[PODCAST] The Introduction of 5G and How It Will Change the World

 About this Discussion:

We may have taken the terms 3G and 4G for granted, not truly understanding the impact the addition of each one had to our lifestyles. However, as more devices ‘talk’ to each other and as the demand for data increases, the need for 5G is crucial now more than ever.

By 2020 the new information generated per second for every human being will approximately amount to 1.7 megabytes. Plus the average consumer will have more access to things like VR and IoT devices, which will make the speed of 4G feel like the old dial-up days of AOL.

As overwhelming as this all can be, the good news is that it 5G is no longer just a thought or a need, but it’s an actual reality. It’s already rolling out to areas around the world, and will be more accessible within the next year.

To learn how 5G will impact the world as we know it, and what we can expect in the near future, we decided to go straight to the 5G source, Ericsson.

We were honored to speak with Swamy Vasudevan, the VP of Strategy and Business Develop-ment for Ericsson. He has been instrumental in making 5G a reality.

More about Swamy Vasudevan:

With a career driving product innovation, business growth, market share, and organizational refinement for global markets, Swamy is an award-winning thought leader in network communications and a recognized speaker on topics including Cloud Management, Smart Grid Communications, and GIS.

During his time at Ericsson, Swamy has held positions as Head of Cloud Solutions and Chief Technology Officer.

Today as the Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Swamy leads strategy definition and market growth planning for Ericsson’s North American cloud and network business, serving B2B customers across the US and Canada.

This includes directing business development for the North America cloud and NFV unit, focusing on industry-unique, end-to-end solutions for commercial clients.

Swamy leads a matrixed team who specialize in competitive analysis, identifying growth opportunities, determining possibilities for disruptive technology, and providing guidance for M&A and venture investments, and he partners with top-level client decision makers in articulating value proposition and driving customer engagement.

You can learn more about Swamy at: https://cloudblog.ericsson.com/digital-services/author/swamy-vasudevan

Official Transcript:

Erin: Alright, welcome to another episode of Innovation Calling. I'm Erin Smith.

Syya: And I'm Syya Yasotornrat

Erin: And today, Syya, you're going to be introducing our amazing guest. Can't wait to, I'll leave it to you.

Syya: Excellent. So I'm really excited. This has been a long time coming. Very patient soul. Since we've been talking about this probably over, almost over a year now. But I'm very happy to introduce Swamy Vasudevan. He is a former colleague and customer of mine from my time over at Hewlett Packard, and we've been having some very interesting conversations around 5G and I couldn't think of anyone that was more knowledgeable and more interesting to talk about what the heck 5G is. He's been very patient to explain it to me. So before we go into too much, I'd like to introduce Swamy. Good afternoon, and good morning, and good evening to you, sir.

Swamy: Good morning Soya and Erin. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to this podcast. I think, as you said initially I think 5G is a new buzzword you know, rare you see. It's casting a lot of attention. So, I'm hoping that we can talk about some of the jargon, what's been happening in the telecom industry, and how 5G is gonna be completely changing the lives of people around the globe. I'm very excited to be here talking to you guys.

Syya: That is exactly it. So, you've heard me, obviously, from our work together in the past. I'm familiar with 5G, obviously, but I imagine many people who are listening are aware of it, perhaps don't fully understand what is the hype around 5G. Let's take it back, we've got 4G, mkay, I use it to talk on the phone I use it to, now starting to stream more media. What's the big hype about 5G? What's it really going, what is it? Why do we care that 5G is coming?

Swamy: Absolutely. I think that even before I talked about 5G I just wanted to give a quick view on where we got here. So, maybe I can probably start quickly with 1G, first generation, I mean it last 30-40 years. It's all about mobile revolution. That's how I would like to call. So the first generation of mobile or wireless network, it was all about wi service, basic wi service. If I can call you, if I can speak to you, that's good, right, that was the 1G. 2G added little more in terms of SMS, short messages, and 3G added little more speed and also the internet came into play, so we were able to look at some content in the internet. Video was okay, but it was mostly internet, first mobile broadband I would say, 3G. And 4G really brought the speed that we experience today, and you can watch live stream movies, or if you want to do FaceTime with your friends and family. All those things were possible with 4G, and also a lot of the app-based services, whether it is Uber or Airbnb, a lot of these things came into play because of 4G network.

Swamy: And taking another step into 5G. What is 5G all about? I mean so far, from 1G to 4G it was all about wireless network and increasing the speed, and also changing a little bit of features. I think that's where it was. But 5G, obviously, it builds on top of that so, you get more speed than 4G, for example if you're talking about one gigabit per second download in 4G we're talking about in 5G up to 10 gig, so that's a pretty good speed increase. So, if you're looking at two hour movie or HD movie, I should say, if it took six minutes in 4G, in 5G it'll probably take a few seconds. So, that's what we are talking about. And the other thing is latency. The latency when you send some request to the server and when you get the response back, that's what the latency is. In 4G the latency was somewhere close to 15 milliseconds, and in 5G its one millisecond, that's what we are talking about. So I will explain, probably later on, why that is so important, because there are certain use cases I want to touch upon.

Swamy: And the other thing is how to save energy consumption in 5G. I'm talking about battery life. Some of these devices that would be connected to 5G, how do we keep efficient battery life that's one thing. And also a huge bandwidth that opens up in 5G, so that you can fit not just the mobile phones, because so far we have been predominately talking about mobile phones, but 5G opens up new wave things like IOT that people are aware of, internet of things. Whether it's a self-driving car or maybe drones. All those things come into play. So, 5G is all about a life-changing event. It's not just a speed and bandwidth that I would call it, it's much more than that.

Erin: While we're recording this we're in the middle of September. Can you give a.… It's not a far in the future thing anymore. I know there are some places that actually have it. Can you give a status of where we are with it, and even what we can expect within the next year?

Swamy: Absolutely. I think you might have seen a lot of the press releases that Verizon, AT&T, many of these operators are starting to low load initial 5G services. I saw personally just a couple of these I think. Verizon is going to be launching in October first I believe, so it's 5G service in select cities, I think it's Los Angeles, and Huston, and a couple of more. And initial use cases, if they were all their own fixed wireless access, that's when it started. The true mobile broadband, like how we are using 4G, it'll take more time, but the initial use case, were fixed broadband, fixed wireless. So what it means is, typically our homes, we are connected by cable companies, and you get certain amount of bandwidth, and you enjoy the different video content, and live streaming, and whatnot, but there were not many other players in our neighborhoods.

Swamy: So, what 5G opened up was, they can actually through the radio signal, you can actually connect to the homes, and you can provide a fixed wireless service. So all you need is, there's no wire coming into your home. So there is some kind of tower somewhere. The homes, you would have a pickup box or a modem, and you actually get high-speed service through wireless. So that opens up a completely new business for most of these operators. So, that's what I think it's been rolling out. At least the latest part of this year.

Swamy: And next year I think the mobile use handsets, it'll take some time, but any time a new technology comes in, you have to have a certain period where the mobile handset manufacturers have to come up with the handset that adheres to the 5G standard. So, I would say it'll continue in 2019 and mostly I think in 2020 is where it's going to become much more of a mainstream. But it's starting to happen. And also, even globally, you may have seen some news that Telstra, Ericsson and Intel joined together, and we were able to make the first ever 5G wise call, which was fantastic. So, I think it's starting to happen, and by enlisting momentum behind 5G we will see that like next few months, the initial roll-outs in the US, and also the continued rolling out in pockets in 2019 and beyond.

Syya: So you mentioned something that struck me as standard. Whilst I was involved with the telco industry there hasn't been or hadn't been an actual substandard for 5G. That was last year. Has that changed in the last year and a half or so? Has there been and actual formal standard that the bodies are kind of agreeing upon or are we still at that stage between VHS and Beta battle, if you will.

Swamy: No I think the standard is pretty much here, I mean if you were to ask me probably two years back, yes, it was a little bit premature, although 3GPP and all the ecosystems around it, we have been talking about that, but now I would say that the standard is out there. There may be some tweaks to it, but compared to two years back, now we have a much more of a standardized way of doing it. I mean there some operators, they went ahead pre-standard, they wanted to deploy it, but they are also feeding that back into the standard, so right now I would say the standard is there and all the handset manufacturers as well as the network infrastructure builders, they all will follow what's coming out of that standard body.

Syya: Okay, because I know there was a little bit of a lull which seemed be kind of delaying, I think, adaption, right, or willing to make that first step or be the first people to move towards 5G. I think it, I think Verizon has been really at the forefront of a lot of that. Right? I'm glad to hear that finally there's get some standardization in place and acknowledgement of it.

Erin: I'm a non-techy person. My mother, she is 80 years old, I have a mobile handset. I mean this sounds cool, but what does it mean to an average user. Will we have to change all of our handsets when 5G comes out? What does that mean to the consumer space, or is it seamless? Should this be something that 4G, 5G is backward compatible. If you've got a 4G phone could you take advantage of 5G technology or do you have to get a brand new handset?

Swamy: Very good question. With any technology change you need to have a different handset, because with 5G because the frequency is totally different compared to what 4G was, so you have to have a new handset, and maybe the initial handsets would probably be, I'm guessing like it might be expensive, but over the years it'll be okay. The market will drive it down. But that's the case with any new technology introduction. But I think for consumers, they will clearly see a difference in terms of the new services that they can start using.

Swamy: The one thing I can clearly see is augmented reality is one of the use cases people always talk about. Because it requires really, really low latency. So, if people are using anything related to that they will see much better improvement, and also from a content perspective, and screening, and also if people are doing online gaming, they will see a tremendous, tremendous improvement. But I think it's much more than just the consumer because I talked about IOT. There was Gartner, the post that actually said in 2016 it was something I believe like 2017 or 2018 it was 8.5 billion things that were connected. So when I say things, it's not consumers, right, it's just some kind of like a machine, some devices that are connected, which actually was up from 2016 almost 30% or so. And there are some analysts predict that that's really going to grow, and probably by 2020 it'll be like 20 billion devices that gets connected. And that's going to grow.

Swamy: So, when I say things are getting connected, we are talking about even sensors. Maybe you want to monitor water flow or water quality. So there are some sensors that get connected. That's one thing. The other thing is self driving cars, and you might have seen some videos, or maybe you might have seen vehicles in California and some parts of the country driving automatically, and that'll come. Eventually, that'll come. But to do that you need a network which creates really low latency. So that's your, as the car is driving, the car has to communicate with the other cars on different lanes, or maybe when it's approaching the intersection it has to make split second decisions, so unless you have really, really low latency, that 5G provides, it's going to be very hard.

Swamy: And also drones is a big thing. We have seen Amazon and some of these companies trying to deliver packages through drones. But there are also some use cases where the humans used to climb up, you could actually send drones instead of humans. One of the examples I would say is when you have two towers, cell towers, and you want to do a line of sight, people really used to climb up and look at how the line of sight is. But now you can actually send a drone up there and see how the line of sight would be. So a lot of these use cases, so it's not just about consumers, but also about how we can improve the machine to machine communications. Whether it is autonomous vehicles or maybe industrial use cases where there are a lot of manufacturing that can be controlled using the 5G technology, I mean there is another thing just came to my mind was remote surgery, which requires really really low latency. So all these things will come into play when we talk about 5G.

Syya: You just threw down a bunch of potential use cases in an enterprise application, non consumer right? So we're talking about how this is really going to change industries. This is not just a convenience of speed as we talked about earlier. I'm really fascinated, I kind of want to hone in more on these applications you're talking about, for the enterprise space. So if I understand you correctly then, so let's use drones, because drones are the sexy thing and topic, right?

Syya: I tend to think of drones in two different applications. One of which, military. Where they are going to change the way we look at warfare. And two is you mentioned Amazon. I guess I should say three. Amazon, the application of using drones as a delivery mechanism, which would disrupt the existing transportation industry as we know it, because they are the primary source of delivering goods. The third one is drones for just pure fun usage amongst consumers, maybe neighbor to neighbor delivery of sugar or something silly like that. This is really interesting to me. So are you saying that with 5G we're going to have the ability to enable machines to talk to other machines in a way that would actually limit the amount of human interaction to do whatever job we're intending it to do? From an enterprise standpoint are you saying that drones, applying drones here, has the ability with 5G to enable a transformation of the military, the transportation industry, as well as the standard consumer usage? Is that what you're getting at?

Swamy: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that one of the, you touched upon cases where the drone is being used but so far I think it was mainly used in some storm impact zones. I mean last year I think there were a bunch of hurricanes where a lot of the homes were damaged and the insurance industry really used that to full extent. Because if you want to send humans and try to assess the impact of what happened, the damages, it's going to take some time. But sending drones and looking at what was the damage and how do you assess. And the other thing is drones can actually capture a lot of these high quality images of the impact and feed them back into the cloud. That requires higher bandwidth and some cases low latency. So, that's one of the clear use cases that's being used I can see.

Swamy: But going forwards there are certain things we may not have even thought of using drones. I know my son has a toy drone. He sends it up and he tries to record what's going on in our back yard, but it's much more than that. They'll bring packages that Amazon was training. That's one thing. And also, there are many cases that the enterprises themselves actually can look at from an industrial perspective if they want to isolate certain flaws, or if they want to look at how things are happening in the production line, so there are cases that you can actually send the drone instead of letting people climb up and down.

Swamy: So, many cases, and there are certain things that we may not even thought about like one example I'm thinking is when iPhone came out, the whole iTunes app platform. I mean the platform was there but we hadn't really thought what it could actually bring out in terms of new app capability. I didn't realize that I would be using iPhone for finding out how many steps I have taken, right? So, the way I'm looking at this the 5G provides the platform and drone is just one application. There could be multiple other use cases that might come out as we go.

Erin: I think what's so intriguing about this is that I feel advances have been made even just in the past few years. That stuff that's coming out, stuff that's available to the average consumer. Yet we're sitting on this, as soon as 5G comes out there's a lot of things that are being held back because it doesn't have the capability quite yet. And now as 5G comes out we're going to see another explosion in all of this data, all of this information, connections, that we currently can't make right now.

Syya: So this is going along with what you're talking about Erin regarding connections. And this is where I get a little techy, techy here. As 5G rolls out, you're going to get a lot of different types of data that is going to be run now on this network that wasn't on before. Again leveraging that machine to machine connectivity, for example, okay. One of the things I'm concerned about is, there's going to have to be some. Okay, let me try this again. The security aspect of it. There's going to be a lot of data bouncing back and fourth, right? And whatever network is being leveraged, and in your case we're talking about the providers and the tech that's actually underpinning it, where is it going to be. Is it going to be stored in the cloud? I mean, help me understand how all this is being transmitted and how this is being organized, because I'm a little confused how 5G is going to complicate leveraging wireless technology in a much more broader sense than just standard mobile technology for phone communication. Can you help me understand where cloud is going help enable 5G, help simplify it, help secure it? Where do you see that going Swami, because I know you have an opinion on this and you can provide some guidance.

Swamy: Yeah, so I think cloud is a really integral part of 5G. Earlier on I said 5G is not just about wireless technology, it's completely a whole new ecosystem, different way of thinking. So, cloud is going to be behind the 5G. So, because you have the low latency and higher bandwidth, a lot of these things that you'd acquire from data perspective and processing perspective, it all gets pushed back into the cloud. So, you are really not storing anything locally. So that's one good thing.

Swamy: And there's also at the same time we are talking about, for certain use cases, pushing certain types of data storage and actualized processing to the edge also. So when I talk about edge, edge is actually the location really close to the consumers. Or whatever the application that's sitting pretty close to the edge. Either close to where the cell towers are, the local, kind of a central office type of facilities. And why that is important is, we are talking about augmented reality applications, virtual reality applications, autonomous vehicle driving. So, if you have to make certain decisions in split seconds you don't really want to be sending all these files in to the cloud and come back. So that's where I think the cloud as we know will try to change a little bit to support all these new use cases in ways that we haven't seen before. So moving these towards the edge would certainly help.

Swamy: And also, there are many initiatives that are happening on how to achieve that. I know purely from an IT perspective Amazon is looking into some of edge processing, but the one thing I sense is Amazon acquired Whole Foods, and you have seen probably in a lot of the press releases that one of the reasons that they have this is they can use Whole Foods for certain types of edge compute. But if you look at mobile operators, such as AT&T and Verizon, they are really close to the consumers. Because when we are talking on the phone, so I'm really close to probably within a mile or two to a cell tower, right? So that's really close to the consumer. So how can we utilize that closeness in terms of providing a fantastic experience to the consumer. I think that's going to be a game changer. So edge computing, that's something to watch for in the coming months.

Erin: Can I ask you about, so we talked about what Soya was asking about concerns. Are there any, you know all this stuff is great, about all this, all the new stuff that's going to be available to us. Are there any other concerns or things people are worried about. Things we have to consider with the rollout of 5G.

Swamy: I think 5G opens, a lot of these things are going to cloud and a lot of the devices are getting connected, which were not connected before, so obviously the question that rises is what about security? I think that's something that Soya, you asked about. I think that's a very valid concern. I don't know if you have watched YouTube video. There was a guy driving a Jeep Cherokee on a highway. I think he was going 60 or 70 miles per hour. There were two hackers, actually logged into the Jeep Cherokee, and stopped the car in the middle of the highway. Just imagine, it's the middle of the highway, you're going 60-70 miles per hour, and somebody stops your car.

Swamy: So, of course I think they were trying to test it out, but at least it gives you some kind of insight into what's possible with all these cars are being connected, your devices are being connected, you know, you may have some wearables on your body, which monitors your health, whatnot. So just imagine if somebody hacks into the car or some of these devices, they get the information pulled out and also they can inflict some damage too, so that's a scary thing. But, as an industry we are working towards how we can do it. There are certain standards that are being rolled out, which will help us along the way. But right now, I would say that even though it's a concern, but the industry is definitely trying to address it. And mobile networks so far it's been much more controlled and secured and it will continue to be that way. There may be certain things that we may have to add as an industry, but overall I think we should be okay.

Syya: I watched this YouTube video yesterday. It's been on my mind. With what we're talking about, with IOT, the internet of things, the fact that the, the whole concept of connected car. All of this is coming, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, those are all nice little buzz words. 5G is going to enable all of those nice little buzz words. Right? What this seems like to me, is we're at that forefront row, that generation that's going to embrace this and going to have to learn how we execute on it, how we're going to best see our society leverage this type of technology. So, there's this word I heard last night. Perhaps I've been watching one too many tin foil YouTube videos, but do you think 5G is that first step towards singularity, and I don't know if you guys are familiar with the concept of singularity. Erin, have you heard of it?

Erin: Yes, I've heard of it.

Syya: Swamy, I'm sure you might have heard of singularity? Do you think 5G is going to be the start of that? Where now you've got all these machines talking to each other. Human interaction is secondary. I mean I'm trying to think of the negative here. Do you think I'm being extreme?

Swamy: I know. To add different thoughts to it. I have seen that there are some people say that oh man if we have the technology going to do everything for us. What would we do. So maybe we'll just lie on the beach and we have fun and we just be humans as we are supposed to be. But, I've seen different arguments between different folk. I would say at least 5G when we start with it, it'll definitely be a game changer, and also a life changing event I would say. One of the things I recently read, I think it was an executive from Verizon, he actually said that 5G would actually enable almost 12 trillion dollars worth of global economic output, and also it would actually influence or support 22 million jobs worldwide by 2035 or so.

Swamy: So we are really talking about some game-changing, life-changing event. Down the road, maybe after some time, maybe 50 years later, who knows, things might be totally different. Since you talked about how would things completely changed once the machines take over. One thing that comes to my mind was, I read an article by I think some folks at SMU. It was beautifully written, it was about how things have changed, the way we work, in the last century or so.

Swamy: So when we started maybe early part of last century, it was more about agricultural economy. That's how it was, an agrarian age the used to call. So it was all about if you have strength, or muscle. That's what was really required. Whether you are fishing, or moving some materials, agriculture, so that's where we started. And then we came into more of an industrial age. That's where the, more about the how do we look at the bookkeepers, or librarians, those kind of folk. And also people who work in the factories. And then we got into the information age which was more on how do we use the computer programmers to do certain stuff. Maybe insurance writers. And then ultimately, where we are going is what you said Soya, is more about imagination age. Who is creative. Whether it's doctor, designer, or architect. Those are the guys that are really shaping up what we think, what kind of products that's going to come out. So, even though it's kind of similar to people talk the industrial revolution.

Swamy: I like this particular article, how we started with agricultural age, industrial age, information age, and imagination age. We are into that imagination age where the machines can think much better than humans, and it's coming. It's because the processing power has improved over the years and also how much we pay for processing is coming down. And also the storage is becoming really cheaper, so eventually, we'll get there at some point. But at least for now I'm looking positive things how I can influence those and better our lives. That's how I think.

Syya: I mean it is fascinating to think about. I do believe, and I agree with you. I think 5G is a bit of a game changer. It is going to definitely evolve our generation, and the generation after, how they view, how they interact with technology. They're far more open and far more welcoming to use technology to their benefit. 50 years from now Erin, I think, our generation is going to be one of those grandma, grandpas first learning the computer right? Half the applications nowadays I don't even know what I'm doing, right? But, you said it Swami, the biggest things we see is autonomous cars. The one thing we didn't talk about by the way, before my ADD gets me again, is smart cities. We didn't talk about that. And I think that's the other area where 5G is really going to evolve how we look at cities today, city centers, and how we look at planning communities in the future. I think that's another neat application and use case that 5G is going to help enable change for.

Swamy: Yeah. Absolutely. I think smart cities is a big, big use case. A couple of things that come to my mind was, obviously the traffic management is one thing, right? How do you make sure that you can beacon just the traffic and also how do you reduce pollution, so that it is much more sustainable. I know that there are some cities that were partnering with car manufacturers where they can actually send some signals to the cars about the traffic light patterns so the car doesn't need to come so fast and then stop but rather they can actually be in tune with those signals sending from the cities administrators. And it automatically slows it down and it maintains the flow of traffic. So that's one thing I thought was pretty cool.

Swamy: The other thing is smart buildings. How the energy consumption is going to be, because all these things have to be connected. There are certain cases it's already connected. But how much each of those buildings consume, and there are cases where you don't want, you want to control the consumption using those sensors, IOT devices, you can actually make sure that the energy consumption is at the optimal levels. So that's good for globe. For me, I really personally associated with some of these concept and sustainability because when I grew up, I grew up in a place that electricity was a little bit scarce and also even when we get electricity, our parents always used to say, "Hey if something you are using, the light, is on, when you are going out you got to switch it off. You can't use it for more than two hours." Or something like that. I mean they said that maybe for a couple of reasons one is maybe they want to save money. Because I think for them I think it was expensive for using electricity. Also, it was more about why do you waste? If you don't need it why do you waste? Those two are the concepts.

Swamy: But now after so many years I'm thinking about it. A lot of these smart cities. If you go to some of the conferences, what we are talking about is, what I did probably 30-40 years back and with the technology twist. We are saying in stead of my parents telling me and saying hey you need to switch it off, we are talking about all IOT devices monitoring the usage flow and automatically adjusting which is on, which is off, and making sure that the city as a whole, the community as a whole, we are doing the right thing. And also you're consuming less as well as you're saving cost and also being more sustainable so that's a pretty good use case which you block out.

Syya: I knew that was something that was dear to your heart. I just wanted to make sure we pointed that out as well. Because I do think about the fact that you said job opportunities by 2035 there should be how many more job opportunities?

Swamy: Yeah it was 22, 20 million jobs worldwide by 2035.

Syya: That is mind boggling to me that there's that much opportunity. Which I think again, because we are shifting towards that technology age, I can't tell how important it is for the next generation to understand how important computer science, computer engineering, the STEM studies are important for the next generation. and I'm not. I have a liberal arts degree but STEM is so imperative, especially now that 5G is coming out.

Erin: Because too with those jobs that are increased there will be jobs taken away right? The basics. We won't need drivers as much. We won't need delivery people. We won't need, case by case, there will be jobs created but to your point Soya, you're going to need to know the tech side of things.

Syya: I mean STEM is so critically important. I think any country that doesn't develop a strong STEM program, and this might be another podcast, quite frankly, but unless we can create a very solid STEM program, I think countries that are not doing that are going to start lagging from here on out. It just sounds like that to me.

Swamy: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's going to be very critical, because the skillset that would be needed to support this new economy that and all these technologies, it's different, so unless you know the fundamentals in coming from a STEM background, it's going to be a bit challenging. One thing that came to my mind was, I was talking to my son and he was asking me about getting a. When you're 15 I think you should be able to… Not only like he was saying. Dad, because you know, cars will be driving automatically, and by the way, I want to use UBER, but UBER once they go with like a.

Swamy: So I'm like wow, so the thinking is completely different and as you said it actually disrupts so many industries. And you don't really need delivery people. Once things, lets say you look at the cars and autonomous driving, if everything is going, what happens to the insurance industry? So they'll be a lot of disruption there too, right? So, all of these things definitely come into play and our next generation, they are growing up with iPhones and tablets, right? And complete technology. For them everything is click off a button. So, let's see. Let's see how it evolves, but I'm certainly optimistic even though there is going to be disruptions in certain areas, it would open up multiple other opportunities too. How would you if you to use case and deliver thinking through and behind the scenes, that's where STEM comes into play. I have seen the new learning centers popping up in Dallas area and also in.

Syya: Swami I appreciate your time. Is there anything with Ericsson or with yourself that you'd like to highlight that we can refer anyone that's been listening to learn more about you or what Ericsson is doing?

Swamy: Yeah, so, um. great, great potential. One thing I will say is, it's just a quick story of a small boy actually going to a balloon vendor. So the balloon bender has multiple balloons, and he is asking the balloon vendor, "Hey, is the red balloon going to fly high?" And the balloon vendor says yes. And then he asks, "Is the green balloon going to fly high?" And the vendor says yes. And then he asks, "Is the yellow balloon going to fly high?" He says yes. And after some time the vendor stops the boy and says that, "Hey, it's not what's the color of the balloon that makes it fly high. It's actually what's inside the balloon that makes it fly high." So when I talk about 5G, 5G think of that as what's going to be inside of everything and consider that as secret sauce that's going to make the cars drive themselves, whether you are going to do a traffic control through cloud connectivity, and some application which requires immediate responses. So the potential is so much and possibilities are limitless. So be 5G. That's what we like to say. It's coming and we all have to be ready.

Syya: I absolutely love that balloon analogy. I think you nailed it right there. Where you are, where you're seeing it. You are in essence saying that you are the secret sauce, right Swami? I get it now.

Swamy: Yeah.

Syya: So, we really appreciate your time and absolutely would love to continue having the conversation with you so if you've got some time available I know you're super busy right now. We'd love to have you back. Or anyone that would love to get a hold of Swami, we'll go ahead and put that in our meeting notes. But you can find Swamy Vasudevan at Ericsson. You can find him. You can Google him as well. We can send some links out. On his blogs talking about the future digital blog within Ericsson. So, Swami, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and I'm so excited to see what you guys and your head come up with. Thank you.

Erin: Thank you Swamy.

Swamy: Thank you. Thank you Syya and thank you Erin. Appreciate it.