Techstrong Gang – May 6, 2025

Hey, everyone. Do we need more space junk up there? You're watching Textron Gang.

Hi everyone, it's Alan Shimo. Happy Tuesday to you. You know, uh, we've got a distinct theme for today's show.

It's a space theme we're going to, two of our three blocks are on, uh, on space related. Actually, all three blocks at some level are on space and, and, you know, that kind of thing. But, uh, should be a fun show.

Let me introduce you quickly to our gang members for today, and we've got some great ones. First of all, he is back home with his guitars in Colorado, futur vp Mitch Ashley. Hey, Mitchell.

Welcome. It's the real guitars too, not faked, Not fake. I was asked Many times at RSA.

Where's your guitars? Where's the guitars? It's just a background.

Anyway, good to have you, Mitch. Good to see you. Um, then joining us still in Ohio.

Well, he's moved, but he's moved still within Hudson. I guess. He is.

Uh, tech field, A CEO, Steven FoST. Hey, Steven. How you doing?

It's good to be here. Yes. All settled in, um, you know, just looking at the stars from a new point of view.

Yeah. 2 miles will do that to you, I guess, huh? Yeah.

Really. Okay. Um, and then joining us, he, he's got it.

He had his fix for the Yankees on Sunday. He's back to work today. He's our chief content officer, Mike Ard.

Hey, Mike. How are you? I'm well.

I'm, I'm licking my wounds here in New York. Two outta three lost to Tampa. I know in Tampa Bay is not what they were either.

Mm-hmm. But look, you die by the home run. You live by the home run.

And we need, we need more high. We need high average hitters, though. Paul Goldschmidt and Aaron Judges, uh, batting averages are ridiculous.

They're, they're both flirting with 400. Um, it's the rest of the, we need Those. We need those bigger torpedo bats, you know, and just make 'em like eight inches bigger on the, on the, on the barrel.

It's just what we need. That's just what we need. All right.

Let's jump into things today though, Mike. You know, look, competition's a good thing. And quite frankly, starlink has been a, I think first it was looked at as an oddity, but certainly as we've seen, let's say in Ukraine, Ukraine, Russian War, it's, it's a strategic asset, but it's never a good thing to have just one provider.

What's, yeah, what do we got here? So, Amazon has finally put up 27 of these kuper satellites, and they're on their way to deploying 300 or more of them. And, um, of course, uh, Jeff Bezos has been driving behind Blue Origin now for a while, and that's had some mixed successes.

But, um, we clearly can't be overly dependent upon one company, starlink to, uh, provide these satellites. And NASA's kinda having its budget cut a little bit. So there's gonna be some strategic issues on top of that.

And, but it's clear that, you know, some of the folks who own these companies and used their influence as a result to, uh, change policies in a way or to maybe insert their noses in places where it doesn't really belong. But Alan, I know you follow the space pretty closely. What is happening here with all these satellites and how does it play?

Or larger geopolitical discussions? Sure. Well, I, I always say that, you know, for the longest time, starlink was sort of like DirecTV.

I got cable. I don't know, you know, unless I live somewhere out in the boonies that don't have cable, oh, then maybe I need satellite. But, you know, as I said earlier, in the lead end with the advent of the Ukrainian, uh, Russian ward stuff in the Middle East, uh, starlink, you know, satellite communication, satellite internet, I think has become strategic.

And, and you're right to have it in the hands of one man, even though he may be a stable genius, uh, or not, is, is concerning, right? It's concerning here in the US because what happens when the next president isn't someone he gave $300 million to elect, and it doesn't go his way, and he, it's been known to have a tantrum or two and put yourself outside the us Would you trust him with anything strategic in your country after what he's done in, you know, in, in on the world stage? Of course not.

So I think, I think it's a really smart move here by Jeff Bezos. And quite frankly, blue Origin can't exist just to take celebrities for quick little joy rides to the upper atmosphere and downing it, um, including Captain Kirk. But, you know, so this is a mission for Blue Origin.

But you said something else, Mike, that I think is really at the heart of this here. They wanna cut NASA's budget and in, in, in, and in, in essence, privatize our space, uh, program, which has been on the agenda for a long time. But the way they're talking about privatizing it now, it's going to one company, right?

SpaceX, we need, we need strategically in this country, we need an alternative. You can't have all your eggs in that basket. We'll wind up launching astronauts outta the cosmodrome, again, in Kazaki, Stan, or wherever the heck it is.

Right? And in terms of the rest of the world, if you are Japan or India or any of the Western, you know, the EU countries, or Brazil, or you know, any country that wants to have a place in this next century, you need a space program today, you're going to need that. Whether it's launching satellites, defending against space borne weaponization, or just pure science and exploration as, as we're gonna have in our B block, right?

Some of the science, you, the, these are strategic assets, right? We chose to go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. And that's makes the medal of a country.

Now granted, we, we may not do this as, as a country anymore. We do it as corporations. 'cause we live in the era, era of proxies.

These corps are proxies. They're, they're their own governments in some way, their own entities, nation states, whatever corps states. But if you're going to have corps states, you, you need competition.

So I think it's a good thing and more power to it. But the space junk issue bums me out. You know, I just, I I how long until these things collide, and when they run outta juice, do they, you know, are they gonna burn up in the atmosphere?

And what does that do? And they don't burn in the atmosphere. Are they gonna land in Hudson, Ohio?

Poor Steven just got a new house. Does he need a satellite crashing? And I Think, you know, I, I think we heard playing, uh, space junk dodge ball up there.

I think the, the International Space Station had him use its thrusters to get out of the way of some satellite junk that was coming their way, and they were like, afraid it was gonna hit it. But Steven, I wanna ask you, how strategic are these satellite networks really gonna be? And what kind of throughput do I see?

I mean, am I just using this because when there's a war on, I need to call in some missiles? Or is this gonna have more commercial purposes? Well, I think, uh, certainly this is, has commercial applications.

It also has military and other applications. As, as Alan said, I mean, there's a sort of a, a strategic, um, aspect to it as well. Um, one of the things, you know, it's easy and fun to dunk on Elon Musk, and we might do that a little bit more in this show.

Uh, but that being said, uh, starlink actually works really, really well. Um, it is, uh, up, it is operational. People rely on it.

Um, and that has, I think, opened the door to other challengers. So you, you, we've got the one web constellation. Uh, there's a, a constellation, uh, from China that's gonna be even bigger, uh, that is going up now.

Um, I do think as, uh, Americans, as, you know, international people as well, would, would like to have an alternative to starlink just given the, the sort of political situation with Musk and the US administration. Um, but that being said, uh, do, how much, how many of these things do we really need? And that is, is my concern.

I mean, we're talking tens of thousands of small satellites up there. It's important to know too, that these things are at different levels, different orbits. Um, you know, I don't think that, uh, the starlink satellites have caused any issues in terms of, uh, people having to dodge them, uh, except on the ground when they come out out of the sky, because they're kind of designed to do that.

But at the same time, uh, eventually it becomes pretty clouded and crowded. And we've had issues already with, uh, the satellites, uh, crowding out, um, observatories, uh, just people trying to enjoy the night sky, you know, that sort of thing. Because these things, there's a lot of 'em, uh, and, and Amazon's adding more.

The other thing I'll point out too is that yes, they launched these things, but, um, they only launched a few of them. They're way, way behind SA starlink in terms of deployment here. And there's no telling whether they will be able to catch up.

Uh, one of the things, uh, you know, some of the coverage that I've been looking at suggests that these Cooper satellites, they're using a more traditional sort of, uh, Pez dispenser, uh, way of, of launching that means that there's less space on the, on the rockets to launch the satellites, which means that they're gonna need more rockets in order to launch more satellites than SpaceX or the, the Chinese competitor, which use sort of a, a flat pack and then adjust launch mechanism. And what that means is that, uh, you know, uh, this whole project is, um, I don't wanna say doomed to failure, but it's, uh, it's questionable whether they, they'll be able to achieve their goals given the fact that, um, starlink and the Chinese are already, uh, so far ahead technologically. Um, we'll see what happens here.

But, um, I'm not all that optimistic that Cooper is gonna be able to achieve its goals. Yeah, I was just gonna say on the, we, I know, uh, a lot of private weather companies, um, and in the past few years have been investing in their own satellites. So you're getting more, um, I guess, congestion as well, uh, from the weather aspect of it.

You know, as far as the KY system by Bezos and Blue Origin, he's not gonna fold Blue Origin. And this is the reason, the only reason, other than the celebrity flybys, it's the only thing they're doing. And I think he envisions a time where he will compete with SpaceX for Nassau type missions, whether it's going to Mars moon, what, what, what have you.

And they need these launches and so forth, will give them the experience, practical experience that they're going to need if they want to get into the commercial space business. You know, I think if you just look at the, um, the goods delivery business, if you wanna call Amazon, that you relying on cellular networks, as I'm sure those trucks do today, that that's a very unreliable way of communicating as those those are traveling around and delivering goods. I think there's a huge advantage to Amazon to be able to have you can Be is right, it's best customer, Instant fleet access to everything.

You know exactly where it is. And you've got GPS coordinates, you've got, you know, you've got the, the satellite connection. Um, the other thing, the, the one thing I'm really excited about starlink though is, oh, United Airlines announced they're changing their wifi to starlink.

I can't wait. 'cause wifi on planes is pretty bad. So first world problem, I know, but that I'm excited about.

Other than, other than that starlink to, to the average person is kind of a nothing burger, at least today. I think it's more global companies, uh, countries, militaries, things like that, that it's important too. Steven, are you getting ready to move to Starbase and run for city council?

I mean, you know, they got a whole name of town here in Texas. Well, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of controversy there. Uh, um, that's for sure.

Uh, my friends in Texas, I would be remiss to not bring up their concerns over the fact that, uh, SpaceX has been building their star base launch complex and now the city, um, into something pretty big down there on the Gulf Coast. And a lot of folks on the Gulf Coast aren't all that happy with it. I think a lot of the com people, uh, out in the, out in the Gulf and, and out in the Atlantic, are not all that happy about it either.

But frankly, um, if we're going to have a space program, we need to be able to launch them from places. And the closer to the equator and the closer to the ocean they are, the better the logistics are for launch. And so I guess that's that.

I mean, you could, again, make a case that SpaceX has brought a lot of commercial, uh, prospects to this. One of the things about this whole star base city, uh, concept that I'm a little, uh, nervous about is that, that as, as you know, there's been a push, uh, among Silicon Valley elites to create sort of new free cities with, uh, limited legal requirements and, uh, and so on. And, um, I know that that's something that, that we've seen happen, uh, in Austin.

Um, you know, Elon Musk has tried to build a, uh, a, a company town there. Uh, they're trying to build a company town here at, uh, at Spaceport, uh, or Star Base. Uh, this, this, this, uh, is a little bit concerning.

Uh, we'll see what's exactly is gonna happen. Um, uh, Politically it goes back to what I said, Stephen. It's the era of Corp States, right?

These corporations are independent entities that are, you know, and yeah, they are corp towns, right? We, we had corp towns in mining areas earlier on, and, um, it worked out real well. We, We, Midland, Michigan, you could argue as a corp town.

Yeah, let's face it, uh, Walt Disney pioneered this model, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, he's probably the most successful example of that with Disney World.

And of course, that even led to, well, Really, lake Buena Vista. Buena Vista, right? To controversy between, you know, that the, the, the town, the city, the, whatever it is, what is it, Reed Creek, right?

The Reedy Creek Development Corporation. Something that, well, that's the core of that developed, but the entity. But look, this is a bigger issue than Disney World, though.

This is a, you know, this is not that Disney World's not strategic. I don't mean to insult all my Mickey and mini friends out there, but this is a very strategic asset here. You're talking about where if Elon Musk has a, a hissy fit, the United States doesn't have a space program, I'm not willing to put my eggs in those baskets.

Not a strategic element. It's a very powerful asset, right? That could, you know, Elon decides he wants to favor the Chinese, or whoever, you know, owns the town in whatever one of these corporate corporate entity towns.

Yeah. They can shift, they can shift allegiance as alliances where they want. So, Alan, close this out for a minute though.

You, you mentioned nasa and there's been a new budget proposed, and it cuts the budget in a lot of key areas and wants to refocus our efforts on Mars and all this other stuff that Elon's been kind of banging the drum about. Is NASA basically too inefficient to handle any of this and we're just gonna privatize everything? Or what would Be the role of that?

It's not that NASA's too inefficient. NASA did a hell of a job getting us to the moon and everything else they've done, like any government entity, is it the most efficient thing in the world? No, but make no mistake, this budget for NASA is an out and out private, the same way we've privatized jails, schools, immigration.

The people who are grabbing people off the street are probably part of some Blackstone or whatever the company is, not Blackstone, excuse me, whatever the company is that they hire for soldiers that, you know, mercenaries. This is replacing our government space program and privatizing it to Elon Musk. And it's a mistake.

And I, you're right, Elon's done great out of all the companies he's been involved with. SpaceX has done great stuff. I I, you gotta give credit there, but you can't put all your eggs in this basket.

We need blue origin. We need competition and space if we're gonna go on the private side of the thing. But again, we go to the moon because, not 'cause it's easy.

This is a hard thing where it takes nation states to do it. China's going to do it, right? Other countries are going to do it.

This can't be a company thing. It has to be a country thing. And that's the last I'll say on it.

Let's take a break. You're watching Text and gang. We wait.

We've got more space for you though. Welcome back to the Textron Gang. Well, to keep with the theme of space, we're doing a special tribute this block because NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is 35 years old.

Time flies. And looking back at the mission and the accomplishments is really remarkable. I took a closer look and, and compared it a little bit to some of the work that we emphasize here on the show about it.

Practices like refreshing updates, um, longer life cycles, believe it or not, it's all connected. Plus Hubble and the incredible work the scientists associated with have done really are at a lot of the roots stuff that we also talk about, like AI and cloud computing. So let's take a look at that video.

The Hubble Space Telescope just turned 35 for tech enthusiasts, its legacy blends. Astronomical discovery with groundbreaking innovation launched in 1990 to capture clearer views of space than ever before. NASA's pioneering observatory marked a new era of what technology could achieve in orbit.

7 million observations and over 22,000 scientific papers. Hubble is the most productive telescope in history. So how has Hubble lasted 35 years?

Adaptability over its lifetime. It's been upgraded by astronauts five times, replacing worn out parts, adding cutting edge instruments, and extending its capabilities. Hubble's mission has shaped more than science.

Its sparked open data and imaging tools that drive everything from AI to medical tech. Hubble's story is an important reminder that in space and in tech, the next great discovery may be just over the horizon. It was really remarkable to research this and look at the five missions over the cross of 35 years of the different astronauts that have gone to, uh, service Hubble.

gov, you can see all the, the images that were released. But even just looking at the way the astronauts looked is so different from the nineties to today. Yeah, it really was.

You know, I was telling Bonnie before we were live today when my kids were little, you know, living in Florida, going up to the Kennedy Space Center is, uh, it's better than going to Disney World in my opinion. But, so I took them there one, one time and we spent the day in space camp, and then we had what they call lunch with an astronaut. And our astronaut for lunch was, I wanna say Cory Overstreet or Cory, something like that, right?

Well, my kids were five and seven years old. They were more interested in their PB and J sandwiches. I, on the other hand, was a mess.

I was a mess. I, I couldn't talk. I was in such awe of this astronaut, you know, you talk about the right stuff.

He had a law degree, a medical degree, a PhD in engineering. He had it all. And, and he flew, I think three or four shuttle mis missions, including the first repair of the Hubble.

Remember when they had to replace that lens and give it glasses or whatever. And another repair as well. You know, back to the previous, uh, session or the pre section, that's part of NASA's mission.

It's the pure science, the learning that we've gotten. Look, over 35 years, we've gotten our money's worth out of Hubble, right? This thing's been out there for 35 years, sending back pictures of things we've never seen before in ways we've never seen it.

And so expanded our understanding of the cosmos, right? When you go to privatization and with a profit motive for everything you're doing, pure science like this loses out, right? We've got the James Webb telescope, the successor to Hubble.

There's another one that's built and ready to launch that is now with this NASA budget on the chopping block. Huh? Why the hell would you build, invest all of that money to build this next gen telescope and then decide not to launch it so Elon can send some craziness up or whatever.

It makes no sense. One of the fascinating things about Hubble Alan is I believe it was only designed and intended to be operational for 15 years. And of course, reaching it to 35, it, it's a great example of you, you think about embedded systems and, you know, talk about putting things into space and satellites, and you can't go up there and fix it.

Well, you actually can in some ways, but the engineering involved not only in creating Hubble, but also designing the systems to maintain it and upgrade it and improve, add improvements to it. But a lot of that niche, Pretty insightful Platform. A lot of that in the original plan, there wasn't the, the plans to upgrade it.

This was sort of an like a Apollo 13 kinda. Yes, we can let's, you know, build it and figure it out. That's, that's what makes NASA great.

That's what makes NASA great. What makes NASA great is you have satellites on the fringes of the solar system, probably outside the Helio sphere right now, that would never design for that mission, but are still sending back telemetry, what is it, 40 years after, 50 years after they were launched, Voyager, all that Voyager one and two, and there's more heading out. That's what having a science sp a science orientated space program is about.

Mm-hmm. Right? This is the, you touched on this, but this is the part that I am really worried about.

It's, um, NASA and all these government agencies, DOD and whatever, invest in research and technologies that they wind up sharing with a lot of companies. And that creates an ecosystem of technology companies that wind up taking those things to market. And it's not just one company that does it.

And NASA will do things that, um, you know, don't have an ROI that would pass any Wall Street muster. But if I looked at the total benefit to society and all the companies they create, it's huge and it's core to how we operate. But I don't know, Steven, I mean, you know, can we do this stuff with a privatization model or are we gonna lose something here?

Well, I think that my, my concern is, if you look at the failures of space and the failures of NASA over the last couple of decades, I, I put the blame squarely on the feet of the, uh, politicians and corporations who have transformed NASA from a, um, basically, uh, as, as Alan has said, a goal for the nation into essentially a jobs program and a for-profit, uh, or a, uh, a cash cow. Let's not say for-profit, let's say cash cow. If you look at what's wrong with most of what NASA has been forced to do for the last couple of decades, most of that is because the Congress has forced them into this, into this position of, of becoming a jobs program for states, for companies.

And these companies have, um, you know, put together all these cost plus programs where they're fleecing the government. Uh, SLS is the biggest boondoggle ever and should be canceled. I mean, I'm not a big fan of what the Elon Musk and the Doge crew are doing, but I'm also not blind to the fact that SLS has been a complete waste.

And frankly, if you look at what most of what NASA has been doing for the last few decades, it has been a complete waste. Elon Musk was right in looking at space and saying, this is way over budget. It's way over specified.

It's not what we should be doing. What we need to be doing is having a slimmer and more efficient and more goals oriented, more science oriented space program. The problem is, if we give it to Elon Musk, well then that's not that solution either.

It, I don't know what the right solution is, but basically making it a 50 state jobs program that costs billions of dollars per launch, ain't it? So the problem with nasa, and I think it's been a problem since the Apollo mission failed, was what's next? The shuttles in and of themselves were supposed to be an intermediate step.

They were the workhorse to carry stuff up to space to build what's next. The fact, and we're all of nature here, except you, Bonnie, the fact that we're still sitting here as little boys, except, well, obviously you were not a little boy. Um, the fact that we were, we're all sitting here that as little boys, we watched men land on the moon, and we haven't gone back.

You didn't watch Steven. I'm too young. I missed it.

Did you really? Yeah. I'm sorry.

I didn't realize that. I look old, but I'm not as old as I look. All right.

I'm sorry you missed it. But my, I watched Mitch, we watched that and as you, It was the little, the little grainy black and white photos. It was grainy black wipe.

I remember him hitting the golf ball. I, if you would've asked 10-year-old Allen Shimmel, are we going to go back to the moon between now and the time you're 60? Hell yeah.

The fact that we haven't is an abject failure of imagination and perseverance here in the, and leadership. 'cause one president says, we're going to Mars. The other one says, we're going to the dark side of the moon.

The other one says, we're gonna mine asteroids. The next one says, you know, we're looking for predator versus alien. And, and you know, star Wars crap.

We have abdicated. Again, this was a great American story. It's what made America great.

You wanna wrap yourself in the flag. We were the first people on the moon. We did it.

We, and we did it in record time. Maybe there was some waste, and then what happened? But, but you know what, the waste for the amount of money that it threw off in, in new innovations and products and everything else, it was great.

We have suffered from a lack of leadership since then. It's become, you know, what, what's my particular take on it? Instead of pure science, instead of reaching for the stars.

And it, it, it, it upsets me. Honestly. It upsets me that we've had to do this.

A Alan, the way I think about it is there's three reasons you go to space. One is science. You do it for the science of it.

Second, which is why we did, you know, the Apollo missions was, was strategic military, uh, control, right? Because Russia was, had beat us into space. And the third is commercialization.

And it seems to me certainly the third category is ripe for the Elon Musk and others. Bezos, yeah. Use that technology for that.

I wouldn't want to plan on our strategic capabilities solely on commercial. I'd wanna keep some of that back for nasa. And I wanna keep all the science at nasa.

Uh, 'cause that's, you know, like you, I think, I think you said, uh, Stephen, the failures, Columbia shuttle, you know, disasters were people Making that happens, that decision. But Mitch, Mitch, but lemme call out Columbia and of course, challenger, right? For the amount of missions, the amount of launches we've had and and to have had, there were actually three Apollo.

One was the other one where we lost lives. We've had three tragedies in 60 years. 60 plus years of space.

That is not a terrible re i, it, it's terrible. If, God forbid, you, you were one of your loved ones as one of those people. But it's not a terrible record.

Look, you know, Todd Vernon and Mitch, uh, you know, Todd, right from legit, and, and you know, a bunch of Brad Feld companies. Todd was an ex NASA guy. He worked on a lot of stuff.

There. There was a time where NASA's tagline was the best and the brightest, right? There were a lot of smart people who went to work in the government, but the smartest were at nasa, right?

That was the best and the brightest. It's not anymore. It, well, it may be.

I mean, that's the thing though. Let me, let me kind of cut my legs off. What, what I said earlier.

It, it's not NASA's problem. I think NASA's doing great. I've actually, I was, um, I had the privilege of, um, being one of the people selected for the annual visit to the Glen Center here in, in Cleveland, uh, to visit, uh, they, they invite in bloggers to, to, to show off what they're working on.

Those are some smart cookies. That is a fantastic program. They're doing some incredible stuff.

You look at curiosity and perseverance and the rovers on Mars, that's nasa, that's the NASA that I want to get behind. The problem is the bureaucrats come in and screw it all up. They, they make everything, like I said, these job programs, they try to funnel pork here and there.

They change the direction. If you just let NASA decide what NASA should do, I think we would have a pretty cool space program. The problem is all these other people meddling with it.

And to be honest, I'm actually oppor, I see an opportunity here. Let's, let's kind of bring this back to the point that Bonnie made, which is that the Hubble was so successful. One of the reasons, as we said, was because of that cool NASA stuff, because people, they, they found a solution.

They fixed the mirrors, they fixed the thrusters. They fix the gyros. Well, unfortunately, Hubble is basically, uh, almost used up.

Um, you know, she's coming down sometime between 28 and 2040, which is a pretty broad number. Uh, they did put a, uh, a capture mechanism. They've, uh, talked about private things.

But one of the things I wanna point out is that one of the people that talked about a service mission to keep the Hubble operational is a, a private astronaut, a billionaire called Jared, Jared Isman, if you know that name. That's because he's Trump's nominee to lead nasa. That could actually be a good nominee, amazingly enough.

It could be somebody who's gonna lead NASA forward as more of a dynamic and solutions focused organization that will do great things and, and so on. I mean, I don't know if we're gonna be able to save the Hubble and, and service it and, and, and, and, and come forward. But somebody like that maybe will have the right priorities and maybe will get us back to the moon and maybe will have us do some cool science.

Uh, I think there's a, there's an opportunity for hope here. And frankly, having the SLS program canceled is probably the best thing that could possibly happen to nasa, because hopefully they can get back to what they do well, which is exploring space instead of what they do poorly, which is creating expensive jobs and building expensive garbage that never flies. Yep.

Mitch, I liked your idea of look, commercialize what needs to be commercial. Leave the science and stuff to naar. Anyway, we're gonna take a break here on Textron Gang.

Let's come back. Let's talk wifi seven something a little less, uh, contentious. You're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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Hey folks, we're back in, as Alan said, we're gonna talk about wifi seven. Uh, our friends here with Steven Foskett at the Tech Field Day, or doing a mobile field day kind of event. I think it's tomorrow, uh, today being Tuesday, so it should be tomorrow.

And we invite you to all check that out. But also, there's an article up on Techron it about where we are with wifi seven adoption. And, um, Steven kind of framed this for us a little bit.

I feel like we were just at wifi five and now we're six, and then moving to seven. And I also am a little confused about like, well, a lot of folks are skipping wifi and just going LTE related technologies and maybe not using wifi at all. So what's going on here?

Well, you know, technology just keeps advancing, doesn't it? Um, and also you missed six E, which is probably the most important wifi that didn't get a number. Um, so I, I gotta, I gotta admit, so I am not the wireless expert that, uh, Tom and the tech field day delegates are.

But that being said, um, you know how EE everybody, you know, if you ask a parent, you know, which is your favorite kid, they'll be like, oh, I don't have a favorite kid. But then, you know, if you push 'em, they'll be like, well, yeah, obviously it's this one. Um, uh, mobility and wifi, uh, you know, wireless Field Day has always been my favorite nerd out tech field day, because the, the delegates that come in are just from another planet in terms of knowledge and in terms of nerdiness and in terms of, I mean that in a very good way.

I love these people. Yeah, yeah. They're from another planet.

Well, they're also all radio and space science and enthusiasts, which is kind of fun too. They're just a fun group to be around. Um, yeah, wifi seven is one of those interesting things.

There's a lot of, I think, mixed, uh, reception even within the mobility community when it comes to wifi seven, because obviously it's the next generation of wifi, so every company is doing it. So you look, and you've got companies, you know, sort of the leaders out there like Cisco and Juniper and HPE, and, uh, you know, Arista, they're, they're obviously going to be deploying, uh, wifi seven access points. And wifi seven has some stunning numbers.

If you look at the throughput that it's theoretically capable of, if you look at the, the features that it has, I mean, one of the things that, um, that happened again, six E was that we got six gigahertz wifi instead of just two and a half and five gigahertz. We've now got a new band, uh, wifi seven. Um, it, it, my, uh, sort of layman's perspective on what the heck is wifi seven.

It basically makes every device and every access point into a whole crew of devices and whole crew of access points. It, it lets you combine multiple receivers, multiple bands, multiple everything in order to just stuff so much, so much data across that wireless network. Um, we already got to the point where with wifi six, where one gigabit for per access point was not enough, you know, we start having people deploy two and a half gig, um, as a, as a normal thing to wifi access points in 10 gig in some cases, or multiple one gig lines, multiple, two and a half gig lines.

It's, it's amazing that wifi has gotten to that point, but wifi seven also has just so many cool technical aspects of it in terms of improving user experience, improving the quality of data, reducing retransmissions. Um, if you love to geek out, I think that it's well worth reading more about what they're doing there, even if you don't really care about wifi, because what you're saying is absolutely true. That, that there's companies looking at other technologies.

I mean, already you've got, you know, 5G uh, you know, in, in your pocket. You've got, uh, private 5G. There's, there's technologies like Laura Wan, which is something that's really kind of gone under the radar, but has incredible range.

Um, you know, people are building, you know, whole like private networks on that. There's so much happening in this space, and yet wifi is still, is still viable. It's still growing.

Um, and it's still important, uh, even though it's sort of finding a new niche as sort of a high bandwidth local connector, that's a compliment to some of these other things that have longer range and, um, you know, better, uh, access through buildings and walls and all that sort of thing. So it's just a cool space. I'm, I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm just getting nerdy about it.

Somebody else get nerdy about it. I'll get a little nerdy about it. Um, I ran a lab that did at Antioch Chamber that did product testing.

I think it was back when it was wifi five was the, was the latest back then while ago. And, uh, anyway, I think some of the interesting things about seven is one is really cutting down on latency. So for gaming and ar vr kinds of applications over wifi, much more viable.

Um, but by also increasing the channel width from 160 to 320 megahertz, basically doubling they, and also the, the qua modulation has gone from one K to 4K, which means you've got so many more, uh, states that that can so much more capacity, I guess is the best way to describe it, that you can handle across the radios, uh, that are, that are being broadcast, including up to six gigahertz Contiguous channels now, which is a yes. Another cool thing. Yeah, exactly.

And, uh, you could have higher device capacity, uh, as well as higher speeds, you know, uh, the speeds and feeds I always take with a grain of salt because, you know, those are lab testing speeds. Not real world speeds for most of us. 6 to like 45, 46 gigabits per spec per second.

You know that, that's, that's killing it. That's fast. So I think what this lets us do is not only deliver consumer services, but increase what's possible on corporate campuses, uh, on military bases, you know, and, and those, those environments to be able to offer a much more comprehensive wifi experience and coverage.

So is this then, wait, does this mean that a, I might not need as many extenders as I do to kind of make the whole wifi thing work, and then B, extenders are evil. Stop, stop. Okay.

B, you know, do I no longer have to watch Alan messing around with the wifi in the, in the company every other 10 days or so to fix? I, I I am the it wifi dude here. It's true.

4 gigahertz bandwidth, which is the same thing as the microwave in the office. So if you would, I've told them switch over to, to higher bandwidth. Uh, Different.

Either that, or you've gotta have someone stand on the microwave like this, you know, Or just a build a faraday cage around the microwave. But let me, let me, let me bring a dose of reality here to you. Two dreamers.

Oh, come on. Come on. Don't do wifi.

I get out and wifi seven is amazing. I, I would, so in my house I run, or B or B six and they now have the or B sevens. And I was very close to laying out a couple of thousand dollars just because, for no reason, because I only have a gigabit internet.

Anyway. Well, how fast am I going? But that being said, don't make fun of me.

But I'm also the president of the HOA at our development, and we are one of the, and we have a small development, 69 homes altogether. Um, we don't have a development wide cable internet provider. Everyone's free to do what they want, except that the only broadband that we could get right now is Xfinity.

And, uh, 'cause at and t doesn't have fiber bias. So I am negotiating with a company called hotwired that does communities, they will bring up to 10 gig fiber right to, into every house in the neighborhood. They'll dig trench, they got fiber out on the main road.

They'll dig trench, they'll bring fiber in. They'll put two wifi, seven, uh, routers or access points into every home. Wow.

They'll give us 500 meg, asynchronous five up, five down base, 140 channels of HDTV IP phone if you're born a home phone for $85 a month. What? 10 year contract?

No brainer. I thought, thank you, Mr. President.

I delivered. You Did. I did.

Well, I'm, I'm actually building that out myself at a community here in Hudson. As we've talked about before. We're doing, uh, Hudson Community Living, uh, dot org If you get called.

But wait, it gets better. I did a survey of our neighborhood to say, are you in for this? Because it's gonna cost you $85 a month.

The amount of people I've got and blame it on Florida because we've got losers here. Florida meant they, like, one of the question was, what's your present Internet speed? You know, what, what do you have?

72%? Don't have a clue. Right?

I was gonna say, most people, I don't know, 72%. The other, the other do Percentage state, What would you do with 10 gig? Where do you get your internet now?

The majority are getting Xfinity. T-Mobile is selling 5G in the house, where if you get a T-Mobile phone, they'll give you like a T-Mobile 5G modem and you can then do your wifi over 5G with T-Mobile cheap. I have that With Verizon 5G.

Right? It's, it's $30 a month, $40 a month. But no one can tell me how much that, you know, how, what the bandwidth is.

It's enough. Um, and so it breaks down to this, about half of my community is paying $250 or more a month for internet and tv. Wow.

'cause if you got the Xfinity full boat, that's what it is about two 70, that's the other half are paying $50 or less and don't want to do this. So is wifi seven gonna appeal to those people? Hell no.

Hell no. It's just a non-actor. Yes.

Mitch, your lab, you get all giddy about what you could do in the lab. Steven, you're a nerd for this stuff, but I'm afraid that where rubber meets the road, people don't care. I think it's more applicable to households with kids when you've got three kids watching Netflix and Whatever, YouTube that may be, we don't have a lot of households with, you're gonna use this little area there.

You, you and you, and you know, the family. They're you and your spouse sitting at home watching one thing is not gonna make a big difference between one gig and 10 gig. And, but, and matter of fact, even with wifi six, you're gonna be limited to half a gig over wifi.

So you're not gonna get it on your device. And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna kick the kids out to the library anyway, so, you know, Well, to me this is, I could get to the neighbors and Their wifi more reason. Just one more reason to move outta Florida.

If anyone knows of a very a year-round warm weather locale that I could keep my boat nearby, let me know. Have, have you thought of, uh, au Uh, I, I, I've, yes. So short answer one thing I'll say that, that kills me.

So when I was a uni cismen in the nineties, I remember when Windows cis admins started appearing. And the problem with windows in the data center was that everybody who'd ever used a PC thought they were cismen because they had, you know, oh, it's Windows. I can do this.

To quote Jurassic Park wrong. Um, wifi is even worse. Every idiot thinks that they can run a wireless network because they've got a router.

And the truth is, again, as I've learned from these people, uh, the, the wireless field day delegates, um, you know, the first thing they do is they, they look around when they walk into a hotel, they look around, they're like, oh, it's Ruckus in here. Oh, it's Cisco in here. Oh, it's Aruba.

Um, the funny thing is that they're basically wifi everywhere is configured almost entirely wrong, except for like this little tiny percentage of places when you go to a place where it's configured, right? It's transformative. So like we are building out wifi in this community that I'm working at.

And one of the big fights that I had with the board to start with was, they're like, we want great wifi, or, you know, great, you know, service here. And so I said, okay, great. So we're gonna have to lay cables.

And they're like, no, wifi, what are you talking about? Well, wifi doesn't work without cables. So the first thing we needed to do was wire all the buildings for ethernet.

The second thing we needed to do was build a fiber loop around the community so that we could distribute high bandwidth. The board really thought because, oh, I use orbi in my house. We can just use Orbi in the entire community.

You know, wifi to wifi, to wifi, to wifi to wifi. Well, that don't work, folks. What you gotta do, if they have hot wire by you look into it, Steven.

They bring fiber to every house. Yeah. Well, that's what we're doing, is we're building fiber.

In fact, I was working on that for two hours yesterday. Uh, terminating fiber in every building in this community, because from there you can install wireless access points and it's gonna be absolutely mind bending. Good.

Absolutely. I I can, the problem is People's wifi by is mind bendingly bad? And they look at these ads and they say, oh yeah, right.

I'm not gonna get that kind of speed because my current one sucks. Well, maybe it Sucks. I think you marketed the whole thing wrong, Alan.

You should have just led with we're putting an end to wimpy wifi and everybody get on board. Nobody wants w wifi even though they don't know what it's, Maybe that's it. Okay.

The grandkids won't complain when they come over. These would be wifis are criminals and everything else we've gotta, that'll play well in Florida. All right.

Hey, let's call a wrap on today's text on gang, whatever wifi you're using. You know, we didn't call out this past weekend was, uh, May 4th. Mitch, I thought you would come in as Yoder or something.

May the force be with you. Oh, I put up, put up my costume. Darn it.

Alright, uh, we'll be back tomorrow with more, actually tomorrow we will have the mobility, uh, tech field Day after gangs. So check that out. Of course, today we have another full tech, strong TV lineup, including I guess some of our RSA content from last week.

We had a great RSA, um, so good seeing our community there. Um, until then though, this is Alan Shimel for Text and Gang. Have a great day, everyone.

We're out.