All right, let's get started. Hello, everyone. My name is Joe, and thanks so much for joining us for this next installment of the T-Mobile for Business Solution series, where we update organizations like yours on the evolving landscape of business connectivity and how you can leverage new developments to your advantage. Now at the end of our time here together, I'll share a link to an online resource that contains lots of valuable connectivity information covering several topics across multiple verticals. You could start implementing right away, but today we are going to explore the continuing transformation of manufacturing's connectivity landscape. As manufacturing continues to evolve, its connectivity environment needs to evolve with it requiring more and more speed and agility to handle near real time data processing like AI, edge computing, analytics platforms and other solutions that far surpass the capabilities of Wi-Fi. Without this increased connectivity, manufacturers will no longer be able to innovate, which means they lose their competitive edge and ultimately they just lose. So the question is, how can T-Mobile and Digi help? Well, if you think of connectivity like a river, T-mobile's industry leading 5G network is the current, fast and powerful, moving data quickly, reliably and securely wherever it needs to go. But to navigate this mighty 5G current, you need strong industrial grade equipment that can withstand more rough waters and guide and monitor data from safe harbor to safe harbor quickly, accurately, intelligently and safely. And that's where our special guest and new T-Mobile strategic partner Digi comes into play. Digi is a pioneer in industrial grade connectivity solutions that delivers seamless remote monitoring and data management. Combine that with T-mobile's industry leading 5G Network Solutions, innovation not only survives, it thrives. To explore this more deeply, we've invited 2 connectivity experts who will help us navigate this now. The first of our two guests is Nate Pleasant, Product Manager for Enterprise Software at Digi. Now, Nate has played many roles in the industry, starting out as a hardware engineer, so he brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. And when he isn't assisting customers integrate their devices into their business processes. He's an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, so he has no problem imagining a new world that includes powerful ways to conquer your connectivity challenges. And you won't even have to roll for them. All right. Our other guest speaker is Andrew Paulson. He's senior manager at T-Mobile for Business and Advanced Network Solutions, and when Andrew isn't driving strategic revenue through advanced Network Solutions and digital transformation initiatives, he's a volunteer firefighter. It's awesome. Means no matter what metaphorical fires the world of manufacturing connectivity throws at him, Andrew is the guy you want in your corner. But before we jump in with them, we're going to take care of a little housekeeping here first. Directly below the video screen, you can submit questions, and we encourage that. Feel free to submit questions anytime during the webinar and you will receive a personalized response to each of your questions within one or two business days. Also, below the screen you'll find a section called Related Content that contains links to all sorts of additional information about this topic. And last, during the webinar, some polling questions will appear on your screen. Just select your choices and together we'll see the up to the 2nd results. And remember, your answers will not be seen by any other webinar participants. In fact, let's go ahead and try one out. All right, here's your question. How would you best describe the primary connectivity environment in your manufacturing operations? Please select one of these and then send. Would you say it's fully wired? Example, Ethernet based systems, partially wired with some wireless solutions like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Fully wireless with Wi-Fi 5 GI OT devices, legacy systems with minimal conductivity upgrades. That's your last choice. So please just pick one of these, choose the one that most closely reflects your primary network environment and then hit send. All right, well, let's see how you all responded here. Well, it looks like your answers are wide-ranging, and that makes sense since you each have your own specific challenges. So let's go to kick things off by starting with Nate. All right. Now, Nate, how are you seeing manufacturers evolving today? That's a great introduction and thank you so much. So, yeah, we're seeing an evolved today, but just a step back a bit in time. Yeah, this has been an evolution that's happened over decades and Digi's been providing that innovative solution every step of the way that we started as a company back in the 1980s and that was in the industry one dot O phase we'll say of this, this journey and that was had a lot of different challenges that that we're looking to resolve. At that time it was mainly about local serial communication. So that's where Digis Foundation started was with that industrial manufacturing and communication and you would have over serial based devices. As we evolved over the years that grew to take on more different protocols as each vendor for industrial manufacturing equipment would evolve in their own pace and time. And that would introduce some protocols like a Goose protocol or DNP or OPCUA. And each of these had their own distinct advantages that they would solve for a particular, you know, piece of equipment, a particular use case or a particular type of site manufacturing. And with each of those evolutions of communication, Digi adapted its serial communication and capabilities to support that. So it became a very ubiquitous name amongst the different types of serial based communication devices out there as Digi being the easy to use solution with all those different use cases. And again coming more into the modern times in the past couple decades, you know, 2000s will say was with the industry 3.0 and that thing's when things became more automation at scale, which meant really connecting equipment to a network so you can really access it as things. As those manufacturing facilities became more widespread and were distributed across the globe, think gas locations or just remote manufacturing facilities, you needed to have AIT, you know, team that could manage all that in a central way or just even a remote way, whether bits from some private network or cell based location. So that really meant getting the devices online and that's where Digi and T-Mobile solve that by making cellular connectivity seamless, whether that's on the private network or public network. So where we are now is leveraging that connectivity in the best of the in class world that it can be. So that's what industry 4.0 world looks like. So that's leveraging that automation and connectivity and even AI tools today to optimize the entire manufacturing process. And that's the the promise of industry for Dotto. You know, you'll see on this, there's a slide, there's lots of buzzwords and initiatives, but to the at the end of the day, at the value is your industrial manufacturing is about connecting Everything Everywhere to digitally transform your world. And that's what Digi and T-Mobile have been doing for years. And whatever we continue to innovate and help you along the way. With that, I want to pause here, Andrew, I wanted you give a moment to talk about that. Connecting Everything, Everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Nate. And that's a great point. In order to realize all of the benefits of Industry 4.0, you have to have the right connectivity platforms in place to handle it all. The amount of data traversing the network grows exponentially with Industry 4.0, and many of the current networking platforms in place today just aren't scaled to handle at all. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Great. Yeah. So we're talking about Industry 4.0. Just keep in mind that there is never a stopping point for technology. There's always innovations that happen. Industry 5.0 will be in its next phase and it's really focusing on what advantages it can make to make that process easier for the with the manufacturing facility itself, but the people who work there more importantly and the companies that that run them. So making that a more advanced technology solution. So it's adopting those new innovations and within both the network and the equipment. So see ubiquitous coverage increases and technology advancements help resolve this industry. 5.0 you know advancement. So things like 5G connectivity and leveraging the 5G advancements that T-Mobile offers along with DIGI connectivity to to the network as well as satellite communication and use of cellular to make it more reliable, faster and sustainable overall network. Just as the G and T-Mobile key innovators and solution providers for industrial solutions for decades, we continue to lead this charge here and making sure that you are leveraging your network to the the best ability that you can there. So speak on some 5G innovations in particular. We're going to drill down into this a bit, but there's some distinct advantages here that T-Mobile has available for industrial manufacturing solutions. Andrew, can you maybe break down these numbers a bit? Yeah, absolutely, mate. So a recent study by Omdia showed the top five benefits for implementing 5G for manufacturing. First of all is, you know, improved worker experiences when workers don't have to worry about being connected while they're on the factory floor or even in a distribution center or logistics center. They just want whatever device they're using, they want whatever solution they're using to just work. Anytime they have to think about connectivity, that's usually a result in downtime at the end of the day. And so when you've got better coverage and you've got a much more ubiquitous coverage throughout the entire, you know, factory floor, that really allows for industries to be able to do a lot more and connect a lot more things. Other benefits include improved worker safety. So when you've got a platform that allows for things to stay connected all the time, think of your autonomous guided vehicles that might be roaming the floor and being able to have real time reactions because they're on a very fast and low latency, fast network with with very low latency. That allows them to be able to react in time and then resume immediately when things are safe again. And of course, you know, enhance security out of sight and with the vision systems and and video technologies and being able to ensure only the right people are in the right places at the right time. At the end of the day, it all kind of comes down to really increased process automation when you start looking at, you know, what are really the most effective tasks for humans to do versus machines to do. And being able to enable the right types of technologies based on the different processes that may be in place or that are going to be in place as you move into a fully Industry 4.0 environment. And that's all possible and a lot more with 5G. Right, absolutely. Well, fantastic guys, great way to set the table for us. Yeah, I think we're all ready to rock'n'roll. You highlighted the fact that, you know, manufacturers are facing challenges like, you know, siloed systems and limited interoperability, variable network reliability. So that leads me to ask everyone listening another question here. What steps is your organization taking or has already taken to upscale connectivity and fully leverage the the advantages of Industry 4.0? Now remember, no other participant can see a response there. You're OK. So select all that apply to you and then hit that send button. All right. Have you implemented advanced robotics and AI systems, increase training and upskilled your workforce, enhanced your sustainability practices, upgraded your digital infrastructure, including IoT and 5G connectivity, or not yet taken significant steps toward Industry 4.0 readiness? Go ahead and select any of these steps your organization has taken or going to take and then go ahead and send. All right, OK, well, let's take a look and see how you respond at this time. Well, once again, I see a wide range of responses coming in. But you know what? The good news is all of these enhancements are achievable these days. All right. So Andrew, why don't you go ahead and continue here. Can you take us through some use cases that illustrate how manufacturers are evolving their connectivity to remain competitive and prepare for the future? Absolutely. There are literally hundreds of use cases where 5G really shines. If you look at the standard connectivity model today, which is Wi-Fi in most cases, there are a lot of challenges with Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is a great technology, don't get me wrong. I'm using it today, sitting here on my laptop that is not capable of a 5G connection embedded, you know, inherently in it. So, you know, 5G is still an awesome technology, but the challenge becomes when things are mobile or moving around or you're starting to connect hundreds or thousands of devices into the network. When you start looking at sensors and asset tags, you know, things like, you know, small label asset tags, you know, all of the connected mobile workers and being able to really make sure that everyone's got the strength, the bandwidth, the coverage, and it just stays connected all the time. Another challenge becomes often times in a Wi-Fi world, devices and we'll make that decision on when they connect and when they hand off. And sometimes there's a little bit of a lag there, some introduction of latency and jitter, which especially with things that are real time like autonomous guided robotics and in vehicles and things like that, or just very latency sensitive applications really don't seem to do very well in that world. That's where 5G really shines. One of the most common use cases for 5G, just connected mobile worker, you know, those that are out there with their smartphones or tablets or scanning devices or whatever that may be, making sure that they're just connected all the time. And so they shouldn't have to worry about if I stand here, I'm connected, but if I stand there, I'm not connected. I just want to be connected everywhere. And that's one of the things that that 5G and cellular really does well, creates a very pervasive environment for anything and everything to connect and stay connected the entire time. Then you start bringing in some of the more advanced use cases like robotics and, and ARVR solutions and video enhancements and computer vision. Those things really shine well when they've got a high amount of bandwidth and an extremely low latency. And so creating that type of environment and 5G allows you to do that really enables that to happen. And again, on the number of devices connected, as more and more devices are connected, as more and more data is generated, often times that's really straining today's Wi-Fi networks. And 5G can be that platform, whether it's a alternate platform and running both of them, which many do today or at some point in time moving to much more of a 5G centric environment. Imagine just being able to worry about one network connectivity model, whether that's device is on your factory floor or outside across the globe, always being able to be connected to that device. And that's something 5G is able to do. And so I mentioned that because when you look at the entire ecosystem of, of manufacturing, whether that's raw materials coming in, whether that's the production lines or whether that's the finished goods and, and going out within the factory floor, absolutely it's important to have a very strong connectivity. But of course, sometimes those things that are produced or again, whether it's through asset tags or, or other means, they still need to be connected outside, maybe moving from one finished area to another finished area within your campus environment or factory environment. And then of course on the go as well, perfect example that would be in the auto industry, being able to produce a vehicle, but be able to do over the air updates for that vehicles software or firmware. And so being able to do that in in a way where I don't have to worry about how it that vehicles connected. It's just always connected because 5G is virtually everywhere. And then lastly, being able to secure all of that data, whether it's T-Mobile T SIM secure or through private EP NS or wherever that might be. Being able to ensure that your data is fully protected and that it's not touching the public Internet if it doesn't need to or you don't want it to. But being able to have private routing protocols in place in order to ensure your data gets to where it needs to be in a very secure fashion. Or if it does need to go to a a public site, it's going through a secure web gateway to ensure that all of that data is protected. And I mentioned on the factory floor, because that's really one of one of the biggest challenges from an Industry 4.0 takes place. We've got a very strong public mobile network and we've been applauded by all of the industry analysts, whether it's Ookla or Open Signal or so many others that say that we've got the fastest, we've got the most available, we've got the lowest latency, you know, best performing 5G network and we're very proud of that. And so we've worked very hard to to get here, but often times in some of these more industrial environments, the signal may not be as strong as you need it to be indoors. And that's where we come in and build purpose built coverage in order to give you exactly what you need in the coverage that you need indoors as well as outdoors. These can be both indoor and outdoor solutions that might be at a factory plant that's sort of in the middle of nowhere, but you still want to take advantage of cellular and 5G in order to connect anything and everything. And so we can build that for you. And then in the use cases where you need more of a private cellular connection activity, we can hang private cores off of that in order to create a private SIM card and air gapped environment. And that's usually the case where you've got local on Prem processing and applications and you don't want that data to have to leave and do a hairpin round trip outside to come back in when when that processing happens on premise. And so we can do that with a private SIM card and a private core as well. So most people think, so if I'm doing, you know, cellular and industrial environments, it has to be just private only. Well, you're building sort of a single purpose network when you do that, you're not really taking advantage of all that cellular has to offer. And that's really one of the advantages. So working with T-Mobile is we build those in more of a, a hybrid mobile network environment. So you can leverage both public SIM cards as well as private SIM cards. And so often times the question comes, what about capacity constraints? You know, within that environment, how do you, how do you handle that? Well, T-Mobile has built our 5G network from the ground up as a 5G stand alone stack network. So in other words, everything within that stack is 5G. Unlike a lot of other operators, you know, here in the US and, and around the globe, they're getting there and into that 5G stand alone. But they have a what's called a non stand alone, which means I really have a 4G core and I'm stacking some 5G components on top of it. But at the end of the day, it's still a 4G core. Well, when you got a fully 5G stack network, you can do things like some of the advanced network features like network slicing. And network slicing is that ability for us to be able to carve out a portion of the network specific to a use case. So let's take for example, that autonomous guided vehicle, that ability to ensure that, because I've got those in place, but I've got a bunch of smartphones and tablets and cameras and sensors and smart labels and you name it, they're all hog in the network as well. I have to ensure that these autonomous guided vehicles from a worker safety perspective and from a productivity perspective are always working and always aware of their environment around them. And so being able to create a network slice, I can put those Agvs or those robotics on that slice to ensure that they always have a consistent lane on the highway, that 5G highway to enable them to just be on, no matter how crowded the rest of that network gets inside or on that campus environment. And that ensures that those devices are always running in in an optimal fashion. And so that's something that's unique to 5G and something that's a little bit unique to T-Mobile at the moment 'cause we're the only ones with a true 5G stand alone network that allows us to do things like that. And so when you start taking a look at OK, oh, go ahead. I was going to back and add on that one of the other main benefits with 5G slicing, you can do multi slicing. So in a network that might have multiple types of data or traffic going through it, which is typical in a manufacturing environment, there's lots of equipment that's connected to the 5G network is you can set a multi slicing to prioritize and send out traffic like you're saying through specific dedicated lanes of the 5G network. But with 5G multi slicing, you can have multiples of those together, each with their own unique set of constraints for optimizing latency or optimizing throughput and enhancing the throughput there or just massive IoT connections with the dedicated laying out. That's really a true unique and distinguishing advantage of T-Mobile offers with their 5G solution. Yes, absolutely. And well put, Nate. I appreciate that. And yeah, it's, it's, it's something that's still being developed. It's a little bit newer in the industry, but something we actually started leveraging already within our network for our customers. And so you know, when you look at the entire factory floor, there's a lot of different use cases and a lot of different things that can be connected simultaneous and simultaneously and be able to run and in a very optimal and efficient way. You know, whether it's robotics, whether it's pallet or asset tracking could be security. And of course, again, again, that number one use case is just that connected mobile worker on a factory floor or in a distribution center, being able to have that handheld device and ensuring that no matter where they are in that environment. And often times these are very difficult environments for wireless technologies because there's a lot of steel, there's a lot of concrete, there's a lot of machines and, and, and you know, other things that that kind of impede your, your standard wireless environments. And so being able to make ensure that you've got a very pervasive coverage allows you to really make sure everything is connected in the most optimum way. And then you know, when you look at, well, what about some of the devices that you know may not be 5G enabled today? Well, we've got as we build out these environments for our customers, our manufacturing and, and distribution center customers, we're building out a system that essentially is its own cell site within your environment, whether it's again on a campus or on a manufacturing floor. And so it's not dependent on the outside cell sites to feed it. So it's not a repeater, it's its own whether it's a distribution antenna system or different, you know fashions of that to enable you to have your own coverage in that environment. That allows us to do a lot of these other cool features and things with it as well. But sometimes where you don't have devices that are 5G enabled today, that's another place that Digi really comes in and helps out in order to be able to enable those those legacy devices with 5G. Nate, you want to talk a little more about that? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, that Digi device is really your single connection point for the different types of communication protocols that might happen with those different pieces of equipment that don't have their own cellular connectivity or cell modem inside of them. So you can leverage things such as a serial communication, which I mentioned Digi's been a leader in for decades, as well as Ethernet based connection, Wi-Fi connectivity or even simple analog and digital IO ports. So if it's just even a simple relay that you need to have remote access to or just even automated control over, that all becomes a way that the Digi cellular router and I exporting this diagram here can provide that ease of use, connectivity and leverage that on the best in class network that T-Mobile offers with their 5G network. Whether that's the public network that we've talked about or these private networks or the hybrid of the two. And not to mention the the if you have some sort of distributed manufacturing facility where there are multiple sites all needing to communicate with each other, maybe they're trying to automate and handle that manufacturing process for the multi site setup. Digi devices have incorporated the best and leading VPN technologies into the box. So not only can you leverage the reliable and secure connectivity of T-mobile's network itself, but utilize the modern VPN technologies on top of that to further kind of distribute and connect to your multiple sites together. So to talk a bit about, yeah, so when we to maybe go back into the promise that Industry 4 dot O had those different capabilities in addition to the 5G advancements and benefits we've talked about before, there's also other several things to consider when you're choosing your industry forward auto solution. And did you have some key advantages in the products and solutions that we offer along with T-Mobile? And to talk about the first part of it, you got to get it right at the source. You have to make sure you're getting a secure solution from start to finish and that includes a securely manufactured device that is produced and manufactured from a vetted and validated, you know, manufacturing facility. So the things like TA compliance for especially for, you know, US based manufacturing facilities is a big important thing because if you were and manufacturing things for say government, you know, contracts or any other sort of military facilities, the equipment you install there has to be compliant and validated from, you know, this the country of origin that it comes from. So having that TA compliance stamp is a really value add for the digital products and solutions to make sure you're getting the right at right security at the source. And there's also security and software as well. So making sure that your equipment is communicating with vetted and validated secure encryption algorithms and authentication tools, make sure that the communication is secure from both the start of the the packet that's coming out of your network through the T-Mobile network to your, your data center or other equipment that it's talking to. So different certifications like FIPS 140 Dash 2 become of a a stamp there and a gold standard that not just digi routers, you know, adhere to, but it is something that is standard amongst, you know, U.S. policy. So that's what the beginning of it. But there's also other things to consider when you're making sure you're getting a solution that delivers on the promise of an issue for Ditto. And that's also with making sure that your equipment is not just a black box that you've installed and hope it does what you you, you think it should be doing, but it is tailored fit to the solution that is needed for your industrial manufacturing facility. So leveraging ditching containers, you can have that integration to make sure that any sort of automated applications or custom applications that your company has developed or even if you want to leverage best in class and even industry standard tools and the industrial facility. So things like inductive automations, ignition edge or encrypted portless VPN communication without science technology, and then even the EACM tool from Autosol, a lot of these different industrial communication tools and technology this that have been out there now become something that you can run easily and efficiently on Digi devices without having to have a another piece of equipment that's hard to maintain or difficult to manage within your infrastructure. And then lastly, with the connectivity, not only can we leverage the reliability that T-Mobile leads on with their 5G network with either in the public network or the private network for that facility, but you can also land bonded multiple connections together for either increased reliability or throughput for that mission critical data. So we've seen customers with use cases like this where they need to make sure that for say remote distributions like oil and gas facilities, they might need to combine multiple cell connections together, even from the same carrier. They might just be using, if we're talking LTE days, different bands with 5G we mentioned before, different network slices to really get those prioritized lanes for the connectivity. And we can actually have a device like the Digi device that can bond multiple of them together into a seamless single Internet connection. So you don't have to worry about anything about failover or any downtime between the two connections. It just seamlessly sends that traffic through the the T-Mobile network on the multiple lanes that it has and it gives you that data, data guaranteed assurance for your mission critical data and all that and are wrapped into device management as well. Again, these devices are growing. And as far as quantity at each site, yeah, thinking massive IoT equipment, you know, there's, like Andrew said, there's hundreds and thousands of them that you have to manage. And not only have the solution solved with T-mobile's network for connectivity with 5G, but also device management of the equipment to make sure that they stay up to date with security notifications, critical patches or even just firmware updates. Digi is a leading vendor for that by providing a Digi remote management tool for making sure your equipment not only stays up to date, but you are notified and made sure that for quality assurance and audit purposes that your equipment stays up to date and is compliant with all the basic security standards. Yeah, I got to tell you, I'm blown away by all these exciting developments that are out there. I had no idea. Before we dig deeper into some more real world case studies, quick reminder everyone out there, if you do have a question for Andrew and Nate, make sure to submit those. We will make sure you get an individualized answer within the next day or so. And now I do want to ask you one last poll question. Now this could be a little tough. Here it is, how confident are you that your organization's connectivity solutions are on the right track and will be ready to leverage the benefits offered by Industry 4.0. Now, remember, no other webinar participant could see your response, so you can be completely honest here. All right, so please select one of these and then send. Would you say you are very confident, confident, somewhat confident, or not very confident? Go ahead and select your confidence level here and then send. All right, let's take a look and see what the confidence is out there. Well, just as I suspected, there's not a whole lot of confidence out there, but then that's why you're here, right? So that brings us to our final and perhaps most important topic, how T-Mobile and Digi are working together to guide manufacturing connectivity into the future. Andrew, why don't you go ahead and lead us off? Absolutely, Joe. So, you know, as we talked about before, being able to use 5G in order to be able to connect things on that factory floor as part of, you know, Industry 4.0, that really gives industries and manufacturers the opportunities to do some things they may have never done before and create greater operational efficiencies. Whether that's through solutions like, you know, sensors for, you know, real time quality control, automation for autonomous guided and, and things that, you know, move about without human intervention or even just, you know, smart factory floors and being able to do things like ARVR solutions. 5G really shines and enables those things to happen. One example of that is around computer vision and being able to do quality control. The human eye is absolutely fascinating. It really can detect and see so many different things, but it's amazing how much quicker and faster and more accurate some of these computer vision solutions are. But they need the right network in order to be able to do that. And when they're AI driven and allow for, as things start becoming just slightly off in the manufacturing process, that that information is set in real time to the controls and, and applications that are making adjustments in real time. So you don't have to necessarily shut down a factory line in order to make those adjustments and then start it back up again. But those things can happen in real time. But you can only do that if you've got the right network in place that enables all of those robotics and all of that computer vision, all of those solutions in order to be able to communicate with each other and share that data and process that data in real time. Another great area to do that. We talked a little bit already about robotics. Robotics, again, you know, when the device is making the decision of where it's going to hand off from once wireless source to another in a, you know, again, in a Wi-Fi world, often times that can be very detrimental to autonomous vehicles and autonomous robots in order to really stay connected the entire time. Because when they make that handoff and you introduce that latency and jitter or it just hits that one little dead spot, those things stop moving. When that happens, production stops. And when that happens, you're losing revenue and you're losing a lot of efficiencies. And so being able to have that ubiquitous coverage, especially when things have to move across pretty far ranges, you know, some of your facilities are quite large, several 100,000 or million or more square feet. That becomes a little bit more difficult to cover. And when you do it with cellular, you're also doing it with less access points or radios or antennas, less cabling, less infrastructure, but better coverage and more ubiquitous coverage to be able to Support Solutions like this. Nate, I know you've got a an example you wanted to share as it relates to economist guy to robots. Yeah, a great example just to follow on what you said was helping out what they did. You was helping out the distribution center in Florida where there that distribution facility was responsible for providing the inventory for a large distribution vendor and market store with, you know, hundreds of locations throughout the area. And this one distribution center which had all this inventory and equipment was several football fields long. I mean, it being there, you never thought it would end they the the way that the winter inside there just a rows and rows of of of equipment and package. But they had multiple floors of this with robots AM Rs within each lane of that interior of the facility and it was all connected Wi-Fi originally when the facility was designed as a result, they had a lot of infrastructure headaches like you mentioned. Actually, they had to have so many access points throughout the, the building installed and there was a lot of headaches they ran through even after the equipment was installed bedded, when things actually production turned on, there was routine issues where the, the AMR would get into like these dead zones like you talked about, or latency would shut down. And all of a sudden that, that AMR, whose job is to quickly get the equipment and, you know, from the inventory, bring it out and have it packaged up for shipping, would stop. And when one of those stops, you had to shut down the whole line. So someone could crawl up into where all the, the AMR, you know, robots are and fix the, the connectivity, move it back to a location where it could get the, the Wi-Fi fixture. And over the past year, they switched out to a entirely based private cellular network environment with the G routers. And thanks for that. There's less infrastructure they had to deal with, you know, with access points and managing those. So and the better more continuous and quality coverage that they got out of that really brought down their their production issues and and factory online by several factors there and just bring to the end of the day gave them better overall revenue without any service disruptions. So it's a real value add for companies who have these large facilities. Absolutely. I've, I've been in several manufacturing facilities and distribution centers myself. And yes, they are quite large. And you know, most of the time if you'd once you start really talking to the folks that are in charge of those, you know, the, the productivity of, of those facilities, they'll eventually kind of admit, yeah, there are some connectivity challenges. You know, these again, are very large industrial environments, either high shelves or, or walls or another manufacturer I spoke with it was running AAMR project and absolutely was like, we have to do this cellular first because we know these things are are going from one room to another, but it's a very small space that they have to fit through in order to get there. That Wi-Fi signal is not going to bend and come underneath. And these walls were pretty thick concrete and steel walls. So that hand off had to be seamless. And so they wanted to to ensure that in using cellular and not just cellular, but being able to to use the right type of cellular. Oftentimes you mentioned your private cellular, most private cellular here in the US has been deployed using CBRS technology or spectrum. And there are challenges, you know, to that in that there's just not a lot of that spectrum available for businesses to use. And it's also shared, which means if I'm doing it in my location, my neighbor wants to do it, I've got to share that spectrum with them. We do it a little differently here at T-Mobile. When we build these environments out private and hybrid environments, we use our license spectrum, which we have a tremendous amount of and that allows us to be able to do things like run the robotics O and your computer vision and all your connected mobile workers and all your sensors and all your smart labels and all your everything. We've got plenty of spectrum to be able to work with, with these solutions that ensure, and again, with things like network slicing and other technologies and advancements in, in cellular technology allows for everything to run optimally all the time. One last one here we'll discuss is around augmented reality and, and wearable technology and that ability to, when something does break or or stop, how do you ensure you've got the right technician in order to be able to repair that and bring that that robotic or machine or whatever that might be back online quickly and efficiently? Oftentimes not every technician or, or repair person has everything they need with them when they show up to that particular location. And so or they may not be the most expert on that particular machine, but being able to have wearable technology they can see. What it's supposed to look like versus what it does look like and where those differences are and how to make that adjustment. As well as being able to access things like remote manuals, electronic manuals, and know how to get to the right information, not have to do the swivel chair back and forth between looking at a manual and looking at what they're actually doing. And so these type of technologies are really starting to take off as it relates to manufacturing, distribution and and Nate, I think you've got another example as well to talk about. Yeah. Just to know, use case we had that really leverages some of the 5G innovations that T-Mobile is doing is that Digi, we worked with a partner and customer where they use these wearable technologies and providing them to the different manufacturing facilities that they they service. And when they were utilized, they found that they had to quickly reserve some sort of network, you know, bandwidth and space for that. Because once the some of this equipment comes on, it consumes a lot of data to send up this high quality video imaging and data back and forth to the to the systems that they need to communicate with. So we were able to leverage T-mobile's quality on a manner QOD service to make this dynamic API allocation within T-mobile's network infrastructure to say, hey, we need this network bandwidth available and T-mobile's been able to provide that just for this particular application. So then that bandwidth was dynamically allocated for just this, this data usage, which helps both with the customer data plans. So making sure they're using the the data and referencing that only when they need to and then using the regular network connection for all other use cases. So really thanks to the the the quality and improvements that T-mobile's done with their 5G network, we're able to solve a lot of challenges that these augmented wearable technologies have had. Yeah, indeed. You know, I got to tell you, it's really good to see how manufacturers are breathing a little easier after working with partners like T-Mobile and Digi, and that helps them to keep their connectivity environment moving forward. That leads me to ask if anyone watching or listening is interested in learning more about the process you both use to help them. What is the next or perhaps next several steps that they should take? Andrew. Absolutely, Joe. So, you know, one of the things that we do is work with all of our customers to be able to understand, you know, where they are in this transformational journey. And you know, whether they're just starting, whether you know, they're in the middle of it or whether they're really kind of humming along and what else can be done in order to make it even more operationally efficient. And so we're happy to come in and do whiteboard sessions to figure out, you know, where you're at in that journey. What can cellular and 5G and partners like did you do in order to be able to help you through that transformational process? How do you take that next step? You know, what should that look like? Who are some of the partners to work with in order to enable all of that? And so we're happy to come out and do that. And matter of fact, we do it for free. Most people charge, you know, heavy consulting dollars at T-Mobile here we don't. So we're just excited to be able to work with you and and enable that entire digital transformation. In addition, Digi also provides a professional services team that's available to help it kind of anywhere along your industry for a journey. Whether that's just getting some guidance on breakfast practices and and set up to provisioning staging equipment before it's sent out to the site or even integrating custom applications into your solution, really there to help you anywhere along this journey. Yeah, very customizable. That's the thing that really stands out both for T-Mobile and for Digi, right? Absolutely. Cool. Well, I hate to say that we're coming to a close here, but thank you guys for all that great information. Quick reminder for everyone that out there answered all the questions that you submitted, that will be sent to you directly within the next day or so and you will be receiving a general follow up e-mail that contains links in case you think of more questions after we're done here. That follow up e-mail also will contain links to additional information about this and many other topics, including information about live in person events where you can meet with the T-Mobile and DIGI teams face to face and continue this conversation. Oh, and don't forget right now you can access more information in that related content section just below this window. Thank you all again to Andrew and Nate. Thank you all of you for joining us and we look forward to seeing you again at one of our next webinars. So long, everyone. _1739897733715