2025 5G Prospects – Open RAN, D2C & DOOH – Six Five Webcast: The 5G Factor

2025 5G Prospects - Open RAN, D2C & DOOH - Six Five Webcast: The 5G Factor

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast: The 5G Factor, hosts Ron Westfall and Tom Hollingsworth discuss the promising future of 5G technology in 2025, focusing on Open RAN, direct-to-cell satellite communications, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) applications. They dive into the early efforts by the US NTIA to administer the $1.5 billion Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund to encourage Open RAN development, with a keen eye on supply chain and national security considerations, citing the Salt Typhoon cybersecurity incident as a critical factor.

Their discussion covers:

  • The potential impact and benefits of the $1.5 billion Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund for Open RAN development, focusing on supply chain resilience and national security.
  • An analysis of the pros and cons of federal funding in the technology sector, specifically regarding Open RAN, including how US DoD mandates for private 5G on military bases could influence its adoption.
  • Future projections for the satellite industry, moving towards integrated multi-orbit space networks, and how this shift will redefine satellite communications.
  • T-Mobile’s acquisition of Vistar Media and its strategic move to capitalize on the accelerating momentum within the DOOH advertising market for 2025 and beyond.
  • Debates on how federal initiatives and industry acquisitions might reshape the landscape of 5G, satellite communications, and advertising technologies, setting the stage for innovation and growth.

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Disclaimer: Six Five Webcast: The 5G Factor is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded, and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors, and we ask that you do not treat us as such.

Transcript:

Ron Westfall: Hello and welcome everyone to The 5G Factor. I’m Ron Westfall, Research Director here at The Futurum Group, and I’m joined here today by my distinguished colleague, Tom Hollingsworth, the Networking Nerd and event lead at Tech Field Day here at The Futurum Group. In fact, I believe we’re at the forefront of an amazing lineup of Tech Field Day events to kick off 2025, and today, we’ll be focusing on the major 5G ecosystem developments that really have jumped out at us and merit more insight and perspective. And so Tom, hey, welcome back to the 5G Factor and thanks for joining today. I trust 2025 so far has been treating you all well, including yourself.

Tom Hollingsworth: Yeah, so far, so good. Everything seems to be going well and we’re gearing up for some fun, exciting stuff going on. We just had to get everybody back in the office and get them running on things.

Ron Westfall: Exactly. Yes, I think we’re really charging up our engines ourselves. And to do a little shout-out before we really dive into the 5G hot topics of our conversation today, Networking Field Day 37, we’re up to 37, will be slated for March 19th and 20th this year, and also Mobility Field Day 13 is already pegged for May 7th and eighth later this year, and that’s among several important field days that are scheduled for the first half of ’25. Tom, any additional comments on the upcoming Tech Field Day slate?

Tom Hollingsworth: Well, I can tell you right now that Mobility Field Day is going to be super exciting because we already have a lot of companies that are committed to be a part of it, so make sure you head over to techfieldday.com and check it out. And if you’re interested in being a presenter, now is the time to reach out to me because those slots go pretty fast.

Ron Westfall: Exactly. Yeah, you can see for yourself at the site, it’s already a great lineup and we anticipate it will be quite exceptional by the time everybody gets to gather around. And so with that, let’s now look at the 5G ecosystem specifically, and one topic that I think is always a major consideration in conversations is Open RAN, and yes, so let’s talk about Open RAN and its prospects in 2025. As we can see, the NTIA is in the early stages of administering $1.5 billion of public wireless supply chain innovation funds to deserving applicants. Now, a little background. The fund is designed to cultivate the development of Open RAN networks domestically, and interestingly enough, internationally. The NTIA is an agency of the US Department of Commerce that serves as a key advisor to the president on net telecommunications policies, and of note, it is also the same agency that is administering the Biden Administration’s $42 billion BEAD program. A little bit more on that later.

Now, first of all, the NTIA already distributed $5.5 million in Open RAN grants back in ’23, and most of that was focused on creating facilities for Open RAN testing. That makes sense. You’ve got to have a foundation to really get Open RAN validated and see if it can really work in production networks. In a subsequent round early this year, it then allocated $42 million to AT&T and Verizon to test Open RAN equipment from the likes of, I kid you not, Fujitsu, Mavenir, Dell Technologies, Intel, Radisys, Rakuten, Red Hat, VMware by Broadcom, and Wind River. Now as you notice, those aren’t all strictly domestic companies. In fact, many of them are headquartered in Japan, and that I think is of note and we’ll comment a bit more on that later. Now, toward the end of ’24, the NTIA then issued $273 million, now we’re going up in amounts, to help fund the actual construction of Open RAN equipment. Amongst the recipients this time was JMA Wireless. That got around $44 million to make indoor and outdoor radios. Appside Networks got $47 million for MIMO radios. Eridan Communications got $37 million for small cell radios. Solid got $28 million for neutral host in-building radios, and Nokia got $45 million to develop what is dubbed next generation Open RAN radios. And just last week, fresh in ’25, the NTIA issued another $117 million in grants to Airspan, Analog Devices, SecureG, Skylark Wireless and others for Open RAN radios and communications.

Now looking forward a bit, the NTIA will allocate up to $450 million, that’s almost a cool half billion, for Open RAN software this time, targeting industry verticals such as utilities, manufacturing, as well as products that reduce the cost and complexity of multi-vendor integration through our good friend automation. That allocation will start in March under the new administration or Trump 2.0. And with that, Tom, what’s your perspective on what are the prospects for Open RAN in ’25 and what else can we anticipate?

Tom Hollingsworth: I sincerely hope that Open RAN gets a fair shake this time around, because I know a lot of other companies are coming up with competing ideas like VRAN. And you may ask yourself, well, what’s the difference? What difference can a letter make? Well, the difference is that ORAN of course stands for open, and VRAN stands for, well, not open. And it’s important for certain carriers to be able to develop VRAN technology because it gives them a foothold, right? They don’t have to publish the specs of the software and everything else. But I thought it was interesting in some of the articles that we were looking at that the biggest proponent of ORAN right now is the Department of Defense. And you’re probably sitting there scratching your head thinking, “Well, why would DoD want an open-source piece of software?” It’s because they can audit the code to make sure that it meets their standards, and that’s a big deal to people who have national security implications.

And you probably know where I’m headed with this if you’ve been paying attention to the news for the last couple of months because there is this salt typhoon problem that’s sitting out there that has caused a massive upset in the way that carrier networks are being operated. The FBI came out and said to start using Signal. When the FBI tells you to use the one program they hate more than any other program on the planet, they’re probably getting serious about this. We’ve even looked at the possibility of the FCC having a spectrum license auction to be able to add money to the pot to tear out some of the equipment that’s been compromised by Salt Typhoon. We literally cannot get them out of the equipment without replacing it.

Well, if the DoD is scared enough, they’re going to say, “Well, we only want to install equipment that allows us to do a full code audit, to be able to make sure that there’s no way to backdoor into this system that we don’t know about.” And I think that that’s probably going to be where ORAN really takes off, and I really am waiting for the day that someone puts out a press release saying, “Well, it’s military-grade ran technology,” which doesn’t really mean anything, but it should help out quite a bit because it’s one of the things we’ve seen with adoption of other technologies like IPv6. It’s being driven because the government is mandating it, so if you’re going to have to build something that is on FedRAMP or some other DoD approved list, you might as well pick the one that you know they’re going to pick, which in this case is Open RAN. So I expect we’re going to see a lot more development in that. The key though is in that list that you mentioned, you heard a lot of companies that are domestic. What you did not hear is AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. They’re still going to be holding out for VRAN, and I’m curious to see if having government backing is enough for them to tip the scales in favor of picking up the open version of the technology.

Ron Westfall: Yes, and I think those are all excellent points. There is the ongoing debate, AT&T’s major announcement with Ericsson saying, “Hey, this is demonstrating our commitment strategically to Open RAN, yet it was fundamentally a single vendor implementation, Ericsson really being the lead integrator with some Fujitsu radios included. And so that comes down to Open RAN is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not exactly this open system where we have multiple vendors competing for different elements of the implementation, and this is something that I think will be revisited. Now, we have to naturally look at how this network evolves, i.e. how does Ericsson enlist and interoperate with other vendors that are supporting, really, Open RAN specs or ORAN specifications. And so the jury’s definitely out. I think those are excellent points. What is really Open RAN? And I think the government funding is looking at the more pure version of it really, actually based on open source capabilities for interoperability is a matter of implementation and not having to jump through fences and hoops through another vendor that’s involved in the implementation.

And pivoting on your point, I think the defense department’s role here is very important. As we know, the internet itself was really developed by the military and ultimately became the public internet as we know it today. So there can definitely be areas where the government can actually play a very helpful role, but sometimes it could be a mixed blessing, and I’ll touch on that in a bit. But to your point about the Department of Defense, it’s basically requiring that private wireless 5G is implemented on all US military bases. And now, there are about 800 such bases around the world. That’s not including Greenland, not yet at least, but the key point here is that the US Air Force is announcing new 5G contracts that are covering dozens of bases using Verizon and Boldyn Networks. So here, we’re getting the fact that this is real. This is something that is at least giving I think wind to the private 5G use case, but also, it’s interacting with the Open RAN initiatives that the US military favors. And yes, the thick irony, the FBI is advocating encryption after the salt typhoon security lapse.

And so what is interesting though here is that when I talked about the mixed blessing of government’s role, we’ve seen with the BEAD investments that came out during the pandemic that not one single broadband connection has been funded directly by BEAD yet. So it shows you that sometimes the government can have layers of red tape and bureaucracy that can impede how rapidly some of these initiatives can take off. Hopefully, Open RAN in this iteration will avoid some of the issues that have come up with BEAD itself. And yes, I think that’s another good point about where is the equipment coming from? And since Finland and Sweden are now part of NATO, that can shift the overall geopolitical consideration summit. Certainly, I think that’s one reason why the US military is not raising too many red flags about, oh, it’s equipment from Sweden headquartered Ericsson, or it’s equipment from Finland headquartered Nokia. And so I think this is something that will be a net positive in terms of giving Open RAN more momentum, again, going back to that domestic and international dimension of what the NTIA is up to with the funding. Also, I think Nokia Ericsson, to their credit, have shrewdly emulated Japanese audio manufacturers in locating key facilities including manufacturing facilities in the US itself, so I think that will also assuage and alleviate any concerns about supply chain and national security related to Open RAN deployments, let alone how 5G networks evolve in the US, both on a military base but also for society as a whole.

And with that, let’s turn to the next topic I think that’s interesting for 2025, and that is what’s going on with satellites and its impact on the 5G ecosystem. Now, from my view, I think there’s a growing consensus that the satellite industry will evolve from siloed GEO, MEO and LEO services toward a more integrated multi orbit space network. That means operators will increasingly secure multi orbit capacity agreements while equipment manufacturers will continue developing solutions specifically to support multi orbit networks, so that includes electronically steered antennas, and we touch on the previous 5G factor, as well as cloud-based intelligent automation systems that improve satellite orchestration and overall performance across a multi orbit constellation. Now, the approach to satellites can, I believe, improve the communication capabilities of several key segments. That includes maritime, aviation and governments. Now clearly, any field that requires communications on a more broad basis, not necessarily having to navigate around the limitations of land-based implementations, I think that’s all understood, but I think it’s becoming more a reality how this can be implemented on a much wider society-wide basis, on a global basis as well.

And so for instance, with the deadly wildfires that are going on in the Los Angeles area, T-Mobile and SpaceX teamed up to enable satellite texting for people impacted by this disaster in California. And this feature uses Starlink satellites, which was set to undergo beta testing by T-Mobile customers earlier this year, but now they basically enabled it so it can just work right now, and it has actually proven to be a difference maker. So it has direct public safety implications, and that of course applies to maritime and aviation communications, just making it better, making it more reliable, more available, regardless of the context. And so with that, Tom, what do you think is going on with direct to cell satellite services and the overall satellite prospects for 2025?

Tom Hollingsworth: I think we’ve got two different things going on here. We have providers that are increasing capacity across the board, whether it’s Starlink, whether it is Globalstar or where we saw the launch of the Blue Origin rocket get scrubbed this week, but that’s one of the things they’re planning on is they want to launch Project Kuiper to be able to put more communication satellites in orbit. And then we’re looking at what we can leverage those increased capacities to do. One of the examples that I used with somebody the other day was the fact that every iPhone from the 14 up has the ability to do satellite messaging. Initially, it started off as a public safety thing. If I need an SOS, I can send it, and now we’ve reached the point where we can actually send satellite messages. And then when you look at how the market for satellite communicators evolved to that feature increase, Garmin inReach went from being simply a simple tech service to now being able to send picture messages, to being able to increase the offerings for their customers for that monthly fee that you pay on a Garmin inReach. Because now we’re getting to the point where consumers are expecting to always be able to be connected, and like you said, we have this hierarchy of satellite coverage that we’ve never even really had before.

Because typically, LEO, low Earth orbit satellites have had coverage gaps because they do have to go around the Earth in orbit, and then if you wanted always on capability, you had to have a geostationary satellite. Well, the problem with those is not only is it ungodly expensive to put them up in the sky where they’re at, but the distance requires that to be a very low bandwidth communication. And there’s actually a story that we’re going to do on The Rundown this week where we talked about a giant satellite outage, not causing the satellites, it was actually a ground station problem. But one of the things that happens is that when you put those things out there, they’re actually subject to a lot more stress. And so those satellites only have a five or six year lifespan at best, so this company is already having to replace the satellites that they boosted into orbit five years ago. But I think that what you’re going to see is you’re going to see, like you said, public safety or isolated incidents. Maritime is a really great example. I can do ship tracking now, which we know is a huge problem in the Gulf of Aden where we’re seeing terrorist actions against shipping traffic. Satellites for airlines. We’ve seen a lot of companies that are investigating using Starlink for their onboard internet service because of the amount of bandwidth, and companies that are even testing the capability of saying, “Well, why don’t we let the people on the plane watch YouTube videos as opposed to having content vaults that they have to play off of?”

So this idea that your customers are able to be connected at all times, there’s never going to be a time when their system is down. And when you consider wildfire impacts, when you consider hurricane impacts, when you consider other kinds of disaster situations, being able to send communications at check-ins, things like that through satellite networks is really about the only option that we have. The question’s going to be, are customers going to be willing to pay for that? Because as of right now, the iPhone messaging is free. I don’t know if customers are going to be willing to pay for that. Likewise, being able to send those messages in the middle of a disaster, obviously the providers want to provide that service at no cost because it’s so valuable, but would the clients have an appetite to pay an extra $10 a month for satellite, or would they say, “Nope, it’s nice to have but I’m not going to pay for it”?

Ron Westfall: Yes, that’s something that will play out in ’25. That’s why it’s such an interesting year for satellite communications and its impact on the 5G ecosystem, so we’re definitely going to stay tuned and we’ll definitely have more comments on it, certainly I would say before Mobile World Congress ’25, which starts in the first week of March, and subsequently. And speaking of T-Mobile, I think another thing that was interesting was just the other day, it had announced that it entered a definitive agreement to acquire Vistara Media, and while that might not be a household name, they are a key player in terms of providing solutions for digital out-of-home advertising that reaches millions of consumers throughout their daily lives. You might be watching a sports game, and lo and behold, behind the hitter or behind the players, you see digital signage flipping ads for different people. That is the type of technology that we’re talking about. And a couple details, T-Mobile will pay approximately $600 million in cash, and it’s subject to closing adjustments naturally, and it’s expected to close this quarter in Q1 ’25. And so Tom, what do you think is going on here? What do you think about the prospect of digital out-of-home or DOOH advertisement prospects during the course of this year?

Tom Hollingsworth: I find it funny because growing up, I remember billboards everywhere. It is one of those things that a lot of people have really embraced over the years, to the point where Lady Bird Johnson had to literally say, “You can’t have billboards on the sides of certain roads.” But then you look at where we’re at in modern times in 2025, and the idea of a static billboard is old hat. The newest digital billboards have the ability to rotate through content, so you can put up weather forecasts, you can increase multiple advertisers, and then you extend that to places that people see things, right, where you have digital signage in sporting events or at pro wrestling events. It’s no longer just having a static piece that’s there. You have to have the ability to rotate those ads to keep them fresh, because if you don’t, you’re going to be seen as static and in the past. And for a company like T-Mobile to offer that capability through this acquisition is even more exciting because it means that with 5G uplinks to these billboards, I can create up-to-the-minute stuff.

For example, and I’m just tossing this out here, let’s say that you’re driving down the road and you’re stuck in a traffic jam because there’s an accident up ahead of you. An enterprising company, say a pizza delivery place, could put out an ad knowing that there are people watching it going, “On your way home? Going to be a while? Call ahead and order a pizza,” and give a discount code, and then that way, they can get more business. And those are the kinds of intersections with this technology that are super possible. Like you said, when somebody hits a home run in a baseball game, maybe Taco Bell flashes an advertisement that says, “Hey, get a dollar off of an order of 10 tacos because he hit a home run,” or something like that, and you can only do that when you have this integration. And remember that this is T-Mobile as well. They can bring that technology to their handsets if they want to, which is just as big a digital advertising portal as anything else, as evidenced by the fact that when you think about the number of things that are being consumed on mobile devices now, the idea of watching a show on a television, how crazy is that? My kids watch everything on their iPad or their phone because that’s the device that’s always with them.

Ron Westfall: Yes. Yeah, we don’t really hear too much about television being not good for kids. It’s basically been supplanted by a new set of screens, and so, one problem solved, but hey, we’ve got a new set. But I think there’s really good news overall for everybody and that can include kids, and that is this particular market is expected to grow at a double-digit clip, at least 10% compound annual growth rate or CAGR all the way through 2030 for the very reasons you touched on, Tom. It’s out of the home so there’s many scenarios, many possibilities. And I think what’s also interesting about this particular investment, it’s taking advantage of really the intelligence that could be applied to digital signage or out of home advertising, and that is being able to really look at understanding the contribution that these ads can have to sales and conversions, so basically just making it smarter and even more intelligent. So this is something that I think is a smart move by T-Mobile, and it will be interesting to see if the AT&T, and likewise, the Verizons and the Comcasts will respond with similar type moves including these types of acquisitions. And so with that, I think we covered a lot of space and we’re certainly looking forward to ’25. We’ll comment more on the next 5G Factor, so with that in mind, thank you everyone for tuning in and listening to the 5G Factor, and Tom, once again, thanks for coming on board.

Tom Hollingsworth: Absolutely. Always a pleasure to join you, Ron.

Ron Westfall: You got it. Thumbs up. And so with that, don’t forget to bookmark 5G Factor. It’s on the Futurum Group website along with Tech Field Day. And with that, everybody have a great Open RAN and 5G Day.

Author Information

Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.

He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including a wide range of topics across software and services, infrastructure, 5G communications, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.

Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Ron worked with GlobalData Technology creating syndicated and custom research across a wide variety of technical fields. His work with Current Analysis focused on the broadband and service provider infrastructure markets.

Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.

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