Erik Brunnefreef with Deutsche Telekom

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

satellite, connectivity, cellular, Erik, product, telecom, customers, iot, industrial, people, world, conversation, data, flood, solution, operations, network, services, roaming, company

00:04

Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. Alright,

00:21

once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk. And thank you for your continued support of this particular platform that celebrates industry professionals all around the world, you know, the routine, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly you innovate, you collaborate, and you solve problems each and every day. That's why we celebrate you on this platform Industrial Talk. And we are broadcasting on site. Once again, IoT Solutions World Congress, Barcelona, Spain is the location, you need to put this on your calendar, it is an ecosystem of individuals that are absolutely focused on solving your problems than it is. And it's all about education, collaboration and innovation, so that you can create your business to be more resilient. And we have in the hot seat, Erik, and I even gonna try to say his last name, but his first name is Erik, I can do that. The company is T Mobile. And we're going to be talking about that whole marriage between cellular and satellite and much, much more. Let's get cracking. No, you're okay. Yeah.

01:20

Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks very much. Because for about a year, Yeah, course

01:24

that was so that was I just wandered on over to the T Mobile police. And I said, I need to talk to somebody in T Mobile. And then Erik popped his head out. And it was like, that's it. We're doing an interview. Boom. That's, that's how we roll. Yeah, let's

01:35

talk about very exciting things today.

01:38

Yeah, I agree with you. 100%. Good conference. Yeah,

01:41

it's, it's actually it's always a good conference. I've been here already many years. Yeah. And it's the conference is a really a great quality conference. So you have really great discussions, interactions with people, engagement with customers. And that's all what we need to make better products. It's,

01:57

you're absolutely right. And if you've been coming here for many years, then you've seen the changes that have happened as a result of just, I've been coming here for about, well, six years or so. And then the conversations are completely different than they were six years ago, completely. In fact, we're not even having those conversations.

02:17

No, and it's interesting, what, five, six years ago, we saw a lot of deathbeds. So kind of your initial test setup, prototyping stuff, and so on a lot more. We are we don't see that that much anymore. That doesn't mean it's not there. But it's there in a different form.

02:36

Yeah, you know, you're right about that. I didn't even really think about that. But you're absolutely correct. We had the, in fact, there was a testbed that was, you know, in a warehouse, and it was moving packages, or simulating the movement of packages and all of that step by robots. Yeah.

02:53

And it was actually we had, we had these things that were more representing the dream that we had that we need to build. And then after that, we get these technical technical prototyping stuff. And now we have, we were really starting to get products. And six years ago, we did not have products at all, but now we have product. So there's quite an advancement. Actually, it

03:11

is. And it's and that's fast. That was fast. Yeah. And it's just getting faster all the time. All right, before we get in that conversation, Erik, give us just a little background on who you are.

03:22

03:55

So you were speaking, definitely, you're speaking here at this particular event. And give us a little overview of what you were talking about.

04:06

So yesterday, we had a talk, I did it with my colleague from Intel salt in terms of as a satellite operator. And we are Telecom, we have made a unique product, I would say in the medium van broadband area, where we have created a converged satellite and cellular product. And that means that you have one box and that there is cellular and satellite connectivity in there. And it's all orchestrated and managed centrally. And customers just can get this and put it on a site where they need absolutely secure connectivity. Because we made this product especially for for use cases the companies have where they need to deal with critical infrastructure, critical operations, but also critical business things in terms of E commerce, and also safety. Did you know that about 35% of the IoT connectivity is related critical life, money, poor national safety.

05:03

What is that percentage?

05:05

35%? And so it's not so obvious to everybody. No, it isn't. But let's make this really obvious. Actually, we have every week now somewhere in the world of flood. The rainfall really? Yes. Last Last week in Germany, we had one in Brazil in Porto Alegre, we had one rain flood in Dubai, we had a rain flood in Nairobi, in Kenya, all in the last month. And weather is getting extreme climate is getting extreme. And we use IoT to at least monitor that what's what's going on. We can't say everything, of course. But we can at least monitor it. We can communicate with the people involved, what to do in which kinds of situations. And that's for these kinds of reasons, we built that satellite connect product from from Telecom, which is Telecom, together with the intercept providing it.

06:03

So with that, sort of overview of what the product is, or what the solution is, are you saying that my cellular device, I'm going to use it in sort of whatever that cellular device is my communication cellular device? I won't see it shift from a cellular to a satellite. It's just, it's just sort of in essence, the technology is seamless. So I'll maintain no matter what communications Yeah,

06:38

indeed, it said, if we talk about cellular device, talk about IoT, of course, those are IoT devices and not mobile phones. But yes, that's exactly true. And we, we explicitly made this, this product, to create that to create a base quality of connectivity, and to create almost 100% of coverage. Because if we combine cellular, which is a public network, which is all around here, with satellite, which is a private network, we combine your leased line with the public surface. And that's the ultimate way of getting resilient connectivity through two different networks. So and that's the that's

07:19

huge. Yeah. That that's huge. And I can think, from a, from an IoT connected device perspective, if I have devices that are in remote locations, and of course, there's no cellular coverage in some of these remote locations. But if I want to have connectivity, then I'm able to, to achieve that with that solution, where it's like, okay, there's a cellular, or there's a satellite solution that can maintain my connectivity to that remote asset. Yeah, that's in the middle of wherever Timbuktu.

07:56

Yeah, it's it can be in the middle of philippou. But it can also be just around the corner. Yes, let me take the example again of this is rain flooding, because rain flooding happens everywhere, not only somewhere out here, but it starts normally somewhere, because a real flood starts somewhere high in the water comes down. So it starts in mountains where you normally have cellular coverage is not always good. So what we do, we put on the side there is a cell router, and a satellite dish, or a satellite terminal. And along the way, we can measure always uninterrupted get data that measure every second every minute, actually, the water levels, and combining all the data and doing the analytics for that gives the people who will need to solve and monitor and save hair

08:47

and and hold the they can sit there and be ahead of the game. Yeah.

08:52

Yeah. Because if you if you are going and going to compare that data with data from other floods that have passed have been happening in the past, you get much more knowledgeable about how you need to manage your slot that's coming maybe one or two days, you can start forgetting it is this is one solution, one situation where we do that I also spoke already about ambulances and fire brigade and that stuff, but we also do industrial activities like we monitor connectivity, or we manage connectivity for solar parks and wind parks, which are also partially outside of cellular coverage or, and more and more companies, for different reasons, want to have this uninterrupted data flows, so they need this kind of signals. So

09:44

because I'm intrigued with the cellular side, I've got the knot and I'm intrigued with the satellite side, excuse me. Your relationship with a company that has satellites that are specific and dedicated to Due to providing the communication and are they expanding? Like, you know, I mean, it's like physically expanding these satellites. And, and and are they tell us take us through that

10:16

there are a couple of couple of different models how they can work together. So we have a telecom we have at the moment or two models working. One model is that we invite companies satellite company, so that we can integrate, make a joint product on the network of telecom. But the medium broadband product, which I just was discussing about, it's more like that we invite partners, a very important IoT is a world of partnering, we invite different satellite partners to provide their own satellite services. And we doing them on the data level with the cellular services that we have themselves. So in this case, also the customer can does have the choice of selecting a certain satellite partner that he wants to help with a certain coverage with a certain set of parameters that are attributes that service and combine that with our services, specifically tailored for their needs. No way. So that's more of a partnership model. Whereas the other is more, I would say, a network integrated model where we have included satellite as a roaming partner on the Deutsche Telekom romances,

11:36

so. So this is in in operations right now.

11:39

Yeah, this both are in operations, they work we have customers. And for the roaming services, we still need to wait a little bit and until the module makers can also provide, say the module is in production. But in testing, we're already there. We work with customers, and the satellite connect service. So the minimum broadband service is already in operation with customers now.

12:07

It is it is it across? Where is it in operations? Where Where? Where can I we

12:13

started just in Germany, okay. And so we have some German customers, because we're, our headquarters is in Germany, we started there. But for instance, also here in Barcelona, we speak to many other people from Europe and also United States. Technically, the surface Works Global. So in any kind of country that you can find with a satellite that is global, and also the SIM cards, where they have roaming. But for the sake of focus. And to do a guided market introduction. We started in Germany, and now are getting into Europe.

12:54

With all that said, with all of this wonderful solutions being rolled out. Now, I would imagine it's going to be in the United States and Asia. And it just makes sense. So I'm going there. What what is sort of that future look like? Where where are we going? What's that strategic vision? So we're, it's just, is it just the point where communication is 100%? Everywhere?

13:21

Yeah, it's everywhere, where where it's needed, where it's

13:24

needed. There's, I don't need it in the middle of exactly.

13:27

We don't want to waste resources. Yes. And so we just need to find a way how to make it available there as needed. So some other things about the awful amount of satellites was going into the sky. Yeah. There you can start also thinking about the the efficiency side of things, is it really efficient, because everything that you produce or make available for operation costs money. So I think we should make something that is only there where it's needed for customers. And that means in the beginning, we need to make a little bit more to find out how chair. But on the other side, what I also think it's will be very important, is actually the, the hardware used by by the customers, because we need to make satellite communications a lot more easier to set up, even to buy but also to set up and to operate. Because many people still have a little bit of a James Bond idea about satellite and touchable and so on. Right? And we just need to make this a lot more new mainstream. You

14:33

bring up a good point about the it needs to be simple. Don't Don't make me jump through hoops. Make it just, in fact, I don't want to see it. I just want to it's an interesting position to be in knowing that I can be pretty much anywhere. Okay, I'm connected. I don't I don't want to have those conversations where I'm not exactly you don't

14:55

have this. It just needs to be there where you need it. Yeah, and we it's Your job, it's interesting to make that happen. Yeah,

15:03

that's an interesting position to beat him. Because if I'm, if I complain about it, then I I'm seeing too much. Yes. But if I'm not complaining about it, I don't see anything but, but it's just happening. Yeah, it sounds good. So Mason, you know, yeah.

15:21

Many, many things, the same people that are not complaining are happy people.

15:29

So, with all of that said, this is a great conversation. How does how does somebody get a hold of you? Are you out on LinkedIn? Yeah,

15:37

I'm on LinkedIn with my full name, Erik Roenick. And you probably find me when you do something with satellite data satellite ID. Yeah,

15:45

that's true telecom. We're in Netherlands are you from?

15:50

I'm from actually close to the German border to Tonko. Hallo. And now I'm just on the other side of the border, working for telecom.

16:00

Not too far. All right. We're gonna have all the contact information for Erik out on Industrial Talk. So be sure that you connect with him. This Excellent. Excellent. It's just new. It's just, it's just happening. It's just one of those things. I appreciate that. All right, we're gonna have all the contact information for Erik out on Industrial Talk. We are broadcasting from IoT Solutions World Congress, Barcelona, Spain is the location. And you need to put this on your calendar. Make it happen, Captain, we're gonna wrap up this conversation on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.

16:35

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

16:45

What a fun conversation. IoT Solutions World Congress, Barcelona, Spain, was the location. Erik was in the hot seat. And what I enjoyed about this conversation, which is just as you start to project forward into your future thinking, they have the solution, the solution to marry cellular, with satellites, or seamless, and I mean, seamless connectivity. That's exciting. I don't know about the technology. I don't know about what, what is needed to make that work. But nonetheless, that's exciting stuff. Thank you, Erik, for being on the program. Once again. We were at IoT solutions World Congress, Barcelona, put that on your calendar. As I mentioned, it is a great event. And well worth the time and energy to be able to attend and be people like Erik all the contact information for Erik will be out on Industrial Talk. You know, this platform is dedicated to you. So go out to Industrial Talk, and educate, collaborate and innovate. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from this wonderful event shortly so stay tuned.