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September 12, 2025 47 mins

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The telecommunications landscape is undergoing a seismic shift as major players consolidate their hold on crucial spectrum assets. AT&T's stunning $23 billion acquisition of Echo Star's spectrum holdings grants them control of valuable 600 MHz low-band frequencies—airwaves that travel farther and penetrate buildings better than higher frequencies. Meanwhile, SpaceX's $17 billion purchase of Echo Star's satellite spectrum dramatically alters the competitive dynamics in space-based internet services, giving Elon Musk unprecedented control over the infrastructure powering global connectivity.

These massive transactions raise critical questions about market competition and consumer choice. With fewer players controlling more spectrum resources, what does this mean for pricing, service quality, and innovation? For rural Americans especially, these consolidations could determine whether they finally gain reliable, affordable broadband access or remain digitally underserved.

Against this backdrop of industry consolidation, the cybersecurity landscape has been rocked by the Salt Typhoon incident—a sophisticated attack that security agencies are calling a "national defense crisis." Chinese state-backed hackers compromised core routers across 80 countries not through advanced zero-day exploits, but by exploiting known vulnerabilities that organizations had simply failed to patch. By enabling SSH listeners on unusual high ports and using basic SPAN port mirroring, the attackers quietly monitored communications for years, harvesting sensitive data from millions of Americans. This breach underscores a critical reality: even sophisticated nation-state attacks often succeed through fundamental security lapses rather than technical brilliance.

The technology landscape continues evolving with innovations like Tarana's G2 multi-frequency panel, offering breakthrough capabilities for rural internet service providers, while Meter's upcoming event brings together industry luminaries including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalf to chart networking's future course.

Join me as we navigate these transformative developments reshaping our connected world. Whether you're a network professional, policy advocate, or technology enthusiast, understanding these shifts is crucial for anticipating how we'll communicate, connect, and secure our digital lives in the years ahead. Have thoughts on spectrum consolidation or network security best practices? Share your perspective—I'd love to hear how these industry changes are affecting your corner of the digital landscape.

Support the show

Thanks to our sponsors: Helium & meter Networks!
🤑Looking for ways to monetize your network? Check out helium.com!
💡Change everything you thought you knew about networking at meter.com

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, sending
data live, live and direct.
Live and direct Scene, Perfect.
You know, that's what you do ona Friday afternoon.
You just you put the weekbehind you and you jump up in
front of a microphone and youstart recording and you hope

(00:21):
that everything's working theway that it's supposed to on the
back end, and I think it is.
You know it, it's pretty good.
I got the chat going and sotoday we're broadcasting on
YouTube and on LinkedIn and on X, which is normal.
Those are the ones I normallydo.
But we are also on TikTok liveand that's different, because
I've never really paid attentionto the TikTok marketplace or

(00:43):
the, I guess, the notmarketplace, but the stuff that
goes on there, because I didn'treally have a lot going on.
I've been making someridiculous videos lately and
posting them to the TikToks andit has gotten a few viewers.
So if you're watching me onTikTok, that's fantastic and I
appreciate it.
I appreciate the viewership.
The only thing is, I don't knowhow to log in to see if I'm
live or not, or even to see whatthis looks like on tiktok.

(01:07):
So if you could, if you'rewatching on tiktok, do me a
favor, send me a message and letme know what's going on.
Anyway, all right, that'slooking pretty good.
Let me open up the little webbrowser of justice here and see
what's happening.
Oh, hope everybody's doing okay.
Hope everybody had a fantasticweek.

(01:27):
It has been two weeks, um, sinceI sat down to cut an episode
out, just because there's justso much going on.
You know, it's one of those.
It's one of those things wherethings just get like they just
catch up to you.
You got a, you got a lothappening.
You know the stream's going.
The stream is live.
And am I able to see?
Whoa?
I don't want to kick feedbackback into what I'm doing, but
that's pretty awesome.

(01:47):
There looks pretty good.
Rtmp 1280 by 12, 1920 by 1080.
Sweet, let's go ahead and openup that tiktok live monitor.
Maybe this is going to show mewhat I look like anyway.
Uh, it says I'm live.
So apparently I'm live, whichis great.
I don't know what that lookslike and I don't have any
viewers.
Oh, oh, I have one.
Oh, even better.
Anyway, well, hi everybody.

(02:08):
Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd.
Today is September 12th 2025,and it has been a week.
There's been lots of stuffhappening this week.
You know, sometimes the weeksspeed up and sometimes they slow
down with the amount ofactivity that's happening, but
there's been so much that'shappening lately and it just
seems like it got all compressedinto the last couple of weeks
with what's been going on.

(02:30):
So last week and this week andeven the one previous, there's
lots of things happening.
I mean, my mind immediatelygoes to what I've been reading
about online and if you're likeI am, you've been watching
everybody's LinkedIn.
You've been seeing that WICOLondon looked absolutely
fantastic.
I don't get FOMO a lot.
Usually I get an opportunity toattend a lot of these events,

(02:50):
but when they start happeningacross the pond and I don't jump
over there often it's like, ohman, that's got, it looked
awesome.
So WICO Austin looked prettygood.
That looked like a really goodtime.
I'm not going to lie, I wasfalling on LinkedIn as much as I
could, but I guess they don'tbroadcast it, they don't stream
it, so there was no way for meto see what was going on, except
for the pictures that everybodykept posting.

(03:10):
So kudos to the team, to Peterand everyone behind WICO, the
team that put all of thattogether.
Congratulations on what lookedlike a tremendously successful
event.
I'm very, very happy for you.
It's great to see the industryjust moving around and these
little shows that are popping upand gaining more traction.
We've got the two big onescoming up in Prague and then

(03:34):
we've got WLPC coming up inFebruary also, and I still lay
those down as my cornerstonesbecause that feels like those
are the touch points for ourentire industry.
If you're dealing with wireless, those are definitely the spots
that you want to be at.
So registration is opened up,registration sold out,
registration got expanded, thestuff that's happening for
papers is coming out or has comeout for Phoenix.
So, man, it's just there's,there's.

(03:56):
It just feels like it's movingso fast and I think the more
stuff that pops up, the moreevents that we have, and the
more you know like, the more notjust the events, but the more
like news that's happening inthe industry.
It really seems like it.
You know it picks up prettyquickly.

(04:17):
Let's see.
So, yep, I'm still live onTikTok, which is crazy.
Can't believe I'm doing that.
So where do we start?
There are a lot of things thatare happening in the space, and
I say space because I alreadyread one of my headlines out of
the corner of my eye here and Ithink that the first thing that
comes to mind is what's going onwith Echo Star and or with Echo

(04:38):
, you know, dish Network, andthat has.
That stands out to me assomething that has the ability
to really change the way that weconsume internet access across
the country and across the world.
So that one's up there.
I think you know hpeintroducing their new juniper
mist, hpe ap36 access points.

(05:00):
That really stands out to me,with some of the new things that
are coming out, that we'refinally starting to see the
fruits of what has gone intothat HPE Juniper acquisition.
That's up there.
The work that 802.11 Systems isdoing in testing out access
points inside their Candelacontainers is really cool to see
.
It's what I wanted to do withthis rig that I have behind me

(05:23):
but just honestly haven't hadthe time to do it.
So to see them independentlyverifying access points that are
off the shelf that you can getyour hands on is so cool.
It's information that usuallyonly the manufacturers have and
they can keep to themselves.
And now you know Ferris and theteam is out there just cranking
Jack Ferris out there justcranking it away, putting it out
there for everybody to consume.
It's really neat to see thatway, putting it out there for

(05:45):
everybody to consume.
It's really neat to see that.
Yeah, it's just that.
And then the WLAN Pi Go, which Ihaven't read enough about to
understand everything that itdoes.
So I'm curious to see the markthat it's going to make in the
wireless industry, becauseeverything that those guys do is
super impactful.
And then into that comes thenew edition of the N1 chip and
what the N1 chip means, not justfor Apple, but what it means

(06:07):
for our industry, and what it'sgoing to mean over the course of
the next 12 months.
Is it going to work the wayit's supposed to work right out
of the box?
I'm assuming Apple did theirhomework, but what are we going
to have to do to make ourequipment work with that N1 chip
if something doesn't go the waythat it's supposed to?
And then, what access is thatgoing to give us to one of you

(06:27):
know, one of the tools thateverybody uses, which is their
mobile device?
How?
How is it going to affecttroubleshooting?
Are we going to be able to dopacket capture?
Is it going to be hidden?
Is it going to be blocked?
Are we going to have access tothe chipset, a lot of questions
that we don't have all of theclear answers on yet.
Luckily, in this industrythere's a lot of people that
work on those teams, sohopefully, hopefully, a lot of
that went into it.

(06:48):
But where I do want to start isI want to start with the
spectrum buyout from echo withat&t.
So, first and foremost, at&tand and echo started talking
about what they were going to dowith spectrum and it wasn't, it
wasn't clear echo star.

(07:08):
So, like historically, echostars been buying up all the
spectrum.
They were like they would enterall these auctions, they'd file
the spectrum, they'd get it andthey'd grab it and they'd hold
onto it and no one really knewwhat they were going to do with
it.
And then, you know, they gotbehind boost and everything that
they did started to to to sparkthat as a different carrier for
Boost Mobile.
And then, as Spectrum becameyou know, I don't know what the

(07:30):
correct word is you know therewas more Spectrum to be had, but
then everybody was buying it.
And then, you know, theSpectrum thing is weird to watch
.
But as Spectrum became morescarce, I guess, as a way to say
it, echo held onto these assetsthat were in a very particular
space in low and mid-bandspectrum of 50 megahertz, of

(07:51):
that like a chunk of it justsitting there that they could
use but they weren't using.
Then they were using a littlebit of it, then it was like they
were hoarding it.
No one really knew what washappening.
And now, after a $23 billionacquisition, it's going to add
50 megahertz of low band and midband spectrum to AT&T's
holdings, covering virtuallyevery market across the US and

(08:13):
positioning AT&T to maintainlong-term leadership and
advanced connectivity across 5Gand fiber.
It's a lot.
It's a $23 billion acquisitionof Spect, of spectrum, and it
says it's going to be providingwireless service under the boost
mobile brand.
So this is at&t's way to get inand and take over that I guess

(08:33):
that carrier, if you will, buthave a lower offering that they
didn't normally have.
The acquisition bolsters andexpands our spectrum portfolio
while enhancing customers 5g,wireless and home internet
experience and even more markets.
John stanky said and you knowthis is the guy that just got a
lot of heat for his memo that heput out telling everyone that
they were going to make thesebold moves and they were going
to move forward and they weregoing to really take no

(08:54):
prisoners and do what they hadto do and everyone's like, oh,
this memo is kind of like toughon the workforce and whatever.
And then bam, 20 billiondollars later they're like we,
we're going to open up a newoperator called Boost, you know,
by using the spectrum from EchoStar.
So that was kind of cool.
It's AT&T.
It says AT&T will acquireapproximately 30 megahertz of

(09:15):
nationwide 3.45 gig mid-bandspectrum and 20 megahertz of
nationwide 600 megahertzlow-band spectrum.
Dude, 600 megahertz is way downthere.
When you think about thespectrum that you use on your
cell phone, you know it'sanywhere from 700 to 1900, 2300,
2100, 2300 up in that space.
And then you get into wifi 2400, you know 5,000, you know 6,000

(09:37):
, you know 2.4, 5, 6 gig.
Dude, you're talking 600megahertz.
That is so low, that's.
That frequency is like way downin the dirt.
I wonder on that, on thatfrequency, space in 600
megahertz, you know what, whatkind of bandwidth?
I wonder what let's see if wejust ask the internet, what kind

(09:57):
of channels are there in 600megahertz?
Because, man, that's like waylow.
Wireless microphones, vhf anduhf, on channels 2 through 36,
you know let's see 617 through652 for wireless microphones.
Man, I mean when you talk aboutthroughput, though when you

(10:19):
talk about broadband, I wonderwhat that?
I wonder how many bits perhertz you get way down there,
and I wonder what those channelsizes look like.
It's a lte band 71 for 4g and5g services.
The primary use is, let's seehere uh, it was made available
by reclaiming over the air fromchannels 38 to 51.

(10:40):
It's got a guard band from 614to 616, a duplex gap at 653 to
663.
It doesn't say what the channelsizes, what the operating
channel sizes are in broadband,though, and I wonder what does
lte band 71 look like?
5 megahertz, 10 megahertz, oh,11, uh, 11 megahertz split usage

(11:00):
, 4 megahertz block for licenseoperation.
So it's like between 6 andeleven there's there's a six
mega channel of four, eleven anda two, and so when you think
about what that's going to dofrom from a nationwide
availability perspective, man,that's kind of cool, because at
that super low frequency rangeit's going to give you like huge
propagation, like very longpropagation.

(11:22):
The question is, what kind ofthroughput are you going to get
that?
But if you're using it inconjunction with other
frequencies and you're doing,you know, and you're doing link
aggregation, oh my God, carryaggregation.
That's pretty awesome.
So so that happened and it itsparks the debate about how many
carriers we have in the UnitedStates, and do we have enough?
Is it monopolization Cause?
Dude, I'll tell you thatVerizon service at my house

(11:45):
sucks, and if you've ever talkedto me on the phone, you know
that if I leave my office andI'm a walker, like I'll get up
and go walk around when I'm onthe phone having a conversation,
man, if I walk out of my officeit drops because there's this
wall here beside me and as soonas I get on the other side of
that wall, it's just strongenough for the cell signal to
seep into my, into my room, andso my phone's like oh look, 5g,

(12:07):
let me attach.
And it tries to attach and itkicks the wi-fi network and then
it just the call you can't hearme for like a good solid four
seconds.
And that was an upgrade thatthey had to have done in the
last six months, because itwasn't always like that.
And I'm noticing now I'mgetting 5g versus only getting
lTE.
So when I get home I need toset that little command that
enables my Wi-Fi only and shutsdown my cellular modem, because,

(12:28):
man, it's tough.
But if you think about morespectrum and making more
spectrum available to someonelike AT&T now they can reach
further into these cracks andcrevices of people's houses at
longer distances and if it'sonly those carriers, then what
does that say for a marketplace?
Because my phone bill isridiculously expensive.
I think everybody's phone billis probably pretty expensive if

(12:51):
you're not on one of thediscount plans.
I just I hope that my phonebill doesn't go up anymore and I
hope that there's analternative to that coming soon,
somehow, some way shape or form, which is a great time for me
to talk about one of my sponsors, which is Helium, and you know
it just lends itself to theconversation, right?
So one of the things that Ilove about my Helium plan is

(13:13):
I've got the Helium Zero planand it runs on a OnePlus 11 that
I have behind me and I can usethat phone pretty much anywhere.
And now helium is available withhelium uh ultra, where you can
install it by using passpoint ondifferent networks.
So if you want more informationabout that, uh, you can just
look it up.
Just uh, either you can Googlehelium or let me see if I can
get you a direct link on there.

(13:34):
Uh, go to heliumcom, hu-m,heliumcom.
You can go there and you canjoin up and you can convert your
existing hardware over toHelium, join the movement.
It says Unify, aruba, cisco,meraki, ruckus, fortinet and
Xtreme.
It's equipment that supportsthis via Passpoint.
So it tells you how to do itonline.
You jump online, you configurethe profile and then, once you
do that, if you have a Heliumdevice or a Helium phone, it'll

(13:56):
automatically jump up on yournetwork and use it by leveraging
Passpoint.
So it's pretty neat to see whatthey're doing there.
Helium Plus is definitelyreally cool coming along.
That enables monetization ofyour Wi-Fi using those existing
pieces of equipment.
So it's fun.
If you don't know anything aboutHelium, visit heliumcom.
Give me a call, shoot me amessage, let me know if you have

(14:17):
any uh questions about it.
It's pretty neat to see whatthey're doing.
They're one of the fastestgrowing networks in the world
because what they did is theydemocratized it right.
I started with a cbrs devicewhere I would hang it outside
and and cbrs capable you knowlte band 48 capable devices
could connect to it if they wereon one of the shared networks.

(14:38):
And and it was.
You know it didn't really.
I don't know if it reallyworked out the way everyone
thought it was going to work out, but it grew really quickly for
CBRS, and now they're doing itover Wi-Fi.
So check it out.
If you don't know anything aboutHelium, it's a fun way to get
involved in telephony andPasspoint over Wi-Fi.
So pretty neat, pretty neatthere, and I like it because

(14:58):
what they're doing is they'reshowing that you can still have
all of these incredible voiceservices but at a much lower
entry cost.
And so when you add that to theconversation of how many
carriers are out there betweenAT&T, timo, verizon and now that
Boost has been absorbed by AT&T, it feels like you don't have a
lot of options, but there areoptions out there, depending on

(15:18):
what you're trying to do with it.
It feels like you don't have alot of options, but there are
options out there, depending onwhat you're trying to do with it
.
So I thought that was importantto talk about, because that was
the first acquisition that tookplace.
Well then, all of a sudden,this other one, which I think is
more impactful overall, tookplace, and oh, I can do my
little screen share here.
Let's see if I can share myscreen.
Let me open up a little windowhere and show you what I'm

(15:39):
looking at here.
Let's see which is this guyright here which is SpaceX
buying Echo Star SatelliteSpectrum for $17 billion.
So Charlie Ergen's got an extra40B in the bank.
It looks like this week A lotgoing on for him.
But this one has, I think,different ram than than at&t

(16:01):
making the acquisition that theyhave, because this one feels
like it can affect more peopleand and in in in a couple of
different ways.
Right, so they bought thespectrum.
They agreed on this was uh, thisis monday, this is earlier this
week.
It's going to license this out.
Um, it's going to sell itslicenses for $17 billion.

(16:21):
It's going to close once theFCC figures everything out.
And it's AWS for PCS.
Pcs H blocks are going to be 50megahertz again in total for
8.5 billion in cash and 8.5billion in SpaceX stock.
So now we got Charlie Ergentied to Elon Musk, which is
interesting.
Spacex will also pay twobillion towards existing

(16:42):
interest payments okay, so theirpayments on everything.
And it's going to allow this touse the same aws4 airwaves okay
, so this is important right inthe for device to device.
So now what you have is there'sa bigger conversation that was
taking place about who has theability to operate in space, and

(17:04):
before it was like the free thespectrum that was available for
leo and for low earth orbitingsatellites.
It wasn't controlled by oneperson, it was controlled by
multiple entities because thespectrum in the space was there
to have it.
However, this oh, look here, itis right here.
However, now this is showingthat what will happen is it's

(17:28):
coming under scrutiny, it says,because it's set to decommission
its physical network.
It subscribes to be connectedby AT&T's infrastructure, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
Hold on, let's see where is it?
The new hybrid mobile networkoperating satellite service
mechanism is a big unknown.
It could regulate, couldrelegate rural americans to
subpar service, because nowthey're saying this is you have

(17:48):
at&t um owning a whole bunch ofthe spectrum and you have echo
star owning a whole bunch of thespectrum, and the spectrum that
they use, that they'recommunicating from space to
earth, is now largely controlledby one entity.
And you know when you haveother groups like amazon, kuiper

(18:09):
, and you've got, you know, umhugh, well, hughes.
Yet echo star, you've got um.
There's a handful of them thatare out there.
They're operating in space.
When you have all these areoperating and you only have a
couple people that own access tothe, to the, to the frequency,
then it's kind of it's kind ofrough.
Look at this.
Um, this is from may land must.

(18:30):
Spacex was misleading federalregulators and access to gain in
a bid to gain access to theairways, because they had this
big fight.
There's a big fcc fight goingon between echo not wanting to
share the spectrum or userspectrum, and then you know
SpaceX saying, hey, we want tobe able to use this spectrum,
but they're the only licenseholder.
Can we make more available?
Now they own all of it.
So this goes back to the wholemonopolization question.
Is it, is it good for a singleoperator to own as much of the

(18:55):
spectrum as SpaceX does and asAT&T does?
Is that a good thing for theAmerican consumer and does it
limit us from being able to havechoice?
And I think that's the bigquestion that everybody's asking
.
You know not to get political,but we are in a spot right now

(19:15):
where it feels like theadministration that we have
isn't necessarily concernedabout consumer choice as much as
they're very pro-business groupthat we have in the
administration of the FCC rightnow.
So I think that that isn'tgoing to lend itself to value
for the end user as much as itis for the people in the

(19:36):
marketplace, for the people thatare the vendors providing it.
So that's interesting.
So that happened this week inthe last couple weeks.
Another thing that happenedthis week.
That was horrendous and I hopethat everyone that's listening
to this is aware of what wasgoing on and what happened with
all this.
But Salt Typhoon was prettyepic man and if you aren't

(20:04):
familiar with what Salt Typhoonwas or is, it's important to
people that probably listen tothis podcast because it's right
in our wheelhouse and I'm goingto skip through this On the
Forbes article.
It does a really good jobtalking about it.
Fbi and allied intelligenceinternational intelligence
agencies have declared that salttyphoon cyber cyber campaign is
now a national defense crisisafter uncovering widespread

(20:27):
infiltration infiltration ofglobal telecommunications
networks by chinese state-backedhackers.
Now check this out, let's diginto the details and one of the
most sweeping espionageoperations ever exposed salt
typhoon actors compromised corerouters and management planes to
carry the world's internettraffic.
Sensitive data belonging tomillions of americans were

(20:49):
stolen.
So let's let's keep in mindwhat they did here.
They didn't bust into acomputer.
They didn't bust into a server,they busted into network.
And when they busted into thosenetwork devices and they did
this years ago and they've beensitting on it we just basically
found out.
It was pretty epic, right?

(21:10):
Sensitive data belonging tomillions of Americans were
stolen, communications weresurveilled and the integrity of
the global networks was quietlyundermined across at least 80
countries.
80 countries how did they do it?
Oh my God.
It's like I can't even believehow they did it, because it's

(21:31):
something that seems like it'sso basic that it's like, oh my
God, they actually did that andthey got away with it.
Let's see if they talk about ithere.
They gained access by exploitingwidely known vulnerabilities in
networking equipment, includingAvanti, connect, Secure, palo
Alto and Cisco IOS XE.
You know none of the major ones, just the absolutely biggest,

(21:54):
most major ones.
No evidence of zero-dayexploits, oh good.
The attacker succeeded becauseorganizations failed to patch.
Look at that.
That's all they did, justfailed to patch.
Negligence, not novelty, openedthe door.
And that is such a big dealbecause it was people who just
didn't update their networks.
And how did they break into it?
Look at this Once inside SaltTyphoon, operators altered ACLs,

(22:17):
access access controls list,create privilege accounts and
enabled remote management onunusually high ports.
They just went in and theyturned on remote management, but
they stuck them on a port wayup where nobody was looking.
Are you ready for this?
Look at this.
They activated hidden servicessuch as the ios xr ssh listener
port on 57722, giving themstealthy long-term access.

(22:41):
Dude, an SSH listener crankedopen on iOS XR whatever way up
high where no one's looking atthe ports, oh my God.
And then look at this.
This is the best.
The attackers mirrored trafficthrough SPAN, rspan and IRSPAN
to quietly monitorcommunications.
They harvested administratorcredentials via tacx plus.

(23:01):
They pivoted across provider toprovider links and downstream
networks, then exfiltrated thedata through gre and ipsec
tunnels carefully designed toblend with legitimate traffic.
They nailed up tunnels and theypopped all the traffic out of
there.
So as a network administratorlooks out and they go, oh yeah,
dude, dude, there's just someVPN tunnels.
They're going across that.
You know no big deal.
Jerry.
Jerry's running fine.

(23:22):
Ip sec tunnels are ranked fine,everything looks like it's
legit.
Don't know what's on 57, seven,22, but I mean whatever.
Holy moly, dude, dude, spanports.
Are you serious span port?
So if you don't know what aspan port is.
It's basically a mirrored porton your network device.
You can take two ports and youcan say, hey, port a all the

(23:46):
traffic that's coming out ofport a.
Just mirror it, span it acrossthere, make a part of it.
Let's just mirror all thetraffic that's going on there.
Dude, it's all of the data.
It's all of the data.
It's not like a subset of thedata, it's just all of it.
And they were just's all of thedata.
It's all of the data.
It's not like a subset of thedata, it's just all of it.
And they were just taking allof the data that was coming on a
port and they were just pipingit out to God knows where, and
they were doing it for God knowshow long.

(24:08):
The campaign didn't focus onquick financial gain.
Uh-uh, salt Typhoon targetedtelecom carriers, government
system transportation hubs,lodging networks and even
military infrastructure.
The goal was clear Enablecontinuous surveillance of
people, communications andmovement across the globe.
The FBI has notified hundredsof victims.
It spans more than 80 countriesand they're saying that.

(24:30):
Well, how do you look out forit?
Look for SSH services ending in22.
Double encoded requesttargeting Cisco IOS XE Packet
captures with names like TACPCAP.
Look for redirections of TACXplus traffic.
The advisory panel is let's see.
The advisory provides a robustset of indicators for compromise

(24:50):
, including IP addresses datingback to 2021.
Name a website that you went toin 2021.
Name a website that you went toin 2021, that you don't go to
anymore, and think about that.
That's data that has beentraversing the internet.
Think about what you did whenyou were in a hotel in 2021 and
the websites and the credentialsand everything that you were

(25:11):
using four years ago, andrealize that that data was now
sucked away and piped out tosomebody far, far away.
It's pretty insane.
What salt typhoon, what salttyphoon did?
It's a national defense crisisand it's there's a lot that
happened with that, and it wasall because people didn't patch
their equipment.
So if you haven't patched yourequipment, let this be a clear

(25:32):
signal that you need to do it.
There's been lots of databreaches lately.
There's been lots of databreaches lately.
There's been a loweredcybersecurity defense posture in
the United States.
It's up to individual networkadministrators, it's up to the
people that are listening tothis to make sure that your
equipment is patched and makingsure that your equipment is
secure.
If there's one thing that we'velearned over the last six

(25:54):
months is that theadministration that's out there
right now may be pro-business,but they are not pro-cyber
security.
It is up to you to make surethat your network doesn't get
affected, so please be diligentabout updating and upgrading
your equipment.
That is my spiel on SaltTyphoon.
Let's see what else is going onback on back on the space front.

(26:16):
Lots of stuff happening inspace.
Amazon kuiper is has announcedit.
It's going into vietnam.
A 570 million dollar investmentwith more satellites being
pushed up there.
Um, with kuiper.
It doesn't say the numbers thatthey're at right now with where
kuiper is.
Wonder how many they have goingover there.
Uh, starlink is authorized toprovide blah, blah, blah, blah
600,000 subs, but no data on thekuiper stuff.

(26:38):
So kuiper's coming along.
Um, uh, one of the leads of itposted a video on linkedin and
showed two gigabit servicedownlink from kuiper right now
and that's really cool.
It's neat to watch, uh, theconstellation delivering over
two gig of access today.
Today, now, with these, withthe new spectrum acquisition,
everything that's going on withwith, with spacex and with

(27:01):
starlink and with echo star man,I wonder what that's going to
look like.
Um, that a pretty cool video oftheir lasers connecting the
other day, by the way, which ispretty neat.
So it's going to be really coolto see where global
connectivity goes in the future.
Now, something that isn't onthere.
Let me look this up.
Um, this is.
I saw this on broadbandbreakfast.
I think there is some back andforth about uh, let me see here,

(27:29):
see if I can find it some backand forth about changing the,
the description of whatbroadband means in the United
States.
Let me see if I can find it.
Fcc may increase broadbandspeed benchmark.
No, that's not it.
Fcc to eliminate Spiegel,that's not it.

(27:52):
There was something that cameup with the FCC where they were
debating changing.
Here it is.
Yep, it was on broadbandbreakfast.
Let me share this out realquick.
Let's see.
Let's see.
Fcc proposal to scale backbroadband standards draws fire.
As it prepares to enter itsbroadband deployment report, the

(28:14):
FCC is confronting sharpdivisions over where to scale
back long-term gigabit standards.
Chairman Braden Carr's proposalnarrowed the scope of its
Section 706 inquiry, scrappingaffordability and adoption
measures and rolling back the 1gig per second, 500 meg per
second long-term broadbandbenchmark set in 2024.
They're saying, well, maybewe're not going to hit it Now

(28:36):
rural cooperatives and equitygroups have countered, telling
the fcc it should raise, notlower, its standards, with some
pressing for symmetrical 100 by100 uh, upload, uh versus
download benchmark for fixedbroadband to support economic
development in rural regions.
So they're saying well, maybewe need to drop it down from uh,
our long-term, long-term goalof 100 of down, 500 up.

(28:56):
Let's go with symmetrical 100by 100.
So lots of talk going on thereand how that affects internet
service providers is really key,because if they don't have the
equipment to deliver theseservices, then they're
technically not deliveringbroadband services, they don't
qualify for grants, they don'tqualify for state funding.
There's a lot of stuff thatdoesn't happen In other news
alongside that, oh that, oh man,look at this.

(29:18):
If you were tuned into theinternet this past week, I hope
you were able to see what tarana.
Tarana introduced their new g2,which is their um
multi-frequency panel, and itsupports non-line of sight, near
line of sight and line of sightcommunications.
It's backwards compatible,compatible with their g1 stuff.
So if you're an internetservice provider and you have a

(29:39):
whole bunch of subscribers outthere and they're already using
the old remote node, you don'thave to go upgrade those just
yet.
You can swap the panels andit'll work with it and allow you
to add and continue and upgradethem when you need to.
What's really, really greatabout this panel is where it
pushes the boundaries in ruralconnectivity.

(29:59):
Because when you think aboutwhat's happening in rural
connectivity, it's not just theEcho stuff that's happening with
SpaceX, it's not just Kuiper,it's not just all the low-Earth
orbiting satellite stuff.
It's also about traditionalterrestrial microwave and how
people can consume that.
Because from a cost perspectivefrom an operator's side,
operators can do this.
You can still set up a WISP.

(30:19):
You can still set up your localinternet service provider and
provide access in your area.
Now is Starlink going to takeaway from that?
I think that's still yet to beseen.
I don't know how many operatorsare feeling the pinch from
Starlink.
It's probably a lot.
Starlink keeps amassing thesehuge numbers that are coming out
there, but then the one thingthat you hear is that the speeds
aren't what the speeds used tobe.

(30:41):
So are they going to continueto flip-flop on their speeds?
Are they going to allow fortrue growth in people to consume
it, especially if the FCC issitting here moving the
goalposts on what broadbandquote-unquote constitutes?
So what makes this great isthis is still a product that's
absolutely viable.
This is something that peoplecan deploy as an operator, that
they can put out there and use6.4 gig of capacity on the base

(31:05):
node, right Up to 2,048customers per site, 512 per
sector on a single installation,160 megahertz and four
separable carriers acrossunlicensed and licensed band.
Now what that means is they'vegot three and a half gig at CBRS
, they've got five gig andthey've got six gig and they can
combine multiple carriers frommultiple frequencies to provide

(31:26):
better access and a better userexperience at that remote node,
which is really awesome.
Distributive, massive MIMOarchitecture.
I think these are six, I thinkit was like six by six and the
joke was that they had to addtwo more.
It was four by four, then theyhad to add two more into it.
It was a great presentation andif you've ever had a chance to
listen to Basil from Tarana,it's so much fun to just watch

(31:49):
him on stage Not someone I'vegotten the chance to hang out
with yet, but hopefully somedayin the future I'll get to kick
it with him.
His stage presence is so cooland the way that he talks about
his product.
You should really go listen toit.
Tarana does a really good jobof just being honest and up
front and bold and blunt aboutwhat they're doing, and they
don't sugarcoat it and theydon't make shit up.
They just tell you what it is,how it works, why it works and

(32:11):
what it's going to do for you.
Now it's expensive as hell.
It's like 30 grand for theirnew panel compared to you know,
buying a freaking ubiquity.
You know whatever that youstick up on a tower, but it
delivers incredible results.
So if you get a chance, gowatch.
You go to toronto wirelesst-a-r-a-n-a wirelesscom and go

(32:32):
look up their g2 product lineand see what it does.
It's's really really neat andthey've got you know as if
you're watching on the on thewebcast here.
They've got you knowtestimonials from everybody,
from everybody.
Everybody who's one of theselarger wireless ISPs has either
tested this out or know someonewho's tested this out, because
it is a revolutionary thing whenit comes to terrestrial
wireless.
So kudos to the team at Torontofor getting that out there and

(32:54):
getting that product out in themarket.
It's really really neat to see.
Oh man, what else do we have?
Mwc25 is coming up in Las Vegas.
It's Mobile World Congress thatis coming up here pretty soon.
It says MWC25, delivered inpartnership with CTIA, meets
this pressing need head on fortech leaders that aren't just
looking for inspiration, they'relooking for expertise content,

(33:16):
according to rcr wireless um2025 themes, from text vision to
execution.
Connected industries with 5gand iot, ai plus how is ai
helping everything?
Connected enablers with api,cloud native infrastructure.
Mcp I wonder if mcps can betalked about in there at all.
But this used to be dude.
I used to love going to CTIA.

(33:37):
Ctia was one of my favoriteshows to go to man.
You would see everything there.
I was talking to my wife theother day.
I was talking about the firstblog that I ever put up such a
long time ago, long, long timeago.
And it was right at the timethat Richard Branson was giving
a keynote at CTIA.
He talked about this plan to goto Mars and everyone was like,

(33:59):
oh, is he kidding, is he notkidding?
And everyone just wrote it offas an April Fool's joke.
And it ends up obviously hewasn't kidding, with Virgin
Galactic coming afterwards andthen SpaceX and then all the
other things.
But that used to be such a fun,big, big event.
And you know, mobile WorldCongress happeningolona every

(34:20):
year is the big one for mobilethere, but it's been a while
since I've been to mwc uh in theamericas.
So, um, I wonder I wonder ifthat one is is going to be
mobile world congress las vegas?
It's.
It was a fun one when I used togo.
I'm just super calm.
What's your favorite show?
I'm trying to think if you hadto think your favorite trade
show man comdex, right, uh, whatwas your favorite show that

(34:41):
you've ever been to?
What was your favorite tradeshow?
I gotta think on that one,because there were some really
good ones.
Man interop used to be so greatwhen you had everybody working
together.
Isp summit was another good one.
Broadband wireless world wasgreat when that industry and
ymax was just coming, coming upand LTE those are good shows.
But I still got to hand it toWLPC.
But even though WLPC isn't atrade show, it's a, it's a

(35:03):
meeting.
You know it's a meeting place.
I don't know what my favoritetrade show is, but CES.
I guess I'm going to stick withCES.
I go to it every year.
I, you go.
This year we're going to bedoing some pretty awesome stuff
there, but with the crew thatI'm working with, um, that's a
great show.
What's your favorite show?

(35:23):
I don't know.
Answer in the comments.
What's up chat?
Answer in the chat.
Oh, that's about.
I mean, when I think aboutwhat's going on, those are the
things that are top of mind forme.
Um, hpe junipers, or hpejuniper, he says um, their new
line of access points let's seeif I can dig this up their
self-driving network operations,dude, these are the things that

(35:44):
that, when they first talkedabout it, when they first talked
about green lake and what itcould do and about how we were
on our way to self-drivingaccess points or self-driving
networks via the access points,was like, yeah, someday we'll
get there.
And now they're sitting heretalking about a genetic AI.
They're talking about Marvisminis.
They're talking about, uh, themissed capabilities and what

(36:06):
they're doing with Marvis.
Actions.
Dashboard now supportsautonomous remediation of net,
of more network issues,including misconfigured ports,
capacity issues andnon-compliant hardware, with
full it oversight.
So it gives you the ability towatch it drive.
Um, it's it's incredible tothink that that's where they are
.
They're finally at a pointwhere they're allowing those
actions to take place and thoseactions to, to, to affect your

(36:28):
network in real time, and it'sit's neat to see.
It's already been proven thatthis stuff works.
But you know, at larger, at thisscale it at hpe scale, it's
pretty cool to see what they'redoing.
They do have some new APs thatare out there.
Let's see if I can dig up that.
Um, let's see if we can dig upthose new uh, uh, hpe Aruba was,

(36:51):
it was, oh, it's the mist 36.
I think that's what it was.
They've got a new one that'sout there.
That's pretty cool looking.
Someone did a comparison online.
Anyway, if you want to take alook, uh, please take a look at
that and go see what they're upto.
Just because it's, it's, it'sneat.
I mean, it's neat what they'redoing.
They're coming along, they'recoming along nicely.
But I gotta say you knew thiswas coming.

(37:13):
I gotta say, if you want to seesomething that's really pushing
the edge and really pushing theenvelope, um, I still have such
a soft spot for meter man, youknow, and, and, granted, I do
appreciate meter doing all thethings that they do.
Meter is a wonderful sponsor ofthe waves podcast.
They've stuck with me throughthick and thin on this thing and

(37:35):
they've given me access to justabout everything that I need in
order to understand what theydo and how they do it and what
they continue to do is justincredible, incredible.
I mean, look at this right.
If you're looking at the screenright here, this is you know
it's their dashboard where theysay create an SSID named Globex,
assign it to VLAN, private,enable WPA2, and limit bandwidth

(37:57):
to 100 megabit on the primarynetwork.
And you click a button and itdoes it.
You know, canvas is such anincredible thing.
Command powered by Canvas issuch an incredible thing.
You know they've got here ontheir website.
They're showing theirinstallations everywhere.
It's just really great.
What they're bringing to oh, Ididn't punch that what they're
bringing to the industry.

(38:18):
And if you want to see it, theyhave an event that's coming up
and I have a code that I can'tremember.
I think it's like waves orwireless nerd or something.
Just text me if you want tocode.
Uh, that that knocks your priceto free, so it saves you a
whole bunch of money.
But meter up is coming metercomslash meter up.
And they've added some newfeature speakers since the last

(38:39):
time we talked.
So if you're looking at thescreen, you can see that satya
nadela is their ceo and chairmanof microsoft.
Sanjay bizwas, from ceo andco-founder of samsara and also
former ceo co-founder maraki.
Kate johnson, ceo of lumen, andnow bob metcalf, the inventor
of ethernet.
Is there?
Um, what dude like what?

(39:00):
What is this lineup of speakersat meter up?
This is going to be pretty nuts, man.
The ticket price right now is349.
Hit me up if you want thatoffer code.
I'll be happy to share it withyou.
It's november 18th.
That's happening in sanfrancisco.
If you can get out there, getout there for meter up.
You have a lot to listen to fromsome of the people that helped
establish what we're doing todayand the people that are taking

(39:22):
it forward, and it's going to bean interesting event to learn
about the insights that thesepeople bring to the table.
This group of people isbringing something to the table
that they're going to talk aboutthe future of networking.
They're going to talk about thefuture of networking.
They're going to talk about thefuture of the internet.
At MeterUp, you're going tolearn about where this is all

(39:44):
going and why it's going thereand how it's going there, and
it's not just Meter that's goingthere.
All the organizations arefalling into place behind what
this vision is, and it'sincredible to see the lineup of
people there, from the CEO ofMicrosoft, the CEO and
co-founder of Samsara, whostarted Meraki, to Bob Metcalf

(40:04):
and then to Kate, on how all ofthis is going to move and what's
going to happen as thesenetworks grow.
It's going to be an incredibleevent and there's going to be
some really cool learning, andyou're going to walk away
inspired by what you see, and itdoesn't matter if you work for
a different vendor and itdoesn't matter if you work in a
different place of the industry.
What matters is that this isgoing to be a glimpse into the

(40:27):
roadmap of the future, and itjust might so happen that these
guys are doing that, or maybethey're not even doing it yet,
but it is incredible to be inthe room where it happens.
To quote Hamilton, you want tobe in the room where it happens,
and if you're sitting in theroom, even if you're not part of

(40:48):
the organization that's hostingthe event, even if you don't
work for them, even if you workfor someone else, this is
guaranteed to spark interest inwhat the future of our entire
industry is, and that's why I'mstoked about MeterUp.
That's why I don't mind talkingabout it.
It's incredible to have all ofthis conversation happen in one
place at one time.
That one place is at MeterUp.

(41:09):
That one time is November 18thin San Francisco.
Hit me up for a discount,because I'll be happy to share
that with you.
So I really look forward toseeing you there.
All of the people on mynewsfeed are going to be there.
So for me it's great because Ican see all my friends Now.
If I could just keep quiet thewhole time, that's even better,

(41:29):
because last year I was justlike raising my hand.
I wasn't even raising my hand,I was just blurting out
questions.
But I get a little excited andI hope that.
I hope that you can understandmy enthusiasm for what's going
to happen there.
So, that being said, I thinkI'm going to go ahead and wrap
this for the day.
For the week, I've got a lot oftravel coming up.
I'm going to try and cut somelive shows this week.

(41:49):
I'm going to try and do someneat stuff.
I am headed out tomorrow, whichis totally weird because I
don't dude, I don't travel onweekends.
I've got this deal with my wifewhere I don't travel on
weekends unless there'ssomething, unless it's important
, unless there's somethingreally happening, and then if I
have to travel, I bring her withme.
I burn miles, I burn, you know.

(42:10):
I do what.
I do what I need to do to getmy wife out there with me so
that as soon as the conferenceis done, as soon as the show's
done, as soon as the conferenceis done, as soon as the show's
done, as soon as the meeting'sdone, I can go have a moment
with her.
But our work schedules I livein a house where both of us
travel a lot for work.
So she's out right now.
Actually, her plane lands inlike an hour.
I got to go pick her up at theairport and then I'm out
tomorrow.
But this week, so Saturdaynight, sunday, monday and

(42:35):
Tuesday morning, I'm going to bein Orlando at the Gaylord Palms
at FSTech.
Now, fstech is the Food ServiceIndustry Technology Conference,
food Service Tech and FoodService Innovation.
No-transcript.

(43:05):
Get to experience it and itgets to affect your daily life
every day, because it's thestuff that you interact with the
food service, the retail,whatever it is.
It's the stuff where technologyhas to work in order, order for
people to make money.
So fs tech is a pretty big onewhen it comes to this.
It's gonna be pretty neat.
It shows that there's, they'vegot, you know.
A whole bunch of attendees areshowing up, lots of sponsors and

(43:25):
exhibits, um, lots of speakersthat are out there also, y'all
this is, uh in a, just from aregistration side.
I'm not gonna lie, this wasexpensive to get into.
It was five grand for theregistration fee, which is kind
of nuts.
I've been to a lot of tradeshows and this one was pricey
man, but to have that manyattendees spending that much

(43:50):
money to go to this event,that's saying something.
So if you happen to be at FSTech, give me a shout man, let me
know.
I would love to learn fromother people who are embedded in
the space of some of the thingsthat they're seeing, and I'd
love to learn more about thetechnology and what's happening
from the eyes of other peopleother than me, because I've got

(44:10):
my camera lens.
But I don't want to just focuson the things I do, I want to
learn from other people.
So please, if you're going tobe at FSTech, reach out to me
and it's going to be really neatto see what technology, what
innovation, what people aretalking about, what all the buzz
is at food service.
So that's happening.

(44:31):
I'll be there for the nextcouple of days and then I've got
a couple of meetings and thennext week, on the 19th, I'm
going to West Texas.
I'm disappearing, I'm out ofhere.
On the 19th, I'm going to WestTexas, I'm disappearing, I'm out
of here.
It's my birthday on the 21st.
I'm ditching everything and I'mgoing to go cruise around West
Texas because that's my happyplace.
If you happen to be in WestTexas, give me a call, join me
for a beer at Brick VaultBarbecue in Marathon, texas.
Anyway, until then, I hope tosee you all at some shows.

(44:53):
I've got some other events thatare coming up that I'll start
talking about later.
All at some shows.
I've got some other events thatare coming up that I'll start
talking about later, but youknow, right now I'm not going to
be at WLPC Prague.
I really wish I was going to bethere.
I'm not going to be able to makeit this year, unfortunately,
but I'm really looking forwardto seeing the content that comes
out of there, and I would alsogladly pay for a live streaming
option.
Keith, just so you know, Iwould love a live streaming

(45:14):
option for some money.
I'll be happy to pay for it,just so I can not get the FOMO
that I got watching MichaelLondon happen.
Anyway, I hope you have awonderful week.
Thank you for listening to thewaves podcast, as always.
Thank you again to our sponsors, helium, and to our sponsors
over at meter, and to ourbuddies over at net ally who are
always giving me some neatstuff to talk about, friends
over at CEDOS who are alwayssupportive of the show.

(45:36):
Thank you for listening and Iwill catch you all next week,
where I think I'm just going todo a live session from FSTech
and see how that goes.
Anyway, until then, have awonderful week, take care and
enjoy your weekend, see ya.
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