 Live from Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Mobile World Congress 2017, brought to you by Intel. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Palo Alto for theCUBE, special coverage of two days of wall-to-wall coverage of Mobile World Congress 2017. We're doing it here in Palo Alto, covering what's happening in Barcelona with folks on the ground. We got analysts, we got reporters, and we have friends there phoning in and sharing their commentary, certainly on Twitter as well, and we're doing it from inside of our new studio in Palo Alto, and we're going to break it down. As their day ends, we're going to be analyzing and discussing the future implications of what it all means, teasing out the top news, giving our opinion and our commentary and reaction to all the breaking news. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle and theCUBE. I think the next guest is Willie Lu, who is a Facebook friend who I've been having conversations with, this is great to meet in person. He's a wireless guru going back to his PhD in the 90s, now chairman of the Palo Alto Research Group, extensive experience in dealing with fixed wireless, mobile wireless, but more importantly, creating the technologies with industry to understand what's it going to take to invent the future. Willie, great to have you inside the studio. Thank you very much, John. One of the great things about having the Palo Alto studio is while everyone's out in Barcelona right now, having dinner, probably going out for the evening, we get to sit inside the studio and talk about what they did today. So the big story inside of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was obviously the devices. You're seeing Blackberry making a comeback, Nokia, pumping their new muscles, bringing back the old Nokia phone and rolling out their new ones, Huawei bringing in their Apple killer. They want to go up and down the stack. So certainly the device-centric jewelry, if you will, the phone, the iCandy, the VR, the AR, the virtual reality, but also 5G, Intel, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia, all the major telcos are rolling out essentially what they are calling 5G and beyond, which is essentially not just wireless, but an end-to-end network to be the new fabric of wireless, not only for the devices in the phones, but the devices being the people in the cars and the factories and the cities and the entertainment. This is an area that you a lot of work in at a technical level. So I want to spend this segment talking about the picture of the future, right? Honestly, we need that next step-up function of architecture. We need that next network. We need those next devices. That's something that you're thinking a lot about. What's your picture? What's the future look like for you? Yeah, thanks, John. Yeah, I'm the wireless mobile assistant architect for almost 25 to 30 years. So from my point of view, because I'm the technical guys, from a technical point of view, when you talk about mobile communications there, normally we have three factors. We have to trade off, compromise each other, okay? The first is high-speed transmission. The second one is mobility, free mobility. The third one is capacity. Make sure capacity, right? Make sure that all people make money, right? So before, previously in the last 20 years, 30 years, our phones from the step-by-step from 2G, which is GSM or CDMA, the basic CDMA, which is IS-95, to the 3G, which is WCDMA, to the 4G, which is OFDMA, including LTE. And these phones basically is still focusing on one issue, even mobility issue, even high-speed issue. But in the future, in the 4G, 5G, 6G, whatever, we need a very high-speed, very high-speed, one giga, beyond over there. We also need a mobility, free mobility, right? We also make sure everybody make money, the operator make money, right? And so how to, we want to, three, we want to mobility, high-speed, capacity, everything we need. And then single one standard is not going to work, because if you want to pick out LTE, or very high-speed, you lose the mobility. If you pick out the free mobility, you lose the bandwidth. So the issue, that's the issue we 20 years ago, when I do the PhD, and when I was a Stanford professor, I was a consulting professor at Stanford, we started the open wireless access. This means converge a multiple standard together, converge the Wi-Fi, LTE, and the broadband access together in the same device. So when you have a Wi-Fi, go to Wi-Fi, which is very high-speed. It can be very, very high-speed in the future, right? And then you go to the highway, move very fast, it can get Wi-Fi, but you can LTE or 3G or 2G, that's fine. So that's the research we are working on the open wireless access, or open wireless architecture, or OWA, and the roadmap is from TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA to OWA. Okay, that's the technical point side. And for the device design side, my picture is for the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, which is very clear, okay? Before that, in the last 20 years, everybody that moved by phone is still a carrier-centric mobile phone. It means when I have a mobile phone, it's AT&T, it's AT&T. It's a locked AT&T, or it's AT&T phone, right? And right now, from last year to this year, we are on a very important transition from a carrier-centric phone to a user-centric phone. You're probably a couple of companies, Google or other companies, they're working on the virtualization, mobile virtualization, right? Means what? Means a user can pick up different operators on the way, right? So this phone, if I don't have a signal, I don't have a T-Mobile signal, I can use an AT&T to get an LTE. And if I don't have an AT&T, I can use a Flyzen. So we are on the way from a carrier-centric to a user-centric moment. Let's stop right there, because I really think you're onto something really important, and I think this is, there's some history to look at. I mean, if you look at wireless, I agree this is a very carrier-centric, and for the consumers out there, you can think of just the basic concepts of most people's experience. I want to unlock my phone, right? These are kind of known terms of consumers, whether it's my kids or adults. I don't want to be stuck to the carrier on their plan. I want to move my phone around. But that's just on the service. Now you want to de-couple it further to the person. So take a car. I might want to have a relationship with my car, as if I'm going to be never buy a car, I might use autonomous cars or Uber or other services, and I get into the car and I need personalization. So this is a user-centric thing, it's a super important point. But now we're still stuck, in my opinion, in siloed telco stacks, meaning I'm stuck to the carrier, I have limited services, and now I want to shift that to better performance. I mean, you can't look any further than hyper-convergence or converge infrastructure on the data centers, storage, networking, combining. So are you taking that same approach to say that you think wireless will converge in? Is that the idea? Yes, when your wires can merge in, I mean, take examples, Wi-Fi, LTE, and converge together. So your phone basically is running on a Wi-Fi, actually in a priority order, Wi-Fi first, Wi-Fi first, and the second is LTE, and then probably 3G is the second one there. So, and then if you have Wi-Fi, go Wi-Fi, and if you have a car that the car can be, also can be a micro-base station, okay? To connect the Wi-Fi, LTE together, and distribute to the passengers in the car. So this is also for the future, where I can move my office project. You can stay in the car, and the car itself is a subway station, and connect to each other. They're also, okay, let's talk about future picture, okay? In the next five years, okay? There's a couple of companies working on the mobile Wi-Fi network. So it means if I'm living in Palo Alto there, I'm moving along in my neighborhood in Palo Alto. I don't even AT&T flyers and operators, I can have a mobile service, because I can share all neighbors' Wi-Fi network together as a mobile protocol, then I can move, I can jogging your house, my house over there. We can share the Wi-Fi together, and we call, we divide the Wi-Fi into the home Wi-Fi, and then visit the Wi-Fi, we can rent the service to outside. So it's called community mobile network based on Wi-Fi. That's the next five years picture. How does that happen? I mean, I just, I mean, first of all, I believe in that's a great philosophy. And you started to see Xfinity do that with their current Wi-Fi, to create a little metro neighborhood network. That's really hard to pull off, because there's security concerns, and is it viable in the next five years? Do you think that is even doable? What has to happen to make that happen? I think this is going to be another major issue, because the Wi-Fi still have a lot of bandwidths, right? And you can exchange bandwidths with the security issue there. So Wi-Fi is more easy to the security than the LTE, because LTE for the state of the movement network, the spectrum is very expensive, right? So that's why we cannot use a lot of overheads for security. So as I always say, the most security with Wi-Fi than LTE, because LTE, the data, right? When you open it, there's not much overhead available for security, encryption, whatever should there. So Wi-Fi, you can- So they're maximizing their signal for performance, not security? Yeah, not security. Wi-Fi, you can take it like 40%, 30% the overhead load for security and it's very secure. So that's not the issue. That's why that's the next five years movement, okay? And then beyond that, when the mobile Wi-Fi neighborhood is built, right? Then we back to the traditional cellular operator networks there, we converge together, then user for the next 10 years, after 10 years, user can pick up his preferred operators, as you like. For example, if I'm in Palo Alto, and then AT&T give me a good package, right? It often, I click my AT&T, it's go to AT&T. And I'm back to the Cobotino. It's like network hopping. It's like not radio hop, frequency hopping, it's network hopping. That's not easier, right, right. But I still need a converging network infrastructure together. So let's take it back to Mobile World Congress. So right now, the current present is that they're painting the picture of a 5G world where autonomous vehicles, entertainment, smart cities and a smart home are all being powered by an end-to-end from the network to the edge. Yes. Software and capabilities from silicon software to device. Yes. So that's cool. That makes a lot of sense. Yes. Now, is 5G truly the enabler of that 5G, 6G, is the wireless enabler for this in your view, in your picture of the future? What role does wireless play in creating this new fabric? Yeah, I think it's very much possible because when I say when we converge the different wireless solutions together, then you have more space to focus on one direction, you focus on very high speed. We can one giga, two giga, even 10 giga, isn't that right? On the other side, we increase the mobility issue, right? And then on the other side, we converge on the operating side. In the future, I mean AT&T, Verizon, they're not going to just provide the cellular mobile access only. They want to provide more service. Around this 5G, 6G new business model, right? The traditional business model just provide the radio, the handphone access. But in the future, this operator is going to have provided more service, service-oriented platform. Is that consistent, that service, business model? Is that viable in your vision of the future? What is, or let me ask differently. What is the business model for the operator in your vision of this multi-network world? What do they do? What kind of services are they delivering? I think in the future, very important service, around 10 years, around time-free, it's a very important service it's called mobile virtualization service. So in the future, Google can run mobile service, but they're working with AT&T and the Verizon operator. So MVNO and steroids, basically, it's all doing pipe management. Yeah, and then let's say, for example, Google, they were contract with AT&T for how much bandwidth every year, probably one P, or a large bandwidth. And then AT&T provided bandwidth to the Google, right? And then AT&T can do other service also. So AT&T doesn't save a lot of cost in the individual marketing, you know? Verizon operators spend a lot of money on marketing, right? But later, they can cut off this cost that Google can do marketing, right? So this is an economic reconfiguration. Yes. Okay, so here's the next question. In today's landscape of the marketplace, what would be bad behavior from your standpoint that would screw up that future? What would be the signs that it's not going the right way in the ecosystem? Because part of the things that I'm seeing with things like Intel and the big players is there's an ecosystem that needs to get agreement that to accelerate the future, there has to be a new model, a new network. What are some signs that are warning signs for you? You know, people holding on to a certain thing, certain technology, what would be a red flag for you if you look at the marketplace? What kind of activities would say, whoa, that's not good? Okay, I think it depends on, for the operator, I think it's not good in the future, it's not good because you just focused on making money from the access side. Because in the future, access will be cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. So if AT&T just focused on access revenue is going to the red flag, okay? So you have to provide total solution, right? And for the vendor side, you cannot support one single standards. You always support LT is going to be dangerous. So you have to be open. So in the future, I think in the future, for my personal point of view, Comcast, AT&T or this company, they are going to merge together because they want to provide a convergence solution, right? So in the future, access will be cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, and then you have to have another revenues from the other side. I wrote a paper in 2001 called Broadband Starvation. And it was the beginning before Wi-Fi really hit, and then Wi-Fi hit, and New York Times picked it up as one of those stories. But we talked about the starvation from America for more bandwidth. I'll see, even outside the US, you saw our accelerated bandwidth broadband penetration, I called the Broadband Starvation because Broadband Starvation was in rural areas. So it always was limited by the actual physical connection, you know, the cable, the last mile. We all know the history and the policy side of the R-Box and the days of the telephone companies. But now Comcast and now AT&T, they're the fiber to the home. There's some, or the coax to the home. They bring in off the street and terminate into the house. Wireless changes that. Is that a scenario where you see 5G going where ultimately this notion of fiber to the home could be, you know, ancient history? Or, because that always, there's still construction. You gotta still trench. You still gotta provision in the circuits to the homes. You know, is wireless an opportunity there? And will that free up more competition? I think that's a big question and a big picture. I think for my personal experience when we design technology for the next 10 years, 15 years, the very big picture you think about is very important is we are on the way to transition from mobile communication to a personal communication. So previously the mobile communication. Personal communication means people centric. Yeah, people centric. So mobile communication, previously we call mobile communication, is a telecom term. It means just for connection. Just for information connection, right? End point, that's it. Yeah, that's right. So we are on the way, even in some universities, they change their course from mobile communication to personal communication. Personal communication means everything is personal. Personal centric, right? So in the personal centric, so in the future, the operator, the vendor, the provider think about it. In the future, you're not only provided information connection only, you provide anything that a person needed for his life, including health, security, right? Everything there. Transportation, yeah. Could be all digital services. Transportation, security, health care. Everything there. And then each application, we need a different requirements of the bandwidth, right? Especially for health, we need lots of video transmission, right? And this is going to, then that's why we need a wireless network is converging together. And a wireless is still a lots of way we have to invent. The word convergence is back again. It's happening everywhere. Willie, thanks so much for the commentary. I love this. This is consistent with Wikibon's head of research, SiliconANGLE, head of research, Peter Burris, who was on our opening segment talking about not IOT, only IOT Internet of Things, but IOT and P, people, Internet of People. Yes. And I think about IOT, okay? What's the major technologies inside IOT? One is sensing technology, okay? The other one is wireless connection, right? You want to connect to that billion billion news together. So we need a multi-dimensional, different wireless technology how to connect to this billion billion news together. That's also when the wireless technology. I worry about that not happening because I think the telcos have been slow. I think I'm seeing movement now with the telcos that now is the time to make their move. NFDs viable. Yes. And now their business model is somewhat emerging. The question is, will they be fast enough to move? That's the question. Yeah. That's also my question because the mobilization like from Google, they're moving very faster than a traditional telco, right? So telcos have to change their way of thinking in the business, right? I think Google should be the telco. Take over the telcos. That's why I say in the next five, 10 years, people just go to Google using Google account to get access to the phone, to the mobile phone. They get a phone number from Google, right? We're going to call it Apple World Congress. Google World Congress, Uber World Congress But anyway, we still need everybody to work together. It's like a different wireless standards. They converge together. And different companies, they also want to converge together. And eventually, the target is very simple. It's the personal, it's a personal-centric, user-centric, the wireless world. That's the future. Here from Palo Alto Research, Inc. Here at Palo Alto, a good Facebook friend, Guru, in the wireless area all the way down from Apple's PhD days as a practitioner and inventing the future. Great vision. I agree with it 100%. I think Intel and all the big players would agree. The ecosystem of smart movement right now is critical. And I think it's a huge opportunity to tie it all together in IoT and people-centric world. And congratulations on your work at the wireless mobile Congress that you started. And also the open, this open alliance, open wireless alliance. Congratulations. Willie Lou here inside theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. More exclusive coverage of Mobile World Congress here in Palo Alto after the short break.