The neXt Curve reThink Podcast

Send us Fan Mail mmWave is simply not an easy spectrum to use due its quirky physics. Network planners need to contend with significant propagation challenges that make it difficult for operators to realize the promises of 5G attached to this high frequency band. neXt Curve is joined by Sameer Lalwani, co-founder of Digital Twin Sim, a specialist in network modeling and planning, to discuss how ad...

Send us Fan Mail Over the last two years, the hype cycle for Open RAN has been firing on all cylinders fueled by the first open cloud-native network, and global geopolitics. Despite all the excitement, little progress has been made on the commercial front. Brownfield mindshare and presence are yet to be realized amid early-stage greenfield deployments of open RAN networks, most notably Dish and 1&...

Send us Fan Mail 5G is supposedly about enabling new industrial applications that will benefit from the industrial grade connectivity that 5G promises to bring. Yet, enterprise uptake of 5G is in the very early stages with recent support for private networks using licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Where are we with 5G for the enterprise? Is it ready for prime time? neXt Curve and AvidThink founder...

Send us Fan Mail The metaverse is all the  rage in the media today. There isn’t a single “tech company” that is not touting their hand in this thing that is just simply known as the next big thing. The metaverse hype is being pumped with little consideration for the preservation or protection of our identity, persona, or our psyche. As individuals, as communities, as societies we need to understan...

Send us Fan Mail This is a replay of Leonard Lee's presentation at Fierce Electronics' Autonomous Technologies Summit 2021 virtual event.  In this Analyst Talk, Leonard goes over some of the key points outlined in neXt Curve's research brief, "The Future of Transportation: A system of systems perspective on the future of the car", where he touched upon to importance of hol...

Send us Fan Mail Smart transportation is closely tied with smart city initiatives. What happens when vehicle travels from a smart city to one that might not be so smart? Will autonomous vehicles bridge the intelligent transportation divide or will autonomous vehicles rely on a smart infrastructure to support functions critical to improving public safety, traffic efficiency, and sustainability?  Bi...

Send us Fan Mail The semiconductor industry has never faced a more tumultuous and exciting time than now. Competition, innovations, and geopolitics are forcing tectonic shifts in the industry landscape. These shifts have put a spotlight on RISC-V from multiple vantage points that highlight its emerging importance. While it is still early days, SiFive has been at the forefront of advancing the RISC...

Send us Fan Mail Today, you can’t talk about security without mentioning zero trust. What is it and why is it such a prevalent principle and practice that dominates cybersecurity speak whether you are talking about an enterprise network, the emerging edge cloud or the 5G network? John Kindervag, SVP of Cybersecurity Strategy at ON2IT and creator of Zero Trust, joins neXt Curve to recalibrate our u...

Send us Fan Mail When the FCC held the first auction of CBRS (Citizens Band Radio Service), it raised hopes that novel neutral host models will emerge that improve the economics of indoor cellular networks and bring some of the promise of 5G into venues of all sizes. Alex Besen, CEO of the Besen Group, LLC, joins neXt Curve to discuss the neutral host opportunity presented by CBRS and the economic...

Send us Fan Mail What if technology could not just make cities “smarter” but help us entirely reimagine the idea of a city of the future? NEOM is a visionary giga project that aspires to apply the most advanced in current and emerging technologies to realize a bold urban development concept called THE LINE. neXt Curve’s Leonard Lee is joined by Mansoor Hanif, NEOM’s Executive Director, Emerging Te...

Send us Fan Mail Excitement about the open RAN movement continues to rise as operators such as Rakuten proves out OpenRAN and O-RAN principles in their greenfield 5G network which went live last year. How are major network equipment manufacturers adjusting to the new technology landscape? What are the benefits and costs to operators and vendors in adopting open and interoperable technologies? next...

Send us Fan Mail On January 20th, a new US Administration took office in the midst of a global pandemic, economic crisis and deteriorated Sino-US trade & security relations. During the Trump Administration, the tech industry became the epicenter of the trade war as US and China quickly escalated their exchange of tit-for-tat tariffs and bans. What will change under a Biden Administration if an...

Send us Fan Mail What is 5G innovation? We hear about it all the time but 5G has yet to inspire innovation outside of the technology itself. Afterall, autonomous vehicles are nowhere near mainstream nor is robotic surgery. What are the practical areas that government and private enterprises prioritize and focus on first to bring the benefits of 5G to the public and consumers? neXt Curve is joined...

Send us Fan Mail Rakuten recently launched their long-waited and highly-anticipated 5G network service. Despite a Covid-19 induced delay, Rakuten has managed to put up a 5G network in a very short time. The jury is out as to whether they have succeeded but one thing is for certain, Rakuten has proven that an industry outsider can put up a compelling offering with the help of new cloud-based and op...

Send us Fan Mail With the advent of Release 16 of 3GPP’s 5G technical specification and the introduction of SA (Standalone) 5G NR, operators can now explore the benefits of E2E network slicing. It will be critical in enabling dynamic placement of network functions across mobile network edge. But 5G is also about MEC which will converge the pipe with compute. neXt Curve and AvidThink founder, Roy C...

Send us Fan Mail It has been almost two years since the first commercial deployment of 5G and we have seen operators around the world embark on the deployment of the next-gen mobile wireless network. In these early days of 5G, use cases such as smart factories are touted as proving grounds for 5G’s disruptive potential, but we will need URLLC. neXt Curve is joined by renowned telco industry analys...

Send us Fan Mail Some argue that the freemium business models that are largely based on ad-driven revenue streams have had a democratizing effect by allowing seemingly free access to content and services to be enjoyed broadly and globally. For the most part new digital media, software as a service (SaaS) and communications companies that have emerged from the Dotcom era have gone largely unchecked...

Send us Fan Mail Arguably, edge computing is nothing new. Depending on your domain, you are familiar with the idea of edge computing. You might say you have been doing it forever. But what makes edge computing different in the era of 5G? What is the industry getting excited about? Chris Pearson, President of 5G Americas, joins neXt Curve to discuss the novel aspects of edge computing that will mak...

Send us Fan Mail In November of 2019, the RISC-V Foundation moved their base to Switzerland as the US government continued its increasingly aggressive protectionist policies impacting tech trade globally. Flash forward to today. The US Department of Commerce continues to press its campaign against China’s tech industry. RISC-V presents a possible neutral zone in what is a global semiconductor indu...

Send us Fan Mail The space industry is undergoing a great shift with some winners, some losers and significant change in the landscape. While billionaire-funded entrants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Amazon, Virgin Galactic are shaking things up with the incumbent space industry leaders, there are many other advances being made by smaller angel and venture-funded space startups with promising potentia...

Send us Fan Mail The Digital Twin is considered by some the next big thing since network slicing. Rob Tiffany, renowned IoT pioneer established the non-profit Moab Foundation to bring the bigness of digital twins to do good in the world. The charter of the foundation aims to bring the benefits and enablement of IoT to bear in furthering the UN’s 17 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals). Rob and Leon...

Send us Fan Mail In the modern digital age, there has been no moment that has been as disruptive as what humanity is experiencing today amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The IoT world has been shocked as the promise has been stripped away as enterprise budgets have withered as have their IoT ambitions. Yet, now more than ever, we need innovation. The IoT industry must adapt. Leonard Lee is join...

Send us Fan Mail The semiconductor industry is the foundation of our digital world. Everything runs on semiconductor products and continues to advance with each new process node. As we reach the physical limits of Moore’s Law, what comes next? Jim Walker, President of WLP Concepts and former Gartner research VP joins neXt Curve’s Leonard Lee and Dean Freeman to discuss heterogenous computing. This...

Send us Fan Mail The truth and reality are at risk ironically due to digital technologies and the social applications that serve as a distribution network of fake content that share alternative views on what are true and fact. Things are not getting better, in fact they are getting worse. Trust platforms are inevitable. These platforms will foster fabrics of trust that will provide a source of tru...

Send us Fan Mail On July 17, Softbank announced that it was considering the spinoff or sale of Arm which they acquired in 2016 for $32 billion. Imaginations ran wild. Would Intel or AMD pick up Arrm? What about Apple? Soon, rumors circulated that Softbank was in talks with Nvidia, the global GPU leader. What kind of impact would the merging of these two companies have on the industry and the compe...