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

Full Transcript

Don Kellogg 0m10s

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

Roger Entner 0m22s

I'm awesome. So Roger,

Don Kellogg 0m24s

this week, we're pleased to invite Corey Davis to the podcast. Corey is the vice president at Verizon Frontline. Corey, welcome.

Guest Speaker 0m31s

Hey. Thanks, Don. Hey. Thanks, Roger. Great to be with you all today.

Roger Entner 0m35s

Hey. Good to see you again, Corey. So Corey, explain to our listeners what Verizon Frontline does and how you're how you're different to what the other guys do.

Guest Speaker 0m47s

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I'll tell you, Roger. For thirty years, Verizon's been committed to delivering the most reliable, secure, and resilient mission critical communications solutions to public safety. So we support our nation's first responders with a purpose built award winning network where our communications are always prioritized.

Guest Speaker 1m6s

We have a dedicated crisis response team, twenty four seven best in class support and innovation. And today, more first responders trust Verizon Frontline for their reliability and mission critical communications than any other network provider hands down. So today, we serve over 40,000 public safety agencies, and that number continues to grow. I can tell you over the last two or three years, we've had very robust growth in this specific space. And we continue to see the innovations and the growth and these partnerships grow throughout Verizon Frontline and across the nation.

Guest Speaker 1m44s

One of the things that are helping grow that is our most reliable five gs network. So our five g ultra wideband network now covers more than 250,000,000 people across the country. And as all you know and your listeners know, you know, that means essentially, you know, 10 times faster, more capacity. And we do a public safety survey every year. We survey about 1,700 public safety officials across all of the states in The United States.

Guest Speaker 2m13s

And nearly 70% of those first responders feel that five g will either be a top or important priority for their agencies in the future. One of the other things that really differentiates us is really our redundancy, the reliability, the backup, the security that we put into the network. So a couple more stats here. We have nearly 80% of generator penetration across the country. So what that means is 80% of our big match growth sites have a generator that backs up in the times of commercial power failure.

Guest Speaker 2m47s

A 100% of those sites have battery backup. We have nearly 600 deployable assets that we can deploy on demand for public safety during crises and disasters. And crisis response team that I mentioned before, it's a dedicated team 20 fourseven. It's made up primarily of first responders and military members. Our Verizon Frontline Crisis Response Team in 2024 alone had over 1,500 responses.

Guest Speaker 3m14s

We were able to loan out over 10,000 solutions to over 800 agencies across 46 states. Not only that, we have over 200 certified drone pilots across Verizon and Verizon Frontline. And really innovation and partnering with public safety is at the forefront of everything that we do.

Roger Entner 3m34s

That's big numbers. You know, when I look at the first responder market, I hear from everybody that they're working with more. One of my assumptions is that there were a lot of agencies that were unaligned, that were expensing individuals' cell phones. And that's a horrible thing for a first responder, especially if something gets subpoenaed. Where's the growth coming from?

Roger Entner 3m59s

Is it from these previously unaligned agencies? Or what do you see?

Guest Speaker 4m5s

Well, I think, Roger, as the technology continues to get better, right, the networks continue to get better. One of the things that, you know, we do here at Verizon Frontline is we hold roundtables and listening sessions with first responders on, you know, what's the need? What are they hearing out there? What are some of their pain points? And the number one thing that we hear today is we need more capacity because everything that we're doing is data intensive.

Guest Speaker 4m31s

So I think, you know, the days of doing things from pen and paper even to digital mapping, which we're able to do with some of our drones, All of that is getting geared towards solutions, whether it's on phones, tablets, routers, in vehicles. Everything is starting to get done more digitally. So we're starting to see that appetite increase. And when you have a best in class solution like Verizon Frontline, there's a lot of attention to it. And we also feel like competition is very good in the industry.

Guest Speaker 5m2s

It continues to drive that innovation forward. And Verizon Frontline is leading the way in innovation to really help public safety professionals achieve their mission, not only more safely, but more efficiently during both routine and emergency response operations.

Roger Entner 5m18s

You mentioned that the network is, like, purpose built for first responders. Can you expand a little bit on that?

Guest Speaker 5m24s

Yeah. So kind of the stats that I was talking about before. So everything that we're doing is based off of the feedback here at Verizon Frontline. So, I have the opportunity being on the Frontline team to go out and be part of some of these disasters and crises like Hurricane Helene, Milton, the LA fires. And we see it time and time again, when commercial power goes down, having nearly 80% of the generators or those macro sites on generators is a key, key differentiator.

Guest Speaker 5m55s

And I can tell you that number is even higher across the Gulf Coast. So you look at Brownsville, Texas, the way to Naples, Florida, we're in the high 90s. Over 95% of those macro sites have generator backup. Also, our deployables that we're deploying out in the field, you all probably remember Thor that we launched a few years ago, really big, lots of solutions built for us to your environments. Well, what we're doing now is trying to shrink those solutions.

Guest Speaker 6m21s

So what you'll see going forward is so that we don't have to bring in a large asset and take up a lot of footprint during these disasters. Our goal is to shrink that and make them smaller and smaller. And we've deployed things like our rapid response connectivity unit, which is something that can be set up with one person. It can be set up within probably fifteen minutes to a half hour. It's using both LEO technology and GEO technology.

Guest Speaker 6m47s

And it's really, really good for rapid deployments. So that's really one of the things that we're seeing in a differentiator between us and others is we're able to innovate, work closely with public safety, build our network based off of the feedback that we're getting to make sure that it is purpose built for public safety. Another thing, Roger, I know you and Don talk about a lot is our fiber holdings. Over 50% of the cell sites that I just talked about has our own fiber running to them. That's another advantage that we have here at Verizon Frontline.

Roger Entner 7m19s

Yeah. And with some disasters, even when when you have all the backup, it's not enough. Right? You have mobile assets. How do you stack up in that category?

Guest Speaker 7m31s

So, yeah, Raj, that's a great question. And as it pertains to deployables, you know, that's the key focus for our Verizon frontline innovation program. So we actually just launched three assets this year alone. We launched a few before that. As you remember, Thor, which we launched, I believe it was back in 2021.

Guest Speaker 7m50s

So really what our goal is is to work with industry, work with partners, a very robust ecosystem. We're working with over 30 partners across the Verizon Frontline Innovation Program to make these deployable assets smaller, shrink the footprint, and really be able to go into these austere environments and not take up a bunch of space and compete with others that are coming in. So for example, we built what's called our rapid response connectivity unit. This is a very small unit. It can be on the back of the vehicle.

Guest Speaker 8m20s

It can be stood up by one person in about fifteen minutes to a half hour. It uses LEO satellite technology and can support up to 200 users. Really good for things like a fire base camp or a mobile command setup at an event or at a disaster. So we're really, really excited. And that thirty year partnership really gives that credibility because Verizon Frontline was truly built from the ground up to meet those unique and evolving needs for first responders and the public safety community.

Roger Entner 8m51s

That's quite a commitment. Can you give us a couple of examples of how Verizon Frontline has worked with first responders? Unfortunately, we had, like, quite a few disasters recently, and I have the feeling we will have some more. Right?

Guest Speaker 9m7s

Yeah. No. No. Absolutely. So we're working, like I said, our Verizon frontline crisis response team, you know, last year alone had over 1,500 responses.

Guest Speaker 9m15s

I can tell you this year, we've been really, really busy, you know, supporting things like the presidential election. So we did a lot of work there with the government agencies that supported those events. We've been supporting the LA fires. That started at the January. We continue to do exercises as well, specifically with DOD and state and local agencies.

Guest Speaker 9m37s

Last year alone, we did over 70 exercises in partnership with state and local and DOD. This year, we were out of Patriot twenty five. That continues to be a great exercise for us as well where we're able to work with the DOD and go through some scenarios and exercises. You know, we got kind of a tagline here at Verizon Frontline where we don't wanna be passing business cards in the middle of a gray sky disaster crisis event. So it's really a key and fundamental pillar of Verizon Frontline for us to get out, partner with customers, pressure test technology together, understand who is who in the environment.

Guest Speaker 10m14s

So then when that crisis does come up, everybody knows who to call, and everybody knows what capabilities they are bringing to the theater. So we've had a history of proven success throughout Verizon Frontline working with these partnerships and these exercises. It's really, really enabled us to sharpen our pencils. It's enabled us to build on our playbooks. And then something else that we do, Roger and Don, is we do a lot of after action reviews.

Guest Speaker 10m42s

So anytime we handle an exercise or we do anytime a crisis response like a Helene or a Milton or LA wildfire, for example, as recent examples, is we sit down with those agencies and we talk about it. We talk about what we're right, what we're wrong. Look. We have the best network possibly on the planet, but we know we're not perfect either. So we're working day to day diligently because we know how important these communications are to public safety to ensure that when we're called upon, it just works.

Guest Speaker 11m13s

And that's really what public safety needs.

Roger Entner 11m15s

Alright. Sukari, what else are you excited about?

Guest Speaker 11m19s

Yeah. Roger, one other thing that I'm really excited about is our Verizon Frontline Verified program, which we launched about a year ago. So right now, what we're doing is we're taking these OEMs and these manufacturers, and we certify equipment onto our network. Right? We do rigorous testing.

Guest Speaker 11m36s

But this is another set of testing that we do in a steer environments to ensure that that equipment is mission ready and it is built for public safety. So we have put many partners through that program and through the labs. So then what that does is that also enables them to be able to put you know, on their marketing and to go out and market together to say, hey. This solution has been pressure tested. It is Verizon Frontline verified.

Guest Speaker 12m5s

It's mission ready, and we have the data analysis to back it up.

Roger Entner 12m9s

So what kind of devices are or what kind of equipment is that?

Guest Speaker 12m13s

Think of everything. We're verifying whether it's smartphones, routers, devices that are doing things like smart blending. We're also doing antennas, things that bring in RF and increase the RF. So we have a a gamut of solutions that we're verifying to ensure that they are mission ready for our public safety customers.

Roger Entner 12m35s

That's cool. Alright. Well, thank you, Corey, for coming on the show.

Guest Speaker 12m40s

Yeah. Thanks, Rogers. Thanks, Don. Appreciate all you guys do out there too, and stay safe out

Don Kellogg 12m44s

there. Alright. Thanks, Roger. We'll talk

Roger Entner 12m46s

to you next week. Thank you.