In The Arena by TechArena - Dynamic Spectrum Allocation and the Future of Digital Services with DGS CEO Fernando Murias

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

TechArena host Allyson Klein delves deep into dynamic spectrum allocation and new government policy that opens up innovation in how spectrum is accessed for all with DGS CEO Fernando Murias.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Allison Klein, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Fernando Moraes, CEO of DGS. Welcome to the show, Fernando. Thank you very much. So, Fernando, why don't we just start? DGS has never been on the program before, so why don't you just start with an introduction of DGS and what your role is in the industry. So DGS is a spectrum management company. Our whole goal is to assess the wireless spectrum and provide data and information, actionable information at the edge that enables our clients to solve issues that are relevant to them,

whether they're a first responder, whether they're a private network, whether they're a public wireless company, a tower company, a government entity that's looking at security issues. Obviously, all their goals are different, and we provide the wireless information that enables them to solve their problems. Spectrum has been something that's been discussed quite a bit with the advent of 5G. Why is spectrum such an important topic as we've moved to that new technology? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think, first of all, people need to recognize that spectrum is finite. And as a result of that, constantly, not just in the U.S., but everywhere in the world,

governments struggling with the balance of national security, use of the spectrum, and commercialization of the spectrum. And finding that balance as commercial applications continue to grow and expand and services continue to grow and expand is a real challenge. And so maximizing the use of spectrum is a major focus in the industry today because of that finite aspect and because of the significant growth that we're seeing in all these new wireless applications. You know, one thing that is quite interesting about 5G is the concept of private 5G networks, because all of a sudden you have private entities not provide you know comps providers not the government utilizing spectrum how has that impacted the adoption of private 5g and what do

you see in terms of that landscape so if you focus on why 5g really was it's because the wi-fi usage by enterprises wasn't giving you sufficient security, wasn't giving you sufficient management control of certain services, wasn't giving you the mobility that you might need. And so private networks were created to solve those issues. The challenge with private networks and having all of that really take off quickly was that the underlying infrastructure to deliver on a lot of that wasn't in place and on top of that when you're dealing in a shared service environment like the cbrs model that uses a static propagation

model to allocate spectrum it's a fairly inefficient way to allocate spectrum because it doesn't identify potential sources of interference or what spectrum is optimal for the user. And as you get more users on the network, that's going to become problematic for private network as an industry to really grow at scale. When you think about private 5G, you know, I've been covering this space for a long time. It was one of the lead use cases discussed.

But really, the adoption has been slow to take off. Is that because of the spectral issue, or do you think that it's something else? No, I think it's exactly that. I think it's the lack of underlying support infrastructure for the new services and the new functionality that was being required, as well as how spectrum was being allocated in the CVRS model that makes it very inefficient to scale. Now, I know the Biden and Harris administration has been getting involved, and they're actually talking about ways that they can modify legislation to address this particular issue. What have they been saying, and how do you think that'll impact how private 5G is deployed, at least in the U.S.? And the spectrum policy that the Biden administration just released in December makes it very clear that dynamic spectrum sharing

is at the cornerstone of everything they're planning with respect to repurposing of government spectrum over commercial use, which is huge because from our perspective, when you look at, and you just look around you here in this conference, there's such a focus on AI and there's such a focus on new 5G services emerging.

That really can't effectively happen quickly without a shared spectrum environment because the services, the spectrum that's being repurposed, 3.1 to 3.45 is really currently being used with all the airborne radar. It's very expensive for the military to vacate that spectrum. So the quickest access that people have to new services, new spectrum, for these services would be to share on the spectrum. So a dynamic spectrum sharing solution is critical to not just drive new services in the U.S.,

but really this is a global issue that people are looking at. I remember when we were finalizing the 5G specs, there was a lot of conversations about spectrum allocation in different geographic areas. How have other geographic areas dealt with this dynamic spectrum challenge? If you look at China, if you look at India and different parts of Europe, they're looking very closely at the U.S. taking a leap on evaluating how dynamic spectrum sharing is going to roll out into the market. This is something that's been studied in the U.S. for five years. Our CTOs, Ramon and Montel, have been on the past committee and very active in hearing both sides of the argument, perspective dynamic spectrum sharing.

Different countries have different control over their spectrum. In a society like in the United States and most of Europe where it's not just dictated to the users, but there's more of a democratic process with respect to how spectrum is used and allocated the allocation of spectrum and the use of spectrum moving from government to commercial is a lot more reliant on dynamic spectrum sharing for future growth and balancing these two different needs but having said all that india china and the larger wireless network center out out there and the globe are looking very closely at the U.S. as what's going to happen here with respect to what we're doing in 2021. Nice.

Now, DGS is obviously very involved in this space. You said that your CTO is engaged in the policy work. How are you engaging the rest of the ecosystem, operators, et cetera, to help with delivery of this new capability? One of the biggest knots around dynamic spectrum sharing is that it will take too long to develop the capability to do this. In fact, it took us seven years and close to $100 million to develop this technology. But we correctly made a bet that this was coming back when we started DGS. And so the focus on understanding the importance of RF awareness to drive low latency and high reliability with all the new services that are coming out

and to facilitate dynamic spectrum sharing is something that we foresaw and were able to deliver. We actually have functioning technology that can be demonstrated that shows that spectrum can be effectively shared and we are of awareness that we can provide to different customers. We are, as of last year, we came out of stealth mode. After being 10 years in R&D mode, we have 160 issued U.S. patents, 50 pending. We're second only to Qualcomm in the total number of patents in spectrum management.

We actually lead everyone in the categories of RF capture, RF optimization, RF process, and dynamic spectrum sharing. And so we can expect to continue that development effort going forward, but we are getting the word out since last year to brand providers because if you look at what we do, what our technology does, it's really four things. Number one, it enables new 5G services because of our awareness of the latency requirements and the environment to support new services.

So we're making sure that parties that are trying to deliver new 5G services are aware of it. Number two, we can solve the scalability problem in private wireless. So we're working with firms private providers make sure they understand how we would approach this process as well as several of the status providers in that network and the Envoy Alliance and others really explain our view of how this can be done better. And number three we enable the next generation RAN.

So you're in a paradigm shift right now. If you walk around, you can really understand that the future digital economy is going to be about services, not about capacity. And so the RAN of the future is going to have to do a lot more than just deal with capacity. It's going to have to understand what signal characteristics are out there so that disparate signals can coexist together in a shared environment, whether or not the environment can support low latency and high reliability environments, et cetera. So having software like that and making sure that grant providers understand that that's out there is an important part of what we're also trying to do.

And last but not least, we've made several presentations to government agencies in the United States and abroad, as well as with a number of hyperscalers to explain how we can today advance the concept of dynamic sponsorship. That's fantastic. Now, you've been out of stealth for a year. We're back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. What are you showcasing here this week, and what are you taking in terms of what 2024 is going to hold for dynamic spectrum sharing as well as for DGS? Our main focal point is to make sure people understand

those four pillars that I just explained, but that really walk away with an understanding of how important RF awareness is to the new digital economy. You see AI throughout this conference, but people need to understand that AI in a telecom environment is driven on this whole basis to try to drive new services into the economy. You cannot drive new services into the economy using old KPI data and applying AI to that. Sure.

You should have to have an understanding of the RF environment in real time to really be able to have AI have an impact to optimize your spectrum. And so having conversations with key players here to explain our view on that, to explain our capabilities on that, is a big focus of our spot. It's funny, I just did another interview

and the exact same thing was said. You need something to optimize in order to apply machine learning, and you said the exact same thing was said. You need something to optimize in order to apply machine learning, and you said the exact same thing. Yeah, and that's, we've got, we actually were, I forget what article it was that came out of Europe that basically put DTS as the leader in AI as it relates to RF. Nice. And we've got machine learning in that.

I built it to everything that we do. But we're doing it based on real-time environmental data and key signal data metrics because we analyze the spectrum, not just power frequency, but we look at signal characteristics, spatial information. We look at six different dimensions in how we analyze the spectrum of our sharing. That's fantastic. I'm so glad we got a chance to talk. I love talking

about Spectrum and what is going on in the space because I find it fascinating. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day. One final question for you. If folks are listening and they want to engage with your team, where would you send them? So our website, www.digitalglobalsystems.com. I apologize for that because DGS was already taken, but digitalglobalsystems.com and i apologize for that the dgs was already taken but digital global systems dot com is our website and there's a lot of information on how to contact us what we do what we stand for a lot of different articles our white papers on our views on these issues fantastic thanks for the time tech arena subscribe and engage at our website thetecharena.net all content is copyright by the tech arena