Welcome to 5G Talent Talk. I'm Carrie Charles, your host, and this is the first show of 2025. So I'm really excited. We've got a lot of, gosh, some changes planned for 2025 for the show, really exciting things ahead. But today I have with me one of my dear friends in the industry, and I've been trying to get him on the show for a long time, and he finally said yes. So it's Dennis McColl.
He was with Verizon for, gosh, I think over 30 years. He'll talk about that in just a minute. And he was an associate fellow in RF engineering. He is now retired. He has his own new company called PracticalRF. Dennis, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Of course, of course. I know we've been talking about this for a long time. you have a...
boy, you've had an incredible career and now a transition. Talk a little bit for those that don't know you. I know you're well known in the industry, but for those who don't know you, a little bit about your journey and, I mean, be interested how you even got into this world of RF engineering because I know it has been your world for so long. I've always had a passion for wireless.
walkie talkies as a kid always fascinated me and then went to San Diego State, get my BSEE and like the last semester or before the last semester or before summer, I saw on the elevator a note about an internship at AirTouch. And so I ended up carrying transmitters up to the top of hills to do what they called pack rats. You set up a generator and antenna and you drive around and collect signal information. And that's how I got into the industry.
And I enjoyed it. I thought I wanted to work for Qualcomm, but it turns out I wanted to be more hands-on and get operational. And that's where I really found my passion at the market level in San Diego. And then transitioning after 20 years, transitioning to headquarters, maintenance engineering, where I could help others and help establish policy and procedure for the business. And I just enjoyed every minute of it. I appreciate all of the opportunities that I had with Verizon.
So you recently, I don't know how recently it was, but you transitioned from Verizon, from a long career at Verizon, to your own business. tell me, I know this happens with a lot of people where they think, gosh, I'd really like to do something else or something different, but there's a lot of obstacles in the way. What contributed to your decision to start your own business? how does it feel?
It feels great, but it certainly has been a challenge over the over the last 10 years. I knew that eventually I wanted to go out and just work on things that I wanted to work on and solve problems that I wanted to solve. And I was fortunate enough to have a VSP of voluntary separation package was offered to me. And I figured, well, after 30 years. You know, if not going to do it now, when they're going to give me this cushion to.
to take away some of the risk, I'm never gonna do it. And so I had to pull the trigger and we parted ways. But I'm still very close with all of the people that I worked with and I'm still staying in the industry. I'm still wanting to solve those problems, solve interesting problems really. And complex problems. That's what I saw. Simple solutions to complex problems.
The best solution is A, it's no big deal, just everybody go home. And then it's like, okay. And that's always fun when you get to say that. Yeah, I know. I've done that before. tell me about your business and the type of clients you work with and maybe some of those problems that you solve. So I guess there are the problems that I see that would benefit the industry. And typically those are
Are areas where large amounts of money are being spent in efficient, inefficiently. There are certainly opportunities to capture those money. So, because that's one of the challenges that the industry is having now. And then the other side of things, I'm just want to work on things that I find interesting. So, you when I go to shows now, and I talk to people and I can ask them, hey, what are you working on? And and they'll, you know, we'll talk and we'll chat and we'll troubleshoot and collaborate.
And I always want to, I don't mind helping anybody do anything. It's always interesting. And sometimes it's more serious than others. But always there has to be an element of fun and passion and I need, but it's, I enjoy helping people solve problems and that's what collaboration is about. And that's what these shows are about. You have your AvalonTUF and...
and Mobile World Congress, these opportunities to collaborate. it's what happens in the hallways between the meetings. I know, I saw you at Mobile World Congress and you had a lot of meetings lined up actually. And I know that there were people coming up to me asking where you were and if I knew where you were. I know that you're highly sought after now.
You've been in the industry a long time and I've known you, my goodness, there was an event every year, a very large event called VZTUF, Verizon Technology Users Forum, right? And so you produced that event and it was phenomenal. think it was, I would have to say, I thought it was the best event of the whole year in our industry.
And so that's why I first met you, but you you have been on stages, you've been on panels, you've, I mean, you've seen it all from behind the scenes, you know, from hands on everywhere. But what is your view right now? Actually, let's talk about the industry a little bit. Where you see that it was, and again, this is the wireless industry, where you see that it was, where are we now?
and any ideas about where we're going in the future? I mean, it's January, you know, we're all excited, ready for a new year. What are your thoughts? Well, you know, when I started June 15th, 1994, it was my first day. It was a Wednesday. back then, the margins and the revenues, there was no problem. I mean, I think the revenue was something really silly, like 50 cents a minute or something along those lines. It's crazy.
What that brought is unlimited budgets, whatever you wanted you could get. everybody, since you had unlimited budget, all of the salespeople and the experts were there for you to talk to. And also the cell sites were on the ground. So if you wanted to test something, you just had to walk into the cell site and hook up to the test coupler and start making measurements. And that's really how you have to learn is getting hands-on. And so from that perspective, in the 90s and early 2000s, things are great.
But we've seen over time that that margin has disappeared into nothing and we're talking fractions of a penny on the minute and the revenue streams that that of previous are something that the industry is still looking for because they are for profit. I get that and there's a requirements to the street and those requirements are are hard to handle from an engineering perspective, you know, go in from.
Perfection to managing budgets when you're you have a lot of problems to go after, but you don't have the budget to go after all of them. How do you manage that? And that's where the engineering really comes in. So you need good engineering. You need to know the fundamentals and the background so that you can, you can capture those moments and go after what's important and what's not important. And I think that's that's where the struggle is. Because at the same time.
The radios now are on the tower. You can't touch them. And so from an RF perspective, how are you supposed to learn? It took me a good 10 years to really get the basics of what I was doing. And immediately went out of school. thought, you know, I was an expert. No, no, absolutely not. I think after 10 years, I realized I didn't know a whole lot. In 20 years, I realized that I'll never know everything. And so now I'm just a humble engineer that knows what he knows. And I will make mistakes, but I'm trying.
And I think the engineers that are coming up now do not have the opportunities to learn. So in a situation where there's little budget, and so there's a lot of folks that are struggling and looking for opportunities. And it's in that chaos that I think I can bring value. And say, okay, what do you wanna do? Okay, this is how we're gonna do it. But you have to be willing to break some eggs in these tough times. Let's talk about that.
Because again, we talked about you being, I call you a solution master. I feel like that wherever there's a problem, you bring it to Dennis and he'll find the solution, right? And what challenges do you see today with the service providers specifically? I mean, I wanna look at both sides, right? Like you touched on it a little bit. So challenges with the service providers and also the challenges maybe that the contractors and suppliers are facing.
I think that the challenges are with training and providing the engineers the foundation that they need to do so that they can come through and make these hard decisions. what we're seeing is now that the budgets are going down, the contractors are being asked to accept less and less money. And so there are a lot of contractors that are leaving the business because the money isn't there.
And so that leaves the lowest bidder there. So in order to do better, we need to just capture the inefficiencies and then try and recover some of that money. And what I always like to talk about and what I'll be talking about at AvalonTUF in January 22nd and 23rd are just the operational expense associated with antenna system failures. For example,
well over $100 million for the carriers, right? 100 to 200, maybe even more than $200 million annually. And I've talked to a lot of contractors over time saying, okay, guys, when you're told to go out to a site, how often are you successful? And a typical answer is 50 % of the time that you go out on that first, you go out there one time and you're gonna spend 3,500 to 5,500, maybe more for that visit.
And if you're solving the problem 50 % of the time and $200 million are on the table, that's $100 million of waste. And so there's a lot of efficiency that we can get. so what I want to talk about are the novel approaches to reducing that operational expense, like external passive intermodulation is a big problem.
just rip and replace as a troubleshooting method is a problem, just taking radios down and antennas down and replacing them in the exact same situation with the exact same problems and you end up going out 10 times, spending a couple hundred thousand dollars to fix a problem that may not even really be customer impacted. So my approaches are, okay, let's look at this problem, what's causing it, and then how can we resolve it without spending money? But that puts the contractors in a tough spot, because they're there to make money.
But even they would say that the inaccuracies, the miscategorization of the problems that are being sent to us a problem. So how do we fix that? And I have some ideas for that as well, which I'll be talking about at AvalonTUF I mean, my goal is for everybody to win. There's so much money on the table that's being just wasted. So let's go after that and let's make it so everybody wins and goes home. I love that. I love it.
You know, let's talk a little bit about I want to talk. I want to talk about where you are first. So you're in your garage right now and you have your entire setup your desk. But when we had our call recently a couple weeks ago, you brought up all this stuff you're working on. Do you have some things that you're working on right now that you can show like do a little show and tell because you've got a cool area there. See, I to switch my camera. I can't switch my camera anymore, but so.
I'll do it. So here, this is one of my, this is my very first purchase when I left the business. This is a calibrated dipole antenna. And so understanding dipole antennas is really critical for a radio frequency engineer. so in order to really understand the dipole, you have to dive in. So this is a transmitter from ECSite. It's a four port transmitter. And I basically have just a monopole antenna that I've configured, just a wire that is coming out of that. And
and also a thermal imager so I can turn that on. the thermal imager so I can see the electron movement in the wire to understand how that's happening. And then you've got cool things like reflectors that you can start playing with. So the idea being we have all of these things and oh, there's a spectrum analyzer in the background. Turn the transmitter on. Anyway, so you get hands on and you start playing with these things and you see what matters and what doesn't.
And one of the experiments that I've been running is on fiber-reinforced polymer. So you look at a cell site and stuff that, and the panels that they put in front of the cell sites, this is a quarter-inch fiber-reinforced polymer. And the effects on the antenna systems are massive. And the problems that they create are huge. And so that's another thing I'll be talking about. I've run some experiments comparing different materials and how they affect things.
our problems around antenna systems, and then how to select materials to reduce those problems. And I'll be sharing those results in Dallas. How can, we'll talk about that in a minute. How can, how's technology gonna play a part in solving these problems? Well, the processes, our processes have to get better. And like there's a narrative right now that artificial intelligence is gonna be a big deal. I mean, we've had what blockchain was a big deal and you
virtual reality and augmented reality and robotic, that was gonna be a big deal. And there's a lot of narratives and big deals that are out there and right now artificial intelligence is one of them. And certainly there are applications for these large language models, but at the end of the day, you have to have folks that really...
that are passionate about these solutions and understand them. narratives aside, we have to get better at our processes and the processes that are being used to characterize problems and issues. It's like, where are those issues? So AI can find the problems, but yeah, what then, right? Because we can see the problems now where we're getting it wrong 50 % of the time. So how do we do better?
And so that's, I think that's what the evolution that we're going to see is an attempt to capture efficiency and to do better and to spend less but do better and help the customers out there. So I see maybe some technology in your future, a few patents coming. What do you think Dennis? It's funny, know, the patents, a lot, there are a lot of focus on patents, but...
But what I do with RF engineering, I'm not creating anything. I'm taking known pieces and I'm putting them together in different ways and applying knowledge. And I've tried to run several patents and I'm always told, yeah, but no, this is just another way to use what we already have. And it's like, okay, well. So it turns out that folks that are on the ground that are passionate about RF, there are very few opportunities.
Do to get patents. I mean, if 1 shows up fine. Fine about a couple of ideas, but. I'm, you know, I'm looking for. Interesting problems to work on and problems that can generate revenue for my, my business PracticalRF. Right and where those 2 intersect. Is where I'm going to be spending my time and the interesting problems that nobody cares about. But me, I'll do that as well, but I don't, I don't think, you know.
Patents, you that'd be great, that's, I have never done well with patents. You never know. You never know. You know, Dennis, you and I have talked a lot about just talent and workforce and diversity. I mean, we've just had many conversations about that, but I'm just curious, you you talked about the industry and where it is today, how it's changed. What advice would you give to...
you know, a young person in the industry right now, someone who maybe a young engineer who is thinking about getting into the industry or somebody who's been in for a bit, you know, with all of your experience, what advice would you give to them? would say whatever you do, make sure you're passionate about it because it's a long haul. if, I loved going to work many, many days because I was going to get to work on some really cool stuff and
And I just I'm very passionate about about our all aspects of it. And I would say certainly try and find an area of the business that you're passionate about and move that direction, but also start gathering around you. Others that are experts in their field like you are an expert in your field. And so when there's a, you know, it's nice having 30 years under my belt and.
And there's a lot of folks that we can all call on and we know each other. It's like, hey, I have a problem. Carrie's going to know that. Carrie, got a weird question for you. And those calls happen all the time and they're super fun. But building the network and building a career around something that you're passionate about is what I would absolutely recommend. A network. I agree with everything you've said, especially the network piece, because I think that is
instrumental in anything you do in the future. Like when you started your own company, I mean immediately your network, you know, realized what you were doing, you talked to them, they're like, okay, I want you to help me. So I agree with that. Really strengthen your network this year. In fact, all of us need to do that this year is strengthen our network, become more active on LinkedIn, you know, do the things that we need to do to get more connected. And then, you know, if you've lost passion, then then reignite the passion.
Right? Find out your why. Why did you start doing this in the first place? Because I know as the industry's, it's been tough, you know, it's been tough the past couple of years. And we can lose some of that fire because it's been so hard. So I think hold onto that why, right? And I love talking about these RF fundamentals. I get very passionate about it. And so when I provide training classes, training moments,
My passion comes through and people like it and we have fun. so I, and this is something I was, I was working with a client yesterday and I said, well, what we need to do, you know, just get together some training stuff. I, I, you know, I did some online training that I did with, right. So wait a minute. I could still do that. I'll just pick the topics that I care about and invite cool people in just like you're doing and just geek out on some cool stuff. You need a podcast to Dennis.
No, the podcast is just recording stuff and putting it on a platform, right? So if I record it and I put it on YouTube, that counts? Yes, it does. It does. counts. Well, I have a YouTube channel, PracticalRF. I have one video on there. you do? Okay. Awesome. So PracticalRF. You need to do, let's say what? Another one a week? yeah, that's what I should do. Yes. It's coming.
Well, it's time to talk about AvalonTUF And AvalonTUF, again, I know that you're one of the founders, one of the creators, also the producers, I will call it. And tell me the story. So AvalonTUF is an event, and it takes place January 22nd and 23rd of 2025 in Dallas, Texas. The website is avalontuf.com. Now it's Avalon Technology Users Forum.
That's spelled A-V-A-L-O-N-T-U-F dot com. I suggest that, I mean, everyone needs to register. It's an awesome event. But Dennis, tell us what it is and why it's an awesome event. If you go to that and you scan down on the page, we have now posted the event schedule. And so you can see all of the speakers, all of the training opportunities that are going to be there.
and it's everybody that is collaborating to solve the problems that we're working on. And if you're a service provider, if you're T-Mobile, AT&T or Verizon, there's a code that you can use to get free access. So you just might as well come on down, spend the day and just hang out because it's an opportunity to collaborate and learn and the trainings that are selected are something that is supposed to be.
very impactful. A lot of the spend right now on problems is on external PIM, so there will be a lot of discussions about external PIM and interference and also training sessions about the materials and the tools that are being used and the GCs are going to be there as well and we're going to be talking about all of these things. And it's not just the training opportunities, it's the opportunities to collaborate and work on some of these issues because there are folks out there that are working on some serious problems and have some great ideas.
And, you know, it's often just, this comes out of the woodwork, some of the solutions for the problems. They just, they're there. And even if it's a problem that somebody's working on, okay, let's talk about it. We don't have to make money, let's solve problems. And, you know, that's what my sales friends say, no, you gotta get paid. I said, no, actually, no, let's solve some problems. And if somebody gets a jet, just give me a ride.
You know, what's different about AvalonTUF that I like, and again, I'm honored to be moderating the keynote panel, and we have some amazing speakers on that keynote panel. I'm really, really excited about that. But what's different about it is, and we've supported it every year at Broadstaff, is that it's not a typical conference. It is hands-on. I mean, people go there, like you said, to collaborate, to solve problems, to learn.
You've got, there's training opportunities for your team members. And obviously the networking, but it's a very different kind of event. And it does remind me a lot of VZTUF. because VZTUF was like that too. It wasn't just another conference. And so I think, you know, again, I think it's going to be awesome. It's probably the first show I know of this year. I mean, I know there's also Mobile World Congress probably in Barcelona, something.
but one of our industry. CS is going on right now, right? I think CS is going on right now. Oh, is it? OK. OK. Yeah, but they're not hands on. They're not hands on. Yeah, AvalonTUF is hands on. So I think, yeah, and you're going to be speaking. You're going to be doing some trainings and some speaking there as well. Good. So we'll hear more solutions to more problems. So no, that's awesome. Again.
January 22nd, 23rd, Dallas, Texas. It's AvalonTUF, a-v-a-l-o-n-t-u-f dot com. You can register there. I want to see everybody, everybody who's listening right now, no matter what country you live in. Let's go. Let's be there. So Dennis, again, I have just had so much respect for you for so many years and everything you've done. And I think you are probably one of the most brilliant human beings I've ever met in my life.
I wish you all the best with your new company. How can we reach you to hire you or to learn more about what you do or maybe just to collaborate and solve problems? I'm on LinkedIn. I also have a practicalrf@gmail.com. I monitor that. feel free to give me a call. I don't know if I should give my phone number out, but if you're in the industry, just ask around. They'll tell you.
Just get me on LinkedIn. I'll give you my my my phone number on LinkedIn. Yeah, or you can call me I've got his phone number too. Yeah. Yeah, call Carrie. Yeah Call anytime. Don't worry about formalities. Let's just have fun conversations. I love it Dennis. It's always a pleasure Thank you for coming on the show and Yeah, and I'm so grateful for our friendship so I'm excited to see what great things you're gonna do in our industry Great. Thank you. Take care.
