S1E13: The Path to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Episode Summary:

Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Colby Synesael, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cowen and Company.

Colby has been covering the communications infrastructure and telecom services industries as a senior research analyst since 2006, and recently co-authored Cowen’s extensive Ahead of the Curve report on edge computing and the future of the internet.

In this interview, Colby offers his unique perspective on the investment decisions that are powering the growth of edge infrastructure, the elements that will enable True 5G, and how the pieces work together to usher in the fourth industrial revolution.

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Key Quotes:

“While edge computing is not dependent on 5G, 5G is dependent on edge computing…The edge infrastructure that is obviously tied to edge computing is going to be required to enable what we refer to as ‘True 5G.’”

“When you take all three of those aspects--the bandwidth speed that’s north of a hundred megabits, the latency that’s sub-10 milliseconds, and the massive machine connectivity or IOT—that, combined, is the recipe to enable True 5G.”

“The beauty of True 5G is it's going to enable a lot of new businesses to leverage a wireless network beyond the phone that's never really happened before…And when we talk about True 5G, that's really what we're referring to, and to make that happen, absolutely a physical edge infrastructure is going to have to be out there.”

“With these three key attributes–the speed, the latency, and that massive connectivity–ultimately it enables what many people refer to as the fourth industrial revolution. And that's going to create a whole new set of market opportunities that are going to happen across just about every industry.”

“When you think about the internet in its current iteration, it's really been built for humans…This next iteration of the internet–which very much is tied to edge computing and 5G– is actually going to be built more for machines…It’s going to unleash this huge opportunity, and that altogether is what we refer to as the fourth industrial revolution.”

“The way I think about it [edge] is that it's not an explicit definition. It's not black and white. It's an evolution. It's a concept. And we're already starting to see that happening today. And at some point…we're going to see an inflection point where there finally is enough infrastructure that you start to see some of these newer use cases start to come to market.”  

“I don't think of the edge as cannibalizing the cloud. I think of the edge as expanding the TAM–the total addressable market–for the cloud...You're not cannibalizing the demand, you're augmenting it.”