May 27, 2025 • 27 mins
Recent funding cuts to digital equity programs threaten to deepen the digital divide in America, just as communities were preparing for infrastructure improvements that would bring connectivity to underserved areas. These decisions impact rural residents, small ISPs, and equipment manufacturers who were counting on these opportunities.
• $2.5 billion in digital equity funding labeled "racist and illegal" and eliminated
• Senate voted along party lines to kill FCC program distributing Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren
• Ted Cruz claimed hotspots would bypass parental controls, ignoring existing parental monitoring solutions
• COVID-19 exposed the digital divide as students without home internet struggled with remote learning
• Terra's free space optics technology promises 20Gbps connectivity over 20km distances
• IoT developments expanding beyond LoRaWAN with Ultra-Wideband gaining traction
• Fortinet quietly acquired Everest Networks to complete their Wi-Fi portfolio
• Upcoming industry events include Network X, WBA event, hospitality industry tech conference, and Cisco Live
If you have unused wireless equipment, consider donating it to community centers, churches, or nonprofit organizations where people can access Wi-Fi. Reach out to me if you need help connecting equipment to organizations in need.
Thanks to our sponsors: Helium & meter Networks!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Howdy everybody, drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd let's
see, it is May 20th today.
Tuesday May 20th.
What a day, what a week.
So many things going on.
I appreciate your patience as Iwas getting all this stuff up
and running and going.
It has been a couple weeks.
I've been out and about, man.
If you don't follow me onsocial media, look up Wireless
(00:24):
Nerd.
You can find me on LinkedIn,you can find me on X, you can
find me on Instagram and allthose places, and I post a lot
of the stuff that I'm currentlyworking on.
So if you have any questionsabout any of that, please just
feel free to reach out sometimeand let me know what you want to
know more about.
I keep pretty active with a lotof the stuff that I'm doing, and
right now I'm I'm right in thethroes of it.
(00:45):
There's a lot of really greatprojects going on, but I want to
turn around and look at what'shappening with the entire
industry, because there's been alot of stuff that's going on in
the last you know, the last twoweeks, and I dude, I don't even
know where to start with all ofit, because there's things that
are near and dear to my heart,that that, you know, my loyal
(01:08):
listeners know about, uh, andthen there's things that are
just popping up left and right.
I mean, it's like you.
You sit back for a week and allof a sudden, the entire world
changes.
You know, um, and politically,there's all these things going
on, but then commercially,there's all these things going
on as well.
I do want to start, first ofall, with the digital equity
program being called racist andillegal.
(01:29):
I don't even know how to feelabout that, you know.
I, I um keeping politics out ofit, which is really difficult
to do in this.
In this case, um, this is justlike a huge shocker, not only
for what's happening in theinternet industry and the
connectivity industry, but thenthe equipment manufacturers and
(01:52):
everyone else around them.
You know, when the broadbandequity act came out, the digital
equity act, the bead fundingwas first announced, there were
a lot of places that don't haveconnectivity that were super
happy about this right.
What a great opportunity tohave.
Um, federal funds have madeavailable for broadband equity
(02:15):
across the united states and itgot everybody excited.
You know what I mean.
States got excited, independentbusinesses got excited, um,
residents got excited, residentsgot excited, lots of people got
excited and there were RFPsthat were put out down the line
to the point that that fundswere starting to be set aside to
(02:49):
be made available.
So I mean, put yourself in theshoes of someone who's in, you
know, in South Texas or inKansas or in these rural areas
where, as a citizen, you'venever had great internet access.
You've kind of watched thewhole digital world fly by you.
And now there's an opportunitywhere you know that your
community is going to get somefunding.
And you know, you've got thesepartners, these local C-Lex or
(03:11):
I-Lex and these local telephonecompanies that are now turning
around saying, great, we,finally we're going to be able
to do this.
They work with theircommunities, they try and figure
out how to come up with the youknow, either matching funds or
grants to help get them on theirway.
And now, all of a sudden, allof that just dries up.
And it's not just the citizensthat lose the benefit here.
(03:31):
It's the small, independentbusinesses that we're going to
have an opportunity to thriveand do some incredible stuff
with some of this bead funding.
And then it's also theequipment manufacturers who you
know there's some companies outthere that aren't doing as well
as other companies who this mayhave been a great opportunity
for them to get their productout there and help their company
grow.
Maybe they really needed thisbusiness.
(03:53):
And now I've spoken with mywonderful Secretary of Commerce,
howard Lutnick, and we agreethat the Biden-Harris so-called
Digital Equity Act is totallyunconstitutional.
Trump wrote on Truth Social nomore woke handouts based on race
.
The digital equity program isracist and illegal.
Two and a half billion dollargiveaway I'm ending this
immediately and saving taxpayersbillions of dollars.
(04:15):
Dude, that sucks.
Man like must be nice to nothave to worry about Internet
connectivity, because there's alot of people in the United
States that do worry aboutinternet connectivity.
My wife is doing a telemedicine, telehealthcare call here in a
(04:35):
little while just to check onnormal stuff and to know that
there's people out there thatdon't even have access to that
or access for their kids to dotheir homework or access to
basic internet connectivity sothat they can at least be a part
of the conversation with theirclassmates, and then calling it
racist and illegal.
Man, I don't even know.
I don't even know where to gowith that, other than to say I'm
(04:55):
absolutely disappointed.
So support the people thatsupport programs like this.
National Digital InclusionAlliance, the NDIA, visit
Broadband Breakfast to learnmore about some of the things
that are happening.
But there's people out therethat are trying to make the best
of this and trying to figureout what to do with it, because
this is $2.5 billion that arebeing taken away.
(05:19):
Places like Indiana, alabama,arkansas, iowa, texas, you know
where plans have already beenput into place, they've already
been approved, and now they'resaying now we're, you know we're
not going to fund any of thisstuff.
That is heartbreaking on somany different levels.
You know, I don't.
This isn't a radio show, thisis a podcast, and so you know
(05:39):
even things like this.
Wireless people who listen toyou know my silly ass sit here
and talk about Wi-Fi stuff.
If you don't have internetaccess, you can't download, you
can't watch it, you can'tparticipate.
It's just so frustrating, man,so frustrating and then like
double down, right, where are weas a country?
Let's see.
The next thing with this ishere, from the great state of
(06:02):
Texas, our chairman, senateCommerce Committee Chairman, ted
Cruz, has passed the CruelRepublican Plan.
So Ars Technica has an article,and this goes hand in hand with
the bead funding thing.
You know, in the United States,right when COVID hit the digital
divide was exposed somethingawful and it wasn't just here,
(06:23):
it was everywhere right, wherepeople couldn't get online to
have access to the things thatthey needed, because now that
they were stuck at home, theydidn't have a way to connect and
, most importantly, schoolstudents didn't have the ability
to get online with anymeaningful connectivity.
And so what happened was someplaces, like here in the city of
McAllen, the mayor jumped intoaction and we set up a thousand
(06:47):
Wi-Fi hotspots throughout ourcommunity, the city of Pharr,
down the street from us.
They went out and did this hugefiber initiative to start a
program to deliver fiber toeverybody's homes Across the
country and across the world.
Initiatives like that tookplace, but in some places that
wasn't feasible.
But what was was piggybackingoff the carriers Verizon, at&t,
t-mobile, whoever it is andwhichever carrier it was and
(07:09):
they said you know what?
We're just going to sign thesecontracts with carriers so that
kids can take Wi-Fi hotspotshome with them.
Now I hated that idea.
I never thought it was a goodidea because that was never a
permanent solution.
That was an absolute temporarysolution that the carriers knew
that it was temporary.
They knew that they wereeventually going to charge for
it.
The school districts knew thatthey were eventually going to
(07:30):
have to pay for it, but it was astopgap and it really bothered
me because, instead of investingmoney in the future, they were
like, well, we'll just throwsome band-aids at it.
And they did.
And now that's going to comeback and bite all these
communities right in the ass.
Because this, this thing thatjust passed, and I'm going to
read from ars technica the ussenate today voted along party
lines to kill a federalcommunications commission
(07:51):
program to distribute wi-fi hotspots to school children, with
democrats saying therepublican-led vote will make it
harder for kids withoutreliable internet access to
complete their homework.
The senate approved acongressional review act
resolution to nullify thehotspot rule which was issued by
the federal communicationscommission in july 24 under then
chairwoman jessica rosenworcel.
The program would be eliminatedif the house passes, if the
(08:14):
house version passes andpresident trump signs a joint
resolution of disapproval.
Now this means that now theycan't use federal funds, e-rate
funds, whatever it is to havekids use Wi-Fi hotspots at home.
And the reasoning behind this?
Senator Ted Cruz announced theplan in January, saying the FCC
(08:35):
program would, quote impedeparents' ability to decide what
their kids see by subsidizingunsupervised access to
inappropriate content.
Ted, get a clue, bro.
There are all kinds of parentalcontrols out there that parents
can enable on their kids' stuff.
We use Bark here at home.
If you're a Bark fan, great.
If you don't know what Bark is,go look up Bark.
(08:56):
If you're from Bark, oh my God,give me a discount code for my
listeners.
We use Bark at home.
Disney has Circle.
There's parental controlseverywhere.
Eero has parental controlsbuilt in.
You know, all these differentdevices have parental controls
built in.
The internet is a pipe man andwhat you as a parent choose to
allow your kids to have accessto whether it's everything or
(09:18):
nothing or some of it in myopinion, there's a way to
control that.
But destroying people's abilityto have a connection to the
internet, that to me just sucks.
So if you couple this with theprevious conversation about bead
funding being lifted, where arewe as a country?
We've gone back to this placewhere now people don't have
(09:42):
internet access and the federalgovernment isn't willing to help
them receive internet access.
It's in stark contrast to whathappened with Obama, what
happened with Clinton, whathappened with even W, with all
these people trying to figureout ways to get people connected
.
Now it's just we've gonebackwards.
(10:04):
Today's Senate vote on theresolution of disapproval is 50
to 38.
Senator Blumenthal said onTuesday quote that this
resolution will prevent millionsof students, educators and
families from getting online.
It would be a disgrace if weprovide their students and these
families this vast resource ofliterally life-changing access
to really necessary service thathelps them not just now, but
(10:25):
throughout their entire futures.
We ought to expand internetaccess access, not constrict it.
We ought to be enhancing it,not cutting it off.
And this, just this isn't justabout the carriers.
This isn't aimed at verizon ort mobile or at&t or xfinity or
whoever it is.
This is Because if I'm runninga local wireless ISP and I'm
(10:49):
using a band like CBRS allows meto give out hotspots to my
community, now that fundingdries up for them too.
So all these small businessesthat are sitting here trying to
figure out how to make a buck asinternet service providers,
they all get affected by this,and that, to me, is very, very
frustrating.
Again, what you can do is reachout to groups like the National
Digital Inclusion Alliance, theNDIA, and go find places where
(11:12):
you can help provideconnectivity.
If you're listening to this.
You are probably a Wi-Fiprofessional in some way, shape
or form, or you want to get moreinvolved in wireless.
Here's what I would do Findways to deploy wireless in your
community.
Help out where you can findways to deploy wireless in your
community.
Help out where you can Getthose old access points that are
sitting on your shelf andfigure out where you can
repurpose them.
Take them down to the Boys andGirls Club.
(11:34):
Take them to community centers.
Take them to nonprofitorganizations, take them to
churches, take them to placeswhere people can use Wi-Fi,
because, if you're like me,you've got a whole bunch of junk
sitting in your room not doinganything, while now there's
children in your community thatdon't have access to internet.
It's a little bit of a call toaction.
(11:54):
If you've got the stuff, use it.
If you need some stuff, call me.
I might have extras.
I can't promise everything toeverybody, but if you're in a
position where you say, hey, youknow what, drew, I know you've
got a stack of aruba ap sittingright behind you and I have a
place that could really use them, reach out to me.
Maybe I'll ship them to you.
I do want to give awaypractically everything in my
office.
So so let me know, let me knowwhat can help.
(12:17):
Anyway, alphabet spin out.
Tara teams with digicom toexpand lightbridge deployment
and this was fascinating to mebecause I went through some of
that FSO stuff.
I deployed a lot of that not alot, but some of it and we
looked at, we looked atLightbridge, we looked at, you
know, all these other.
Well, it wasn't Lightbridge.
Back then I want to say it wasLightbridge only because I'm
(12:38):
reading it, but we went throughsome of those things.
Man and FSO was fascinating.
So when I saw this pop up, Iwas like oh joy, another entrant
into free space optics.
However, this one's a littlebit different.
They call it fiber over the air, which you know, heard that
before.
But what's different about it?
(12:59):
Where is it?
It's in here somewhere.
A sophisticated system ofmirrors, sensors, precision
optics and hardware to steerbeams of light effectively
transmitting data through theair, of mirrors, sensors,
precision optics and hardware tosteer beams of light
effectively transmitting datathrough the air.
This technology is designed todeliver fiber-like internet up
to 20 gig per second, reachingdistances of 20 kilometers.
Okay, awesome, but I mean, Ireally want to see it work.
(13:22):
Tara demonstrated a siliconphotonics chip capable of
transmitting high-speed datathrough it.
That's great.
So they have a chip that can doit.
It uses an optical phased arrayto steer, track and correct
light beams with precision,representing a significant
advancement over traditionalmethods employed by the
Lightbridge system.
Yeah, I guess Lightbridge wasolder.
The company anticipatesincorporating technology in its
next product launch in 26.
(13:42):
I am interested in this becauseI want to see it work.
I've always wanted to see itwork, and then they started
talking about this.
Terra's use case aren't limitedto terrestrial deployments.
The company teamed up withVodafone, using drones equipped
with Terra nodes to quicklyrestore communications after
disaster.
The drones can hover over areasaffected by natural disasters,
(14:02):
establishing temporaryhigh-capacity links.
The Terra nodes were mounted ondrones and reestablished
service by sendinghigh-throughput light signals to
fixed receivers.
Okay, so if it can correctitself fast enough for a
hovering drone to be able tomaintain connectivity.
That's the part of me that wasreally, really interested in
(14:23):
this, so I'm going to bereaching out.
I want to bring someone fromthem their company, them, their
company onto the show and havethem talk about this, and I
would love to see a real-worlddeployment, because I think that
this could be really cool as analternative in the wireless
space, light's wireless bro, soit doesn't have to be Wi-Fi.
(14:44):
You know'm curious about it, solet's see.
Let's see where that goes.
What else, oh, the thingsindustry had their their annual
conference and that was uh, youknow, one of these days I'm
gonna make it out to that.
I think that that's that.
That's such a cool show.
They focus on the iot componentof stuff, and the iot solutions
world congress happened.
(15:05):
The things industry has theirshow, and one of my favorite
things to look at there I'mgoing to pop it up on the screen
here is they have their wall offame.
That's this huge wall thatshows off everything that works
in their world of IoT.
Granted, they were mainlyfocused on LoRaWAN.
I don't know what else they'redoing.
I know that there's been a wholelot of talk in the IoT space
(15:27):
about UWB.
Corvo had a great presentationat the Wi-Fi Now World Congress
and they're continuing to makestrides.
I know that there wereannouncements at Mobility Field
Day about more inclusion ofultra-wideband now in Juniper
products, and ultra-wideband hasalready existed in Cisco
products.
So to see people moving in thedirection of ultra wideband for
(15:50):
things is pretty cool.
I don't know if that's evergoing to come to tracking
devices like this, because youhave to have the whole client
software ecosystem thing workingtoo.
But ultra wideband now fordirectionality and locationing
is pretty cool fordirectionality and locationing
is pretty cool, but for thingsyou know, large connectivity of
things great to see them.
(16:10):
Great to see Halo stillrepresenting Wi-Fi Halo
representing at the Wi-Fi NowWorld Congress, excited to see
Wi-Fi Halo grow more.
I leave on a plane tomorrowmorning to go to Network X in
Dallas to go sit down on a panelup there and talk about
connectivity.
But I know there's going to bea lot of connectivity
conversations there at WBA.
(16:30):
Hopefully we see more from Halo.
Hopefully we see more about UWBand the things that are going
on there, because it's such acool space that's now not just
LoRaWAN, there's all these otheralternative technologies that
can be used and that's excitingstuff to think about.
What else do we have going onhere?
Oh, I saw so a uh, a guy I workwith showed this thing to me
(16:53):
that's I'd never heard of thisand I thought that it was
interesting and I don't.
It's like it's one of thosethings that you hear about that
you're like man, I don't thinkthat'll ever make it.
And if it does, it'd be like,wow, that's crazy.
I didn't think that that wouldever make it.
Fightunes products.
So you know, there's alwaysbeen the here.
Before I jump into it.
There's always been that ideathat you could use leaky coax in
(17:16):
buildings to supply wi-ficonnectivity.
I think george stephanik triedit one time, if remember
correctly, and I thought aboutdoing it at Railyard.
I never did deploy it, it justdidn't really add up and there
was never any good results.
If you know of anyone who hadgood results using leaky coaxes
of Wi-Fi antenna system, let meknow, because I would be
(17:38):
interested in seeing that.
But if it worked really well,I'm sure I'd see a lot more of
it than we do out there in theindustry.
So, that being said, lot moreof it than we do out there in
the industry.
So that being said, um, fighttunes.
Check this out.
High frequencies lose power,causing performance degradation.
High frequency signals include5g, wi-fi, 6 and future 6g
services.
While those frequency bands candeliver ultra low latency, you
(17:59):
have to be close.
You have to have a really goodsignal strength in order to do
it.
Fight tunes products aredesigned to support a universe
of possibilities.
Okay, you ready for this?
They have these things that useexisting cabling, I want to say
to transport signal.
(18:20):
This is like broadband overpower line in a way.
Okay, because the 5G signalgoes around barriers within a
building, users receive a highsignal strength and therefore
significantly enhance userexperience.
A single-wire bidirectionaltransmission technology,
phytunes 5G, consists of twounits the head-end IF node with
(18:42):
the carries 5G baseband units.
Neptune then modulates the 5Gsignal and transports it over
the building's physical wiring,such as Ethernet, coax and fiber
.
The signal then terminates atseveral satellite RF nodes where
it's broadcast as a secure andstrong 5G signal to all the
indoor smartphones, tablets, etc.
Okay, so maybe I'm confused here, and this is just reading
(19:04):
through this.
Tell me what you think aboutthis.
Right, because it sounded likethey were using the cable, the
existing cable, to carry thesignal and then transmit.
But it's not.
They're using, they'remodulating across the copper and
then breaking that down at theend user.
So this is this reminds me oftut systems, this from wow dude
(19:29):
yeah, I went there, I was justhaving a conversation about this
reminds me of uh, hdsl and idslusing existing wiring,
modulating over the wiring to touh to get adsl.
You know, adsl, hdsl, idsl,xdsl, they call it vdsl.
Ah, vdsl is a big one that'siso had, so using the existing
(19:49):
copper.
This is saying that whatthey're doing is they're using
the wiring to transmit thesignal from a baseband node to
satellite RF nodes.
That makes more sense.
Very, very similar to broadbandover power line.
I wonder if I can look at thedata sheet.
Oh look, nope, flagged.
Yeah, okay, cool, phytunesright on.
(20:13):
That looks neat, let me know.
Oh shit, I mean, I'll try it atthe house.
It's like a DAS alternative.
It seems like using existingcopper instead of having to run
fiber.
John Rice, if you're listening,I wonder what your thoughts are
on this, or you know, mike.
Anyway, I'm curious if youthink that'll make a difference
(20:35):
in the data space.
What else do we have going onMobility?
Field Day 13 happened and therewere some.
There was lots of conversationabout let me see if I can load
up my little notes here on that.
There were lots ofconversations around AI, around
(20:56):
using different mechanisms inhardware and software combined.
I think I don't know.
Give me one second.
Let me see if I can load up mydeal here.
Do, do, do, do, do.
I had notes on this whole thing.
So I don't want to mess up.
I wasn't there, I wasn't adelegate.
This year I'm back in what theycalled vendor scum, because now
(21:20):
I'm back working for anothervendor, so I usually don't get
invited to things like that.
Where is it Well?
I don't know it.
Where is it well?
I don't know.
It's in here somewhere?
No, not there, not there anyway.
Um, if you have any thoughts onmobility field day, let me know
.
I did an assessment where I wastrying to understand really
everything that was happening atmfd 13 and I didn't get to
(21:42):
watch a lot of the sessions.
But, um, the ultra wide bandthing from juniper is
interesting.
Uh, ubiquities, uh program thatthey're working on, you know.
No, it didn't seem like therewere any big announcements.
What was fascinating was to seethe fortinet announcement of uh
, what was the?
The one that they just acquired, where fortinet didn't even
(22:03):
mention it.
But then francois broke the newson his, on his linkedin page.
It was not, uh, not ever clear.
What's the?
The name of the network,everest Networks, the Fortinet
acquisition where they just kindof like glanced over it and all
of a sudden people who werepaying attention, like Francois,
were like, hey, wait a minute,no one's talked about that
before and so I still don'tthink that there's.
(22:25):
I'm surfing on LinkedIn rightnow to see if I can pull up that
article.
Where did it go?
It was like, oh okay, didn'tknow that was actually happening
.
Look, here it is.
Now we know why we haven'theard from Everest Networks in a
while.
So Francois busts out.
He's like hey, just in case youmissed it, last week at
Mobility Field Day, fortinetannounced they've fully acquired
(22:47):
Everest Networks to completetheir Wi-Fi solution portfolio.
And fortinet announced they'vefully acquired everest networks
to complete their wi-fi solutionportfolio.
And it's like, oh, interesting.
And then you, you know, youread the comments on here.
You look at comments online.
People like where was thisannounced?
When was this announced?
Um, all right, well, good, goodto them.
I would tell you that, out ofall of the coverage, I'm going
to give the shout out tofrancois for the coverage on
(23:08):
Mobility Field Day.
Really cool man.
You know there's an articleabout what Niall did.
There's an article about whatFortinet was doing.
There's articles about Ubiquity.
Francois always does such abang up job.
Make sure, if you don't alreadylisten to the Clear to Send
podcast, that you jump in andyou listen to the Clear to Send
podcast with Francois and Roel.
What else, golly, I think, jumpin and you listen to the clear
(23:29):
descent podcast with francoisand roel?
Um, what else, golly, I thinkthat's.
That's about it.
That's trying just trying tocatch up with everything that's
going on.
Um, yeah, lots of time on theroad.
I've had some really funprojects that we've been working
on.
I got to do some really coolwi-fi in a in a stadium.
Um ero announced that oursponsorship of the chicago cubs
at wrigley field, so I got to goout and be a part of that,
(23:51):
which was really awesome.
Awesome to sit through a120-day game.
That was pretty cool too.
And then lots of neat stuff thisweek Network X if you're going
to be in Dallas, give me a helloand I'm going to be there with
WBA and I'm going to be talkingabout connected communities and
some of the work that I've donein Oxton, california, the work
that I've done down here inMcAllen, and why wireless makes
(24:11):
a really good fit, in my opinion, for connected communities, for
people are trying to get online.
And then after that I'm off toCharlotte for race day weekend.
If you are a NASCAR fan, be onthe lookout.
Sunday at the Coca-Cola 600.
For a six foot five guy walkingaround with a spectrum analyzer
(24:32):
in the pit, with number 21,josh Berry driving the Ford
Mustang Team Pinsky Ford Mustangthe Eero car is going to be in
full effect so I get a chance togo out and hang out and see
what Wi-Fi looks like in thepits at NASCAR.
So that's going to be prettyneat to watch.
Other than that, I think that'sabout it.
(24:52):
Still, you know, wlpc call forpapers is out right now.
Wba event is happening this week.
The next events I'm going to beat lots going on high tech.
If you're in the hospitality,the hospitality industry
technology conference ishappening in indian.
Yes, it's in Indianapolis andthat's coming up, I believe, on
(25:14):
the 16th, I want to say of June,and then Cisco Live.
I'll see you all at Cisco Live.
Drop me a note.
We're still trying to figureout.
We have to do something.
I reached out to Alexis.
I was like, hey, we have to dosomething fun to make sure that
we take advantage of being thereat Cisco Live.
So if you're at Cisco Live andyou have some creative ideas,
let us know.
All right, I'll let you getyour Tuesday morning back.
(25:36):
I hope to see you all atNetworkX this week and I hope to
hear from you soon.
I hope you all have a greatweek.
From Drew Lentz of WirelessNerd peace out.
Enjoy the week and make sure tofollow all the social media
stuff, because I'm doing somereally cool stuff this.
Howdy everybody, drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd let's
see, it is May 20th today.
Tuesday May 20th.
What a day, what a week.
So many things going on.
I appreciate your patience as Iwas getting all this stuff up
and running and going.
It has been a couple weeks.
I've been out and about, man.
If you don't follow me onsocial media, look up Wireless
(00:24):
Nerd.
You can find me on LinkedIn,you can find me on X, you can
find me on Instagram and allthose places, and I post a lot
of the stuff that I'm currentlyworking on.
So if you have any questionsabout any of that, please just
feel free to reach out sometimeand let me know what you want to
know more about.
I keep pretty active with a lotof the stuff that I'm doing, and
right now I'm I'm right in thethroes of it.
(00:45):
There's a lot of really greatprojects going on, but I want to
turn around and look at what'shappening with the entire
industry, because there's been alot of stuff that's going on in
the last you know, the last twoweeks, and I dude, I don't even
know where to start with all ofit, because there's things that
are near and dear to my heart,that that, you know, my loyal
(01:08):
listeners know about, uh, andthen there's things that are
just popping up left and right.
I mean, it's like you.
You sit back for a week and allof a sudden, the entire world
changes.
You know, um, and politically,there's all these things going
on, but then commercially,there's all these things going
on as well.
I do want to start, first ofall, with the digital equity
program being called racist andillegal.
(01:29):
I don't even know how to feelabout that, you know.
I, I um keeping politics out ofit, which is really difficult
to do in this.
In this case, um, this is justlike a huge shocker, not only
for what's happening in theinternet industry and the
connectivity industry, but thenthe equipment manufacturers and
(01:52):
everyone else around them.
You know, when the broadbandequity act came out, the digital
equity act, the bead fundingwas first announced, there were
a lot of places that don't haveconnectivity that were super
happy about this right.
What a great opportunity tohave.
Um, federal funds have madeavailable for broadband equity
(02:15):
across the united states and itgot everybody excited.
You know what I mean.
States got excited, independentbusinesses got excited, um,
residents got excited, residentsgot excited, lots of people got
excited and there were RFPsthat were put out down the line
to the point that that fundswere starting to be set aside to
(02:49):
be made available.
So I mean, put yourself in theshoes of someone who's in, you
know, in South Texas or inKansas or in these rural areas
where, as a citizen, you'venever had great internet access.
You've kind of watched thewhole digital world fly by you.
And now there's an opportunitywhere you know that your
community is going to get somefunding.
And you know, you've got thesepartners, these local C-Lex or
(03:11):
I-Lex and these local telephonecompanies that are now turning
around saying, great, we,finally we're going to be able
to do this.
They work with theircommunities, they try and figure
out how to come up with the youknow, either matching funds or
grants to help get them on theirway.
And now, all of a sudden, allof that just dries up.
And it's not just the citizensthat lose the benefit here.
(03:31):
It's the small, independentbusinesses that we're going to
have an opportunity to thriveand do some incredible stuff
with some of this bead funding.
And then it's also theequipment manufacturers who you
know there's some companies outthere that aren't doing as well
as other companies who this mayhave been a great opportunity
for them to get their productout there and help their company
grow.
Maybe they really needed thisbusiness.
(03:53):
And now I've spoken with mywonderful Secretary of Commerce,
howard Lutnick, and we agreethat the Biden-Harris so-called
Digital Equity Act is totallyunconstitutional.
Trump wrote on Truth Social nomore woke handouts based on race
.
The digital equity program isracist and illegal.
Two and a half billion dollargiveaway I'm ending this
immediately and saving taxpayersbillions of dollars.
(04:15):
Dude, that sucks.
Man like must be nice to nothave to worry about Internet
connectivity, because there's alot of people in the United
States that do worry aboutinternet connectivity.
My wife is doing a telemedicine, telehealthcare call here in a
(04:35):
little while just to check onnormal stuff and to know that
there's people out there thatdon't even have access to that
or access for their kids to dotheir homework or access to
basic internet connectivity sothat they can at least be a part
of the conversation with theirclassmates, and then calling it
racist and illegal.
Man, I don't even know.
I don't even know where to gowith that, other than to say I'm
(04:55):
absolutely disappointed.
So support the people thatsupport programs like this.
National Digital InclusionAlliance, the NDIA, visit
Broadband Breakfast to learnmore about some of the things
that are happening.
But there's people out therethat are trying to make the best
of this and trying to figureout what to do with it, because
this is $2.5 billion that arebeing taken away.
(05:19):
Places like Indiana, alabama,arkansas, iowa, texas, you know
where plans have already beenput into place, they've already
been approved, and now they'resaying now we're, you know we're
not going to fund any of thisstuff.
That is heartbreaking on somany different levels.
You know, I don't.
This isn't a radio show, thisis a podcast, and so you know
(05:39):
even things like this.
Wireless people who listen toyou know my silly ass sit here
and talk about Wi-Fi stuff.
If you don't have internetaccess, you can't download, you
can't watch it, you can'tparticipate.
It's just so frustrating, man,so frustrating and then like
double down, right, where are weas a country?
Let's see.
The next thing with this ishere, from the great state of
(06:02):
Texas, our chairman, senateCommerce Committee Chairman, ted
Cruz, has passed the CruelRepublican Plan.
So Ars Technica has an article,and this goes hand in hand with
the bead funding thing.
You know, in the United States,right when COVID hit the digital
divide was exposed somethingawful and it wasn't just here,
(06:23):
it was everywhere right, wherepeople couldn't get online to
have access to the things thatthey needed, because now that
they were stuck at home, theydidn't have a way to connect and
, most importantly, schoolstudents didn't have the ability
to get online with anymeaningful connectivity.
And so what happened was someplaces, like here in the city of
McAllen, the mayor jumped intoaction and we set up a thousand
(06:47):
Wi-Fi hotspots throughout ourcommunity, the city of Pharr,
down the street from us.
They went out and did this hugefiber initiative to start a
program to deliver fiber toeverybody's homes Across the
country and across the world.
Initiatives like that tookplace, but in some places that
wasn't feasible.
But what was was piggybackingoff the carriers Verizon, at&t,
t-mobile, whoever it is andwhichever carrier it was and
(07:09):
they said you know what?
We're just going to sign thesecontracts with carriers so that
kids can take Wi-Fi hotspotshome with them.
Now I hated that idea.
I never thought it was a goodidea because that was never a
permanent solution.
That was an absolute temporarysolution that the carriers knew
that it was temporary.
They knew that they wereeventually going to charge for
it.
The school districts knew thatthey were eventually going to
(07:30):
have to pay for it, but it was astopgap and it really bothered
me because, instead of investingmoney in the future, they were
like, well, we'll just throwsome band-aids at it.
And they did.
And now that's going to comeback and bite all these
communities right in the ass.
Because this, this thing thatjust passed, and I'm going to
read from ars technica the ussenate today voted along party
lines to kill a federalcommunications commission
(07:51):
program to distribute wi-fi hotspots to school children, with
democrats saying therepublican-led vote will make it
harder for kids withoutreliable internet access to
complete their homework.
The senate approved acongressional review act
resolution to nullify thehotspot rule which was issued by
the federal communicationscommission in july 24 under then
chairwoman jessica rosenworcel.
The program would be eliminatedif the house passes, if the
(08:14):
house version passes andpresident trump signs a joint
resolution of disapproval.
Now this means that now theycan't use federal funds, e-rate
funds, whatever it is to havekids use Wi-Fi hotspots at home.
And the reasoning behind this?
Senator Ted Cruz announced theplan in January, saying the FCC
(08:35):
program would, quote impedeparents' ability to decide what
their kids see by subsidizingunsupervised access to
inappropriate content.
Ted, get a clue, bro.
There are all kinds of parentalcontrols out there that parents
can enable on their kids' stuff.
We use Bark here at home.
If you're a Bark fan, great.
If you don't know what Bark is,go look up Bark.
(08:56):
If you're from Bark, oh my God,give me a discount code for my
listeners.
We use Bark at home.
Disney has Circle.
There's parental controlseverywhere.
Eero has parental controlsbuilt in.
You know, all these differentdevices have parental controls
built in.
The internet is a pipe man andwhat you as a parent choose to
allow your kids to have accessto whether it's everything or
(09:18):
nothing or some of it in myopinion, there's a way to
control that.
But destroying people's abilityto have a connection to the
internet, that to me just sucks.
So if you couple this with theprevious conversation about bead
funding being lifted, where arewe as a country?
We've gone back to this placewhere now people don't have
(09:42):
internet access and the federalgovernment isn't willing to help
them receive internet access.
It's in stark contrast to whathappened with Obama, what
happened with Clinton, whathappened with even W, with all
these people trying to figureout ways to get people connected
.
Now it's just we've gonebackwards.
(10:04):
Today's Senate vote on theresolution of disapproval is 50
to 38.
Senator Blumenthal said onTuesday quote that this
resolution will prevent millionsof students, educators and
families from getting online.
It would be a disgrace if weprovide their students and these
families this vast resource ofliterally life-changing access
to really necessary service thathelps them not just now, but
(10:25):
throughout their entire futures.
We ought to expand internetaccess access, not constrict it.
We ought to be enhancing it,not cutting it off.
And this, just this isn't justabout the carriers.
This isn't aimed at verizon ort mobile or at&t or xfinity or
whoever it is.
This is Because if I'm runninga local wireless ISP and I'm
(10:49):
using a band like CBRS allows meto give out hotspots to my
community, now that fundingdries up for them too.
So all these small businessesthat are sitting here trying to
figure out how to make a buck asinternet service providers,
they all get affected by this,and that, to me, is very, very
frustrating.
Again, what you can do is reachout to groups like the National
Digital Inclusion Alliance, theNDIA, and go find places where
(11:12):
you can help provideconnectivity.
If you're listening to this.
You are probably a Wi-Fiprofessional in some way, shape
or form, or you want to get moreinvolved in wireless.
Here's what I would do Findways to deploy wireless in your
community.
Help out where you can findways to deploy wireless in your
community.
Help out where you can Getthose old access points that are
sitting on your shelf andfigure out where you can
repurpose them.
Take them down to the Boys andGirls Club.
(11:34):
Take them to community centers.
Take them to nonprofitorganizations, take them to
churches, take them to placeswhere people can use Wi-Fi,
because, if you're like me,you've got a whole bunch of junk
sitting in your room not doinganything, while now there's
children in your community thatdon't have access to internet.
It's a little bit of a call toaction.
(11:54):
If you've got the stuff, use it.
If you need some stuff, call me.
I might have extras.
I can't promise everything toeverybody, but if you're in a
position where you say, hey, youknow what, drew, I know you've
got a stack of aruba ap sittingright behind you and I have a
place that could really use them, reach out to me.
Maybe I'll ship them to you.
I do want to give awaypractically everything in my
office.
So so let me know, let me knowwhat can help.
(12:17):
Anyway, alphabet spin out.
Tara teams with digicom toexpand lightbridge deployment
and this was fascinating to mebecause I went through some of
that FSO stuff.
I deployed a lot of that not alot, but some of it and we
looked at, we looked atLightbridge, we looked at, you
know, all these other.
Well, it wasn't Lightbridge.
Back then I want to say it wasLightbridge only because I'm
(12:38):
reading it, but we went throughsome of those things.
Man and FSO was fascinating.
So when I saw this pop up, Iwas like oh joy, another entrant
into free space optics.
However, this one's a littlebit different.
They call it fiber over the air, which you know, heard that
before.
But what's different about it?
(12:59):
Where is it?
It's in here somewhere.
A sophisticated system ofmirrors, sensors, precision
optics and hardware to steerbeams of light effectively
transmitting data through theair, of mirrors, sensors,
precision optics and hardware tosteer beams of light
effectively transmitting datathrough the air.
This technology is designed todeliver fiber-like internet up
to 20 gig per second, reachingdistances of 20 kilometers.
Okay, awesome, but I mean, Ireally want to see it work.
(13:22):
Tara demonstrated a siliconphotonics chip capable of
transmitting high-speed datathrough it.
That's great.
So they have a chip that can doit.
It uses an optical phased arrayto steer, track and correct
light beams with precision,representing a significant
advancement over traditionalmethods employed by the
Lightbridge system.
Yeah, I guess Lightbridge wasolder.
The company anticipatesincorporating technology in its
next product launch in 26.
(13:42):
I am interested in this becauseI want to see it work.
I've always wanted to see itwork, and then they started
talking about this.
Terra's use case aren't limitedto terrestrial deployments.
The company teamed up withVodafone, using drones equipped
with Terra nodes to quicklyrestore communications after
disaster.
The drones can hover over areasaffected by natural disasters,
(14:02):
establishing temporaryhigh-capacity links.
The Terra nodes were mounted ondrones and reestablished
service by sendinghigh-throughput light signals to
fixed receivers.
Okay, so if it can correctitself fast enough for a
hovering drone to be able tomaintain connectivity.
That's the part of me that wasreally, really interested in
(14:23):
this, so I'm going to bereaching out.
I want to bring someone fromthem their company, them, their
company onto the show and havethem talk about this, and I
would love to see a real-worlddeployment, because I think that
this could be really cool as analternative in the wireless
space, light's wireless bro, soit doesn't have to be Wi-Fi.
(14:44):
You know'm curious about it, solet's see.
Let's see where that goes.
What else, oh, the thingsindustry had their their annual
conference and that was uh, youknow, one of these days I'm
gonna make it out to that.
I think that that's that.
That's such a cool show.
They focus on the iot componentof stuff, and the iot solutions
world congress happened.
(15:05):
The things industry has theirshow, and one of my favorite
things to look at there I'mgoing to pop it up on the screen
here is they have their wall offame.
That's this huge wall thatshows off everything that works
in their world of IoT.
Granted, they were mainlyfocused on LoRaWAN.
I don't know what else they'redoing.
I know that there's been a wholelot of talk in the IoT space
(15:27):
about UWB.
Corvo had a great presentationat the Wi-Fi Now World Congress
and they're continuing to makestrides.
I know that there wereannouncements at Mobility Field
Day about more inclusion ofultra-wideband now in Juniper
products, and ultra-wideband hasalready existed in Cisco
products.
So to see people moving in thedirection of ultra wideband for
(15:50):
things is pretty cool.
I don't know if that's evergoing to come to tracking
devices like this, because youhave to have the whole client
software ecosystem thing workingtoo.
But ultra wideband now fordirectionality and locationing
is pretty cool fordirectionality and locationing
is pretty cool, but for thingsyou know, large connectivity of
things great to see them.
(16:10):
Great to see Halo stillrepresenting Wi-Fi Halo
representing at the Wi-Fi NowWorld Congress, excited to see
Wi-Fi Halo grow more.
I leave on a plane tomorrowmorning to go to Network X in
Dallas to go sit down on a panelup there and talk about
connectivity.
But I know there's going to bea lot of connectivity
conversations there at WBA.
(16:30):
Hopefully we see more from Halo.
Hopefully we see more about UWBand the things that are going
on there, because it's such acool space that's now not just
LoRaWAN, there's all these otheralternative technologies that
can be used and that's excitingstuff to think about.
What else do we have going onhere?
Oh, I saw so a uh, a guy I workwith showed this thing to me
(16:53):
that's I'd never heard of thisand I thought that it was
interesting and I don't.
It's like it's one of thosethings that you hear about that
you're like man, I don't thinkthat'll ever make it.
And if it does, it'd be like,wow, that's crazy.
I didn't think that that wouldever make it.
Fightunes products.
So you know, there's alwaysbeen the here.
Before I jump into it.
There's always been that ideathat you could use leaky coax in
(17:16):
buildings to supply wi-ficonnectivity.
I think george stephanik triedit one time, if remember
correctly, and I thought aboutdoing it at Railyard.
I never did deploy it, it justdidn't really add up and there
was never any good results.
If you know of anyone who hadgood results using leaky coaxes
of Wi-Fi antenna system, let meknow, because I would be
(17:38):
interested in seeing that.
But if it worked really well,I'm sure I'd see a lot more of
it than we do out there in theindustry.
So, that being said, lot moreof it than we do out there in
the industry.
So that being said, um, fighttunes.
Check this out.
High frequencies lose power,causing performance degradation.
High frequency signals include5g, wi-fi, 6 and future 6g
services.
While those frequency bands candeliver ultra low latency, you
(17:59):
have to be close.
You have to have a really goodsignal strength in order to do
it.
Fight tunes products aredesigned to support a universe
of possibilities.
Okay, you ready for this?
They have these things that useexisting cabling, I want to say
to transport signal.
(18:20):
This is like broadband overpower line in a way.
Okay, because the 5G signalgoes around barriers within a
building, users receive a highsignal strength and therefore
significantly enhance userexperience.
A single-wire bidirectionaltransmission technology,
phytunes 5G, consists of twounits the head-end IF node with
(18:42):
the carries 5G baseband units.
Neptune then modulates the 5Gsignal and transports it over
the building's physical wiring,such as Ethernet, coax and fiber
.
The signal then terminates atseveral satellite RF nodes where
it's broadcast as a secure andstrong 5G signal to all the
indoor smartphones, tablets, etc.
Okay, so maybe I'm confused here, and this is just reading
(19:04):
through this.
Tell me what you think aboutthis.
Right, because it sounded likethey were using the cable, the
existing cable, to carry thesignal and then transmit.
But it's not.
They're using, they'remodulating across the copper and
then breaking that down at theend user.
So this is this reminds me oftut systems, this from wow dude
(19:29):
yeah, I went there, I was justhaving a conversation about this
reminds me of uh, hdsl and idslusing existing wiring,
modulating over the wiring to touh to get adsl.
You know, adsl, hdsl, idsl,xdsl, they call it vdsl.
Ah, vdsl is a big one that'siso had, so using the existing
(19:49):
copper.
This is saying that whatthey're doing is they're using
the wiring to transmit thesignal from a baseband node to
satellite RF nodes.
That makes more sense.
Very, very similar to broadbandover power line.
I wonder if I can look at thedata sheet.
Oh look, nope, flagged.
Yeah, okay, cool, phytunesright on.
(20:13):
That looks neat, let me know.
Oh shit, I mean, I'll try it atthe house.
It's like a DAS alternative.
It seems like using existingcopper instead of having to run
fiber.
John Rice, if you're listening,I wonder what your thoughts are
on this, or you know, mike.
Anyway, I'm curious if youthink that'll make a difference
(20:35):
in the data space.
What else do we have going onMobility?
Field Day 13 happened and therewere some.
There was lots of conversationabout let me see if I can load
up my little notes here on that.
There were lots ofconversations around AI, around
(20:56):
using different mechanisms inhardware and software combined.
I think I don't know.
Give me one second.
Let me see if I can load up mydeal here.
Do, do, do, do, do.
I had notes on this whole thing.
So I don't want to mess up.
I wasn't there, I wasn't adelegate.
This year I'm back in what theycalled vendor scum, because now
(21:20):
I'm back working for anothervendor, so I usually don't get
invited to things like that.
Where is it Well?
I don't know it.
Where is it well?
I don't know.
It's in here somewhere?
No, not there, not there anyway.
Um, if you have any thoughts onmobility field day, let me know
.
I did an assessment where I wastrying to understand really
everything that was happening atmfd 13 and I didn't get to
(21:42):
watch a lot of the sessions.
But, um, the ultra wide bandthing from juniper is
interesting.
Uh, ubiquities, uh program thatthey're working on, you know.
No, it didn't seem like therewere any big announcements.
What was fascinating was to seethe fortinet announcement of uh
, what was the?
The one that they just acquired, where fortinet didn't even
(22:03):
mention it.
But then francois broke the newson his, on his linkedin page.
It was not, uh, not ever clear.
What's the?
The name of the network,everest Networks, the Fortinet
acquisition where they just kindof like glanced over it and all
of a sudden people who werepaying attention, like Francois,
were like, hey, wait a minute,no one's talked about that
before and so I still don'tthink that there's.
(22:25):
I'm surfing on LinkedIn rightnow to see if I can pull up that
article.
Where did it go?
It was like, oh okay, didn'tknow that was actually happening
.
Look, here it is.
Now we know why we haven'theard from Everest Networks in a
while.
So Francois busts out.
He's like hey, just in case youmissed it, last week at
Mobility Field Day, fortinetannounced they've fully acquired
(22:47):
Everest Networks to completetheir Wi-Fi solution portfolio.
And fortinet announced they'vefully acquired everest networks
to complete their wi-fi solutionportfolio.
And it's like, oh, interesting.
And then you, you know, youread the comments on here.
You look at comments online.
People like where was thisannounced?
When was this announced?
Um, all right, well, good, goodto them.
I would tell you that, out ofall of the coverage, I'm going
to give the shout out tofrancois for the coverage on
(23:08):
Mobility Field Day.
Really cool man.
You know there's an articleabout what Niall did.
There's an article about whatFortinet was doing.
There's articles about Ubiquity.
Francois always does such abang up job.
Make sure, if you don't alreadylisten to the Clear to Send
podcast, that you jump in andyou listen to the Clear to Send
podcast with Francois and Roel.
What else, golly, I think, jumpin and you listen to the clear
(23:29):
descent podcast with francoisand roel?
Um, what else, golly, I thinkthat's.
That's about it.
That's trying just trying tocatch up with everything that's
going on.
Um, yeah, lots of time on theroad.
I've had some really funprojects that we've been working
on.
I got to do some really coolwi-fi in a in a stadium.
Um ero announced that oursponsorship of the chicago cubs
at wrigley field, so I got to goout and be a part of that,
(23:51):
which was really awesome.
Awesome to sit through a120-day game.
That was pretty cool too.
And then lots of neat stuff thisweek Network X if you're going
to be in Dallas, give me a helloand I'm going to be there with
WBA and I'm going to be talkingabout connected communities and
some of the work that I've donein Oxton, california, the work
that I've done down here inMcAllen, and why wireless makes
(24:11):
a really good fit, in my opinion, for connected communities, for
people are trying to get online.
And then after that I'm off toCharlotte for race day weekend.
If you are a NASCAR fan, be onthe lookout.
Sunday at the Coca-Cola 600.
For a six foot five guy walkingaround with a spectrum analyzer
(24:32):
in the pit, with number 21,josh Berry driving the Ford
Mustang Team Pinsky Ford Mustangthe Eero car is going to be in
full effect so I get a chance togo out and hang out and see
what Wi-Fi looks like in thepits at NASCAR.
So that's going to be prettyneat to watch.
Other than that, I think that'sabout it.
(24:52):
Still, you know, wlpc call forpapers is out right now.
Wba event is happening this week.
The next events I'm going to beat lots going on high tech.
If you're in the hospitality,the hospitality industry
technology conference ishappening in indian.
Yes, it's in Indianapolis andthat's coming up, I believe, on
(25:14):
the 16th, I want to say of June,and then Cisco Live.
I'll see you all at Cisco Live.
Drop me a note.
We're still trying to figureout.
We have to do something.
I reached out to Alexis.
I was like, hey, we have to dosomething fun to make sure that
we take advantage of being thereat Cisco Live.
So if you're at Cisco Live andyou have some creative ideas,
let us know.
All right, I'll let you getyour Tuesday morning back.
(25:36):
I hope to see you all atNetworkX this week and I hope to
hear from you soon.
I hope you all have a greatweek.
From Drew Lentz of WirelessNerd peace out.
Enjoy the week and make sure tofollow all the social media
stuff, because I'm doing somereally cool stuff this.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.