Diving Into the Future With Wireless: CES and NRF 2024 Highlights, the Importance of Connectivity and the Intersection of AI Personalization and Healthcare

Prepare to be propelled into the wireless world of tomorrow as we bring you the electrifying highlights from CES 2024 and NRF 2024! I had a chance to join the brilliant minds from the Unplugged Connectivity Podcast and Broadband Breakfast last week, and here I breakdown how the thoughts that have settled through the dust since then. I dissect the shift in the technological ecosystem where telecom giants are overshadowed by device innovation. Dive into the riveting realm of healthcare advancements with revolutionary diagnostic sticks and Withings' versatile health devices, and marvel at the transformative power of AI in tailoring healthcare. We also unwrap the wonders of consumer electronics integration with the allure of transparent TVs and the ingenuity of Rabbit AI, set to redefine our daily digital interactions.

As we continue our technological journey, the spotlight turns to the latest Wi-Fi 7 rollout in smartphones, sparking a debate on Apple's choice to equip their Vision Pro headset with Wi-Fi 6 and the buzz around iPhone 16's potential 6GHz capabilities. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) demands praise for championing broadband affordability as its shutdown nears and I can't help but wonder what that means for the themes that echoed so loudly at CES. We'll also share our fascination with Disney's holotile VR and a game-changing portable antenna that promises to uplift disaster communication. And for a taste of the future in retail, experience our tour of AI-driven drive-throughs and robotics, where wireless communication is the heartbeat of progress and universal accessibility.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:32

There we go. Let's get that Zoom work in on the camera. Let's make sure that I'm in frame, in focus and ready to rock and roll. Good afternoon everybody. It is about 1.30 in the afternoon. It's January 23rd 2024. This is Waves. I'm Wireless Nerd. Today we're going to talk about what's new, what's now, what's next, what's happening in the wireless industry. Lots of fun stuff to talk about today. Want to just go ahead and dive right into it.

Speaker 0: 0:58

Last week was exceptional. I've got a podcast I'm still cutting from last week. The audio was a little bit scratchy there, but I had the great opportunity to attend CES 2024, followed up by NRF 2024. I can't tell you which one I honestly liked more. I think NRF was just an eye-opening realization to a lot of the stuff that's happening in our world. I think CES really gave me that three to five-year reach on what's happening out there and where everything's going.

Speaker 0: 1:27

Let's start with CES first. I had a great time being a guest on the Unplugged Connectivity Podcast with some of the Cisco folks talking about what we saw at CES, talking about some of the trends that we saw there. Then I had an incredible opportunity to join Drew on broadband breakfast and talk about what was happening in the broadband industry. Really cool to be on both of those shows last week. What's great is, even at the time when I was just sitting there in my hotel room recording and talking to a camera in the Milva hotel room with people wherever I got to really understand I got a quick glimpse of what was happening at the show. It's proven to. Really. I think I got a good feel, for it is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 0: 2:10

I read an article today in Fierce Wireless that was talking about how CES is no longer a telecom show. It's no longer a show for the telecom group. That was fascinating because one of my big observations as well as David Barron, one of the other guys that was on the call with us on that broadband breakfast we talked about how there just wasn't a presence there for telecom operators, for telecom providers, for people who make equipment in the Wi-Fi space, in the wireless space, in the communication space that whole infrastructure component just did not exist at CES. It was really interesting because I thought I was the only one who noticed it. Fierce even called out that AT&T's only booth was in the automotive section. T-mobile and Verizon had their booths upstairs hiding. There were these meetings that were held off site, off of the show floor, to deal with telecommunications, but on the show floor there really wasn't a lot of it.

Speaker 0: 3:05

What was pretty pervasive at the show was the amount of devices that just rely on connectivity. So at CES 2024, I think one of the big themes for me was connectivity has to be everywhere in order for the future to succeed. I mean, that's really what it felt like. Whether it was telemedicine or new advancements in biology-based devices, biological devices, medicine devices, healthcare devices all of those things require some level of connectivity in order to operate. I had some favorites that I saw.

Speaker 0: 3:35

Vivoom makes this really cool stick that you can basically pee on in the privacy of your own home and it'll turn around and it will tell you if you've got a deficiency in like potassium or magnesium, or in water or hydration, whatever it is, and it gives you really quick results. But in order to do that you've got to get the stick, urinate on the stick and take a picture of it with your smartphone. It uploads it, processes it and tells you what's going on. The key there is having a smartphone For one of the same things that they made. That was really awesome, I thought, especially in developing countries or in countries where healthcare isn't as prevalent as it is in some of the other countries, is for urinary tract infections. They make the same thing. It's a little stick that women can urinate on and it will tell them with 96, 97% accuracy if they have a UTI, and that UTI can then turn around and be quickly treated via telemedicine, via telehealth, where drugs, anything that they use to treat it, can be immediately sent, dispatched to the female that's having that issue. And that's such a big deal. Having two daughters and having a wife. I know all too well about UTIs and it can be life-taking the older you get and things happen. Just as a matter of fact, how to have a friend who just lost her mother to complications because of a UTI.

Speaker 0: 4:52

And so seeing that little thing sitting in a box on a shelf at CES, where it's all technology and TVs, it was like these are the kinds of things that are groundbreaking but they require consumer electronics and they require connectivity. So without good connectivity you can't have a lot of these things. Withings have this really cool device that allows you to. It's got all these different sensors, you can put your fingers on it and take basically an EKG. You can stick it on your head and take your temperature. You can stick it on your side and listen to your lungs. You can stick it on your chest and hear your heartbeat. You can upload all that data to your doctor or physician. And, once again, telemedicine telehealth your doctor can diagnose and see what's going on. So advancements like that were really, really cool to me to see there. And it goes along with this bigger trend, like this bigger wave that I see coming in about really really helping use artificial intelligence to drive personalized care.

Speaker 0: 5:47

Personalization, personalization, personalization All these things just kept coming out about how to personalize, how to use electronics and how to use devices to personalize your experience with whatever you're interacting with. And that carried over into NRF 2024. So, aside from the flying cars and the transparent TVs and the rabbit, the rabbit AI. That was really cool. It's a device that basically interfaces with your device and with your applications. Rabbit's really cool. I'd encourage you to go look it up. There were some really neat advancements there. But all around this whole theme of AI, we had a joke that every time we heard the word AI we had to take a shot.

Speaker 0: 6:23

So it's CS 2024, the themes there for that personalized use of artificial intelligence and the personalized use of devices, all backended or bookended by connectivity was really a big thing, and if you think about where that's going in your day to day world, that connectivity is absolutely imperative. So here is my weekly call out to make sure that you call your senators and congressmen to support expanding and renewing ACP in the United States. It's on the chopping block right now. February 7th is the last day for people to sign up to receive ACP benefits. Acp is the Affordable Connectivity Program. It's the voucher program that gives people with low income to qualify for low income support by our federal government. It gives them the ability to have low cost internet services that are paid for by that vouchers. My community alone, 250,000 households take advantage of ACP to have broadband connectivity in their homes 250,000 just in South Texas alone. 25 million in the United States that are at risk of losing internet connectivity when ACP expires. So if we don't renew ACP, we're going to have to pay for it.

Speaker 0: 7:35

Here's what's happening right 25 million households that don't have affordable internet access. That means that all of that great stuff that I saw at CES won't work for them. Their cell phones are going to have to go to a different plan. There's no more Wi-Fi at the house. There's all these things that are going to happen unless we do something about it, and unfortunately, we had communities that just slept on it right when COVID came in and everyone had the opportunity and the wheat was high and everyone was going after these grants to turn around and get money so that they could build out these citywide networks. Not many people did, and that was super frustrating because they didn't spend the money at the time that it was available, and now we're back in a situation where everyone who's relying on this connectivity is going to be in a situation where they can't use it, where they can't afford to have it, and so that's kind of a bummer. It's what's happening, but it looks like it's not going to get renewed.

Speaker 0: 8:28

So a lot of things are happening. Fcc is talking about changing e-rate to allow for mobile hotspots now to be irateable full-time. I don't really know how I feel about that. That's an interesting thing. That's still relying on someone else's network to solve the problem. That's a federal government giving money to school districts to turn around and to give to carriers to provide hotspots in their homes. I would rather just see a school district build out a network, adversity and municipality build out a network, solve the problem once and for all and not have to rely on someone else. Anyway, sorry off on that tangent, but that's what's happening Under the category of new, and now those are the things that I see. Happening right now is we're looking at losing that funding.

Speaker 0: 9:12

Now, on a whole different note, google, at&t and Vodafone are just announcing investing $206 million in AST space mobile, so this is going to be a Starlink competitor to communicate with AT&T on their mobile devices. Google has agreed to collaborate on product development, testing and implementation plans for space mobile and their network connectivity for Android and related devices. So this is big right. This is taking devices and giving them a direct satellite link. Right now we're talking I think they said it's a five megahertz channel that they want to provide. So something simple allowing people to know where you are and texting or sending a quick message or a small conversation. But as this progresses and you start to look at what satellites and lower third orbiting satellites can provide from a connectivity perspective, now that the functionality is going to be built into these mobile devices, it's going to be that much more easy to change that into a plan that gives them higher speed access. Granted, it might not reach broadband speeds, but at least it's something.

Speaker 0: 10:09

So then you go back and you think about what do we see at CES? You saw the healthcare stuff. Well, telemedicine. If I'm just sending bits and bytes, couple blurbs here and there up, maybe I don't need that much connectivity in order to send test results up and in order to receive prescriptions. You might not be able to do video calling, but now you start talking about expanding the ability to provide global healthcare options using some form of telemedicine because of Leo, satellites and whatnot. So interesting to see what's going on there. Obviously, starlink has a lot happening, but 206 million is nothing to shake a branch at.

Speaker 0: 10:48

Along the lines, talking about Google, google has admitted that Chrome in Cognito mode is actually tracking users. What you need to know, right, even though going in Cognito prevents Chrome from keeping it in your history and saving cookies, your site data and your browsing history are still looking at your. Your ISP still has access to that. Your ISP can still see where you're going, obviously, and they can see what you're up to online. It could come as a shock to a lot of people who use Chrome. However, for all of us that are kind of aware in the internet business, you know that that's, I mean, that was pretty much we all knew that was coming.

Speaker 0: 11:26

Speaking of home networks and what you're doing at home Eero Pro and Google Home Wi-Fi five devices the prices have been slashed. Just FYI, if you don't need any advanced Wi-Fi Wi-Fi $510 for a three pack for their mesh networks going on right now. I saw that, thought I would mention it Because that connectivity at home is absolutely imperative for all of those devices that CES is talking about. So that's in my head I hope that makes sense how I'm tying those two together what you're doing at home versus what you're going to be using at home Didn't see any huge need for big, big, big data at CES. The streaming TVs were really interesting they talked about. They had wireless TVs where you could just suction, cup them onto a wall, and what was fascinating is that they're using Wi-Fi seven to communicate from the base station to the television. Now, I don't know if LG and Samsung followed in this, but I do know that at least one brand was showing off using Wi-Fi seven in home specifically to communicate from the base station to the television on its own private network. It wasn't using your home wireless network as a pass through. What it was doing was actually establishing the connection from the base station to the TV. So I thought that that was pretty interesting.

Speaker 0: 12:39

Wi-fi seven was everywhere. It was in the Samsung Galaxy, it was in the Republic of Gaming phone from ASUS, it was in the Google Pixel. Xiaomi, zte, vivo All these different phones were touting Wi-Fi seven. The laptops were just pushing Wi-Fi seven on everything. Very, very cool to see it.

Speaker 0: 12:56

The things that do not have Wi-Fi seven the new Apple headset, the new Vision, quest, vision, vision, whatever. I just screwed the name of it up. I'm not gonna buy it, it's too expensive. Just gonna put that out there. If someone wants to give me one fantastic, please do. Well, vision Pro doesn't have Wi-Fi seven, doesn't have Wi-Fi six E it has Wi-Fi six. Doesn't have ultra wide band All these things that we thought we were gonna see with Vision Pro when it first came out. Not there, they're missing.

Speaker 0: 13:22

The rumor is that the new iPhone 16 will have six gig built into it. Don't know if it's gonna be Wi-Fi seven or if it's gonna be six E. Hopefully it's Wi-Fi seven, but interesting to see that this thing that's supposed to be so interactive and immersive and have these requirements for huge, huge bandwidth that it's not going to be built in. So interesting, real quick got a quick comment on the chat there from Mark building a school network, lots of pushback from telcos, though ACP was always the excuse against it, but now that that's going away it'll be the next complaint. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 0: 13:53

I'm fascinated with what's happening with ACP because the scope and the scale of losing out in connectivity for 22 to 25 million homes and granted, they're not gonna they might not lose out, they're just gonna not receive the funding. And if they don't receive the funding then they have to make accommodations somewhere else. And I mean I live in an area of the world where people really literally have to make a decision on if they're gonna go out, if they're gonna have food, if they're gonna buy new clothes, if they're gonna make a car payment or it's gonna be broadband. I mean I just looked at my spectrum bill the other day and I was flabbergasted, as they say. My wife said what can we do to bring this bill down? And it's super expensive, broadband connectivity super expensive. So really hope to see something happen along the lines of ACP or at least give people access to something more.

Speaker 0: 14:43

Anyway, back on the CES track, those are the things I saw that were interesting there. I think again the cars and all that stuff is me, but it was a fun show to be at this year. It was good 130,000 people. I will say that once again. I think I'm gonna change. My business partner and I, from wifi stand, we're walking the show and we've decided that we're gonna change the way we work through the show. We're gonna start at the Venetian because that's where some of the fun stuff is. So I think next year I'm gonna start at the Venetian Downstairs at the Venetian, the G-Haul. That's my jammy jam, you know. I had I sent a friend over there. He said no, that's not where I want to be, and I was like that's where I want to be. Do not discount the corners. I saw some incredible things that were there. Some met some fantastic vendors and it was, you know, as I described it. It's the people that want to change the world but don't have the budget to do it. They end up in G-Haul and it was really cool to see, to see some of the products that were out there. So kudos to the teams that were there. Now Moving over to NRF. But well, hold on. Before I move over to NRF, a couple more things I saw that were new.

Speaker 0: 16:16

This week Disney unveiled the holotile technology for VR experiences. If you haven't seen this, go look up the video. For holotile, there's like magnets and movements and motors. I'm not really sure how it works. I've seen the videos. I've tried to decipher how it works, but they've done a really good job of Keeping that to the side. But essentially it's a. It's a mat that you can stand on, this floor, tiles that you can stand on and as you walk it moves with you. So for VR experiences and air experiences, you can be fully immersed and you're basically walking or running in place and it's not just for one person. You can have multiple people going in multiple directions on the same holotile floor. Very cool advancement to see definitely changes the way that I would imagine people are gonna spend some time in VR Real quick.

Speaker 0: 17:02

Another note researchers from Stanford and the American University of Beirut have developed a lightweight portable antenna that can communicate with satellites on the ground. It weighs 1.6 ounces, it looks like a pair of finger cuffs and you can squish it. And when you squish it, it basically becomes a very highly directional antenna. And when you pull it out and and you extend it to about a foot and a half, it ends up becoming a omnidirectional antenna. It operates between 1 and 1.2 gigahertz in that L band, communicating with satellites. Go figure, we're just talking about Leo the. They're talking about using it in rescue and relief efforts for disaster prone areas, and so it's the same technology that they use in space, where they make stuff really small and then, when they get in space, they expand it so that it can be become some huge array.

Speaker 0: 17:47

This is a helix based antenna. It's got conductive material that runs through. The antenna sends out the signals. Thanks to its unique structures, the researchers can adjust the pattern and power of those signals in the new antenna by pulling it or pushing it into longer shapes and shorter shapes, and I mean you're only a step away from having some little motor that does that for you, depending on what you're trying to do. At its most compact, the antenna is a hollow ring that stands just over one inch tall and five inches across, not much larger than a bracelet, and weighs 1.4 ounces. In this shape, it's able to reach satellites with a high power signal sent in a one particular direction. When stretched out to just about a foot tall, the antenna sends a lower power signal in all directions, more like a Wi-Fi router pretty cool.

Speaker 0: 18:26

Maria Sakov Sakovsky, an assistant professor of aeronautics at Stanford, congratulations on on having this published. It's really cool. Your colleagues at AUB, just as Constantine, use of talk in Rosetta. Maria Bicciara very, very cool Advancements in antenna technology. I can't wait to see where this goes. And for some reason, right underneath that, I say that studies find that big-foot sightings correlate with black bear populations. Go figure, anyway. So to move on to NRF real quick in our F was absolutely mind-blowing. I know I try and keep these to 12 to 15 minutes I think I'm sitting at about 18 right now but I do want to talk about in our F because some of the things that I saw there were just Inspirationally game-changing for me, and I talk about this.

Speaker 0: 19:11

When I got out to New York City, I had the opportunity to do another crossover podcast episode with the, with the guys from the quick bike crew. Brian Klinger and I sat down for the first time in a few years and had a really good conversation. Russ Richardson from machine Q, a big IoT company, joined us and we talked about what we were seeing at the show and the trends and what we were, what we were looking at. I'm, you know, trying to get that audio posted to make sure that you guys can hear that conversation. But one of the things that stood out to me that I absolutely love to to Think about and, as I've come back and you know it's been a week since the show the thing that just sits in my head and resonates with me, that I'm telling all of my friends that care to listen about, is the experience that I had was Soundhound in Samsung. Now, granted, there's a lot of personalization, a lot of shopping, a lot of you know how do you get the product that you want, when you want it, when you need it, how do you use AI to anticipate that, to make sure it ships and make sure it's there and make sure it's delivered, and all of the Stuff that you would imagine is happening in the retail environment. But that wasn't what blew me away. Well, blew me away was the demonstration from Soundhound in Samsung.

Speaker 0: 20:15

So you walk up and you know in this case you would have driven up you drive up to the drive-through and you start having a conversation with the menu board. You say you know it says welcome to Drew's burgers. May I take your order? And I say in absolute plain language yeah, like a large cheeseburger fries. No, you know what, make it onion rings and and add the extra cheese. Cut the burger in half with a coke to drink and throw in an apple pie. No, sorry, wife will get mad me. Take away the apple pie. Just give me a chocolate milkshake. Nope, still gonna get mad, you know what. Give me the chocolate milkshake anyway, also making a strawberry milkshake. So my wife can share with me and it is able to understand all of that and no matter what you change, no matter how you change it, it's understanding everything that you're saying. It's presenting it in real time on the screen.

Speaker 0: 20:58

And that, to me, wasn't the best part. That was absolutely cool, don't get me wrong. But the best part involves conversations with the group from a, from a company called let's Talk or let's Chat, and what they do is in real time. They're taking the order that you've put in on that board where you've been talking to a computer interface. You're talking to AI, you're talking to a robot. You're not really talking to a human, but it can interpret everything you're saying and they're turning around and they're sending that order in text back to the kitchen.

Speaker 0: 21:29

And the great thing that I like to think about is if now you're working in the kitchen and let's say, one person in the kitchen is from Peru, the other person in the kitchen is from Germany, the other person in the kitchen is from France, wherever it is, when they log into their screens to begin their workday and their screens in front of them, their profile, chooses their default language, and it might be Spanish, it might be English, it might be German, it might be French, who knows what it's going to be, but it presents the information to them in a language that they can read best. And the killer thing to me is that I can talk to the menu board in one look, in one language, and I can have that immediately translated in something that makes sense to the back of house staff, to the kitchen staff who are making the food, to increase their efficiency, to decrease the amount of problems that they have because they're reading it in their native, in their native language. It makes more sense to them and that was so cool to me, because then you can even walk out. You know, go up to that drive-through and you're in the drive-through and, let's say, you start speaking Spanish to it. Well, we're talking about AI folks. So the menu board immediately understands that you're talking in Spanish, it speaks Spanish back to you and it then translates it to whatever language the kitchen staff needs to make sure that that food is prepared the way that they needed to. This blew my mind, but that wasn't the best part.

Speaker 0: 22:40

Russ Richardson has been finding some incredible things. He found some great stuff at CES and he found this gym over at NRF, where. Imagine a menu board that, instead of talking, you start using ASL and you use sign language and that menu board immediately identifies that you're using sign language and it starts communicating back to you with visual prompts and signing back to you or using visual words on the screen to confirm what you're doing. Now you have changed everything. Now you can have someone who uses whatever language comes to them naturally, or whatever language they've learned, or whatever the language they're comfortable with, and you can really bridge that gap between giving people the ability to order and do things that are transformative to their lives, and then you couple it with the other stuff that Samsung did, where you walk up and the AI figure, the avatar that you're talking to, is someone who looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you, has the same hair color, is someone that they assume you would hang out with, and you have this completely personalized experience where, no matter what I'm doing, the data and the way that I'm interacting with these devices is on my own terms, and I thought that that was just absolutely mind blowing.

Speaker 0: 23:59

I don't know what the ramifications of that are. I don't know how long it takes for that to get to market, but one thing that I do know is that connection, that human to machine connection, being able to understand me in any language and translate that so that the people who are working there can understand it in the best way that they can, or it can be translated into code and programs for robotic pizza machines. It's all working seamlessly in a lot of these parts now, and so you see these things coupled together and it makes me wonder how do they communicate? And that's you know, blah, blah, blah blah. Wireless blah, blah, blah blah. Iot blah, blah blah. You know all the stuff that goes into it.

Speaker 0: 24:38

My question is how are we ensuring that those services are taking precedence or taking priority on networks. How do we ensure that? If it's a wireless communication signal from the menu board to the back of house, how do we ensure that that is uninterrupted? How do we make sure that it has the same care that Voice Over IP has, or that the wireless data has? You know, what are we doing to make sure that, as more advancements happen to understand who people are and provide more personalized experiences, how are we ensuring that, wirelessly, that communication is still an effective solution for that? Is it 5G? Is it Wi-Fi 7? What is it that we're using? How are we using it? How are we prioritizing data? Lots of interesting things there.

Speaker 0: 25:21

And then, once the data gets into the kitchen, oh man, done the robotics. I saw a robot. I saw a pizza made by an assembly line machine, sliced by a human and handed to me. I saw a hot dog vending machine. I saw the fry cook, the robotic fry cook. We saw a burger machine. We saw every different robot you can imagine preparing food and getting it ready, or preparing clothes and putting them online, and robots that are picking inventory. And it just made me think about all the sensors and all the data and all the stuff that's going to be traversing wireless networks on every different technology you can think of and that really boggled my mind, because we're used to just dealing with Wi-Fi devices, laptops, ipads, whatever the IoT stuff is just now. It's just there and it's doing so much more that the reliance on these networks is just becoming even more stronger as this technology grows. Not just in the consumer space, for why we need wireless communications at home for telehealth and telemedicine and learning and data and video and everything else, but then in the retail marketplace, wireless is just taking on so many more things because shopping carts aren't wired in, because kiosks are no longer wired in, because sensors aren't wired in they have to be where they need to be when they need to be there.

Speaker 0: 26:38

So NRF and CES back to back. I don't know if I'll ever do that again. My mind feels melted. It was phenomenal. It was such a good time at both of those shows. I can't thank everyone enough. I got to see my old friends at Comcast in the restaurant innovation zone, got to see how wireless telemetry was being used to identify where people are and how cameras can add to that to do, you know, to really understand where people are and where they're moving and how they're moving and why they're moving, if they're happy, if they're sad, if they're male, if they're female, if they're you know, whatever it is. Oh man, it was pretty nuts.

Speaker 0: 27:10

That being said, I think that's my update. I've gone way over my time. I'm coming up on that 30-minute mark right now, but what I will say is that, as far as what's coming up next, you know I'm going to tell you about WLPC. We're a month out from WLPC in Phoenix. If you haven't registered, get on the site, register. Make sure you make every effort to get out to WLPC. There's so many incredible things. I've talked to three or four different people just in the last two days that are going to be at WLPC showing off some really incredible products Payment I'm talking to you. There's lots of really good stuff happening. So if you can make it out to WLPC. And then in March you've got the multi-unit restaurant technology show. Mertech is happening in March. Lots of really cool stuff that we saw at NRF we're probably going to see again at MerTech. So mark your calendars if that's what's interesting to you.

Speaker 0: 27:54

Otherwise, thanks for listening. Pay attention to the podcast. Got some new intro and outro music my buddy, alan Taylor West and McAllen, helped me. He gave me the ability to use his original content, so give it a listen. Anyhow, I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening. I'll see you at the shows. Drop me a message on LinkedIn. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. See you later.