T-Mobile’s Business Push, Technology Advantages, and 5G Slicing with Daryl Schoolar

Full Transcript

0m10s Speaker 0

Hello, and welcome to the two hundred and fifty seventh episode of The Week with Roger, conversation between analysts about all things telecom, media, and technology by Recon Analytics. I'm Don Kellogg, and with me as always is Roger Antner. How are doing, Roger?

0m23s Speaker 1

I'm great. How are you?

0m24s Speaker 0

I'm good. I'm back from LA, and rumors of my demise are exaggerated. Exaggerated? Yeah. Had Yeah.

0m31s Speaker 0

Some great tacos, it was amazing.

0m33s Speaker 1

Greetings from Germany, right?

0m35s Speaker 0

Greetings from Germany, that's right. So speaking of Germany, one of the things that we wanted to talk about and you and I have been doing a bunch of work in AI and obviously telecom as well, but there's a new phone that Deutsche Telekom has released. Do want

0m49s Speaker 1

to tell us about it? Yeah, sure. Deutsche Telekom basically talked about this for a year or two, two years, that they are going to build an AI phone. And so, it's called the T Phone that they finally launched, right? And it is basically a Android phone with a deep integration of Perplexity, which is actually really, really important.

1m15s Speaker 1

You know, we're going to launch on September 3 our AI service. We're doing the same thing, what we're doing for the telecom industry, for the AI vendors. And we have already talked with, you know, what, 45,000 people about AI, which is like 10 times more than anybody else. And so we have like really, really deep insights that we will start sharing then. But here, as a teaser, one of the critical gateways for AI is the phone.

1m47s Speaker 1

Any AI company that does not have a way to access the service on a phone is not viable, basically. Because such a huge percentage of people are either using as one of their input variables, or as the dominant one. You know, I found it very interesting that the Perplexity CEO talked about that the AI app race is over. Based on our data, I'm very confident that it is not over. That there are ways yes, ChatGPT has a strong lead, but this game is far from over.

2m26s Speaker 1

At the same time, I'm applauding Perplexity that they are aggressively branching out with a device that is deeply integrated with Perplexity, that they have integrated into a browser.

2m39s Speaker 0

Not only that, but they're bidding on Chrome, right? I mean

2m42s Speaker 1

Well, that's like It's not going to happen, but yeah. Not going to happen. That's like me bidding for Google, right? Or Recon Analytics bidding for Gemini. It's not going to happen.

2m54s Speaker 1

Perplexity is like a valuation that is less than the $34,000,000,000 that they are bidding, right? Ours is by far less, but equally we have a

3m3s Speaker 0

Well, I think they have investors involved, it's not just their trading equity.

3m6s Speaker 1

Yeah, but still, I don't think this will happen. This is like baiting. This is

3m10s Speaker 0

I agree with you. I agree with you. I think what's interesting about the Perplexity approach and kind of the browser based approach is it is so very different from kind of the way a lot of folks are doing it.

3m20s Speaker 1

You know, Don, stop being a Luddite and use Comet. You know, you can download it now. It's an awesome Chromium based browser with perplexity, and all of us here at Recon have perplexity because it's a fantastic search engine. It's probably the best AI to find.

3m38s Speaker 0

Yes. Need to download a comment. But I guess what I would say is I feel like in a lot of ways, my habits around using AI have changed away from using search and away from using browsers. Right? Because why search and browse when you could just get the right?

3m51s Speaker 0

And I think a lot of people are taking that view as well.

3m53s Speaker 1

Yes and no. And our data, by the way, which we will share September 3, also speaks to that. But it is the integration of the two, because on one hand, yes, I want the answer, but B, I also to

4m9s Speaker 0

look at

4m9s Speaker 1

the webpage, right? And it integrates the two. And yes, we're going away from like putting a couple of keywords in to actually articulating, or at least you're getting much, much better results when you're articulating what you want rather than put a couple of bullet points there. And then you have much better outcome, but in the end, I have the choice with Comet to have both. And so I'm really looking forward and I'm waiting listed for like every other AI assisted browser to try it out, to see how well they work.

4m41s Speaker 1

And I like Comet better than I like Edge with Copilot, which I've tried too.

4m47s Speaker 0

So I have tried Edge with Copilot and I'm not a huge fan. Think this is generally speaking.

4m51s Speaker 1

Neither am I. I'm not a big fan.

4m53s Speaker 0

Generally speaking, Copilot could be so much better than it is. Yeah. But everybody's in Microsoft ecosystem and so it's an easy add on for folks to try, but I know beyond search, it's not really done a whole lot for me. At least there are other better models I think that do a lot better.

5m8s Speaker 1

Yeah. The reason why we have copilot everybody and pay $30 a month for every individual, every one of our 17 people, is it searches email really well and it searches our Dropbox really well, which is like massive. But other than that, it's disappointing. But yeah, so coming back to the T Phone, I'm right now in Germany. I think I'm going I'm going to go tomorrow and buy one.

5m34s Speaker 0

Well, that's the thing. It's not very expensive. It's only $175. Right?

5m37s Speaker 1

So Yeah. Something like €149. I'm absolutely gonna buy this thing. I'm gonna try it out, and then I'm gonna report back. This is awesome.

5m45s Speaker 1

No. And I have a subscription here. We not only have every American carrier's subscription, we also have some European carrier subscriptions. So I'm gonna put that on on the T Mobile thing. No.

5m56s Speaker 1

This is fantastic. But, yeah, this is the future, basically. And The US carriers have not talked about it, but I think AT and T and Verizon need something like that. And T Mobile USA better bring this out soon. Here's the thing.

6m14s Speaker 1

The US is so far ahead in the AI race. On the other hand, none of The US carriers, unlike the European carriers and like the German carriers, are bundling AI.

6m26s Speaker 0

Well, right. Here's a little hint for our US carrier friends, right? The same people who are in the switching pool are the heaviest users of AI. Yes. So there's a very powerful value prop.

6m35s Speaker 0

Right.

6m36s Speaker 1

And so you might want to bundle one of the AI services with your thing. You can be like, oh, look, we're so edgy and we're so forward looking. We're bundling this, here's the AI, you know, perk, add on, whatever, right? By the way, Verizon is offering the Google One perk, and I have Verizon as my home internet provider, so I'm getting Google's Gemini Pro through that for $10. By the way, if you're a Verizon customer and you're not getting the Google, and I'm here not a paid spokesperson for Google, but if you're not getting that Google One perk for $10 a month

7m17s Speaker 0

You're missing out. You're missing out. I think the subtext here is the carriers need to stop waiting for Apple to figure out what's going on with their Absolutely. AI disaster and partner with somebody else on this.

7m28s Speaker 1

Absolutely. Because Apple intelligence has the intelligence of a real Apple, right? It's ridiculous right now. And so on my iPhone, touchy PT replaces Siri. And then I mapped one of the keys with perplexity.

7m44s Speaker 1

So I have like two AI models on my iPhone. And I did the same thing on my Android device. You know? I'm AI to up the yin yang. Six months ago, I was like, really?

7m56s Speaker 1

Is this gonna work? And I'm like, man, this is the future.

8m0s Speaker 0

I think what folks that aren't looking at this every day don't realize is how fast things are moving and how much better it is now than it even was six months ago or a year ago. Have my thoughts about ChatGPT five in terms of level of effort and juice and all those kind of things. But that having been said, is still amazing and so is Claude and so is Perplexity and so is Gemini. They're all good at different things and there's still a little bit of criminology I think that you need to do to get them to behave in the way you want to, but they're getting better every day and some point, it's just gonna be talked to and it does exactly what you want, right?

8m34s Speaker 1

Yeah, no, absolutely. I was like snickering a little bit two years ago when Deutsche Telekom and the Mobile World Congress announced it. I'm no longer snickering. I'm like, this is the way to go. And it's the way to go for everybody.

8m49s Speaker 1

Mobile is the gateway drug to AI. The two go so closely together, it's not even funny. This is a bigger step than it was to have apps, or as big.

9m0s Speaker 0

I think it's at least as big. I mean, is, yeah, this is a whole revolution happening, right?

9m4s Speaker 1

Oh, yeah.

9m5s Speaker 0

All right. That's a good place to stop it. We'll talk next week and maybe you can tell us how you like your new phone.

9m10s Speaker 1

Wow. Let's see if they sell it to me, right? Yeah. All right. All right.

9m15s Speaker 0

Thank you.