Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: I want to shift the discussion and now to communications
Speaker 2: and telecoms because data is from the National Telecommunications and
Speaker 2: Information Administration shows that roughly one in five US households
Speaker 2: are not online, and that's especially in suburban and rural areas.
Speaker 2: So of course this is an important priority for the
Speaker 2: Biden administration, which has earmarked forty two billion dollars in
Speaker 2: grants to help kind of bridge this digital divide. But
Speaker 2: it's also a major issue outside the United States. So
Speaker 2: enter this space. Toronto Wireless, which has spent over a
Speaker 2: decade developing a network to rival fiber with less physical infrastructure.
Speaker 2: We're going to novel way to direct wireless signals around obstacles.
Speaker 2: The company announcing today that it raised fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: from Digital Alpha Advisors, a VC that focuses on digital infrastructure.
Speaker 2: And mind you, it was already valued last year at
Speaker 2: over a billion dollars. So here we have with us
Speaker 2: in the interactive broker studio is Basil all One. He
Speaker 2: is the CEO of Toronto Wireless. Passil thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining us. In studio as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Explain to us first why Toronto's technology is different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an important question because people as there's a
Speaker 3: lot of wireless technology around your satellite. Of course, wireless,
Speaker 3: there's five G, there's Wi Fi, and Toronto actually started
Speaker 3: more than a decade ago. As you noted, it's a
Speaker 3: very deep tech company with the idea that home broadband
Speaker 3: it's incredibly voracious. It takes about thirty to fifty times
Speaker 3: more band with to serve a home than to serve
Speaker 3: a mobile, So there had not been yet built a
Speaker 3: wireless technology for home broadband. Instead, there were other technologies
Speaker 3: being used that can kind of do the job.
Speaker 1: But what people really.
Speaker 3: Want, especially now, is they want a high speed connection,
Speaker 3: low latency, and they wanted to rival fiber in terms
Speaker 3: of performance, but they'd like to deliver it from a
Speaker 3: wild's point of view.
Speaker 1: So this is.
Speaker 3: A really deep dive rebuild of wireless technology with some
Speaker 3: really advanced tricks to get better performance non line of
Speaker 3: sight in both license and unlicensed spectrum. And if you're
Speaker 3: familiar with that, that's a pretty interesting trick.
Speaker 4: I'll turn the microphone on and join the conversation. A
Speaker 4: heavily regulated industry when it comes to that spectrum. But
Speaker 4: explain the tech here, because the road to providing you know,
Speaker 4: wireless internet to homes is paved with the carcasses of
Speaker 4: many a company. I was there when Starry launched its service, right,
Speaker 4: that was one that was promising in cities that believe
Speaker 4: was line of sight though, Yes, so how do you
Speaker 4: do this in a way that does it for a
Speaker 4: cheaper does it cheaper than the wireless companies like T Mobile,
Speaker 4: A T T and Verizon, but also does it without
Speaker 4: the infrastructure of the large carrot telecom carriers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's of course it's a bit complicated, but it's
Speaker 3: really fundamentally important right now because you know, digital divide
Speaker 3: is so critical at the moment.
Speaker 1: So look at it this way.
Speaker 3: In the world of spectrum, you know, you have really
Speaker 3: high frequency spectrum, which is really good at high speeds
Speaker 3: because it's high frequency, but it's line of sight and
Speaker 3: it's also impacted by weather a very high frequencies. So
Speaker 3: that technology is really good for speed, but it's not
Speaker 3: so good because if you have to have a tower
Speaker 3: within line of sight to every home, you're trying to
Speaker 3: serve it's incredibly expensive because you have to have thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of towers in every city. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: you have low frequency spectrum six hundred eight hundred makes
Speaker 3: like the spectrum just sold between T Mobile and Comcast.
Speaker 1: Today was announced that.
Speaker 3: Spectrum is incredibly good at distance, but it's not quite
Speaker 3: as good at really high speeds.
Speaker 1: You have to use a lot more spectrum.
Speaker 3: Midband, right between two and seven gig hits, where we operate,
Speaker 3: is kind of that sweet spot. You get non line
Speaker 3: of sight like low frequency signals, travels nice around corners,
Speaker 3: and but you also get very very good speeds. The
Speaker 3: challenge with midband is it's all used for the mobile network,
Speaker 3: and if they think about the economics of delivering bits
Speaker 3: to customers, the mobile ARPU, a revenue per user is
Speaker 3: about the same as you get for a home. Yet
Speaker 3: to support a home you have to deliver thirty to
Speaker 3: fifty times more bits in a given period of time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we stream a lot of Netflix, yeah right, right right,
Speaker 3: and on big screens, which really makes the difference, and
Speaker 3: now on demand, which makes it even more difficult. So
Speaker 3: the challenge has been how do you solve that problem.
Speaker 3: How do you get better spectral efficiency specifically, but also
Speaker 3: can you use both licensed and unlicensed and still deliver
Speaker 3: a reliable service? And that's basically the technology Toronto has
Speaker 3: perfected over ten years.
Speaker 2: I'm an obvious said this talk to about why use
Speaker 2: unlicensed spectrum?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: It's great, No, it's a really important question. The reason
Speaker 3: is is that the licensed spectrum is often is pretty
Speaker 3: quickly consumed by the mobile network in that sweet spot
Speaker 3: of spectrum where you want to operate, and so you
Speaker 3: have to decide how you're going to handle that. Either
Speaker 3: you allocate more to fix, but you know you're not
Speaker 3: going to get much money for that, or you can
Speaker 3: avail yourself of unlicensed. The problem with unlicensed is that
Speaker 3: at any moment in time, somebody else can start using
Speaker 3: it as well, and then what happens to your signal
Speaker 3: if somebody nearby starts transmitting in the same spectrum. And
Speaker 3: the technology that Toronto really innovated here is the ability
Speaker 3: to cancel that interference, basically not listen. It's a way
Speaker 3: to think of it is and this is a really
Speaker 3: good analogy. You're sitting in an auditor or in an
Speaker 3: audit a groom full of people, and there's someone twenty
Speaker 3: people a way that you want to listen to, and
Speaker 3: people are talking pretty loud right next to you. We
Speaker 3: have the ability in real time to silence, not jam,
Speaker 3: but just not listen, to mute from our point of
Speaker 3: view all those signals that are really close and listen
Speaker 3: to that distant signal, and we actually picked that signal up.
Speaker 3: That is a very unique technology requires CHIFS digital signal processing.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty interesting trick.
Speaker 4: So who are your customers and your potential customers? If
Speaker 4: we think about rural areas, increasingly they're being served by
Speaker 4: companies like Starlink that's satellite right band. Densely packed areas,
Speaker 4: especially in the United States, can be served by wireline operators.
Speaker 4: You are already have laid the cable and done the groundwork.
Speaker 1: Exactly who are your customers?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so another really good question, because what you learn
Speaker 3: if you're in this business of delivering broadband is that
Speaker 3: you need a toolkit. You don't need just a tool.
Speaker 3: It's like telling someone to build a house with a hammer.
Speaker 3: You're saying, no, I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Use the right tool for the job.
Speaker 3: In the dense areas, as you note, oftentimes not always,
Speaker 3: but oftentimes fiber is the right answer. It it's expensive
Speaker 3: to do, but you have enough density to justify the economically.
Speaker 1: It makes sense.
Speaker 3: In the ultra remote where there's no infrastructure, satellite is
Speaker 3: really the only choice, honestly because you you know, House
Speaker 3: and Leo satellites are quite good for that. There's no
Speaker 3: way to solve this problem, and it is a real
Speaker 3: challenge for the country. Our country, but curls around the
Speaker 3: world without solving it with multiple tools. And where we
Speaker 3: come in is actually between and and so let's say
Speaker 3: sparse urb and dense herb rural. It's very hard from
Speaker 3: a capacity a pointing for the satellite to really support that.
Speaker 3: In mass it's very hard to get the economics out
Speaker 3: of fiber. So we come in and help right there.
Speaker 3: And that's where where, And that's by the way, if
Speaker 3: you look at it, it's a big part of the problem.
Speaker 3: One of the one more comment on that. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of focus right now on the Infrastructure
Speaker 3: and Jobs Act and the forty two point five billion
Speaker 3: dollars you mentioned, but what's not as reported is that
Speaker 3: in the US, which is kind of interesting, we have
Speaker 3: about one hundred and thirty five million households. There's about
Speaker 3: fifty million households that have exactly one choice that are
Speaker 3: not one choice for internet service providers, that are not
Speaker 3: considered unserved or underserved. So there's a there's a big
Speaker 3: opportunity to help there as well.
Speaker 4: So what is the equipment that you need? When I
Speaker 4: got FiOS, the guy just came and ran a fiber
Speaker 4: optic line from the basement up to my building, and
Speaker 4: we have, you know, the Verizon modem. What's the equipment
Speaker 4: that you need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost it's almost the same. You have a
Speaker 3: little device, although in our case you have a small
Speaker 3: antenna about the size of us all notebook computer. It's flat,
Speaker 3: so it's not like the size of a big satellite dish.
Speaker 3: It's pretty it's pretty small. And you put and that's
Speaker 3: on the outside of your house pointing in the general
Speaker 3: direction of a tower or a building where our receiver is.
Speaker 3: You run an Ethernet cable into your house and you're done.
Speaker 3: That's it, and that's it. And then on the other side,
Speaker 3: we of course grab all those signals and and connect
Speaker 3: them to the Internet.
Speaker 2: I believe you talked last year, maybe last March, about
Speaker 2: the potential to maybe go public in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Is that something that's still on the table to help
Speaker 2: you grow.
Speaker 3: I think twenty twenty three is certainly not. But I
Speaker 3: will say this is this company is interesting and one
Speaker 3: of the reasons I'm enthused about it is that it's
Speaker 3: it's the intersection of a quite large market globally and
Speaker 3: very very deep technology difficult to reproduce. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of sweat equity has gone into this company, So
Speaker 3: I think it does warrant potential for a public offering.
Speaker 1: And we're still you know, building the company and let's see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, look, I mean it's it's
Speaker 3: going to depend on the market, but it's also going
Speaker 3: to depend on our progress. But right now it's looking
Speaker 3: quite good.
Speaker 4: How much is this service per household? And does it
Speaker 4: depend on how much usage you have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it varies. It's not usage based generally. Our
Speaker 3: customers of our one of our customers just launched a
Speaker 3: service on our equipment that's offering two two hundred down
Speaker 3: fifty up for fifty bucks. Other people are offering four
Speaker 3: hundred made services. And now we're launching a gigabit platform
Speaker 3: and that's going to launch n Q four, so you
Speaker 3: can do gigabit down and in fact we just shipped
Speaker 3: our first units that this week and as much as
Speaker 3: five hundred megabits up, so it's a really strong service.
Speaker 3: So you can get tiered services like you have on others.
Speaker 3: You have kind of a starter package. You can get
Speaker 3: a little bit more, pay a little bit more of.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Basil all One, he's the CEO of Toronto Wireless. He
Speaker 2: joined us in the studio to talk about interesting wireless technology.