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

Full Transcript

Don Kellogg 0m10s

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

Roger Entner 0m23s

Hey. I'm great.

Don Kellogg 0m24s

So, Roger, I feel like we're on the back page of a tabloid here, and we're we've we've seen two folks talking to each other that

Roger Entner 0m32s

Through the news?

Don Kellogg 0m33s

Oh, what the news. Yeah. But it looks like Boost and Charlie Ergen are back in the news. You wanna tell us about it?

Roger Entner 0m39s

Yeah. So there's an article on page six of Fierce Fierce Network that apparently Charlie Ergen is talking with Peter Additon about getting help for Boost. Now, I absolutely think Boost needs help, right? But God, how can you put this? Yeah, Boost needs help.

Roger Entner 1m1s

I think Charlie has given up on him. Peter has been on a guest, I think very highly of Peter. I think he could put a new breath of fresh air into this place. But while he was breathing in, he would probably be almost choking. You know, I don't think Peter would wanna wanna work for Charlie.

Roger Entner 1m19s

I don't think so. He's no doubt a genius, but he's a very hard man to work for.

Don Kellogg 1m24s

What they've built is technically very, very impressive. Right? But the problem is there's no marketing dollars behind it. Right?

Roger Entner 1m30s

Exactly. And if you're cheap, then nothing comes out. Right? I have no doubt that EchoStar and Charlie has an interest in mobile accent, Peter, without a doubt. Now, my advice to Peter would be don't do it, right?

Roger Entner 1m43s

I think he has a good thing going. It's small, it's starting, but he's in control. And that's cool. And I think if anybody should buy this, then it would probably be Verizon. It would fit, you know, an AI centric MVNO or then brand would so fit with like, you know, Project six twenty four that is like AI centric.

Roger Entner 2m5s

It would fit with so many other things that Verizon is doing. But, you know, Verizon is Big Red, and they have already a stable of value brands. And so, yeah, we'll see what happens there. But

Don Kellogg 2m17s

I mean, arguably, they're still in the process of thinning out the legacy TracFone value brands. Right?

Roger Entner 2m23s

So Yeah. I I think they've thinned it out, but I think they're still working through all the things that need to be done. So in a way, I think when you look at it internally, they probably think like, we just came out of a massive restructuring with a lot of disruptions. We had so many balls in the air, you know, some dropped, some bounced, some broke. Let us catch a breather before we have the next set of disruptions.

Roger Entner 2m51s

So I don't know what happens there, right? Basically, I don't think I always say if there is smoke, there is a fire, you know, everybody talks with everybody. As I said, like page six, so and so was seen speaking with this person. Yeah. No kidding.

Roger Entner 3m7s

It's an interactive industry. And they all run into each other, and they run into the same circle. So it's not really that extraordinary. And the people who actually run mobile, they're all on the CTI board. So, you know, they all run into each other.

Roger Entner 3m21s

But yeah.

Don Kellogg 3m22s

Well, I mean, I think, you know, DISH's trials and travails continue. Right? What are the pros and the cons of a tie up here?

Roger Entner 3m29s

Well, you know, is there a pulse back at Boost? Yes. Right? They're gaining customers after, like, shedding so many. The question is, is this a dead cat bounce or is it actually a rebound?

Roger Entner 3m41s

I don't know. What you need is funding, right? Prepaid is a never ending treadmill. And when you stop, you fall behind and you fall down because that treadmill keeps running. And you can imagine all the memes of people falling off treadmills when they stop running.

Roger Entner 3m59s

That's Boost, right? Boost needs money. Boost needs ideas. Boost needs a disruptive thing. Because if they keep on going the way they've been going, they will get the same results.

Roger Entner 4m10s

And honestly, that network, that genius five gs standalone core deserves more customers. It's just like nobody's able to articulate properly why they need that. And that's why like tree fell over a forest, nothing happened. Especially when there's no money to pay for the loudspeaker or the megaphone. And Peter is certainly a megaphone.

Roger Entner 4m31s

And Peter is disruptive and has new ideas. So from Charlie's perspective, this would be ideal. Right? And he could get somebody, quote, unquote, on the cheap. He would get, like, a platform, all of these things, something that's disruptive and different.

Roger Entner 4m45s

I just can't figure out why Peter would do it.

Don Kellogg 4m47s

Money? Money?

Roger Entner 4m50s

Yeah. But the money would come at least for a year, if not longer, with golden hand shackles. And as I always say, you have to give Charlie a lot of respect. There are not that many self made billionaires in this country, a couple 100. But still, neither one of us are one of them.

Roger Entner 5m5s

And so you have to respect a man who built up things like that. But from everything I hear, talking with people who have worked with him or are working with him, it's not a walk in the park. It is hard work, and he's typically very hands on. And the more of a maverick you are, the more you chafe on hands on. Right?

Roger Entner 5m25s

If you're a racehorse and a Mustang, you wanna run. You don't wanna be, you know, girdled and directed. So comes to that.

Don Kellogg 5m32s

Well, I think it's certainly interesting speculation. Yeah. We'll keep an eye on it.

Roger Entner 5m36s

Oh, absolutely. It's like it's popcorn. Very

Don Kellogg 5m39s

interesting brands. Right?

Roger Entner 5m40s

Yeah.

Don Kellogg 5m41s

Both very entertaining brands to watch. Yeah. So, you know, what ends up happening there, I think, will be interesting. And I think that, you know, to your point, Peter's gonna make a lot of noise about whatever he's doing regardless of what the outcome is. Right?

Roger Entner 5m53s

Yeah. And so but in other news, right, we kinda struck a content relationship with our friends at Light Reading. So I think on Monday, people will read will they I I don't remember. On Monday, will they read your story?

Don Kellogg 6m8s

Yeah. So on Monday, we did some research when Trump Mumble came out about, you know, what proportion of folks are interested or would be potentially be interested. We presented the offer and asked folks how likely they would be to take that offer in a couple different flavors, like including the gold phone and not including the gold phone. And I don't wanna give away

Roger Entner 6m25s

We want people to go through, like, reading.

Don Kellogg 6m27s

Check out the article, but it's the results I thought were very interesting, and and I was actually quite surprised.

Roger Entner 6m32s

Yeah. And so we showed this already to all of our clients. And so now a couple of weeks later, we show it to the world. And then I think Wednesday, an article is gonna come from XJ Wang on the unfoldable devices. And the difference in satisfaction and intention and all of these things.

Roger Entner 6m53s

So like based on like 11,900 people who are in the market for cell phones. And so we talked to this many people in just two months. And I think foldable is one of these things where, and again, I don't want to take away from the story, where a lot of journalists and bloggers are extremely excited about the thing. Where then the companies are building that stuff and then customers have a slightly different reaction, especially when it's coming to buying these things. So it will be interesting of how these devices are getting better.

Roger Entner 7m26s

And it's based on our device data that we have, because on how many people do we have it over a year?

Don Kellogg 7m33s

In sum total, we have about 600,000 passively identified devices, and that's over the last year and a half or so.

Roger Entner 7m40s

So basically, we collect passively device IDs like down to like for a Galaxy S whatever, we have it down to like six different SKUs. It's absurd. Nobody knows what kind of phone they have. And so we collect all of that. We run satisfaction metrics, all of that stuff.

Roger Entner 7m59s

We know what components are in it. We know how well they perform. It's like an absurd amount of detail that we have, and it's an insane amount of work. And so XJ is publishing this, and so we're gonna put that hours at a teaser. One of the things that's happening is in probably early September, we're gonna launch a new website, where one of the things we're gonna do is, right now, our work is predominantly really white glove, full scale, you know, you tell us what you want to do, and we do it.

Roger Entner 8m35s

No questions. The only answer is yes, we'll do it. Right? But not everybody has that kind of budget. And so one of the things we will do on the website, we're going to start providing and selling our data in a snackable format for affordable price points.

Roger Entner 8m51s

And so, yeah, we're gonna blow people's minds of the things we have, and we've actually never showed it to anybody, which is like a crime. But it's like, I'm so excited about the things that we will show. It's ridiculous.

Don Kellogg 9m5s

Well, we have all this data that's coming in across all these different channels. Right? And Yeah. It's really about, you know, hours in the day.

Roger Entner 9m12s

Yeah. Exactly. We taking the

Don Kellogg 9m13s

time to go through and look at it. And then, you know, I I think particularly with respect to the device data, I've been very, very intimately involved in creating that data.

Roger Entner 9m21s

I made you. Right? Well, yeah.

Don Kellogg 9m24s

Well, I built it. Right? So and I'm actually a foldable user too. So Yeah. It'll be interesting.

Don Kellogg 9m29s

I think, you know, one of the things that's really, really great is that folks can't tell you anything about the subcomponents in their device, but because we're passively identifying and matching that back to a database, we can Yeah. We can go down to chipset level satisfaction. It's, like, pretty amazing.

Roger Entner 9m42s

We can tell you how well an x 75 air interface works versus a Dimensity 7,200. We can tell you like the chipset, like how well is this Wi Fi component working versus that. We can tell you which glass on the phone is actually making customers happier. And one of the things, I've done the analysis, haven't written anything about it. It's really interesting to see how the different handset manufacturers and the glass manufacturers are balancing the scratch resistance, which makes the glass harder, but also more brittle.

Roger Entner 10m24s

So how they are balancing this on the different like Gorilla Glasses and Dragon Scale. I found out that there are so many different glasses, it's not even funny. Most people think like there's only Corning Gorilla Glass. No, there's like Dragon Scale, there's Victra, whatever. And they all have different characteristics when it comes to scratch resistance and brittleness.

Roger Entner 10m47s

And it's very interesting to see also over time how they oscillate between the two of them in these formulas of the glass. And that's like the absurd detail. The ridiculousness of how deeply we analyze these things and the data we sit on, right? It's nuts. And, you know, in a couple of months, we'll sell it, you know, in a stackable format.

Don Kellogg 11m14s

It's a huge amount of data and it's really fun to work with. I've always been a device guy myself and it's kind of a dream to be able to go this deep with this data and then see what people actual users actually think about this. Right?

Roger Entner 11m25s

Yeah. And September is gonna be a big month, you know. We'll have another big announcement coming September 3. I'm really, really excited about that. By the way, what's really what was really funny when I was talking with Phil Harvey, who's a great guy at at Light Reading, and I said to him, you know, he asked me, so Roger, how many people do you have working for you?

Roger Entner 11m45s

And I'm like, 17, you know, focused on telecom. And I'm like, wow. You put this together, like, really quietly. I'm like, yeah. We have now more hardcore carrier centric analysts focused on US carriers than anybody else in the market.

Roger Entner 12m4s

That's us.

Don Kellogg 12m5s

And the data to back it up. Right?

Roger Entner 12m7s

And the data to back it up. So cool shit.

Don Kellogg 12m10s

Alright. More on that front to come. I'm actually gonna be out next week, so we're gonna have a guest host.

Roger Entner 12m15s

Yeah. You're going to a place. You're going to a place full of I read full of animals and foreign invaders that's under siege, you know, and needs military presence to be safe. You know? Watch out.

Don Kellogg 12m30s

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's LA, guys. I'm gonna be okay. Don't worry about it.

Don Kellogg 12m35s

But, yeah, Jake our colleague Jake is gonna be hosting for the next couple weeks. So I guess I'll talk to you in, you know, probably about two, three weeks.

Roger Entner 12m41s

Yeah. No. It's be safe. Right? You know?

Roger Entner 12m44s

Don't let the bad guys get you, you know? And look on both sides of the street when you cross it. Right? You never know what you're gonna hit or what hits you. Can't wait to have you back.

Roger Entner 12m54s

Okay? All right.

Don Kellogg 12m55s

We'll talk soon. Bye.