservices. And we're going to have this little 5G network that's going to deliver capabilities that you can't get from the big boys. Is there a way to monetize that? Is there a way for them to be disrupted, be disruptive, or are these private 5G networks that everybody's talking about just relegated to industrial use cases, where you're just squeezing better economics out of wireless communication amongst all your devices in your factory? That's an interesting question. I mean, there's a lot of those, those smart factory industrial use cases. I mean, it's basically industry 4.0 use cases, but I don't count the cloud guys out. You know, everybody's like, oh, the narrative is, well, the latency of the cloud, well, not if the cloud is at the edge, if you take a local zone and put storage compute and data right next to each other, then the cloud model with the cloud APIs, and then you got an asynchronous connection back. I think that's a reasonable model. I think the cloud guys figured out developers, right? Pretty well. Certainly Microsoft and Amazon and Google, they know developers. I don't see any reason why they can't bring their model to the edge. And that's really disruptive to the legacy telco guys. So they have to be careful. One step closer to my dream of eliminating the word cloud from IT lexicon, I contend that it has always been IT and it will always be IT. And this whole idea of cloud, what is cloud if AWS, for example, is delivering hardware to the edge where it needs to be? Is that cloud? Do we go back to the idea that cloud is an operational model and not a question of physical location? I hope we get to that point. Well, what's Apex in GreenLake? Apex is Dell's as a service. GreenLake is HPE's as a service. That's outposts. Right, yeah. That's their outposts. Right, yeah. Well, AWS's position used to be to use them as a proxy for hyperscale cloud. We'll just, we'll grow at a very steep trajectory forever on the back of net new stuff. Forget about the old stuff. As James T. Kirk said of the Klingons, let them die. As far as the cloud providers were concerned, just let that old stuff go away. Well, then they found out there came a point in time where they realized there's a lot of friction and stickiness associated with that. So they had to deal with the reality of hybridity if that's the word. The hybrid nature of things. So what are they doing? They're pushing stuff out to the edge. So... With the same operating model. With the same operating model. I mean, it's limited, right? So you see a lot of database on outposts. You can run RDS. You see this clash of Titans where some may have written off traditional IT infrastructure vendors might have been written off as part of the past, whereas hyperscale cloud providers represent the future. It seems here at this show, they're coming head to head and competing evenly. And this is where I think a company like Dell or HPE or Cisco has some advantages in that they're not going to compete with the telcos. But the hyperscalers will. Right, right. And they're already, Google's, how much undersea cable does Google own? A lot. Probably more than anybody. Well, we heard from Google and Microsoft this morning in the keynote, it'd be interesting to see if we hear from AWS over the next couple of days. But guys, clearly there is, this is a great wrap of day one. And the crazy thing is this is only day one. We've got three more days of coverage, more news, more information to break down and unpack on theCUBE. Look forward to doing that with you guys over the next three days. Thank you for sharing what you saw on the show floor, what you heard from our guests today as we had about 10 interviews. Appreciate your insights and your perspectives and can't wait for tomorrow. Right on. All right. For Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's day one wrap from MWC 23. We'll see you tomorrow.