Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: This episode is a paid partnership with T Mobile for Business.
Speaker 3: One of the.
Speaker 2: Reasons I've enjoyed the revisionist history partnership with T Mobile
Speaker 2: for Business is that every time I sit down for
Speaker 2: one of our periodic conversations, I learned something I would
Speaker 2: otherwise have not even thought about. The conversation you're about
Speaker 2: to hear falls into that category. In fact, as I
Speaker 2: introduce it to you, it sounds like the start of
Speaker 2: a three guys walk into a bar joke. It was
Speaker 2: a top executive from CNN, Guy Griggs, Steve Douglas from
Speaker 2: Siemens Energy, the person who runs the maintenance operations for
Speaker 2: one of the biggest power companies in the United States,
Speaker 2: and Mokattaba, the chief marketing officer for T Mobile for Business.
Speaker 2: We sat down together in New York City not long
Speaker 2: ago and we talked about something called slicing, a technology
Speaker 2: T Mobile uses to help ensure that when someone absolutely
Speaker 2: needs a strong network connection, they can get a strong
Speaker 2: network connection five G Network slicing strengthens trust and connections
Speaker 2: across worldwide industries. Think about this next time you see
Speaker 2: a CNN correspondent reporting from some far flung remote location.
Speaker 2: Or there's a massive blackout and you're waiting for someone
Speaker 2: to get the power back on. What you see in
Speaker 2: both those cases is a professional doing their job. What
Speaker 2: you don't see is a technology network behind the scenes
Speaker 2: that makes it possible for them to do their job.
Speaker 2: This conversation is about telling the story of that invisible
Speaker 2: technological infrastructure. I found it fascinating, and I'm sure you
Speaker 2: will too.
Speaker 3: There's two ideas I want to explore today. The first
Speaker 3: one is is something that I've been struck by and
Speaker 3: I'm sure all of you guys have been struck by,
Speaker 3: which is that the benefits to technological advancement are largely hidden.
Speaker 3: In other words, only insiders kind of know what the
Speaker 3: implications of them are from the outside. You're just you
Speaker 3: can't observe from the outside and know how it changes
Speaker 3: the specific feel unless you're in the field. So one
Speaker 3: of things I want to do today is have people
Speaker 3: in the field tell me about all the unexpected ways
Speaker 3: in which technology changes are business. And the larger theme, though,
Speaker 3: is that we're going to be talking a lot today
Speaker 3: about infrastructure, and this idea that infrastructure is more than
Speaker 3: simply a kind of passive structural participant in innovation. But
Speaker 3: I want to start with with mo we're talking. We're
Speaker 3: here today, but this we're talking about something special that
Speaker 3: T Mobile business is doing from a technological standpoint. I
Speaker 3: want you to describe what it is, so to set
Speaker 3: up our conversation and to give you and give us
Speaker 3: an example from from your own world about how that's
Speaker 3: made a difference.
Speaker 4: Thank you, first and foremost, great to be here with
Speaker 4: you today, and it's great to see you again. So
Speaker 4: what Teamable and Tea Mobile for Business have been doing
Speaker 4: is innovating our network and creating the most advanced five
Speaker 4: G network frankly in America and likely on the planet.
Speaker 4: We call it five G Advanced Capabilities. And then with
Speaker 4: our business customers, we're really bringing this capability to life.
Speaker 4: That's called slicing. And to your point, this is a
Speaker 4: term that not everyone knows. They don't know what it does,
Speaker 4: and slicing is just a way of thinking about, Hey,
Speaker 4: if you have a network, can you take a slice
Speaker 4: of that network and create specific performance characteristics via that
Speaker 4: slice to ensure that businesses are able to drive the
Speaker 4: outcomes that are important to them. As an example, at
Speaker 4: the Formula one in Las Vegas that happened a few
Speaker 4: weeks ago in November. That portion of that network, that
Speaker 4: slice can be used for things like ticketless entry to
Speaker 4: speed up three hundred thousand people getting in so that
Speaker 4: they can enjoy the sport in the action. It can
Speaker 4: be used for back office operations, all the people working
Speaker 4: behind the scenes. They may be using push to talk devices,
Speaker 4: they may be using point of sale to make a sale.
Speaker 4: How do you ensure that that transaction, that traffic, that
Speaker 4: push to talk click happens when you have hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of people all in a small, limited space. And
Speaker 4: the answer to that is you dedicate a slice or
Speaker 4: a portion of the network to that mission. And so
Speaker 4: slicing can be used for so many different things. As
Speaker 4: you mentioned, we're here with our friends from CNN from
Speaker 4: Siemens Energy. The ways they can be used, frankly are
Speaker 4: limitless and are really really built to think through. How
Speaker 4: can mobile understand the pain points that our customers have,
Speaker 4: smash those pain points and help you deliver various outcomes.
Speaker 4: That's slicing.
Speaker 3: A couple questions about slicing before we get into a
Speaker 3: Seaman's Energy and CNN. First off, I want to dedicate
Speaker 3: a slice, because that's a way of what ensuring the
Speaker 3: reliability of those transactions exactly.
Speaker 4: So what's beautiful about slicing is it gives us the
Speaker 4: ability to use multiple knobs and levers. One can be
Speaker 4: dedicating a piece. One could be increasing the reliability or
Speaker 4: the performance of the network to adapt to the needs
Speaker 4: in real time. Others can be and we're getting a
Speaker 4: little bit more technical here, but latency. How quickly is
Speaker 4: that transaction happening? How quickly are you talking to the
Speaker 4: network and that signal coming back? Some transactions require super
Speaker 4: low latency, and that's another knob we in turn. But
Speaker 4: at the heart of it, you can think about reliability
Speaker 4: and ensuring that the network adapts in real time to
Speaker 4: the needs of the business.
Speaker 3: When did you guys start develop slicing? This is how
Speaker 3: new great great questions.
Speaker 4: So f Mobile was the first company in America to
Speaker 4: deploy what's called five G standalone, and five G standalone
Speaker 4: enabled this set of capabilities. The first slice at scale
Speaker 4: that we deployed was with F one in Las Vegas
Speaker 4: three years ago, and ever since then, there's been writer
Speaker 4: cop a Major League Baseball All Star Week as an example,
Speaker 4: all of these things have used slicing capability to ensure
Speaker 4: that the business can do what they want.
Speaker 3: And is it an evolving technology otherwise it's the slicing
Speaker 3: of today better than the slicing of two years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wonderful question. Just in twenty twenty five, we announced
Speaker 4: two very major, first of their kind slices in the US.
Speaker 4: One that we launched in February of twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: is called T Priority and really what that does is
Speaker 4: provides a slice for first responders and those folks that
Speaker 4: support our first responder communities because at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, what matters, you know, police and fire and EMS,
Speaker 4: emergency medical is in during that the network is working
Speaker 4: for them at those times when an emergency is happening,
Speaker 4: when lots of first responders may be showing up at
Speaker 4: the same time to a given scene, So giving them
Speaker 4: the capacity that they need in real time and expanding
Speaker 4: it to support the number of first responders that are
Speaker 4: showing up. And then the second major slice that we
Speaker 4: launched this year is one called Supermobile and it's actually
Speaker 4: the one that both CNN and Semen's Energy are using.
Speaker 4: And we're going to get into that, I think a
Speaker 4: bit more yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, guy, tell us a little bit about what you
Speaker 3: do at CNN and how you came to be interested
Speaker 3: in working with T Mobile and using this superslice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 5: So I oversee all of our partnerships, advertising relationships across
Speaker 5: the country. I'm all about coming up with smart solutions
Speaker 5: that drive better business outcomes for partners and our advertisers.
Speaker 5: We're going through this pivotal moment of transformation, and I'm
Speaker 5: glad to be overseeing the ad business as we embark
Speaker 5: upon this.
Speaker 3: How has technology altered the way you do your work?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: Just taking a step back.
Speaker 5: The media landscape has changed drastically over the last let's
Speaker 5: say thirteen years or so. You know, back in twenty twelve,
Speaker 5: it was all about cable and broadcast TV. It was
Speaker 5: all about satellite trucks and fixed locations, and for me,
Speaker 5: it was all about trying to get as much money
Speaker 5: on to monetize those mediums as possible. Now, you know,
Speaker 5: whether it's podcasts or newsletters, or streaming or linear and
Speaker 5: cable or events like, there are a million ways of
Speaker 5: reaching our audience, and the landscape has just gotten so
Speaker 5: much more splintered and fragmented. So now what we have
Speaker 5: to do is really meet audiences where they're at, and
Speaker 5: for me, I have to monetize all of those formats
Speaker 5: and platforms and mechanisms in a way that actually drives
Speaker 5: the business.
Speaker 3: So that's i'd.
Speaker 1: Say the biggest change.
Speaker 5: And with that also, we're becoming a digital first, direct
Speaker 5: to consumer brands, and so we're creating these standalone products
Speaker 5: that actually reach audiences across every screen, device and platform
Speaker 5: and reaches them where they're at. And that gets really
Speaker 5: interesting when you're dealing with marketers like T Mobile and
Speaker 5: delivering their messages in new and innovative ways.
Speaker 3: I'm curious about the first conversations you had with T Mobile.
Speaker 3: What was the problem that you defined that you want
Speaker 3: to solve? Yeah, and how did you how did you
Speaker 3: see slicing as as fitting into this solution that you imagine.
Speaker 5: So, as we embark upon this digital transformation and to
Speaker 5: basically transform CNN into a brand of the future, we're
Speaker 5: trying to define the future of news and so with that,
Speaker 5: our reporters really need to stay connected, you know, reporting
Speaker 5: live from a natural disaster or you know, in a
Speaker 5: moment of celebration like New Year's Eve or Super Bowl
Speaker 5: or July fourth or Thanksgiving or whatever that might be,
Speaker 5: or if they're in far flung places, you know, where
Speaker 5: there's not a good signal. We need to ensure that
Speaker 5: our audience gets delivered the information that matters most to
Speaker 5: them and does not skip a beat. And so as
Speaker 5: we're embarking upon this digital transformation, it only made sense
Speaker 5: to outfit our reporters with the bestnology in the palm
Speaker 5: of their hands to ensure that they're capturing that information
Speaker 5: as it happens in real time. You know, with breaking news,
Speaker 5: you're either leading or you're following. And you know, for
Speaker 5: us to have a competitive edge in this digital transformation
Speaker 5: that we're going upon, it was critical for us to
Speaker 5: have a trusted partner that was able to capture news
Speaker 5: reliably so that we don't break trust with our audiences
Speaker 5: and deliver what they need.
Speaker 3: Well, I want you to jump in here because one
Speaker 3: of the interesting things here is that as I when
Speaker 3: you're speaking, guy, I'm beIN a journalist my whole life,
Speaker 3: aware of all the limitations of the various technologies I've
Speaker 3: used over the years. But the thing is I have
Speaker 3: no insight into what is possible technologically right, I just
Speaker 3: know what I've been given. So I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: does the process of educating a company like CNN into
Speaker 3: what's technologically possible work. Did someone at T Mobile like
Speaker 3: call guy up and say, Hey, do you guys realize
Speaker 3: there's this thing out there that you may not have
Speaker 3: heard of? Like, I'm curious about how knowledge gets diffused
Speaker 3: in these marketplaces.
Speaker 4: What I loved about working with them is like any
Speaker 4: large enterprise, that's a little bit of prove it to
Speaker 4: me and show it to me. And so when the
Speaker 4: supermobile hadn't yet even launched when we started talking to CNN,
Speaker 4: but we knew that frontline journalism was such an incredible
Speaker 4: use case for all the reasons. The guy articulated that, hey,
Speaker 4: when breaking us is happening, the camera that you have
Speaker 4: in the video camera that you have in your pocket
Speaker 4: on your phone may be that first way of that
Speaker 4: breaking us making it to the audience. And so we
Speaker 4: sat down and we were having a conversation about how
Speaker 4: slicing would enable, even in moments of congestion and moments
Speaker 4: of emergency, would give them the intelligent adaptive connectivity that
Speaker 4: they need for their frontline to be able to stream
Speaker 4: as well as all of those the big moments like
Speaker 4: fourth of July, New Year's Eve, et cetera. And so
Speaker 4: what happened was they said, okay, prove it. So we
Speaker 4: gave them an X number of test devices. They embedded
Speaker 4: them with video crews and news crews around the country,
Speaker 4: and then they put it to the stress test. They
Speaker 4: went and ran side by side comparison.
Speaker 1: Really like, yeah, we did a test before we embarked
Speaker 1: upon this.
Speaker 3: We needed to make sure that the text tell me
Speaker 3: a little about the tests actually worked.
Speaker 5: I mean, we had engineers and field journalists using the
Speaker 5: technology and just you know, seeing whether the signal was
Speaker 5: stronger than some of the other partners that we work
Speaker 5: with telecommunications company, and it proves shall remain nameless, well yeah,
Speaker 5: name their names, but it proved to work, and it
Speaker 5: proved to be steady, and it gave our tech and
Speaker 5: product teams the confidence and our newsroom to actually say,
Speaker 5: let's embark upon this. Let's outfit all of our field
Speaker 5: journalists with this technology because it's going to be critical
Speaker 5: in our news gathering and news report.
Speaker 3: So it's like you're at some event and there's there's
Speaker 3: some I can I can I mentionine there are there
Speaker 3: are moments when there's one hundred reporters in a scene
Speaker 3: and the networks might be incredibly congested.
Speaker 4: In Yeah, it was both about congestion and areas with
Speaker 4: lots of demand, like New York City was one of
Speaker 4: the areas where the tests were happening.
Speaker 5: It's important not only from a journalism standpoint, but it
Speaker 5: was important for a T Mobile and CNN relationship standpoint.
Speaker 5: It allowed us to deepen our relationship because it's a
Speaker 5: win win win, and it kind of sets some blueprint
Speaker 5: for how we want to be working with T mobile
Speaker 5: more in the future. You know, the satellite to sell
Speaker 5: secure that our journalists have while they're out in the
Speaker 5: field enables them to do the job that they need
Speaker 5: to do better than anybody else. Our audience wins because
Speaker 5: they don't skip a beat, and then T Mobile gets
Speaker 5: the opportunity to show up in a very meaningful and
Speaker 5: authentic way, in a trusted way where the audience knows that,
Speaker 5: you know, what they're seeing right now is powered by
Speaker 5: this this incredible technology.
Speaker 1: And so it's.
Speaker 5: Something that you know, we think is never been done before,
Speaker 5: watershed and really demonstrative of where we want to go
Speaker 5: as a company moving forward.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was starting out as a report
Speaker 3: of the Washington Post, I was given a what it's
Speaker 3: called a trash eighty a radio shack like calling it
Speaker 3: a computer is too way, too flattering, and it had
Speaker 3: two cups. Do you have the cups? You ran to
Speaker 3: a pay phone and you put the cups on each
Speaker 3: of the two things of it, and then you hones
Speaker 3: you use tones to try and if you were covering
Speaker 3: a big event, to be like three pay like half
Speaker 3: a mile away, and then there would be a line
Speaker 3: of reporters waiting to use that. And if you're trying
Speaker 3: to beat the competition, you just would leave the pay phone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just stick there, like make the New York Times wait.
Speaker 3: I've worked for the Washington Post.
Speaker 5: This technology allows like our reporters to literally have a
Speaker 5: satellite truck inter hands, so they're not dealing with cups
Speaker 5: and strings and like waiting onlines for other reporters to finish.
Speaker 4: I'll give you a real example that was playing out
Speaker 4: at F one, which is the photographers from any news outlets.
Speaker 4: Their workflow was they would take pictures and then they
Speaker 4: would hand their SD card, the memory card from inside
Speaker 4: the camera to a runner. The runner would then literally
Speaker 4: run to somewhere to upload the photos. What we're able
Speaker 4: to do with slicing technology is we've launched a solution
Speaker 4: that plugs directly into the camera and uses the slice
Speaker 4: and the five G networks so that in real time,
Speaker 4: every photo that's being taken is moving over file transfer
Speaker 4: protocol to an FTP site. The editors are then able
Speaker 4: to grab it, which means breaking news is able to
Speaker 4: happen even faster, and they're able to beat the competition
Speaker 4: to whatever that iconic next image will be in getting
Speaker 4: it out to the eyes everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Steve, I'm sorry. I feel we've been we've been
Speaker 3: ignoring you. Before I get into the way Semens Energy
Speaker 3: has worked with T Mobile, I'm curious about your own background.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming you're are you an engineer? You're an engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm an engineer yeap originally?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And what kind of engineer actually?
Speaker 1: Marine engineer?
Speaker 3: Interesting? How would you describe your your current job with
Speaker 3: Semens Energy.
Speaker 1: I've got a great job with Semens Energy.
Speaker 6: So my organization, my team's we service the power plants
Speaker 6: across the United States. Power plants no different than your car.
Speaker 6: Every so often they have to do periodic maintenance. We
Speaker 6: show up with a crew of people, take the turbines,
Speaker 6: the generators apart, stem to stern and spect them, repair them,
Speaker 6: modernize them, upgrade them, and then return them too service
Speaker 6: to help power America. So last year, Siemens energy equipment
Speaker 6: generated about twenty five percent of electricity used in the
Speaker 6: United States.
Speaker 1: There's over twenty two.
Speaker 6: Hundred units spread out across eleven hundred sites in forty
Speaker 6: eight states.
Speaker 3: Twenty two hundred units.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 3: How many people work for you.
Speaker 1: In my organization?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have about fifteen hundred, and then I bring
Speaker 6: out about another three thousand contractors every year.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Basically, if a generator goes down somewhere, or a power
Speaker 3: plant goes down somewhere, you're the person who gets called.
Speaker 1: That's correct.
Speaker 3: How did you come to want to work with T
Speaker 3: mobile for business? Tell me how that came about. What
Speaker 3: was it they offered you that you solded.
Speaker 6: We have teams on site, so when we go to
Speaker 6: a power plant, a small event for us might be
Speaker 6: thirty people on a site for thirty's you know. A
Speaker 6: big event for us could be three hundred people on
Speaker 6: site for six months, and it's all about that that.
Speaker 3: Way for six you might you might be as on
Speaker 3: a site for as long as six months.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, and over.
Speaker 3: The close that six months or are you what are
Speaker 3: you doing here? They seemed taking it. You're taking the
Speaker 3: whole thing down and going through it.
Speaker 1: Take taking apart, rebuild it. You know, there might have
Speaker 1: been a uh.
Speaker 6: Some sort of damage to the equipment, you know, waiting
Speaker 6: on other parts to show up, you know, you know,
Speaker 6: we we've we've had events that have taken over a
Speaker 6: year on different sites. But for our people on site,
Speaker 6: you're kind of comparing your trusting history and we used
Speaker 6: to have to show up with boxes and boxes.
Speaker 1: Of drawings and manuals.
Speaker 6: And the connectivity that we get now lets our people
Speaker 6: access our engineers globally, whether they're sitting in Germany, India,
Speaker 6: the US. It allows them to talk to the factories,
Speaker 6: It allows them to access drawings, process procede. But then
Speaker 6: it also does things like let's us run payroll. I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, it enables everything to happen because when we
Speaker 6: show up with these plants, you know, we show up
Speaker 6: office trailers, bathrooms, cranes, tools, parts, you know, none of
Speaker 6: it exists when we show up and none of it's
Speaker 6: there when we leave, and.
Speaker 1: We do that three hundred times a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So logistically, what you're running is something incredibly complicated.
Speaker 3: So walk me through. You've got this group of you
Speaker 3: say as many as you say, as many as sixty
Speaker 3: or three hundred was.
Speaker 1: St Yeah, potentially out of site.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you show up and what walk me through?
Speaker 3: What the first couple of steps are and how this
Speaker 3: kind of connectivity would make a difference.
Speaker 6: I mean, we hire union workers, we're partnered with the
Speaker 6: UBC and hire middle rights. So first thing is sign up.
Speaker 6: Then it's go to safety training, go to site orientation training.
Speaker 6: Customer will bring the unit down, lock out, tag out,
Speaker 6: make sure that all the systems are safe to work on.
Speaker 6: Then take the machine apart. As the machines coming apart,
Speaker 6: you're inspecting every piece is in the condition it should be,
Speaker 6: is it worn, is it broken?
Speaker 1: Does it need to be replaced? Are we modernizing it?
Speaker 3: How these machines are? How big it is a sensing.
Speaker 1: From what I work on. You know, on a small
Speaker 1: side it's about eighty.
Speaker 6: Megawatts on the on the large size up to like
Speaker 6: fifteen hundred megawatts, So fifteen hundred megawats power a million
Speaker 6: and a half homes. Yeah, yeah, And you know, there's
Speaker 6: there's nothing we work on that you're moving with hand.
Speaker 1: Everything's being moved with a crane.
Speaker 3: You're dealing with a complex piece of machinery. You're a
Speaker 3: German based company, You're you You had to show up
Speaker 3: with boxes and boxes of manuals and you had to
Speaker 3: be in communication with people who presumably designed the machines
Speaker 3: back in Europe.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Talk a little bit about the difficulties of that earlier paradigm.
Speaker 6: Doing, you know, to the the earliest parts of my career.
Speaker 6: You know, if you wanted to send a picture or
Speaker 6: a sketch of what you found at the site, you
Speaker 6: actually had to send it by mail, you know, and
Speaker 6: turn it around.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you could fax it.
Speaker 6: And then all of a sudden you could attach a
Speaker 6: digital picture to an electronic communication. And you know, now
Speaker 6: with this technology, you know, we can live stream and
Speaker 6: four K and hey this is what I'm looking at
Speaker 6: you you see this? Okay, Hey I want to see
Speaker 6: from this view? You know, in the technology just allows
Speaker 6: that real time regardless of where the people are sitting.
Speaker 6: You know, collaboration as well as access to all the
Speaker 6: technical information.
Speaker 3: What's the big payoff for you? Is it that you
Speaker 3: can now speed up the process of doing these this
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 6: Maintenance absolutely for the customer, the owner of the power plant,
Speaker 6: whether it's a utility, an independent power producer, or some
Speaker 6: sort of municipality.
Speaker 1: You know, bringing that unit back sooner is beneficial to them.
Speaker 6: Getting my cruise off site sooner saves me money, lets
Speaker 6: me send them to another site.
Speaker 1: So it's all about the speed.
Speaker 6: And you know, the last thing we want to be
Speaker 6: slowed down with is communicating with engineering, getting that technical answer,
Speaker 6: you know, you know, getting that support. You know, I
Speaker 6: need whatever environment my people are working at to seem
Speaker 6: like they're sitting at headquarters and have access to all
Speaker 6: the same information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so T mobile gives you now able to equip
Speaker 3: all of those technicians with essentially a dedicated slice, a
Speaker 3: supermobile dedicated step.
Speaker 6: And you know, as you can imagine, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: unlike where people are reporting, you know, everything that we're happening.
Speaker 1: Is is kind of more remote.
Speaker 6: You know, your power plants are generally found in your
Speaker 6: city centers and your hubs, So it's that connectivity, whether
Speaker 6: it's five G or satellite, you know, lots of different options,
Speaker 6: but it's connecting our people to what they need.
Speaker 3: And how did you find out about about supermobile, Well.
Speaker 6: It was kind of an initially organic conversation. They came
Speaker 6: to us said, hey, we think we've got something for you.
Speaker 6: You know, we're always trying to get our people that
Speaker 6: bandwidth on site, and you know, we brought them the
Speaker 6: problem like to you know, what what can you do?
Speaker 6: And that's what started the conversation.
Speaker 4: For T mobile. It's I mentioned this before, but it's
Speaker 4: worth repeating, Like, we start with what are our customers
Speaker 4: pain points? And we knew with Semen's energy, remote workforce,
Speaker 4: work or safety efficiency were things that were incredibly important
Speaker 4: and so as we were designing and building supermobile as
Speaker 4: a solution, we really fought through what customers, what industries
Speaker 4: do we think will really benefit from this value proposition
Speaker 4: and these paining points that we can come smash. And
Speaker 4: this is why the COMversations with CNN around frontline journalists began.
Speaker 4: This is why the conversations was seen in the energies
Speaker 4: around remote workers working in some of the most remote
Speaker 4: parts of America. Began, and it was so exciting for
Speaker 4: us to see that yeah, there was a there there
Speaker 4: and we could really help our customers win.
Speaker 3: The case studies you've got like F one, Yeah, you've
Speaker 3: got like frontline journalists, you know, reporting on You've got
Speaker 3: like the power plans that we can't live without you
Speaker 3: enrolling out something like this. Do you choose early case
Speaker 3: studies that you think will kind of capture the attention
Speaker 3: of I mean, this seems to be an art behind it.
Speaker 3: Who you are.
Speaker 4: This is why I love business and B to B.
Speaker 4: I mean, like just listening to these stories about solutions
Speaker 4: that are serving Americans, whether the end consumer that's receiving
Speaker 4: the electricity or the power of the energy, or the
Speaker 4: person at home or on the go who's consuming news content.
Speaker 4: Like everything in our lives in some way is touched
Speaker 4: by business. And so absolutely, when we're building any solution,
Speaker 4: we're always thinking about, Okay, what are the pain points,
Speaker 4: what are the specific verticals or industries that could benefit
Speaker 4: from this? And then because we're deep in the B
Speaker 4: to B, we're able to bring industry experts to the
Speaker 4: table internally and trusted partners and customers to have a
Speaker 4: conversation on, Hey, does this really achieve and smash the
Speaker 4: pain point that you have? And so the answer is yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 4: and it's a lot of fun too.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back and we're back.
Speaker 3: Who needs this technology? Who hasn't adopted?
Speaker 4: What I love about supermobile is that there's three key capabilities,
Speaker 4: So let's start there. One is the slicing that we've
Speaker 4: talked a lot about. I think of that is intelligent
Speaker 4: adaptive connectivity that meets the performance and real time requirements
Speaker 4: of businesses. The second one that we haven't got into
Speaker 4: very much is built in security to ensure that as
Speaker 4: part of any layer cybersecurity defense posture that our businesses
Speaker 4: are taking, we're helping protect also at the network layer.
Speaker 4: And then the third one is the satellite capabilities that
Speaker 4: allow people to communicate from anywhere that they're at. And
Speaker 4: as I think about that, the one that we haven't
Speaker 4: really gotten into is events, concerts, political conventions, things like that,
Speaker 4: where the slicing elements of it I think really really
Speaker 4: can help. And then on the satellite side, I still
Speaker 4: think there's opportunities around workers that are deeply remote outside
Speaker 4: of energy. Government employees in national parks is an example
Speaker 4: that could use the satellite capability in their everyday job
Speaker 4: and really for safety purposes to make sure that in
Speaker 4: one way or another they're always on the grid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Steve, I had to come back to promote and
Speaker 3: I'm curious about as you've kind of experienced this technology,
Speaker 3: and I thought about how it affects your workflow and
Speaker 3: all these do you is there a point at which
Speaker 3: you start to reimagine what your uh, these job sites
Speaker 3: looked like. I asked this questionly because I remember we did.
Speaker 3: We did a tea mobile conversation once with these firefighters,
Speaker 3: remember those guys. Yes, and the firefighters were completely rethought
Speaker 3: they were the way they fought fires once they had
Speaker 3: this technology, because they they would go instead of having
Speaker 3: everything from directed from a command center off site, they
Speaker 3: would put just put a server in the back of
Speaker 3: pickup truck and go directly to the fireside and have
Speaker 3: all the decisions made there because now they had connectivity.
Speaker 3: So this would seemed like a relatively simple shift in
Speaker 3: the infrastruct completely change the way they thought about firing
Speaker 3: fighters and now fire fighting fires and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: the firefighters on the scene had to make were able
Speaker 3: to make all kinds of decisions they never made before.
Speaker 3: I'm curious about. Could you talk about you must have
Speaker 3: thought about Wait a second, this means I could do this, this,
Speaker 3: and this that I've never done before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The the idea of a tablet, you know, in an engineer,
Speaker 6: a technician or a craftsman's hand, you know, with with
Speaker 6: the work instructions, the ability to pull a drawing versus
Speaker 6: walking back to a trailer to do that, and then
Speaker 6: the ability to really just collaborate, you know, on the
Speaker 6: deck plates, you know, with a with an engineering organization,
Speaker 6: be it you know in Europe or somewhere else. You know,
Speaker 6: it's all right in the in the in your hands,
Speaker 6: and that goes into you know, changing and streamlining, you know,
Speaker 6: what we're doing on the customer sites and ultimately eliminating things.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. Give me a concrete example of a
Speaker 3: step you could a limit name.
Speaker 4: You know, And one example I love is the see
Speaker 4: what I see right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, if we were inspecting a roll of blades, you could,
Speaker 6: instead of me going through and documenting what each blade is,
Speaker 6: you know, taking pictures of it, go through and write
Speaker 6: a meticulous report. Hey, I just visually inspected these I'm
Speaker 6: gonna let you visually inspect them with me.
Speaker 1: Okay, hey, they're acceptable as is versus.
Speaker 6: You know, getting into dimensioning and visual inspections just to
Speaker 6: communicate to an engineering organization.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like with the camera on the phone, right, be
Speaker 4: a supermobile now literally you can to use a consumer
Speaker 4: term FaceTime in someone an expert and let them in
Speaker 4: real time see what the technician on site is seeing
Speaker 4: and a system.
Speaker 3: Guy just is there a point where we start to
Speaker 3: reimagine what covering an event looks like when we when
Speaker 3: we radically improve the kind of underlying connectivity connectivity.
Speaker 5: We launched last month a new streaming service. It's this
Speaker 5: adaptive live news experience that's designed for the modern news consumer.
Speaker 5: Live when it matters, deep one accounts, available anytime, anywhere.
Speaker 5: It's basically having the entire cn and experience in the
Speaker 5: palm of your hands on the phone. And you know,
Speaker 5: with that, we it's going to force us the opportunity
Speaker 5: to do some really cool things with our journalists. We
Speaker 5: think in this new age of AI, headlines are going
Speaker 5: to be commoditized. You can get them anytime, anyplace, anywhere, right,
Speaker 5: But people trust people, and we have some of the
Speaker 5: biggest world renowned journalists on the planet, like people that
Speaker 5: are anchors and reporters, and you know that millions and
Speaker 5: millions of people really trust it's taking the news reporting
Speaker 5: to the next level. These capabilities aren't afforded right now
Speaker 5: within this new streaming product, but they're on the roadmap
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty six, and we're hoping that T Mobile
Speaker 5: will be the underpinnings of technology that allow us to
Speaker 5: do all of that.
Speaker 1: So that's into the next level.
Speaker 3: A question for all three of you, what would what
Speaker 3: do you want next? So all of you have described
Speaker 3: a technology that allows an existing set of processes to
Speaker 3: be done much more reliably, and is there something what's
Speaker 3: on your wish list? What could the technology go?
Speaker 4: Love this question? I mean, at the heart of it,
Speaker 4: slicing is replacing what used to take wires to do.
Speaker 4: You mentioned it at the beginning, which was fixed locations
Speaker 4: and satellite trucks. We talked about F one at the
Speaker 4: end of the day. Over the last X number of
Speaker 4: decades has been this massive transition and transformation from needing
Speaker 4: to physically connect everything with a wire to now we
Speaker 4: can use slicing to emulate what wireline networks used to
Speaker 4: do on mobile networks. So as I think about what's next,
Speaker 4: it's really about how much more can wireline networks be
Speaker 4: disrupted to solve real challenges and create value for business customers.
Speaker 4: And that's what I spent a lot of my time
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 3: You haven't mentioned MO. I keep waiting for you to
Speaker 3: mention healthcare because I feel like the implications here for
Speaker 3: healthcare are huge.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I mean we talked to actually once before
Speaker 4: a little bit about healthcare. But what I for healthcare
Speaker 4: The way we think about it is one, emergency medical
Speaker 4: services are first responders, so they absolutely have access to
Speaker 4: and we see them using the T priority slice. But
Speaker 4: then where the magic happens is the integration of that
Speaker 4: slicing technology for the moving vehicle, the tablets in the
Speaker 4: vehicle helping save lives, and the ability to transfer and
Speaker 4: transition that data off of the EMS solution directly into
Speaker 4: the hospital or the healthcare facility where they're showing up.
Speaker 4: And I have multiple examples I could take you through
Speaker 4: with hospitals that have deployed five G purpose built coverage,
Speaker 4: usually to replace something like Wi Fi, to enable massive
Speaker 4: amounts of data much faster at lower latency, fully integrated
Speaker 4: with the EMS community around them to do their thing.
Speaker 3: I had a conversation of heartbreaking conversation with a guy,
Speaker 3: an ear doc in Chicago, who is training kids in
Speaker 3: the kind of rudimentary principles of first response, because on
Speaker 3: the South side of Chicago, it's the public who comes
Speaker 3: upon a gunshot with victim first right, and there's might
Speaker 3: be a five or ten minute window where some civilian
Speaker 3: is just sitting with the body and he was trying
Speaker 3: to teach them about, you know, compress the wound or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I can imagine, couldn't you imagine a universe where
Speaker 3: they just take your phone out exactly and you know,
Speaker 3: and take a picture of a video of everything, and
Speaker 3: that's sent immediately to somebody who can tell them in
Speaker 3: real time to do exactly.
Speaker 4: We're thinking about the Seama's energy example of what I see.
Speaker 4: But I fundamentally believe in know that over time, what
Speaker 4: we're going to have is just overlays. So you're going
Speaker 4: to use the camera on your phone, and on your
Speaker 4: phone as you're pointing at something, it will show you
Speaker 4: the schematics or it will show you how to help
Speaker 4: a patient in real time with instructions, so someone can
Speaker 4: be holding it, someone else can be looking at it,
Speaker 4: and it tells you the thing where I thought you
Speaker 4: were going to go with the thing we have not
Speaker 4: yet talked about, which in this year we haven't talked
Speaker 4: about AI at all. It was good.
Speaker 3: That was my next That was my next I had.
Speaker 3: It was I thought that Steve would be the natural
Speaker 3: one to because clearly that's you were talking about connecting
Speaker 3: to the guy back in Germany. Yes, but maybe the
Speaker 3: thing that you're doing with your with this connectivity is
Speaker 3: bringing in AI and having diagnostics that way, right, am
Speaker 3: I Right?
Speaker 6: We don't know what we don't know yet with it,
Speaker 6: you know, but the promise of just we've got years
Speaker 6: worth of running data, We've got years worth of inspection reports.
Speaker 6: How do you overlay those two together and have AI,
Speaker 6: you know, start doing smarter maintenance, doing more predictive maintenance,
Speaker 6: deferring maintenance, you know, based off of what we can
Speaker 6: see with the AD but just the getting ready for
Speaker 6: what the infrastructure and the power to build this this
Speaker 6: this this next wave of AI for the US, you know,
Speaker 6: it's what's driving our industry right now.
Speaker 3: The data demands of having a kind of open interaction
Speaker 3: with I'm assuming they're they're far greater than interaction with
Speaker 3: the human being. It was if I'm if I'm Steve,
Speaker 3: or I'm one of Steve's people and I'm on site
Speaker 3: and I have some problem and I want to be
Speaker 3: able to contact the specialist in Germany, or I want
Speaker 3: to have access to to it to an ll M
Speaker 3: that is like, got all the manuals, and one is
Speaker 3: much more data intentioned than the other.
Speaker 4: Right, Absolutely, it really boils down to are you using text,
Speaker 4: are you using voice? Or are you using video? Because
Speaker 4: the AI compute itself, that's its own server, its own
Speaker 4: mechanism that's sitting and processing. But then the mechanism by
Speaker 4: which you're bringing that information to and from is where
Speaker 4: it gets more intensive based on the modality that you're using.
Speaker 4: So if it's a chat AI, it could be relatively
Speaker 4: limited bandwidth, this required voice bit more and then video
Speaker 4: the most.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, guy. Have you thought about that in the
Speaker 3: context of is that a challenge or a question that
Speaker 3: comes up with at CNN about or well, it's just
Speaker 3: the future of reporting, you know, because I was thinking
Speaker 3: in this conversation, you know, we're talking about what we're
Speaker 3: really talking about with all of these conversations is we
Speaker 3: are making we are increasing the sophistication of the point
Speaker 3: of can action between us whoever has this device or whatever,
Speaker 3: and the problem they're trying to solve. And with journalist
Speaker 3: setting an incredibly fascinating question because you can imagine a
Speaker 3: situation where someone is observing something and AI is helping
Speaker 3: them understand what they're seeing. I agree.
Speaker 5: I think that all of these advances in technology are
Speaker 5: just going to enable us to do what we do
Speaker 5: on steroids much much better.
Speaker 1: It's also going to enable us to.
Speaker 5: Potentially provide value or utility to the general public in society.
Speaker 3: So just getting back.
Speaker 5: To the thing like allowing us to do things better.
Speaker 5: We defined real time journalism on cable TV forty.
Speaker 1: Five years ago.
Speaker 5: We were the first network to have twenty four to
Speaker 5: seven news, and that costs a lot of money to
Speaker 5: do right. And so what we're hoping is with all
Speaker 5: of these advances in technology and literally not needing those
Speaker 5: satellite tracks and not needing that camera crew and literally
Speaker 5: having all of this in the palm of your hand,
Speaker 5: it'll allow us to do that much more efficiently. And
Speaker 5: then lastly, I would say with the utility piece, which
Speaker 5: is kind of you know, this hasn't been vetted. This
Speaker 5: is just my thoughts. Like, let's say we are running
Speaker 5: towards the fire or running towards the flood, and we're
Speaker 5: the first on location and we see people.
Speaker 1: That are in need.
Speaker 5: Is there a way that we, through super mobile can
Speaker 5: connect to the local EMS or could assess what's going
Speaker 5: on and say there's a need for X, Y and
Speaker 5: Z in this moment. So we're not just reporting what's
Speaker 5: going on, but we're also able to help solve for
Speaker 5: whatever disaster or problem is happening any time. So that's
Speaker 5: kind of like the next step where you know, this.
Speaker 3: War reporting war reporting, which is the most confusing and
Speaker 3: kind of mistake prone. The idea that are a reporter
Speaker 3: on the scene could be taking video and having you know,
Speaker 3: identify that that was that plane you see was this
Speaker 3: kind of plane that belonged to this country and not
Speaker 3: that country, and that that that missile you see was
Speaker 3: this kind of missile. That kind of thing improves the
Speaker 3: fidelity of the on site reporting and has all kinds
Speaker 3: of ripple effects downstream, right because we're not we have
Speaker 3: an we have a less corrupted data from the source totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 3: Should probably wrap up. But there's a couple of themes
Speaker 3: I wanted to kind of end up. The first one
Speaker 3: is that the the effects of technological innovation are unpredictable
Speaker 3: and unknowable. I don't imagine no, correct if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: When you guys were coming up with slicing and with supermobile,
Speaker 3: you did not anticipate all the ways in which the
Speaker 3: technology could be used by your customers. You had some
Speaker 3: of it a sense, I think probably, But when you
Speaker 3: listen to Guy and Steve am I right, you hear
Speaker 3: things that you you didn't think that was what it
Speaker 3: was going to be about.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. I mean again, thinking about the arc
Speaker 4: of time here, twenty years ago, no one predicted slicing
Speaker 4: was coming. You know, arguably five years ago, no one
Speaker 4: saw the rise of AI in the way that it's
Speaker 4: actually played out from about three years ago. But yeah,
Speaker 4: we're building mobile networks and as we're thinking about the
Speaker 4: future of now five G to six G and what
Speaker 4: are those use cases and how can they serve businesses?
Speaker 4: One hundred percent it's these sorts of conversations on hey,
Speaker 4: what's going on in your business and what challenges are
Speaker 4: you dealing with and what are you trying to fix
Speaker 4: or address this year. That then gives us the ideas
Speaker 4: of how can we shape the technology and build the
Speaker 4: technology in a way that address is the need.
Speaker 3: Point Number two Reflection number two from our conversation is
Speaker 3: that the systems that we have built as a modern
Speaker 3: economy are probably a lot less efficient than we think
Speaker 3: it was. We assume we're doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 3: Then a new technology comes along, we're like, oh, actually
Speaker 3: you could do it way better. Right, So just when
Speaker 3: you think you've optimized a system, you think that, oh,
Speaker 3: I send the reporter, I got a satellite truck behind
Speaker 3: the reporter. We're fine, this is the way we do news,
Speaker 3: and actually, no, there's a way better. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: Or just in terms of like storytelling formats, you know,
Speaker 5: super mobile enable vertical video, which is becoming really hot
Speaker 5: right now. It's the predominant way that people are consuming
Speaker 5: video on social media, etc. We're just getting into that
Speaker 5: game and we're going to be able to tell these
Speaker 5: visually arresting stories in live formats and vertical video mobile
Speaker 5: for storytelling leveraging that and I think the future.
Speaker 1: You know, the best does you have to come?
Speaker 5: I have no idea what it will now, but I
Speaker 5: just I already see some future applications of where this
Speaker 5: could go.
Speaker 3: And then the third thing, and maybe the most important
Speaker 3: thing is the thing I alluded to earlier, is we
Speaker 3: are working towards a new definition of trust.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 3: We've been thinking about trust for generations now as being
Speaker 3: about transparency and fairness and predictability. But now we're adding
Speaker 3: this fourth component of reliability. I can reduce the number
Speaker 3: of you know, catastrophic power outages or system breakdowns. I
Speaker 3: can reduce the error rate of a journalist of the
Speaker 3: scene of a thing. And that that may be that
Speaker 3: new additional that new way of addressing reliability can enhance
Speaker 3: trust in a maybe as much as the other sort
Speaker 3: of three traditional pillars of trust enhancement, which is a
Speaker 3: very very intriguing thought. Anyway, Thank you, this has been fascinating.
Speaker 4: Thanks to Thank you all of you.
Speaker 3: An unlikely pairing that proves not so unlikely in the
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Milcolm good Singer.
Speaker 2: This episode was made in partnership with Tea Mobile for
Speaker 2: Businessiness at iHeartMedia Special thanks to Moe Kattaba Chief Marketing
Speaker 2: Officer T Mobile for Business, Guy Griggs, Senior Vice president
Speaker 2: AD Sales and Client Partnerships at CNN, Steve Douglas, Senior
Speaker 2: Vice President's Service Operations Siemens Energy, and the entire production
Speaker 2: crew at iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Nina Bird,
Speaker 2: Lawrence and Lucy Sullivan, editing by Karen Chakerji, mastering by
Speaker 2: Marcelo d Olivera. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm
Speaker 2: Malcolm Glapwell.