 Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, in our studio here in Barcelona, it's theCUBE's coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host with Dave Vellante, extracting the signal from the noise, Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Exciting to break down day three, got four days of live coverage. Shahad Ahmed is in the house here in theCUBE, Group EVP, New Ventures and Innovation at NTT Data. Shahad, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really enjoyed your kickoff event. You had day zero of the event, which is pre-event. Thanks for coming on. It was like a week ago, a week ago we had that. How are you holding up? I'm good, you know, so much excitement at Mobile Congress, it's I think day two. And we feel like, you know, things are moving so fast, much like AI has taken us last six, eight months. So yeah, very excited about all the developments. My Instagram and my Facebook and Twitter video from the rooftop party got a lot of views. So everyone's like, oh, rooftop parties are great in Barcelona, good event, you put on with your partners. Schneider Electric, one of them, we'll talk about that news. But the topic of 5G is on everyone's mind. In the enterprise, which is a really focused area for telcos, they can monetize this opportunity. So there's a lot of telcos here saying, hey, we can hit the enterprise, we can monetize with the enterprise market. So the state of 5G is on everyone's mind. Where are we with 5G? What is the state of 5G? Yeah, no, great question. You look, the carriers struggled with monetizing 5G and they, for many, many, many years, they tried to get consumers to pay for it. Are you paying for 5G today in US? No. Probably not, I'm not either. So much like all of us, many of the consumer very quickly rejected the idea of paying extra from 4G to 5G. So the carriers are a little bit of a conundrum and now they have to figure out, well, we paid for spectrum, we paid for infrastructure, how do we make money? How do we get the ROI? B2B is the only avenue for them to monetize 5G. And so this whole idea of private 5G is something we're pushing very aggressively. We believe a private 5G network should be a very CIO centric build yourself network as opposed to a public network being used in the enterprise. So that's something the carriers still need to figure out. They're not quite there yet. You know, one of the things that Dave and I've been hearing here in theCUBE and observing in the industry through theCUBE research is that fixed wireless is great, it kits all the places, 5G is good, but that's a telco view. The IT world inside the enterprise, it's a really different animal from a mindset standpoint, cultural expectations, technology in some cases, and then you put the cloud into the mix. It's kind of complicated. It's a different ball game. What does that mean? Because that's slowing things down. Is that just the way we are? Is that where we're at right now? Well, let's look at who are the customers who are building their own 5G networks. These are industrial companies, automotive companies, manufacturing companies, airports, ports, oil rigs, and one of the key requirements for them is security. And that's something, we all see that in our daily lives. Whether it's securing your phone or your computer, these enterprise networks have some very critical infrastructure that have to be absolutely bulletproof. And so that's one of the big reasons why private networks is a key capability they're looking to build. And it has to be CIO-centric. It cannot be anything other than a CIO agenda, or else it's just going to fall flat on its face. So it's so often consumer markets lead and then the enterprise picks up on it. Certainly saw that, we've seen that many, many examples, the PC, the iPhone, et cetera. Are you worried that the consumers aren't picking it up, or is it going to be the case you think where the enterprises, the B2B, actually seeps into the consumer? Eventually, is there going to be a consumer market, I guess? Yeah, no, generally speaking, you're right. Consumer first, and then you get the businesses to follow very quickly. And by and large, this is kind of what happened also in 5G, but just no one wants to pay for it. They all want it. We do want it. We just don't want to pay. We're waiting, we know it's coming. And I think one of the big reasons is there weren't any compelling applications that drove the need for 5G in the consumer space. Whereas in the B2B side, 5G is absolutely needed in the factory floor, in the warehouses, where you have one million square feet of footage, and you need coverage, connectivity for the AGVs, for the cameras, and Wi-Fi just simply cannot scale. You'll have to have thousands of Wi-Fi access points. You could do that with 6 or 7 5G access points. So it's not a density issue or a power issue. It's coverage and bandwidth, latency, some of those features. And cabling and wiring, to be frank with you, in factories, the real estate is very critical. You can't even put a piece of ethernet cable in there without getting approvals from everybody else. And so, if you think about putting cabling and wiring for 4,000 Wi-Fi access points versus 5 5G access points, it's a pretty easy business case. It blanket coverage with these 5G 10 times better and you get the benefits that you need. So the question I have for you, what do you guys do with customers? What is NTT data doing? Can you take us through what your offerings are? Yeah, so we're a full service global systems integrator. We're also known as a telco in Japan, as many of you know, DoComo, is the largest wireless carrier there. But outside of Japan, we are a full service systems integrator, much like an Accenture or IBM or one of the Indian Pure Plays. So we offer everything from application services all the way down to network capabilities, which includes data center. We are the third largest data center provider in the world. We have under C cable and submarine cables that connects continents. So you can bring the telco understanding to the delivery and formulation of what the enterprises need. So back to you guys to come in. Okay, look, I need blanket coverage. I want to lay cable. I got to integrate to my back end. I got to put in the cloud for my whatever mobile app that's over there, this one over here. Is that kind of the similar? Yeah, absolutely. But we bring infrastructure to the table as opposed to some of the other consultants and integrators. That's a big differential. So radios? We have radios. We work with our venture arm called NTT VC. They have a relationship with a lot of startup companies, including Solona. A private 5G leader in our opinion. We might be a little biased. But yeah, we bring infrastructure. We bring networks. And that's our big differentiator. So you guys had news with Snyder Electric on Monday. What was that about? Can you just take a minute to explain the news there? Yeah, as I mentioned before, industrial manufacturing companies are target market for private networks. And for that reason, we established a relationship and agreement with Snyder Electric. One of the largest industrial companies in the world. And so we would be inserting our private 5G capabilities inside their equipment and their products. When they sell to another manufacturer, private 5G would come right out of the box. And so it's a bilateral relationship. We would be working with also their edge solutions that they have in place. And they would be working with our network solutions. I said one of the policy makers came out this week and was proposing a different way of adjudicating spectrum allocation. Rather than giving it to the highest bidder, they wanted to say give it to the highest committer, if you will. What's your take on that? Maybe give us your perspective on the whole tech policy, spectrum policy. Yeah, no, I think we need a refresh within how we allocate spectrum. Not only the US, but rest of the world. Auction is one of the key tools to get that done. There's all kinds of different auctioning methodologies. And I think in the end, we've learned a lot from all the auctions that have happened all around the world. I think it's time for a refresh. And frankly, I think regulators need to think about spectrum very differently. Technology has moved on. The processing speed has gone up. Cost per units have gone down. All kinds of tech available today. We don't even need to, in my opinion, regulate spectrum. We could be all mandated by tech. In US, we have CBRS, which is a shared spectrum. I think those kinds of policies will suit other countries really well where spectrum is shared through a database that's managed automatically, autonomously. And I think that's the future. What's the counter case to that? Is there, there's got to be some political motivation for the other side? And is it revenue? Is it, has that presented? As with everything in politics, revenue and money plays a big part. And so, yes, it's absolutely, is a factor. However, if you do open up spectrum, much like CBRS in the US, Wi-Fi, if you look 20 years ago, unlicensed spectrum, it opened up all kinds of jobs, all kinds of new companies, ecosystems that we've never expected. And I think that's the opportunity. Yeah, but that budget gets diffused and there's a power struggle at F. Okay, I get it. Mr. Head, I got to ask you about the, on the policy side, connecting over to tech. We've been hearing a lot of advances about silicon advancements, three nanometers is around the corner, stacking wafers, all this density and monolithic versus chiplets, all this stuff's going on. You know, we're simplifying it, but you get the idea. Is there any innovation on the silicon side that's going to maybe help with spectrum issues, 5G slicing, some of the areas that might need a little bit of extra horsepower or performance or new ways to architect the systems? Yeah, you know, great question. As you know, the silicon has pretty much reached its physical constraint. I might eat my words next year, but now they're going into 3D silicon, right? You had X and Y, now they're going to the Z axis. So at some point you will read some physical constraints and limitation, who knows? But you know, look, at the end, the technology is improving and the regulators need to also keep up. And spectrum is always going to be there as a natural resource. We just need to effectively and efficiently manage it for the rest of the other ecosystems. Let me ask you about topology, not topology, but architecture around cloud, because cloud's been a big part in this show this year about telcos and cloud native microservices. Some say it's going to create kind of a blind spot around 5G, got encryption, observabilities needed in some of these apps. That's one conversation. Then the other conversation is around data sovereignty, global deployments. What's your view on NTT data experience with customers around global deployments? Because you've got sovereignty issues, sovereign clouds going around the corner. So cloud's coming. Now telcos are, they do have physical infrastructure. So they're kind of set up for geography. Opportunity, tailwind. What's your view on the global aspect of things like that? And of course you've got open environments where they want to get more API. But what's your take on global? Well, a lot of this is now being driven by AI, frankly. That's going to drive how clouds are going to be architectored in the future. And with the EU AI Act that just got enacted only a few months ago, everybody's watching that because it has a lot of sovereignty, privacy aspects to it. I think to me, cloud architectures of the future are going to be driven mainly by the AI constructs that enterprises are going to be building for themselves, for their stakeholders. And mainly, everyone's kind of watching how this regulation's around AI unfold. I mean, I think the telecom estates that have that regional or local infrastructure will win, fix wireless is a good thing. Absolutely. And I think, look, some of the enterprises have been frustrated with even their current cloud infrastructure and their economics are now, they're wondering if these economics even make sense and should they build in-house? And so now we're seeing a shift and AI is now kind of driving some of that also approaches, so. I got to say, the AI edge conversation really has elevated the game on what's going on at the edge. How do we think about the data and whatnot? Maybe that's the killer 5G app. AI will spawn it, right? We believe so. I mean, I think you're right. You think the killer app is for 5G, is it edge? To me, it is edge AI. And frankly, factories, even before Chad GPT showed up in September of 23, H100s were all over the factory floor doing things like digital twin, virtualizing the PLCs and so on. And those are all edge AI apps. And by the way, all of those PLCs have to be connected and they all require massive bandwidth and low latency network. That's a great point. And at the top of the interview, you actually pointed this out that the state of 5G is about monetizing for the telcos. So this is a great win-win. Telcos can take it right to the market with B2B enterprise and or enterprise or intelligent edge, industrial edge is the low-hanging fruit. I mean, factories are low-hanging fruit. Yeah, they are and they're not because they are very rigid structural enterprises that have some very tough requirements. So telcos can't just show up with a public network. They have to come in with a full suite of integration services. So there's what, 5.6 billion connected users. Is that right? Is that something like that? How many PLCs are there? There's trillions, maybe. My point. So again, my earlier question about consumer, it's always consumers the lead. Why is it that consumer markets lead? It's because of the volume. If in fact the machine volume is that large and even larger potentially the consumers, that could trickle, the mainspring could be enterprising edge into consumer markets because it's all about the volume and the cost. Yeah and price per bit is also high because assuming you'll add some more services on top of just that one little bit including security services, provisioning, activation services, things that you already do but now for an enterprise. And speaking of consumers, I heard you guys got some news today with BMW. What was that about? Yeah, we're very excited going back to the PLCs metaphor. There are more cars than potentially humans, right? And so every car in the future will be a connected car. I'm sure you have cars at home and you do log in or check the status of your fuel or your oil or your- Start my car right now. Yeah, you can start. You need to have a e-sim inside the car. Some sort of cellular connectivity so you can actually see what your car's doing or where it's at at the moment. And so we're working with BMW to put a e-sim. I'll give you one of these. From one of our MVNOs called Transitel and we have contracts with over 200 countries all around the world. Very cool. And so for automotive company, do they go to one carrier and try to strike agreements with 200 countries or should they go to one MVNO and be able to do that? And so we provide that value proposition. UbiG? Is it UbiG? UbiG? UbiG? Yeah, you can go get it in Amazon too. Try it now, one gigabyte. I don't know if you can get it here. So one gig, here we go. Yeah. UbiG and a gig, try it for free. And then the backside, so there's a QR code in the backside that says, need more data? Yes. You're going to need more data. And you can get it from Amazon Store directly. Brilliant. Yep, download it to your iPhone or... Thank you for the plug. Enjoy it, yeah. We're here to please. Jared, thanks for sharing your insights on 5G, really appreciate you. And thanks for having us over to your event. We really appreciate you coming on theCUBE, getting that perspective. This is my pleasure. Thanks for a great interview. All right, we love getting the data. We're going to bring you to all the action, extracting the signal from the noise here on theCUBE. This is our BarcelonaCube studios here in Spain. I'm John Furrier, your host with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with more after this short break.