I mean I might as well start streaming , why not ? I got some jams going on in the background , just trying to get everything going , opening up my show notes , trying to look and see what's happening . It's a lot going on . Man , it's a happy Monday . Hope everybody's having a wonderful day . A wonderful Monday , trying to get back in a groove of things , man you know , oh , a couple viewers already on X . That's pretty good , let's see . Let me get a little dot going here . Open up my chat , see if I get my chat window happening .
Speaker 1I mean , you know everything , to me everything starts with music . Like you gotta have some good music going on all day . Anyone who's ever shared an office with me I already apologize for them . I have always had all kinds of music going on in the background . No matter what I'm doing , no matter where I'm working , it's always gonna be really , really loud . So it makes it a lot of fun anyway . Yeah , what a jam . You know I played this . I played this song when my wife is delivering our Our little baby girl , who's 12 years old now . So that beast of burn would be kind of funny and ironic . It's the end of the day . Just made us jam out in the delivery room , so that was pretty cool . Anyway , I Think my levels are okay . I see the color red where I'm not supposed to see it . I see some yellow , some green . Everything looks good . Good afternoon , good Monday .
Speaker 1My name is Drew lintz , I'm the wireless nerd and this is the waves podcast for a March 18th . We are about a week and a half overdue . Last week was spring break . I hope everyone had a tremendous spring break . I went on holiday with the kids . We went for a road trip 35 121 miles across four states Texas , colorado or Texas , new Mexico , colorado , utah and then back down again . It was phenomenal and and I got my little stream deck set up so that I can do things like like this .
Speaker 1If you're watching the video , let's see if this works . There we go . I have to show off the the love for for nay . I got to stop by for nay's man cave in Sandy , utah , then pop in and take a selfie with them to go say hello . Smiles all around everyone that he was providing the class for . So I hope this is coming up the way that I want to so you can see that beautiful picture of for nay and my chest . If you don't know I'm six . Five for nay is five six . There's a little inverse there . Maybe not five six , I think he's about five six , but his whole man cave is set up just for him . He's the only one that does anything there . So it's pretty funny , because I rolled in there and and I stood in front of the Camera and all you could see was my chest . So kudos to everyone that was going through that training with for nay . That was pretty awesome .
Speaker 1What a great spring break . Like I said , I hope you all had a wonderful spring break as well . It was a lot of fun . But what spring break means to me is that now that ends the holiday season , what starts in October with fall , and then , you know , halloween , and then Thanksgiving , and then Christmas , and then In January really nobody does anything except go to CES . It feels like in February people are starting to get back into a boat by spring break . By March , by second Third week in March , it feels like we're really ready to rock and roll again . So here we are .
Speaker 1Not a lot of stuff going on , thankfully , across spring break . Some , some , some announcements here and there about about different products and things . Everybody's trying to jump on the Wi-Fi 7 train . But there's been some other things that are happening that have been really cool . Broadband , for example , has a new definition . Broadband is now been pushed up to 100 down and 25 meg up . It's no longer 3 meg per second as it was before , so it'd been stuck at 25 meg and 3 megs 2015 and now I apologize , that was incorrect as 100 megabit down and Upload of 20 megabit per second . So those definitions have finally been cranked out by the FCC . It's decreed that anything below that is not broadband . I think our new threshold , frankly , should be 100 megabit . I think anything short of the short changes our children , our future and our new digital economy , says Jessica Rosenwurzel . Nine years ago that's what she said , and now it is finally happening . Very , very cool .
Speaker 1Now what does that mean for the wireless industry ? You know there's been a lot of private 5g , a lot of stuff happening with with school districts and municipalities , and carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile and all these with these huge broadband ads are just adding customers left and right , and they're doing it at connection speeds that hopefully are better than 100 megabit , because now , by definition , anything less than 100 is not worthy . We're not worthy . Cue the sound clip from Wayne's world . But you know , when people talk about fiber optic connectivity and , and you know , plausible , usable Connectivity for people , for school , for school children and for districts , now that definition is stuck at 100 , which is great . You know there's lots of great products that are out there in the wireless world that can help with this . So we will definitely see what , what , that you know how that motivates people to unlock that threshold .
Speaker 1So very cool , glad to see it . It's , it's really neat . And along those same lines , there's , there's a theme , because you know it's your newsfeed . Right , it's the way that the algorithm works . Things just start to pop up in your newsfeed and there's a couple of things that popped up on my newsfeed , which is timely because at the end of this month , actually next week , ubiquity is holding their Ubiquity World Conference . The UWC is happening and that Ubiquity World Conference let's try that little picture and picture again . There we go .
Speaker 1The Ubiquity World Conference is happening again , chicago , march 26th . I will be there , along with my good friend Mr Sean Bender . We're gonna be in the audience , going live as much as we possibly can , talking about what's going on , getting a tour of everything that's happening , listening to Mr RJP give a great explanation of what's happening with Ubiquity right now , mr Parris . So that'd be fantastic . It's gonna be . It's a one day deal , so it should be really fun . But they've got some new announcements leading up to this and , man , like here's the deal . I'm standing in the crowd at WLPC in February and these two cats from Ubiquity walk up and I have this conversation with them about where I think that they're going , just based on what's happening and to see the trends that they're setting are really interesting . You know , I learned a little bit there that I told them I wouldn't share until you know they made announcements and so now they've made some announcements and coming into their World Conference tour . This is gonna be really , really fascinating to see .
Speaker 1The first announcement that they made was regarding their well , it wasn't an announcement , but their MLO product , their Wi-Fi 7 product supporting MLO , was live at WLPC . We got to see it , we got to use it , we got to test it , we got hands on with it , we got to feel it . I got to bring one home . There's one right there behind me . Very cool to see that technology in action .
Speaker 1But then two things happened . Wisp America popped up last week or two weeks ago in Oklahoma and they announced the . Well , they didn't announce it , but they started talking about the air fiber . Let me see if I can jump over to the screen right here . They started talking about air fiber , mlo , air fiber , multi-link optimization , or multi-link operation as they say , is 802.11 BE , as you can see on the screen here Five gigabit per second plus using point to point , with point to multi-point coming in 2025 . So when you talk about FCC changing things to 100 megabit per second , now you talk about using MLO , not on the indoor Wi-Fi but on outdoor Wi-Fi application , including channel puncturing at 100 plus kilometer distances . This is gonna be really interesting to see . Their air fiber product has been around for a really long time . A lot of people use it very cost effective , point to point . But now when you're talking about moving to five to seven gigahertz and you're talking about that amount of throughput with multi-link operation on a point to point and multi-point yeah , point to multi-point product this is gonna be really interesting to see . This changes a lot of the dynamic of where things are going . Cambium has had such a strong run using the Medusa product and using the MIMO product and the massive , massive MIMO product . I've used it hell , I've deployed it . It works phenomenally well . But now , when you start talking about MLO and applications for outdoor , now this is gonna be really cool . So keep your eyes open for that , with more information coming out at the Ubiquiti World Conference .
Speaker 1But the other one that is , this is the one that I thought would be even more interesting is that Ubiquiti is now offering 24 hour professional support , and this is not just phone support . If you see me scrolling over here , they see me scrolling . Check it out , man . I've got video worked into this and it's a click away from offering site support at your locations , and this is across Europe and the US . So this is a really neat thing . I don't know what the pricing looks like on this , but now there's a paid support service that you can have on Ubiquiti , and that's something that everyone has always said is like their weakest point . The Achilles heel with this is that their products are inexpensive and they're easy to get and you can deploy them and blah , blah , blah , blah , blah , but the phone support has never been there and there's never been a way to back up the support . Now there's been other groups that have started up that have offered this level of support independently , but now coming from the manufacturer , along with these huge marketing campaigns , along with these product announcements , this is a big signal to me that something's happening with this organization where they're starting to look around . They're starting to look at that market share and say , ooh , maybe there's more for them . So I'm very keen to see what the announcements coming out at the Ubiquiti World Conference are gonna be . But when you start talking about phone support and you start talking about products like like MLO on the outside , and you start talking about Wi-Fi 7 and a very cost effective deal big signals coming from Ubiquiti so we will find out more at the end of next week it's gonna be great . I do have to mention they are paying for my hotel room to get up there , so I do appreciate that I'm gonna show up and talk about what I can talk about . It should be a good time , but that's gonna be pretty interesting Now , along those lines of people doing things that are unconventional , if you will , very excited to see a product or a project that I've gotten to work on .
Speaker 1Some people that I know over at Comcast Business they just did the players championship this week using private 5G services as well , some Wi-Fi analytics and some enhanced Wi-Fi . Tpc Sawgrass worked with Comcast Business to deploy various connectivity solutions , including that private 5G and quote multiple 10 gig supported circuits and advanced Wi-Fi . So they're doing all this stuff behind the scenes for the PGA Tour app , for the shot tracking , for everything else that's happening there . But what they were using is they're using private 5G to connect the cameras and security systems and the sensors and Trackman and all the other stuff . And I was like I might be the only one who thinks this is cool . But , lo and behold , my good friend , kelly Burroughs posted this on LinkedIn this morning . I was like hell , yeah , at least someone else is looking at this going . This is really fascinating to see and it's no longer just about what a cable provider can provide , it's no longer just about what a telco or mobile operator can provide . Now you see the convergence of all of these things that are happening .
Speaker 1And what dovetails into this is Dean Bubley has an article that he published on LinkedIn . I wanna see . I didn't think I was gonna talk about it , but he published this thing . That was fascinating to me because I read it and I was like dude . I love Dean Because Dean looks at things in all these different angles and then you start to read what he's writing and you're like this is pretty interesting .
Speaker 1What he talks about is about the spectrum grab and about who's leading the spectrum grab and why they're leading the spectrum grab , and there's so many things that are happening in that space with shared spectrum , where he says the future of this is definitely if here let me go back to my screen and screen , now that I've got it where the future of this is giving people the ability to monitor and regulate spectrum using things like spectrum allocation services , like the SaaS services that we see in CBRS and with AFC , and so a central theme is how to bring indoor connectivity up to not just the political standards agenda but for everything else . And so if you read this article , if you don't follow Dean , please go follow Dean , a very , very smart cat , and he's got something coming up . I think it might actually be today , it might actually be right now . So I apologize if it is , but he's working with Klaus at Wi-Fi now to do a little seminar to talk about this , because there's so much talk in the shared spectrum space where people are going after these shared spectrum services and how that's gonna affect mobile operators and how it's gonna affect carriers . Because if you think about like from and he even cites us in his article we talk about Comcast
.
Speaker 1Of course they want some , you know . Of course they want shared spectrum . They don't wanna go buy the spectrum . Nobody wants to go buy the spectrum . But then you get the carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon going no , no , no , no , no . We wanna buy the spectrum because it behooves their business .
Speaker 1So there's some really interesting things happening with spectrum out there . But how that affects private 5G services , private LTE services , wi-fi services , afcs , you know spectrum allocation , all that . There's a lot of really cool tie-ins there , especially when you talk about things like what we were saying before , which was that air fiber , mlo , when you think about the technologies that can take advantage of multi-link aggregation and optimization and where that spectrum is available . We're right at the beginning of this right . We're only able to aggregate the spectrum that we have access to today , so imagine where that's gonna be if a lot more spectrum is opened up in a SAS model . So interesting things are happening there . Good words , you know , definitely from Dean regarding that , but Comcast was showing how that convergence of multiple technologies is taking place within a single operator .
Speaker 1That's doing that , and I've always said it doesn't . You know , no one cares how you're connected 4G , 5g , lte , 2.4 , no one gives a shit how you're connected . What you care about is your connectivity and the quality of that experience . And now , when we start to see multiple frequencies available and multiple services available to support that quality of experience , that's where I think the big aha moments can happen in the wireless side . It's no longer about are you a good Wi-Fi administrator or are you a good 5G administrator . It's are you a good wireless person ? Can you control everything that happens across all of the airwaves when they're all optimized and they're all working together how they should be , so that your user or your device , or whatever it is , is having the optimal , most efficient , performance friendly way to communicate on your network ? And so we're starting to see some of that convergence finally happening , and there's so much more Now alongside that , fierce Wireless ran a paid I guess it's a sponsored deal here .
Speaker 1Let me go back to picture in picture , cohere Technologies transforming mobile networks using universal spectrum multiplier . So this is something that I have no idea about . I started to read it a couple of days ago and there's a good interview here , so I suggest , if you wanna take a look at this , this might be interesting . Definitely leads into open ran , but the entire conversation here is about using this spectrum multiplier and how there was a very cool demo of it done and it was mentioned at Mobile World Congress and you can see that they've been working with voted . They say they've been working with Vodafone for several years with some great lab results to make better use of the spectrum . So now it goes back to that whole . How are we using the spectrum If it's gonna be available to everyone ? If so much of it's available , then what are we doing to make sure that we're effectively using the majority of the spectrum that's out there ? So that's pretty interesting Thought that you know definitely some big picture things happening right now in the industry .
Speaker 1To zoom specifically in , one of the other things that got my attention is we talk about these Network as a Service companies . We talk about Nile , we talk about Meter , we talk about , you know , different groups that are multi-managed service providers , and Meter jumped into the switching game and they made a really cool . They have been , but they made a really cool announcement this week showing off the platform that has their virtual , their digital twin capable switches that are out there , and so if you haven't gotten a walk through about what this technology looks like , it's pretty impactful the way that it works , and you know , obviously , network as a Service and switching , you know software defined , switching and things like that are go hand in hand . But the way that this works and the way that their digital twin works is a little bit different , and so I had , you know , I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I had a really good phone call with the team over at Meter and learned a lot about what they're doing and how they're doing it , and it's really fascinating to see some of this come into fruition and these product announcements coming out . So they have a webinar that's coming up . I'm gonna sign up for it , I don't know April 3rd , so that'll be in a couple of weeks . They're gonna have it . Just hello at Metercom , you can reach out to them or sign up for the webinar to learn more about this , because as their switching goes , so will their wireless , you know . So definitely interested in seeing what's going on with that company and where they rank . Now it's been making some really good headlines , so to see Meter jumping in , especially since they've been around for so long , which I had no idea how long they'd been around . It's really great to see . So kudos to them on the new product that's coming out .
Speaker 1Next couple things . So Cisco Live 2024 registration is open . That's gonna be pretty cool . Don't know if I'm gonna be making it to Cisco Live this year , we'll see . Hopefully I'll make it . I love the team . I love all the people that are out there .
Speaker 1Let me jump back over Registration prices . I don't , you know it's always been expensive for the Explorer badge , but 725 in advance . If you buy my May 6th and then if you wait , you're on site 825 . If you've got the budget and it's something that you wanna do to go for the advanced licenses , if you go for the advanced packages , this is definitely you know . Here's the key on what those package prices look like . I go for the Explorer badge . I'm cheap , but you know I've always done it . I mean it's the same as like when I go to CES just get the free badge , but it's there . Here's all the information on the breakdown on what it looks like . But Cisco Live should be fun . It's always fun .
Speaker 1This'll be June 2nd through 6th 2024 . In Vegas . Cisco Live is great . If you've never been , it is absolutely one of the best shows that's out there . And yes , it has a Cisco name on it . Yes , it has a Cisco branding on it , but it's not all about Cisco . There you find such a group of people in the world of solutions that you get to walk around , you get to see all your friends , you get to make new friends and you get to see how everything congeals and works together , obviously with Cisco at the heart of it . Now , that being said , there's another show HP Discover's coming up , which is exciting too , and at Discover , they made the announcement that the keynote Antonio's keynote is going to be from the sphere . So I hope maybe Cisco Live follows some of that . But to have this thing in the sphere is going to be totally epic . So they've got a lot to talk about this year . So we'll see what they bring to the table .
Speaker 1Another event that we've got coming up let's see we've got Mobility Field Day is happening May 15 and May 16 , 2024 . As much as I talk about WLPC , when WLPC is happening , mobility Field Day is such a good place to learn and you don't even have to go , you just have to watch it online . It's freely available to everyone . There's a couple of people that have already been announced that are going to be presenting this year . As I click on the link , I'm loving this picture and picture . Let me know in comments or whatever , if the picture and picture is working for you or if I totally screwed it up , because I can't really see what I'm doing , but if it's working , fantastic . That's gonna be May 15 , may 16 , mobility Field Day 11 . Juniper , fortinet and Arista are already named these people that are gonna be there .
Speaker 1We've got some new people on the delegate panel , some old , familiar faces not that they're old , but they've been there for a while . Jennifer God , it was great to see Jennifer at WLPC . Keith Kevin Fransen , mark's gonna be there . Muhammad's gonna be there . Ron Westfall , roelle Sam Dev it's gonna be . It looks like a really cool deal . So if you don't know these people , jump in and follow them on Twitter or follow them on the different social medias .
Speaker 1And if you have never applied to be a delegate , right here on the top of this page it says Becoming a Field Day Delegate . If you click on that , you can fill out this simple , simple , simple form and it will assign you up so that you can be considered for a delegate position at Tech Field Day . And you go in and you pick do you wanna do networking ? Do you wanna do security ? Do you wanna do cloud ? Do you wanna do AI ? Do you wanna do wireless and mobility and whatever it is , and it's just such a good group of people to work with . You learn so much , you get to meet so many great people in the industry , and all of that information gets shared out across the beautiful worldwide web .
Speaker 1Now , that being said , I think that's all the fun updates that I have , but I wanted to share this because I saw the Air Connectivity Report and for anyone like me who travels absurdly up and down the country for work or for fun or whatever , it is airports and airlines with the best wifi across the world , the 20 global airlines , and this is it was Skyworks , I believe . Oh , skytrax Airline Customer Reviews . So best wifi globally in airlines . You've got Garuda , indonesia , aseana Airlines and ALNAPON , and if you look down on here , you don't see any American airlines with best wifi , which is interesting . So there's the list right there . Now the worst . If you look at the worst , oh , there we are . Number five , spirit Airlines is the fifth worst wifi in the world . That's fantastic .
Speaker 1Now if we move on to just United States Airlines for wifi connectivity Alaska Airlines I don't really fly Alaska down here in South Texas , but I've heard nothing but great things . So Alaska , jetblue , delta , southwest United , american Breeze and then Spirit Rankin' at that 1.1 , there is your breakdown . I mean , I feel like Southwest Wi-Fi generally works better than American and I fly American a whole lot , but Southwest usually works the way that it's supposed to . I'm curious to know what your experiences are with them and does this make sense to you Down ? If we look at the best and worst Wi-Fi connectivity overall for airports , you've got a couple of them in here , but Indianapolis comes in number 10 as the best Wi-Fi and most connected Wi-Fi airport in the world , which is pretty good , and then right below that , at number 13 , we've got Portland , the Portland airport . That's such a cool airport man , I miss flying into Portland , so that's good to see . Now , if you go over here and you look at the worst in the United States , the good news is you don't have any of the worst that are in there , so that's
pretty good to see .
Speaker 1Now , if we just focus again on North America . Indie ranks number one with the solid four . Portland number two at 3.8 , then Vancouver , up in in Canada shout out to my Canadian friends up there . Tampa , minneapolis , st Paul , raleigh , durham , san Francisco I love the Wi-Fi in San Francisco airport , it always works so well . Detroit , fort Myers I can't believe that Houston is not on here , because Houston , houston hobby of all the airports , I love the Wi-Fi and hobby . If you look at the worst Wi-Fi , mexico City airport , I'm assuming that's the old one , not the new one . Cancun , yeah , it doesn't really work too well , but Honolulu , new Orleans and Miami , oh , down there at the bottom of the list at eight , nine and 10 .
Speaker 1So I would love to know , like I said , I'd love to know what you think overall on who's got the best and worst Wi-Fi that you can find out there , because I know that if you're listening to this , you probably travel as much as I do , because a lot of you are my friends and I see a lot of you randomly in airports . I saw , you know , I saw on Twitter Matt and Mack from ECHO ran into Rowell walking through the airport . That's happened to me . I ran into Joel Crane one time just walking by . I was like , hey , there's Joel . That was pretty cool , but you never know who you're gonna see at it . I wasn't even Joel , it was Chris , I don't know . I think I've ran into , I think I've ran into like more than one people , but that's okay . You never knew who you're gonna see , so always be on your best behavior . Anyway , that being said , I think that's about what I got for the week . Man .
Speaker 1So much to talk about trying to get back in the swing of things , trying to get all this back going again . I will tell you that there are gonna be some really cool things happening here with Waves , with the podcast . Now , it's no secret , everybody knows that about 30 days ago , I got impacted by the reduction in labor the LR is they call it , the labor reduction at Cisco . So I've got about 30 more days as a full-time Cisco employee , which is fantastic . It's been excellent working here . Nothing but great things to say about the organization and the people I work with .
Speaker 1But I'm trying to figure out what my next move is , because there's so much opportunity that's out there and I God I mean especially coming out of WOPC it's like I don't know where to go . I don't know what to do ? There's so many great things , where do I wanna spend time and effort ? But I really wanna take a minute to back up and focus some effort on this , because I've gotten such positive feedback from the podcast and from the interviews and from the blog and everything else that I'm gonna add a little bit to this . So , as you'll see , I've reached out to some of you online already .
Speaker 1I've got some one-on-one interviews coming up , and what I'm gonna do , with your help , is I'm gonna try and figure out how to monetize this a little bit . Not in a way that's super impactful , but I'm gonna open up a Patreon account and I'm gonna ask if you wanna subscribe . Please subscribe five or 10 bucks a month , whatever it is and I'm gonna release some interviews exclusively on the Patreon account to start with , and then , as time goes on , I'm going to release those interviews alongside waves . So what I'll do is I'll do this every week still free of charge , all the normal stuff but then I'll tack on an interview that I've done at the end of it , but those interviews will be available sooner on the Patreon account . So , trying to figure out how to do this in a way that it's easy , that doesn't cost you a lot of money but gives you an opportunity to support me , at least for the time being , while I'm trying to figure out what's going on next . So we're gonna do that .
Speaker 1It's gonna be great sponsorship-wise . If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast , please let me know . But I do wanna maintain this thing because it's so much fun and , like I said , I've got just such incredible feedback that now I really wanna step it up a little . So at Ubiquity World Conference , you're gonna see me there . You're gonna see me blogging and vlogging and doing all the this stuff . I'm gonna do that there . And any chance I get to go to an event or a trade show or something , when I can burn some miles or take the time or drive out and go see it , I'm gonna do that too , because I love doing this and I appreciate the feedback of you all sharing my passion with this . So look for it , man , you know , and if you can support and if you can , I know you still support anyway . So that's pretty cool . But there's my shameless plug for the week . Waves will be going through some changes there , which is really , really great . Be on the lookout . And I think , other than that , other than that he says after talking for 30 minutes . That's the podcast for the week .
Speaker 1I hope you all have a wonderful and exciting week . Next week I'll probably do this and then come to you live from Chicago at the Ubiquity World Conference . But please drop some notes . If there's anything you want me to talk about , if there's anything you want me to share , if there's anything that you think is exciting that I haven't talked about , please drop it in a comment somewhere and let me know . Anyway , that was great . I had a great time . Happy Monday . I hope you all have an exciting week . I'll be parsing some of this up and sending it out there . I think that's it , y'all . Y'all enjoy your week and I will talk to you next week . If you're in Chicago at UWC , give me a call . We'll go grab a dinner or something , see you .