Jeff Pulver is Bringing Back VON. Zoom Jan 25-26
Bill Smith told me what it took to recover from Hurricane Katrina as CTO of BellSouth. In 2004, John Chapman explained how cable would get to a gigabit. (Almost no one believed him.) Jef Raskin explained why he created the Macintosh and what he did wrong. He did sessions in Second Life, now being refashioned as "The Metaverse."
The most original minds in telecom argued long into the night about how to create the future. Years before the rest of us, Jeff realized the giants were going to take over, innovation would slow, and conferences about telecom futures had less of a place. Since then, he invested early in Twitter and created the 140 Character Conference. He was a pioneer of NFTs but now sees them as overhyped.
When we programmed Pulver conferences, the mandate was clear: find the best and most interesting speakers, whether or not they would buy a sponsorship. We all know how the many pay-to-play events are dominated by boring sales pitches.
5G phones have taken over. >70% of phones sold in China, Korea, Australia, Canada, and the United States are now 5G. I believe Japan, England, and most of Western Europe are similar but I don't have firm data. 
Ed Walter beamed with pride as he told us AT&T's next 15 million lines of fiber will offer 10 gigabits upstream and down. This is the first large 10 Gbps symmetric build in the world. 
December 2021: Verizon is just now starting to sell many fixed wireless connections. 8 million in 2023 is unlikely because it did not build the planned 30 million homes of mmWave. Latest data is that Verizon cell site radius is < 200 meters rather than the 600 meters it thought was practical in 2018. A $10-20 billion mistake. As mid-band reaches half the country *late 2022 or 2023,) Verizon could take millions of customers from cable if it priced at $30-45. Mid-band will have so much excess capacity that would be a highly profitable offering. The marginal cost of a customer added to the network even with a high cap will be < $10/month.
December 2021 Since 2017, every telecom reporter on the planet has written about "Gigabit LTE," a theoretical peak that is more often 150-350 Mbps down. 5G NR adds very little. The gain in theory could be 15-50%, but in practice 5G in frequencies below 2100 MHz is often slower than 4G. The apparent improvements, from 4G 50-150 Mbps download to 5G 100-450 Mbps are because of more spectrum (mid-band) and more MIMO antennas. Both are 4G tech shipping since 2017.
Update December 2021: Vestberg was dead wrong about a $200-400/cost per home passed for mmWave. The word from Verizon in 2017 was to expect 600 meter reach for mmWave. Testing by Earl Lum found Verizon built to a 200 meter radius. The economics of mmWave deteriorated because the capability was massively overestimated.
Michael Weening, to my amazement, has delivered for Calix's modestly sized customers a marketing program with the sophistication I would expect from a giant company. In some ways, the Calix suite is even better than Verizon's.