Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. Now, welcome inside the ICE House.
Pete Asch:
One of the themes of this podcast has been how technology has rapidly changed the nature of business, both here at ICE with markets, trading data, and now mortgages and across the 2,400 listed companies that called the New York Stock Exchange home. In mere months, it seems innovations go from the theoretical to ubiquitous. Let me give you an example. Almost 200 episodes and three years to the day, we spoke with then Verizon Business CEO Tami Irwin, who has recently retired. At the time, the main topic of that conversation was the coming impact of 5G, including the promise of better interior connectivity and the coming availability of private 5G networks. At the time, Verizon communication had piloted 5G networks in three dozen cities with ambitious expansion plans despite the ongoing pandemic.
Our guest today, Kyle Malady, the current CEO of Verizon Business, will give us a full update on the company's progress towards that goal and far beyond. But I can tell you that today, I have 5G coverage from my house in the suburbs through my entire commute, which includes a ferry ride across the Raritan Bay and into the steel and concrete walls of the New York Stock Exchange. Our conversation with Kyle Malady on Verizon Communications' success building its 5G network, keeping our nation's telecommunications fast and reliable, plus what technologies will make the same leap as 5G over the coming months will be right after this break.
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Pete Asch:
Our guest today, Kyle Malady, is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Verizon Business, part of Verizon Communication. That's NYC ticker VZ. Previously, Kyle served as Executive Vice President and President of Verizon's global networks and technology team. Kyle began his career as a cell site technician for NYNEX Mobile Communications, which became Bell Atlantic Mobile, and ultimately through transactions Verizon Wireless. Welcome, Kyle, inside the ICE House.
Kyle Malady:
It's great to be here, Peter. Thanks for having me.
Pete Asch:
So my commute, which I just gave you the inner workings of, actually also takes me by Bell Works, which was known as Bell Labs until recently was where some of the earliest breakthroughs in cellular and other technology happened. Has Verizon continued this spirit of a centralized innovation at Basking Ridge or does it have a decentralized innovation network now?
Kyle Malady:
No, I think it's more decentralized, but I'm glad you bring up Bell Labs. I mean, I started my career working really closely with Bell Labs on new technology back in the day in the late '80s, early '90s. I know exactly what you're talking about. Whippany as well is not there anymore. That campus is gone too. I'm sad for me, because the Bell Lab, what an institution. You would walk in there and you can walk down the hallway and you'd see four Nobel Prize winners having lunch.
It was something to behold. But since the breakup of the Bell System, things have changed and that R&D spending is no longer possible by companies like ours. We do spend a lot of money on R&D, but we rely on others in ecosystem and we work with them to develop new technologies and the like. So, it's much more decentralized than it used to be back in the day.
Pete Asch:
When it was centralized, I remember we used to take school trips to Bell Labs and that was the company's ability to basically introduce prospective employees to the different jobs. What was your introduction to the business?
Kyle Malady:
So that's interesting. My introduction was I actually started at a predecessor company to Verizon basically in high school. Then during college, I'd worked during the summers and I was exposed to the paging technology and something called IMPS, which is even technology before what we call now 1G, which was analog, AMPS, telephony. So, I was working in this stuff even before I went to college and I just fell in love with it.
Remember back in the day when you had a cell phone, it was basically a huge transceiver in the trunk of your car and cost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. So, I've had a front row seats from those days to what you see today with what we all have in our pockets. So, it's been an amazing ride. I'm glad I fell into it a little bit luckily, but I'm also glad I made the choice to get into this industry. It's been fantastic.
Pete Asch:
I mean, even to this day, whenever we do renovations in the 11 Wall building, we open up a wall and there'll always be that NYNEX logo. It will be on some old equipment we haven't touched in decades.
Kyle Malady:
There you go. New York telephone too, right, exactly.
Pete Asch:
You mentioned 1G, and I've heard you describe on another podcast, your career spans all the Gs from one to five. How did your career develop as this technology became more ubiquitous and faster and more reliable?
Kyle Malady:
You know what? I was lucky, because I'll tell you, I made the choice to get into this wireless technology really early on. I just found it fascinating and the technology just keeps evolving. It keeps growing, it keeps changing. As an engineer, trained engineer, it's the best of all worlds. You get to learn. You get to be on the cutting edge of new and developing tech. Not all of it works. So, I'll be honest with you, I've probably had more failures in tech than successes, but the thing is you get to work on all these things and help have an impact on it. What's really awesome is when you do get things put together in the right way and then you could see the commercial market use it and use it in ways that are super helpful for society. That's really fulfilling as an engineer and a businessperson.
Pete Asch:
When we had Tami on three years ago, she had talked about using Verizon's technology to move your whole company remote. It was at the very beginning of the pandemic. Prior to your current role, you acted as the CTOA role previously held by the current Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. How did running your own company's technical operations help you better understand the needs of your client? You're the president and operator.
Kyle Malady:
No, see that's why I'm liking my new job here. So, Tami retired. Sam Pat took over for a little bit and now Hans asked me to take on this role. It's frankly a short pot from what I was doing before to the role I'm in now, because the people I'm talking to, a lot of them say in our large enterprise sector or in the public safety sector, I've been supporting and working with them on technology for years. I was also a procurer of the technology. So, being on that side of the house, now that I can come over here, now I can sit down and have a conversation with the CIO and talk about really, "What's your trouble? What issues do you have?"
I can go back into the things that I've known, that I have knowledge about for the last 30 years and help steer them and help guide them and counsel them on, "Hey, here's maybe some things you can think about." That works out really well when we're trying to partner with... I mean, let's face it, I think we serve 99% of the Fortune 500. So, a lot of the people on your stock market, we help move their business forward every day.
Pete Asch:
I wanted to dive into that a little bit. You mentioned you have the background engineering. You really grew your career through the development of the technology. How have you been able to transition those skill sets to now you also are the end manager for tens of thousands of employees, and what are some of the lessons you've learned along the way?
Kyle Malady:
I think it's once again a credit to the company. I've had great bosses over my years here, and the company really gives you the ability to move around and learn new things. We have a very, very large company and we're involved in so many different technologies and business segments. It's really a great place to learn. I've had great bosses. Sometimes they'd ask me to go do something I didn't necessarily think was the best idea, but at the end of the day, they were thinking out more about my career maybe than I even was, because they were giving me opportunities to learn and to see new parts of the business. Really just over the years, I've always had the core and the tech and the products and the networks and all that thing.
But then I was exposed a lot to finance, M&A, business development, marketing, all different parts, all different facets of business. I've just learned and picked up from all those experiences to where I am today. Then also, along the way, you learn to be a better manager. Everybody has to start somewhere and you learn by doing, right? Sure, you can take courses to be a great manager, but you learn by doing and working with people and understanding what motivates people, understanding what demotivates people, and getting everybody going in the same direction.
So, really, for me, it's just been a great career of getting to try different things, learning different things, and then experimenting and working with people. I've been lucky through my career here.
Pete Asch:
The hard work and luck is the story of most people we talk to. This is an opportunity to educate our audience. I think most of our listeners are familiar with the little thing on the corner of their phone that says either 5G or LTE or if they're in the middle of nowhere, perhaps a 3G. But can you explain what the spectrum pipeline is and why that's so important to getting the speeds across this country?
Kyle Malady:
So I also sit on the Industry Trade Association, which is called CTIA. I'm on the board of that. That's an area where listen, us, AT&T, T-Mobile, we all compete fiercely on a daily basis, but there's certain things that we come together on and we lobby for. One of them is a spectrum strategy, an ongoing spectrum strategy. If you've stepped back for a little while and you learn about the cellular industry, basically, the thing you need the most is what we call the spectrum. That's the airwaves that we operate the cell phones on. That's like fundamental. That's the basics of what we need to do. Over the years, it's been the government putting piecemeal parts of the spectrum together so we can make an industry that's trillions of dollars in economic value to the United States.
But what's happening now, the industry doesn't have a clear path to more spectrum. We need the government really to step up and figure out a way, "How do we have a long-term spectrum plan?" So we can continue to innovate and work with our partners on research and development and what's the next new groundbreaking technology that we can bring to our economy and to our citizens of the United States. So, we need a lot of work on that. It's in a quagmire right now. Then we see countries like China that have a long-term plan. That worries some of us because you brought up Bell Labs to start.
I mean the United States has enjoyed a technology leadership position and communications technology for 100 years. If we allow others around the world to take that mantle, that's not a good thing for us from where I sit. People are working on it, but we need the government to accelerate work on how do we get a good solid spectrum pipeline going for the industry for the next couple of decades.
Pete Asch:
You mentioned the economic side of it, but also, the government depends on you and the things you provide. It has a major role in the economy, but also infrastructure. Last month, you were down in DC bringing your 5G innovation session tour to the nation's capital. How are you working with government agencies not just on getting the spectrum available to you, but also providing the support they need to do what they do?
Kyle Malady:
Oh, that's where we shine. Listen, we'll be working with the government, the whole industry to make sure we have spectrum. It's critical. But listen, the day-to-day operations and working with local, state, federal, first responders, it's what we do. We really take pride in making sure we have reliable communication. So, when first responders need to make sure they're communicating, we're there for them. You can see it in any issue that goes on, manmade or natural disasters. Verizon shows up.
We show up in a big way. We invest heavily to make sure that when our customers need it most, whether it be a civilian or a first responder, we're there for them. We take that responsibility very seriously. We invest in it and we spend time practicing it, responding in tabletop exercises and the whole bit. So, it's something that's really dear to our heart and it's been there since day one at Verizon, I got to say.
Pete Asch:
You personally are a member of the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which is a bit of a mouthful to say, but when you're meeting with Biden's White House, you mentioned disasters, natural and manmade. What are the top things you're trying to bring to the table for them that they need to think about as we face climate and other disruptions?
Kyle Malady:
Listen, I'm honored to be a part of that group. It is a mouthful. We just call it NSTAC. It's a good cross section of people. Really it's more around the telecommunications security. So, we spend a lot of time on cybersecurity, making sure we're all weighing in on where we see threats for our infrastructure, because obviously, it's critical infrastructure that we run and best practice is always to be sharing what's the newest and latest thing bad guys are trying to do.
Then how do we help the White House come up with policy that will make it easier for the industry to maintain a reliability and make sure we are thwarting bad actors? We're all doing it in unison. So, it's a great group of people. I'm honored to be on it, but the mission is really to make sure we're sharing best practices and we're giving the White House the real inside scoop on what needs to be done to make sure we can secure our infrastructure in the United States.
Pete Asch:
You think about the White House has the ability to call on people like you call on the military to do that, but there's also in an increasingly digital economy, everyone is more vulnerable to cyber criminals. I want to narrow in on your smaller clients and your small businesses. How is Verizon Business educating and equipping small businesses to make sure they're safe and their businesses are operating with modern technology but with the safety that they need to operate?
Kyle Malady:
We have different things we do based on the attributes of your firm, let's say, or consumer too. We do the same thing. We think about the same way for consumer. We have large institutions that are targets a lot of times of big hacking organizations, trying to get in there, trying to steal data, trying to cause them problems. A lot of times doing something called DDoS to shut them down, which is denial of service attacks on their infrastructure. Those kind of things, we have capabilities that are unmatched that we can take care of those things, but we think about it all the way down to a business that might have a connection with us that has three employees.
We make sure that we can work with them so they can secure their endpoint connections with the latest and greatest software and technology, and then we can also monitor their connections to make sure nothing malfeasance isn't happening. So, while we don't do it at the same scale we do with large enterprises, it's still the same idea. If we can make sure that our edges are secure and people have devices that are secure, then that makes the overall network more secure. If we see individual customers, we can tell if they have malware, because something may go on the network and we can let them know like, "Hey, something's wrong with your device. You may want to upgrade it or check it out or what have you."
So we spend a lot of time with our customers, whether it be just a regular consumer all the way up to the largest enterprises in the world, making sure we're securing them and our networks.
Pete Asch:
Talk one of the larger ones. You spoke recently about the work you did with the VA Palo Alto healthcare system, and I just want to use that as example. You launched full spectrum private 5G network. What does that actually look like for the veteran walking in the front door? How does that impact their care having that connectivity?
Kyle Malady:
It's been a great partnership with the VA, and this is where I think 5G is going to go. We're really in the early stages of 5G technology and what we call mobile edge compute. So, private 5G is your own 5G network in your place of work. In this case, it'd be say a hospital, but then you could also have the compute sitting right next to it. So, it's not going up into a big cloud somewhere where you don't know, but the compute can happen right on-prem. For vets, what it's really about is how do we use this technology to make it easier for doctors to help them and then also how do we make their lives easier when they're in the hospital? A derivative of that is a lot of vets won't even come into a hospital and they'll be in a remote location.
How do we use 5G in this technology so we can get to them and provide them service remotely? So this is what we're trying to do, but in the case of security, what you'll find is... Gen AI and all this stuff, it's the big buzzwords, but these things, if you're going to use this technology, you got to be ultra secure and you got to make sure you understand where your data sits. You understand what's going out and what's staying, let's say, on-premises. When you have your compute sitting right there along with a private network, you can manage the security posture yourself. So, this is going to be I think a pretty big attribute going forward where they don't want their data going out into a big cloud. They want to make sure the control and the flow of it.
So, a nuanced answer there, but really the work with the VA is great. We're bringing same work to other hospitals. The healthcare industry needs some help in modernizing and driving efficiencies, and we're working with a lot of great hospitals and care providers to use this technology. That's the way I think of 5G too, Peter. It's a platform. So, we put out the platform and then we work with others in the ecosystem to how can we use this platform to do better for people. That's generally what it's all about.
Pete Asch:
After the break, Kyle and I will turn our attention to the future of Verizon and the technology it's bringing customers both with 5G and beyond. We'll be right back after this.
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Pete Asch:
Welcome back. Before the break, Kyle Malady, Executive Vice President and CEO of Verizon Business and I were talking about the evolution of telecommunication and his career. A few weeks ago, you headed out to the Mobile World Congress, which I believe was held in Las Vegas. What was the message that you wanted to bring the industry there?
Kyle Malady:
For me, listen, my message is more in that context about what Verizon Business can do for our customer. Talking to customers and partners out there, hey, what can we do? What new capabilities can we bring to the market that will really help our customers? So I actually spent a lot of time on... We just talked about mobile edge compute and private networks, spent a lot of time on that. Then what use cases can we bring to life that would really be helpful for say in manufacturing or healthcare or the like? We spoke a lot there about what we're doing with the coach-to-coach communications in the NFL. That's not the high tech that you need to bring to bear, say, in a high speed manufacturing line, but it just shows the trust, the reliability that we bring.
That's what CIOs want. They want reliability. If the NFL relies on us for their coach-to-coach communication, which is a vital link in the communication chain to run a football game, it is a proof point of what we could do for your operation, even though it's less technical, but spend a lot of time with customers, a lot of time with other partners, application developers, device folks, what the next wave of things are that our customers will want to have in their hands to help their business move forward.
Pete Asch:
This episode's actually going to come out the day that the Las Vegas Raiders are in Ford Field playing the Detroit Lions. I've been a long time Verizon customer, and I think the first time I got RedZone, it was actually a deal that Verizon did with the NFL to my phone.
Kyle Malady:
We actually built the first NFL app and that's back when I was doing technology and development. We actually built the first NFL app. It sounds like you were an early adopter, Pete.
Pete Asch:
Speaking of the technology and building that, while you're in Vegas, I believe you unveiled the first transatlantic holographic calling set up. So, first place, can you explain that technology to us and how close are we to doing this podcast in a holographic environment?
Kyle Malady:
I don't know how close we are to this. I've seen holograms. You've seen holograms for quite a long time. I think what we're just trying to portray there is the benefits of the network in terms of the bandwidth and the latency capabilities we have. So, that's a really tough use case to do seamlessly. So, I don't know we're going to see a bunch of holographs anytime soon. I mean, I think I saw them in Star Wars 30 years ago. We'll see what the demand becomes, but I think that was just more of a showing off a little bit, right, about the capabilities of the platform, like we said, and what it's capable of.
The intent there is to show people like, yeah, this is hard to do, but our networks are getting to the point we can do this stuff. So, you should start thinking about how do you push the envelope on your technologies or things you'd like to see and come and work with us and we'll work on things together.
Pete Asch:
Yeah. Can you put that into scale for us? So you mentioned when you started out 1G, basically voice over a wire to what we have today. How much more information can you pack into a 5G network compared to 1, 2, 3, and 4?
Kyle Malady:
It's really the driving force behind the Gs frankly. How many bits can I force into certain megahertz and how efficiently can I do it? Because the spectrum is a limited resource, so it becomes, "How much can you fit in?" I mean if you go back to the analog days in 1G, I think we could basically fit like 24 calls per phase basically, and now we can do hundreds and hundreds. So, that's really the driving force behind the G, so giving you more bandwidth that you can consume. We didn't have enough bandwidth back in the day to do data very well, but now that's what most people use. They use the data on the devices and that's a function of having enough spectrum and then keeping the technology going so you could fit enough bits.
But there is something called Shannon's Law and there is a theoretical maximum of how much you can fit through. We're getting closer and closer, but we continue working on technology like a massive [inaudible 00:24:03] that there's multiple antennas that can really help move that forward as well. But in terms of really what it's all about is the more bandwidth and latency characteristics or whatever allows us to build, like I said, the new platforms that open up new use cases. I guess one story I always tell is when we were moving from 3G to 4G, 3G data was slower and you could do some things on a flip phone, but it wasn't all that exciting. When we moved to 4G, the only real data thing we had was like a dongle that you could plug into a computer. That was like it.
It took a little while before you had alternate technologies coming together that really formed the LTE ecosystem that we all know is the smartphone thing with the apps and watching video and all those things, but it started with the wireless carriers building the platform that was capable enough to handle the bits that needed to flow through the network to make this happen. Then you started seeing OLED screens, you started to see more snappy processors in the phone, you started to see application, you started seeing higher level OSs. All these things came together, but it was quite a while if you look at it, if you go back and look at it that these things came together after we started the LTE networks.
Pete Asch:
Once the environment's there, inevitably, people are going to build the things to fill the bandwidth. One of the things, and you mentioned earlier and we can't talk innovation in 2023 without touching on it, artificial intelligence, you mentioned how you're using it with the VA. How else are you using it operationally today, and what is the vision for how generative AI will impact your operations, not just within networks, but even how you run the company?
Kyle Malady:
We've been using AI. I mean AI just didn't happen. What's really happened is gen AI has come to bear and then because ChatGPT and all the work that they did on large language models like ChatGPT, people get their head around like, "Wow, that's amazing." But it was there before. It was almost like the internet. The internet was there before worldwide web came around. So, it's been there and we've been doing a lot of AI incorporated mainly in our consumer business and helping us manage calls and the like and doing things like digital twins so we can model out network events and things like this. But now it's getting on steroids.
So, we have a team of scientists, our own data scientists and engineers that are deeply involved with all of the folks that are really pushing the tech forward, but we're being careful. We want to make sure if we deploy a technology, we want to understand all of the caveats of it, the good of it and the bad of it. So, we're doing a lot of proof of concepts right now. We're working with the leaders in the field and we will 100% be utilizing it, but we want to make sure we're doing a thoughtful way.
Pete Asch:
I think that's something we don't appreciate is when we pick up our smartphone and just want it to be fast and want it to write our term papers, whatever people are using it for. But one of the things that when I was preparing for this podcast, I fell down a little bit of a rabbit hole was Open RAN and it's something I had not heard of before. You mentioned the technology already exists and using it in new ways. I think we're all familiar with the Internet of Things, but can you talk about why this topic is so salient for 5G and for the future of where the industry's headed?
Kyle Malady:
Yeah, there's a lot of debate and I'll give you my two cents on it. I mean there's still a lot to be defined here, but the way the telecommunication industry has worked for a long time, it's really a standards-based industry. When you're talking about the Radio Access Network or from the cell site to the device, there's only a few players in the world who build the gear for that and then therefore those are the only ones innovating, right? In the future, there's this notion of what we call Open RAN where the Radio Access Network becomes an open standard and set up a situation where a lot of little guys can play.
Right now, if you're a little guy with some technology, it's hard to play in the ecosystem because you need to get your technology approved by the big players or the standards body. That's a difficult chore globally. So, Open RAN, it's really the notion of having maybe smaller guys, R&D come from other places and be able to utilize that in the networks that we have. But it's a hard thing to do because the way the system works now, that's ingrained for decades. So, there's pros to Open RAN. One of the theories is it'll really spur more development, because let's face it, we don't have a Bell Labs anymore. That's gone. So, we need to find other ways to generate new research and development and people need to fund that.
But in the meantime, we have the ecosystem that we have in place today. How do you transition from one method to another method? So there's still a lot of open questions in O-RAN. I think there's definitely benefit potential there, but there's also some risks. So, we'll see more how this plays out over the coming. This is going to be something that plays out over the next 5 to 10 years.
Pete Asch:
I want to talk about that technology development aspect. You're a technologist at heart. Are you constantly scouring the internet for these up and coming companies that maybe have something that you may be interested in either partnering or requiring with? I mean, how are you personally keeping on top of it?
Kyle Malady:
We have very close relationships with the biggest tech brands, the tech names you know, but we also have teams of people that's what their jobs are is to be out in the world, understanding what's going on. Is there things going on out there that we could leverage? That's part of the beauty potentially of Open RAN, because right now, if I go find something interesting, if it's deeply rooted in lower layer topology in our network, then I'm back into a standard situation. It's hard to implement it. Now, we have done it in the past, but it becomes difficult. In an Open RAN world, that might become easier. So, that's one thing, but we have the nose to the grindstone all the time looking for what's the next technology's coming out and usually really early stage.
Pete Asch:
Yeah. Talk about access and more on a consumer level is fixed wireless access. What role does that have in your growth plans? Also, how does that potentially solve what's been a digital desert problem this country has faced due to the size of it?
Kyle Malady:
Let's face it. There was a big hype curve on 5G and what have you. I think that got overplayed a little bit based on my experience of 4G. Like I said before, it took a while before all these parts come together, before something comes out. But fixed wireless access is made possible because of 5G. Listen, if you go back to the DSL days, we would love to use LTE to be a broadband substitution for cable 15 years ago. The fact of the matter is the technology wasn't there and we didn't have enough spectrum, but now we can do it.
Our NPS scores are so high on our fixed wireless access product for consumer, we're blowing away the cable guys. I don't know exactly if this is true, but basically, if you look at all of the broadband net ads that have gone on in the last couple quarters, I mean almost all of the net ads have been fixed wireless access, not the traditional tethered solution. So, I think there's a demand for it out there. I think as we continue to roll out our C-band, we're going to open up more and more areas that people can buy this and I think we're going to continue to see great success with that moving forward.
Pete Asch:
As we wrap up, you just mentioned 5G, it took a while to ramp up. We're still probably in the early days of that. Where do you see for your business and the business you oversee the green shoots for the growth in terms of either technology or bottom line business?
Kyle Malady:
For me, obviously, there's capabilities in 5G that are better than 4G for just the basic smartphone, but that's not what we're interested in. So, in our business segment, we're interested more in other devices, private 5G networks. How do we help businesses do their work much more efficiently and securely, whether it be on a factory floor or if you have a mobile workforce now? Because let's face it, not everybody's coming back to the office, but if you have a mobile workforce of a thousand people, it's tough to maintain a security posture on a thousand laptops and a thousand smartphones going all over the place.
So, us doing managed services for companies where we can take that headache off their hands and make sure that everything's secure, up to date, if they lose it, we can get them a replacement quickly, things like that to help them move their business. It's not necessarily high tech, but it's about solutions for our customers so we can help them. Then you can get into the more cutting edge things like you talked about VA and managing drones and all that stuff at the higher level, but it's across the board, Peter. So, it's like, "How do we just help your business and what we have?"
Then if you have great ideas, how do we help foster that, so you can harness the power of 5G and mobile edge compute? As a matter of fact, later on today, we have a session going on over here in LA, where we're bringing a lot of customers together to show here's the latest developments in our technology. So, then that'll help inform you as you're developing plans for your infrastructure and your mobile workforce.
Pete Asch:
You're on LA. You're talking to customers. How often are you getting feedback from them that you're then taking back to your team and maybe developing a new product or a new implementation?
Kyle Malady:
Constantly, constantly. It's never ending. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for the feedback. Now, listen, sometimes people come up with things that are impossible. The technology's just not there yet, but there's a lot of things the technology can now support. What's more encouraging to me too is when folks come to me and we actually have solutions and we just might need to tweak this or that, little, tiny tweaks and they didn't even think it was possible, those are the ones that are the best.
That's really about how we're out there talking to our customers about, "What's your pain points? Then how do we bring that back?" Those are the best for me. When we already have stuff and we could cobble a couple of things together and then we could solve their problem and they're mystified, those are the best ones.
Pete Asch:
Talk about solutions. We've established 5G's a lot to go, but if you read any reports, they're already talking 6G, some people saying 2030, some people saying 2028. Regardless of when it comes out, how will you and the team at Verizon ensure that the company will be ready to be the first movers into that when the time is right?
Kyle Malady:
We're always on the cutting edge of this stuff. So, we're involved in 6G discussions. Now, typically, I guess just a rule of thumb, an easy rule of thumb is a G comes around like every 8 to 10 years or so. So, 5G was getting out, people started working on what capabilities are required in the next G. So, 5G's got a ton of lags. There's so much capabilities. We need to figure out what are the great things we'll do with that. Then while you're building that, figuring out what are the gaps in the 5G standard and then what do we do with six G?
I think you'll also see one of the ideas now is O-RAN really shows up in a bigger way in 6G, because now that could be part of the "standard", if you will. So, that may be where you see O-RAN take off, but there's a lot of different technologies that are in play right now and we'll see. But generally, I think a good rule of thumb, Peter, is like every 10 years or so, you start seeing the rollover.
Pete Asch:
That's a good thing. We'll keep an eye out then for that. So, final question before I let you go, talk to your clients in LA. We've covered a lot of grounds. As you're thinking about early 2024, what excites you most about Verizon Business, the telecommunication, 5G across the board?
Kyle Malady:
Listen, right now, we're at that inflection point now where the 5G stuff is going to start come around. So, now's the time over the next couple of years where these solutions that we've been working on and doing proof of concepts really start getting legs and start seeing life. So, right now, for me, it's a super exciting time in my position where I was building 5G networks and doing the technology and now working with customers to be able to utilize and help their business move forward. So, it's a super exciting time for the industry, a super exciting time for Verizon. We're going to continue to push technology on behalf of the American people and our business partners.
Pete Asch:
As one of those partners, we appreciate it. Thank you so much, Kyle, for joining us.
Kyle Malady:
It's great to be here, Peter. Thank you.
Pete Asch:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Kyle Malady, Executive Vice President and CEO of Verizon Business, part of Verizon Communication, NYC ticker VZ. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes, so other folks know where to find us. Got a question or comment you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show? Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show was produced by Ken Abel with production assistance from Ian Wolf. I'm Pete Asch, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 21:
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