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 ninth 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 Itner. And this week, we also have Darrell Spooler with us. How are guys Hello.

0m26s Speaker 1

We're good. Yes. A busy day.

0m29s Speaker 0

So gents, you're coming to us from the T Mobile Innovation Center. Tell us all about it.

0m35s Speaker 1

Well, should we start with the morning of the

0m36s Speaker 2

Yeah, let's start with the morning.

0m39s Speaker 1

The newly opened Executive Business Center. Yes.

0m44s Speaker 2

So T Mobile refurbished, improved, put some cool technology in with their executive briefing center, which is on their campus in Bellevue. And so they can very easily bring the executives over to show all the love and attention to large business customers and get

1m9s Speaker 1

them over the hump. Absolutely. And it has, as you expect, the right amount of magenta color all throughout the building. Yeah. My initial impressions, I mean, it's new.

1m20s Speaker 1

There's certainly things that they're working on still and that they were upfront about it. But when I look at it from the work that we're doing here at Recon, and one of the questions that we've looked at is how can T Mobile move upstream, move into say larger accounts, medium accounts, enterprise accounts. This is something that they talked about back on their capital days as well in November. And from what I've seen, I mean, challenge T Mobile has, there's kind of like three general areas where you can bucket the challenges that they're facing moving up there. There's relationship.

1m53s Speaker 1

They need to build the relationship. They need to fight the incumbency relationships that most people already have. Two, there's still an ongoing perception about their network, coverage, capacity, performance, things of that nature, which takes a long time and repeated messaging to change perception. And a third perception, which I think in some ways is definitely a very standalone challenge is their reputation for working with large business. There is still a perception that they're not good at onboarding larger, and that is good dealing with larger.

2m26s Speaker 1

So they're not as good as they

2m28s Speaker 2

Customizing type deal. There's some truth to it, right?

2m31s Speaker 1

Certainly. But I think obviously the execs and what we saw today goes away to definitely address the relationship part. The part about inability to work with larger businesses. They showed definitely some thought leadership areas where they can do. They shared with us at least like one case example, which I think is always important.

2m50s Speaker 1

It's one thing to say we can do x, y, z. Another thing to find some name beside it and say that we can do x, y, and z. So I think that was really good to hit on those two things. Honestly, they play up their best five gs story. That's not just tied to the executive sentiment.

3m5s Speaker 1

You see that in all of their marketing.

3m7s Speaker 2

We saw that the rest of the day. Yeah. I think some of the things that were interesting that T Mobile shared on the record is that when somebody comes to the Executive Briefing Center, they're 80% more likely to sign up. What was interesting also was that they were very open that a lot of people are going to Microsoft and Amazon and then they also come by T The 80%, the question is, is it the people who made the effort to come are like predisposed to actually sign? Probably yes.

3m43s Speaker 2

How much does the executive briefing center help them? It helps. The question is how much? But they talked about that, if I remember correctly, the contract size of people who come there is like 26% higher. And the cycle time is like 15% faster.

4m2s Speaker 2

Yes. The other thing that was interesting and, you know, Daryl and I, you have been to more executive briefing centers than I can count. What I thought was very interesting that I hadn't seen before was that they had not only the briefing rooms and the boardroom style rooms, but that they also had like small little huddle rooms where like two people can like do a sidebar and can close the door where there's no table, but like in a more social setting. And they had, how should I say, a large living room setting where you can move into a casual interaction. And I think that's a really, really cool touch because it takes people out of their business frame of mind into more an interpersonal frame of mind.

4m56s Speaker 2

And in the end, I think you make sales a lot better when you like the people, when you are in a more casual way rather than when it's hard and dry numbers and you sit on this side of the table, we sit on that side of the table and it's us against you.

5m15s Speaker 0

Right. And that's relationship aspect of sales.

5m19s Speaker 1

Yes. Very relationship. And

5m21s Speaker 2

and they explained to us that was very consciously done. And I thought that was a really cool new things that I hadn't seen in another Yeah. Executive briefing setup. So kudos there. And then we came over here to the, what is it now?

5m37s Speaker 2

Innovation Center. Innovation Center, different name, same building. Some of the same stuff, Yes. Interesting use cases. Yeah.

5m48s Speaker 2

Some of them I've seen three times before like Pano, still cool. Pano is their fire detection stuff. Yeah. And they've explained this, I don't know how many times. Still cool, but okay.

6m3s Speaker 0

I mean, guys, self driving cars, right?

6m6s Speaker 1

Some had stickiness to T Mobile, some didn't. Yeah. But I mean, think, again, the good place to try to meet their objective, honestly, they think of this as a place for growing the ecosystem for. Think of this also in my mind is a little bit this is about like brainstorming where you get like the T Mobile folks highlighting the new technologies that they're bringing into the network like is probably gonna murder it, the new acronym L4S, I believe it's referred to. It's low latency, low packet loss.

6m35s Speaker 1

And other technologies that they bring in slicing of course, to stimulate the conversation with the people that'll be developing applications or services on the network showing the new possibilities. But getting kind of an open dialogue going with also the different application developers as well, thinking about brainstorming.

6m53s Speaker 2

Here's my idea, your idea and then one plus one hopefully becomes three. Yeah, so they very nicely showcase the technology advantage that T Mobile enjoys right now. They're the only one in The US who have five gs advanced, which allows them for the L4s. They're the only ones who have announced slicing on a nationwide basis, even though I think we will see a lot more announcing The standalone core thing is like, from what we can tell, Verizon and AT and T are highly pregnant with that.

7m30s Speaker 1

It's a temporary advantage that we'll eventually adopt.

7m33s Speaker 2

Yeah, but

7m33s Speaker 1

But the question is to get the momentum now. And T

7m36s Speaker 2

Mobile does a very nice job here in that momentum.

7m39s Speaker 1

And they launched the service today too in the business area that uses that engine slice the Super Business. Super Business, yes.

7m47s Speaker 2

Yes. And so that's a very nice combination of the standalone core slicing plus satellite, and then taking basically that key priority differentiation and taking it to businesses. I would expect them to do this then also to consumer because it allows them to then even more upsell a consumer. Especially for

8m11s Speaker 1

what we saw with the L4s and the gaming.

8m13s Speaker 2

Exactly. Now the other question is how many people are doing gaming and do they have the money to game on a on a handset, right? We might be the wrong demographic for that. On a mobile handset, for sure. On a computer, speak for

8m28s Speaker 1

yourself, I'm thinking the handset.

8m31s Speaker 2

Yeah, on a handset for sure. You know, I have to change glasses or I have to take off my glasses to see what's going on with my handset. So I like big screens, not little screens, but that's me. But yeah, no, and what's nice is T Mobile does a really good job to get the story out, right? There are about 20 analysts here, but it's not just an analyst event.

8m58s Speaker 2

They were way outnumbered. We are way outnumbered. We are like outnumbered five, six, seven to one by prospective customers, existing customers, developers. So they are doing a very nice job in doing that. The other guys at least haven't invited us.

9m19s Speaker 2

And from what I know they haven't invited the other guy, the other analysts either. So I think events like this have benefits and drive that store, right? It's always about a good story and talking about it. And T Mobile does a very good job in doing a good job and talking a lot about it. It's also a little bit kind of,

9m43s Speaker 1

I'm trying to say the exact word, but when you think about the audience, so audience I would say mainly there probably was a lot of developers or some of the developers there trying to build the excitement around it showing, hey, here's some examples of things we brought to fruition. Here's how our partnership has been in front of them to continue to keep them energized and motivated to want to work with T Mobile. But at

10m4s Speaker 2

the same time, a lot of these applications will work on every carrier. Yes. Because on one hand, the carrier, it doesn't matter which carrier wants to be a captive audience for that one developer and the developer doesn't want to be captive to one carrier, they want to sell to everybody, not only in The US, but everybody in the world. Yes. And so it's a very interesting tension.

10m32s Speaker 2

And kudos to T Mobile that they didn't play their own center of the universe thing up too much, right? They're an enabler and a lot of the technology like they showed stuff about the sale GP where they're doing five gs slicing in number of harbors. Right now, they're the only ones who can do this. And so they play that nicely. So it was a good event.

10m59s Speaker 0

What's your take on how they're positioning Slicing vis a vis private networks? Because I always feel like that's one of the things that

11m7s Speaker 1

Those are definitely two different things. Yes. They may be cousins, but they're not replacements for each other. Slice could be an extension of a private network, or you could build a slice into a private network, but they're not the same thing. But I'll say they didn't really talk about private networks No.

11m23s Speaker 1

At all

11m24s Speaker 2

Well, Carrier wants to sell slicing. Maybe Verizon is talking about that they also run private networks. But I would say like, there have been more analysts reports written about private networks than there are five gs private networks. They're out there and the ones that are

11m41s Speaker 1

out there are big, but they're not a lot of them. There's only so many harbors out there. There's so many only giant copper mines in the middle of the Australian Outback. Yes,

11m50s Speaker 2

and network slicing is something that will work for every business almost for every size. Yes. The barrier of adoption and the barrier of

12m3s Speaker 0

Well, one is infrastructure heavy and the other is completely virtualized, right? I mean, like that's the difference.

12m8s Speaker 2

Yeah, exactly. And businesses don't want to be infrastructure heavy. A business is not a network operator, right? Look at the company like ours, right? We outsource pretty much everything, right?

12m23s Speaker 2

We could run our own email server, but wherever we're going to put it, right? We buy it from Microsoft, we have cloud, we buy it from Google and from Dropbox, we have this and that, right? We could all do this ourselves, right?

12m38s Speaker 1

Yeah.

12m38s Speaker 2

But then we would have to hire somebody, they would have to invest into hardware, all of that stuff. It's the same thing for five gs private networks. If you're an airport somewhere or if you're the military or if you that proverbial armor, sure. But if you're a say you're a store, you might want to have a private network for your customers. You're not going build a private five g network, right, in

13m8s Speaker 1

in your store. And also, with the talk with reallocating where CBRS is, that's definitely going to put even more cold water on it for a lot of people, even if there was anything happening. Well, Just because the uncertainty of not knowing whether the radio you buy today will work.

13m23s Speaker 2

Well, here's the thing. If that actually happens, all of these people will have enough time to move and will get enough money to get a better system, whatever five, ten years later and say thank you very much the wireless carriers, I happily moved. And we had Tarazi here from Federated. He was like, yeah, we'll move, right? Because the reality is, you're getting a new network, and you don't even have to pay for it.

13m54s Speaker 2

Because by moving, you're getting new equipment, new software, new gear, and you're not stuck. And no, it will be. It will be. That at least that's what was offered. And Right.

14m5s Speaker 2

And usually you get more

14m7s Speaker 1

I'm just too silly to No. I Yeah.

14m10s Speaker 2

No. Because Anyhow. Anyhow. Back to the point, there

14m14s Speaker 1

was not a lot of private network talk here whatsoever. That's Yeah. What I'm

14m18s Speaker 2

So we have tomorrow more It's

14m22s Speaker 1

an Analyst Day tomorrow.

14m23s Speaker 2

Tomorrow is an Analyst Day where we share our concentrated insights. But this has been a good day. We're very appreciative for T Mobile getting us here and we'll come again,

14m37s Speaker 1

right? Absolutely.

14m38s Speaker 2

All right.

14m39s Speaker 0

Cool. All right, guys. Well, Roger, we'll talk next week.

14m42s Speaker 2

Talk to you next week.