Podcast
Podcast
- 10 Feb 2021
- Managing the Future of Work
Parsing 5G’s potential for work and learning
Joe Fuller: Excessive hype around 5G wireless networking may have lowered expectations of its transformative potential. Nonetheless, as the fast high-capacity connectivity finds its way into more businesses and homes, it is likely to generate new uses, new markets, and most importantly, new jobs. Many observers anticipate sweeping changes to health care, education, manufacturing, and other sectors. Low-latency, reliable local links will bolster the emergence of the Internet of Things [IoT], tethering a broad range of devices to wider networks and applications. What new technologies and business models will emerge from the widespread adoption of 5G networking, and what will that mean for the future of work?
Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Harvard Business School Professor and Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. My guest today is well positioned to assess the implications of the next major leap in telecommunications. I’m joined today by Mo Katibeh, chief product and platform officer of AT&T. Mo and I will discuss the disruptive potential of 5G, the Internet of Things and related technologies, and what it all means for jobs, skills, and the future of work. Welcome to the podcast, Mo.
Mo Katibeh: Hey Joe, thanks for having me. It’s an honor to be here with you today.
Fuller: Well, you’ve got a title—chief product and platform officer—at AT&T that I’m sure it makes a lot of sense to your colleagues and analysts of the media and telecom sector, but can you tell us what that means, what your responsibilities are, and how you made your way into that position?
Katibeh: Think about product and platform being the ability to serve your customers with the products that they want to use that drives outcomes for their businesses. I work at AT&T Business. We’re quite fortunate to serve about 3 million different businesses across America—from the smallest businesses to the largest multinationals, as well as businesses in the public space. At the heart of those products is connectivity. Then platforms is just a fancy way of talking about, how do your customers engage with your products?
Fuller: 5G wireless technology seems to have taken on even a more outsized import, since it’s at the root of several points of significant tension between the United States and some other Western countries and China. Can you talk a little bit about why that technology is so important, and what kind of effects do you think it’s going to have as it gets deployed nationwide?
Katibeh: 5G does a few really, really interesting things. First and foremost is speed. Everyone’s gotten used to, with each new G, you introduce faster speeds, and then we figure out really interesting ways of taking advantage of that. But 5G is actually going to do two new things, which foundationally will allow us to rethink about how this capability will reshape our society for the next 10 years. Those two things are: It’s going to enable massive connectivity, and the second thing that it does is that it enables low latency. 5G holds the promise of being able to connect a million things per access point—or per square kilometer, if you want to think about it in that way. You can imagine, you can let your imagination run rampant, that when can connect a million things per access point—then whether it’s an enterprise, whether it’s a stadium or a venue, whether it’s a military base, or even if it’s outdoor coverage with vehicles and bicycles and connected infrastructure—you can really reimagine our society taking advantage of the connectedness of all things surrounding us. That’s a really key reason why there’s so much focus on 5G and leadership on 5G at the national level, if you will. Then that brings us to latency—how fast does the network respond to a command that you give it? I like to bring that kind of back to the way our minds work. Scientists have shown that the way our minds process reality is at around five to seven milliseconds. That’s how quickly we perceive what’s going on around us and respond to it. If you can get the network to under 10 milliseconds of response time—meaning, how quickly does it start that next video or start streaming that audio, or how quickly does your car see that a bicycle is cycling down the street, heading at it, or how quickly does your clothing respond to changes in weather patterns—then, now, suddenly, you have a network that is operating at the same speed that your mind is processing reality.
Fuller: Mo, how do you think this is going to play out in terms of the emergence of specific applications of the type you manage for AT&T that is going to affect or change the nature of work, require people to have different skills, allow people to be more productive, create new jobs altogether? How do you see it playing out?
Katibeh: The first pillar of 5G, if you will, is mobile devices. The evolution of the smartphones—these remote controls of our lives that we have in our pocket—that’s one. The second one is what I think of as “fixed 5G,” or the ability to use these networks to provide the equivalent of a broadband circuit to a consumer or a business. That matters because it allows businesses to think about using this technology as the primary connection for their business, a secondary connection so that they have seamless fail over, if you will—like, if their primary connection, a contractor hits their fiber, it goes out, what-have-you, they still have mobile connectivity and can run their business. Or it’s great for things like pop-up stores, and, “Hey, I need connectivity in a place where I may not have had it before. I only need it for a week or two.” Then the third one is really where I think you’re going to see changing applications, changing nature of work, and getting to the heart of your question, which is the third pillar of edge. What the heck does “edge” mean? Well, 5G will enable the cloud and the information and the applications that we consume as consumers or businesses to move from centralized locations that are hundreds or thousands of miles away from us to either being at my business location or in the city that I live in, so it’s only a few miles away, which inherently then drives that low-latency experience. Okay, so how do we then bring that back to the nature of work? A couple of years ago, we launched the first 5G-enabled smart factory in America with Samsung Austin Semiconductor. Samsung Austin is one of the largest creators of semiconductors in the world. So you can imagine, it’s a very large, very complex factory—hundreds of pieces of equipment. They have to install things, they have to repair things, they’re manufacturing things. They created seven unique use cases to take advantage of this technology and to experiment with it. My favorite thing that they deployed at their factory was this function called “remote expert.” Think of this as, “I’m a brand new worker, and I’m just learning how to install or repair a piece of equipment in the factory.” Using 5G and AR-enabled glasses [augmented reality], they were able to create a layer that sat on top of their equipment that only the worker looking through these glasses could see, and it would give them a guided workflow on the next right action that they needed to take for that install or that repair—way more effective employees, faster. Their turnover is in the teens every year, so they’re always bringing in new folks. And they want to make sure that they become trained very, very quickly. And if I can literally show someone guided workflow, they become more efficient faster. Imagine this: AR glasses, it’s got a built-in video camera. I had the ability to literally hit a button and phone a friend, if you will. And my friend, who may be on the other side of the factory or the other side of the country or even potentially the world, can now see the video of what I’m seeing. They see what I see. And they’re an expert in this technology, and they’re able to say, “Oh, look, hey, you need to do X, Y, and Z.” As you think about the nature of work, you’re very likely to give rise to an entirely new class of employees of workers that serve as remote experts. In an age of Covid, in a post-Covid environment, as we think about gathering people together for training, this sort of capability becomes even more important.
Fuller: Well, it’s certainly also speaks to the way people actually develop skills. A tremendous amount of skill building is done on the job—and not through formal on-the-job training, but rather just by the experience of doing something and becoming more expert, understanding how to do things efficiently and effectively, knowing those kind of tricks of the trade. But as we think more broadly, as 5G gets to be available beyond sites in entire Metro areas, how are we going to see this manifest itself? Maybe you could also talk a little bit about how this affects the Internet of Things, which is something that we hear bandied about a lot. And I’m sure some of our listeners are a little bit mystified about how the Internet of Things will actually show up in a way that impacts their lives and is useful to them.
Katibeh: As you think about massive connectivity and the ability to connect a million things per square kilometer, if you will, then IoT becomes the enablement for that connectivity. Anything can be IoT, and just again to bring this to life a little bit, already AT&T has over 70 million connected IoT devices on our network today. Cars is the one everyone thinks about, but I’ll tell you, we have connected pet callers, we have connected smart bicycles, connected scooters that you might see in major metros, where you walk up to it and you enable it with your phone and you get on it. That’s IoT, right? My favorite is the connected vineyard. We’re starting to see vineyards and other creators of liquids, if you will, starting to use IoT devices to monitor things like the amount of water that’s in the soil. As the climate changes around us, one of the questions that’s on a lot of minds of individuals that create wine is, “Can I get the same quality of grape? Do I need to start thinking about terrain and altitude in order to mirror something that I had, a wine that I created 10 years ago? How will that play out as the climate is changing around me?” And they’re using IoT sensors in the soil to help give them the insights on that and the way that their plants and their root systems and water is changing, year in and year out.
Fuller: When you talk to your colleagues who deal with major corporate accounts or you’re visiting with them yourself or receiving visitors from other large companies, what do they ask? Or what are they expecting will happen, in terms of being able to develop their internal skills to exploit technologies like this, in terms of what they’re going to need in terms of technical staff? But also, how it’s going to affect how they onboard or train workers or what type of workers they’re looking for?
Katibeh: The right-now conversation that we’re having with enterprises and business customers is really about, how can this technology allow me to create a more-efficient operation, taking out some sort of costs, or creating a better, safer outcome for my employees? The other factor that’s in play is, “Hey, can I create new revenue by creating some new and customer-example experience?” In the short-term, it’s really, think of it as being things like, “Hey, if I deploy 5G Samsung Austin Semiconductor, can I decrease my defect rate of things that are coming off the production line, which then creates that ROI relative to the initial investment?” We’re very quickly able to demonstrate to our customers, the answer is yes. How do I think about the talents that I’m going to need inside of the enterprise in order to take advantage of this technology? It’s coming to life in education and training of all kinds. Today, if you want to be a doctor, you do residency, you go spend time watching doctors, you’re watching surgeries being performed, etc. If you’re in manufacturing and you want to create new engines or anything, frankly, you’re engaged in CAD—computer-aided design—and drawings on, how does someone design the next thing? Now that’s giving rise to this phenomenon called “digital twinning,” which is using AR/VR [augmented reality/virtual reality] technologies to not only look at things on paper and on iPads and on PCs, but literally, can I manipulate it in some sort of AR environment by taking the pieces apart, putting it back together as part of my design thinking, and creating the next variant of X? It’s giving rise to a new class of design thinking around AR/VR digital artisans on, how do I bring to life these experiences of whether it’s health care or manufacturing or digital twinning or education? It’s a super fascinating time, Joe, seeing startups, as well as established companies embracing these technologies, and new skill sets that are having to come along with them.
Fuller: Certainly one of the things we’ve seen consistently in the adoption of technology and the associated impacts on workforce is over history, most big innovations do start with big enterprises or other big institutions, like the defense department, and then start gaining momentum. Scale curves kick in, and they start reaching, ultimately, smaller businesses and consumers. Let’s jump out of the enterprise for a second, Mo, and talk about something you touched on a couple of times, which is education. How does this play into what’s often described as the “digital divide,” that we’ve got 30—40 million American households that are already on the outside looking in, in terms of things like availability of bandwidth, access to smart devices? Really shown up, of course, by the impact on K–12 education, Covid-19. What kind of prospects of 5G and other things you work on have for having an important impact in that space.
Katibeh: Right now in America, there are 16 million kids that don’t have broadband at home, is the latest estimates that I’ve seen. Of that 16 million, there’s about 9 million of them that are a part of households where their parents are making about under $30,000 a year. Covid has really brought to life the importance of, how do we ensure every child can go home and continue learning while the vaccine is being created and getting distributed? One of the things I’ve been most proud of this year that we’ve done from an AT&T business perspective is really leaned in to help solve the gap for those 9 million kids. Just over the last six months, we’ve found that using hotspots that use our 4G LTE network, we’ve been able to go serve about a half a million households—and you can think of that as about a million of those 9 million kids. When you look at those households, they’re also one of the most likely households to move during any given calendar year. As you think about moving from one house to another or one apartment to another, you want to make sure that there’s complete consistency in using hotspots as an “always on, no matter where I am” device to keep being able to learn and connect. A lot of kids are using tools like Zoom or WebEx to video conference in and use that as part of their education. Those video conferencing solutions and applications, if you will, only need a couple of MB upstream and downstream to work perfectly. And so hotspots become a really fantastic portable device that the kids can use. Then to your point, you can imagine that, as 5G continues to expand, then that only creates the ability to create rate plans, if you will, and capabilities that allow you to provide significantly more capacity over time, to then pick up more “futurecasting” use cases. I’ve got a 10 year old, I’ve got a six year old, and both of them are using tablets now to learn. When you think about 5G and the capabilities that’s going to bring, now it’s not only about using a tablet, it’s about using AR/VR to truly bring to life the sorts of education experiences, whether that’s, “Hey, here’s what DNA looks like in three dimensions. Here’s what this piece of art that we’ve been talking about looks like as if you’re standing in front of it in the museum.” And you can walk around and get closer and appreciate the brush strokes. It creates a democratization of education as these experiences can be made available, frankly, to anyone using very low-cost, ubiquitously available equipment.
Fuller: We’ve seen some examples of specific school districts and jurisdictions using public moneys to try to solve the digital divide problem as exposed and reinforced by Covid. How do you see that in the future? Is there really a role for the public sector to be guiding this or turbocharging the deployment of technology to reimagine education?
Katibeh: Joe, the math on this one is pretty easy. As you think about how we invest as Americans and where our taxpayer dollars go, it doesn’t take a significant amount of investment, in a bipartisan way to ensure that every child can be equipped with a mobile hotspot, with mobile connectivity, and the sorts of solutions that are required to truly drive an incredible education experience, whether they’re in the classroom or they’re in the virtual classroom at home while we continue to combat this disease, this virus, that’s plaguing humanity right now.
Fuller: When you get 5G deployed with that million-device capacity to connect with a radio head, it sounds like you just get an incredible proliferation of opportunities to be collecting, processing, data and controlling processes.
Katibeh: Some really interesting things that we’re already seeing come to life that you can imagine will get deployed more broadly with the advent of 5G across major metros, is things like an AT&T stadium. You can already hold up a 5G-enabled smartphone and literally point it at your favorite players mid-game, and you’re going to see their stats popping up above their heads, so that you’re kind of getting the best of both worlds. You can imagine that sort of technology being used in day-to-day life. As an example, today when you call a ride-sharing company, an Uber or a Lyft, if you will, I’m certain in the next couple of years, you’ll just be able to hold up your smartphone, and the outside of the vehicle approaching you will highlight some color, so that if you’re at an airport, or you’re leaving a game, or a night out, or what have you, it’s very easy for you to distinguish which vehicle is picking you up. Then I think my favorite example—and this is a great use case in how movies imagine the future, and then technologists using technology like 5G bringing it to life—is we’re already starting to see retail stores deploy magic mirrors. A magic mirror is basically a very large television—a 4K TV—with a built in 4K video camera. And then it points at you and, literally, you can see yourself dressed in the latest fashions without needing to go into a changing room, standing in front of this magic mirror. It’ll only be a matter of time before, as you’re walking past the store, you’ll be able to look to your left, and suddenly, it’s like looking in the mirror, but you have a different jacket on or you’ve got a hat or a new scarf or new shoes. It’s a way of enticing you to come in and buy that next thing. This technology was being deployed before Covid, but you can imagine that in a post-Covid world, it’s also being used so that you don’t have to try on clothing in retail stores. And we’re seeing very large retailers starting to experiment.
Fuller: Well, yes, and I’m glad that magic mirrors are not going to be available right away, because it gives me some time to shed the extra pounds I packed on in Covid. Speaking of Covid, Mo, in talking to other executives and educators, entrepreneurs, about the impact of Covid, we’re hearing a pretty consistent theme as it relates to the future of work, which is that Covid served as an accelerant of trends that were emerging in terms of the evolution of work, of skills requirements, of working relationships. That it’s really been turbocharged by Covid in multiple dimensions. What do you hear from AT&T’s customers? What do you observe as a senior executive in a large company like AT&T?
Katibeh: A lot of these technologies are going to allow us the opportunity to rethink, “Hey, what do our folks at work do?” We’ve already talked a little bit about things like creating experiences, whether it’s guided workflow, or training curriculums that will give rise to different classes of work. You can imagine that remote expert will likely give rise to entirely new platforms that allow us to rethink the gig economy. There’s very likely going to be a platform that serves as an enablement layer to bring these functional experts that have very specific skill sets back to the companies—whether they’re small, large, multinational, or global—and connect them, and drive new forms and new classes of work. I think for all of us, the key question is, how do we keep evolving our businesses to one, ensure that our workforces are ready to be part of the future demand sets and skills that are required? Then also, as individuals, how do I want to get myself trained? And how do I want to engage on where these markets are going so that I’ve got relevant skills to take advantage of all of these new opportunities that are going to be created down the line?
Fuller: Mo, AT&T had quite widely reported on program for preparing the workforce for emerging skills—things like software defined networks and whatnot. Going back quite a number of years, what have you learned about that task of upskilling employees to be ready for the future? And has Covid or the advent of 5G caused you to adopt a new approach to skills development for your incumbent workers?
Katibeh: Stepping back for a moment, our broad goal is to ensure that our employees are future-ready and have an opportunity to fill the jobs of the future, knowing this entire conversation, technologies, networks, products, services are going to consistently continue to transform. Our approach has been, rather than the wholesale hiring of new talent from outside, it made good business sense, it made good economic sense, and it was just the right thing to do to help our employees learn the skills that prepare them for the software- and technology-centric careers that are emerging. Broadly, we took three approaches: One is ensure that we allow our folks to go out and get either undergraduate or graduate degrees of their choice and help them pay for that education, kind of pillar one. Pillar two is to create the ability for them to go out and get micro degrees, if you will, or certifications that may tie to very specialized skill sets, like software-defined networks, like cybersecurity, like virtual-network functions, like 5G. Then the third pillar has really been about just making sure that our folks have the time that they need to take any internal training that’s required in any given year, whether that’s the obvious things we all do, like code of business conduct, etc., as well as skills transformation-related training courses that are made available. You can imagine, in every organization, we pick different courses that we want to make sure that our folks are taking. We make them optional for them, so that the personal responsibility side of this also comes to life, which is, if someone knows they want to retire in the next couple of years, they’re good to go, they don’t want to go engage, great. If someone wants to go get their skill sets ready for the future, then they can take advantage of any one of those pillars that I just articulated. Joe, just to put a capstone on this thing, all of that translates to, in 2019, we invested more than $175 million in employee training programs. Think of that as 19 million hours of training and about $18 million on direct tuition assistance. Covid just means, as we go into ’21, we start thinking about micro degrees, certifications, and specific classes that orient around things like IoT, 5G, AI, edge compute, etc.
Fuller: Mo, one last question. You mentioned you have a 10 year old, a six year old. What are the two or three things you’re hoping, or for that matter, will work hard to ensure that your kids learn and get familiar with so they’re going to be ready for whatever opportunities they want to pursue as they head into adulthood?
Katibeh: Broadly, I look for three things. And a couple of these are more technical, if you will, and a couple are more soft. I think for all of us, for our kids, there’s always the balance. But the first one is really keeping my kids focused on emerging technologies and understanding them. Also how connectivity and IoT devices will create emerging markets. It’s something I talk a lot about with them. Then beyond that, it’s really, all of us have a duty to raise the next generation to be good people. I spend a lot of time with my kids on two softer skills, which is communication and how do we focus on things like good presentation skills, good verbal skills, being able to both in written and verbal form articulate their positions. Then the last one is just being a good human being. Spending a lot of time with what is the right thing? As a society, Joe, and especially in 2020, we’ve had to contend with this thing that has not gone away, which is systematic racism. This has been a year of learning on, why do people protest? What is privilege? How do they have privilege? How do they help others that have less privilege than they do? And how do we treat everyone equitably in our society and being quite intentional about that?
Fuller: Well, Mo, thanks for sharing these insights as to how the world of technology and networks are going to unfold, and what are the very important implications for us at the level of business and employment, but also in terms of civic life and important issues like digital equity. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Katibeh: Thank you, Joe.
Fuller:We hope you enjoy theManaging the Future of Work podcast. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work project at our website hbs.edu/managingthefutureofwork. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter.