2023: The Year Ahead with 5G Guys with Dan McVaugh and Wayne Smith

2023 marks four years since the start of 5G deployment in the United States, and many in the telecom industry are wondering what this year means for 5G rollout. Today, 5G Talent Talk host Carrie Charles welcomes Dan McVaugh and Wayne Smith, wireless telecommunications experts and co-hosts of the 5G Guys podcast. In this episode, the duo provide valuable insights on what to expect in the year ahead through workforce challenges, threat of recession, and return-to-office. They discuss the current approach to a lack of 5G developers and enthusiasts, why adopting a hybrid business model is ideal for this year, and how to implement a healthy workplace culture.

Carrie Charles was a featured guest on 5G Guys’ Podcast Episode 37: Careers Opportunities in The Booming Wireless Industry with Broadstaff’s Carrie Charles.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

2023: The Year Ahead with 5G Guys with Dan McVaugh and Wayne Smith

Thanks so much for joining me on the show. I am glad you are here because I have with me a very special guest. They are the hosts of the 5G Guys podcast. I was a guest on the 5G Guys podcast. I said, “Let’s get you on my show because you have a lot to share.” I want to first introduce you to these fine gentlemen. It’s Wayne Smith and Dan McVaugh. They are wireless industry veterans, and you’re going to hear a lot about that in a moment. They’re the hosts of the 5G Guys podcast.

Let me tell you a little bit about Wayne and Dan, and then I’ll let them talk. Dan McVaugh started his career in the early ‘90s. After seventeen years leading ATECS and Centerline, he stepped away to start a consulting practice where he develops telecom infrastructure projects. He is also the President of the Colorado Wireless Association. Wayne Smith started in commercial construction in the early ‘90s. He then moved into telecom. He’s the President of Vertex Innovations and the CEO of Active Oversight, which is a quality management software company. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having us. It’s great to be here.

I’m excited. We have a show. We typically don’t talk a lot about ourselves. It’s all about the guests. I want to give you a chance to talk about yourself, a little bit more about your journey, what you do, your companies, your roles, and who you serve. Dan, do you want to start us off?

Sure. I’ll be happy to talk a little bit more about where I come from. I’ve spent my whole career in wireless telecom. I came out of my undergrad study as an electrical engineer and started as a radio frequency engineer. I grew up working for the carriers as an RF engineer, designing and building networks back in the analog cellular days. I did that for about six years.

In 2000, I and a couple of gentlemen that I worked with at my last stop at one of the carriers started a company, ATECS. We provided RF engineering services back to the industry. That grew over the years into becoming a full turnkey company where we developed not just RF engineering but site acquisition, construction, real estate management, project management, and full turnkey services. We rebranded that company as Centerline Solutions. I did that for seventeen years until 2017 when I decided to take a break and semi-retire while my kids were still in the nest before they flew the nest.

Since then, I decided to start doing consulting. I’m an independent consultant. I do a lot of advising and a lot of coaching to other businesses in the industry and businesses outside of the industry as well. Sometimes, it’s entrepreneurs that need help. Sometimes, it’s folks in the wireless industry that have specific needs that they would like help with. Sometimes, it’s leaders that want some coaching. That’s what I do and I love it. I’m not currrently the President of Colorado Wireless. I’m the past president. I still serve with Colorado Wireless doing education and other initiatives. I’m glad to be part of that organization. It’s a great organization.

Wayne?

I come from the trade. My career started in commercial construction. I decided to move to Colorado in the early ‘90s to go to school for Electrical Engineering. I needed a job, and this thing called wireless was there. My construction background went well. I joined a general contractor and started building the first towers in the mid to late ‘90s.

I started Vertex Innovations in 2003 at the request of a new company at that time, which was Verizon. They asked me to start a company that would support them in their network. Since then, Vertex has been a great story for us. We’ve been able to build and manage every type of technology in the wireless world from 3G to where we’re at with 5G.

We manage about 4,000 to 6,000 projects a year. We also have a segment that builds live data center projects and greenfield data centers. We’re doing about $700 million in data center projects now where we facilitate the build. It’s been a crazy journey of learning and working from home, and then moving into a full-staffed company. We have employees in 20-plus states.

In 2015, we found that we needed to manage the quality of the project and the deliverables. We started a company called Active Oversight. It’s quality management software. What it does is that allow us to scale and manage many projects. It’s a quick version of what I do. We want to fill a gap where companies need project management and engineering services.

That’s a lot of projects every year.

We were trying to figure out around 40,000 to 50,000 total since we’ve been in business. This year will be our twentieth year.

Congratulations to both of you. You’re highly accomplished in the industry. I’m curious. I have so many people asking me about how to start a show, why I did it, and how much work it is. They’re like, “How do you do this? Is it worth it?” I say, “Yes.” I’m curious about your end. What’s the story behind 5G Guys? What do you talk about on the show and why did you create it? What kind of guests do you have on? Also, we need to know where to find you.

When I started doing my independent thing after I left Centerline Solutions, I was trying to figure out how I could reach people. I tried to start blogging. I’m not a very good writer. Wayne and I have been good friends for a long time. I’ve worked with Wayne, for Wayne, and vice versa. This industry is funny that way where you’ll work for somebody one day and the next day, the roles reverse.

We were working together on some projects and we talk a lot. We would spend hours on the phone talking about all things wireless. One day, Wayne said, “What do you think about recording this and making a podcast?” I was like, “I’m a better talker than a writer. Let’s give it a shot.” That’s how we started it. What Wayne and I were trying to do was not speak to people in the industry as much as people that are outside of wireless. Maybe they were intimidated by wireless. Maybe they’re working for a company that was wanting to start using wireless as an asset for their company. We wanted to reach those folks.

We wanted to remove a lot of the acronyms and maybe some of the things that might come across as intimidating and preventing people from learning more about the technology, and how it benefits their lives, their company, or whatever the case might be. That’s what we try to do. We speak to anyone out there inside and mostly outside the industry as well and make some connections so they can understand some of the concepts that might seem daunting.

It’s a good opportunity for people inside the industry to share your podcast with potential customers or people that are outside the industry to understand it. Do you have something to share, Wayne?

With podcasting, people like to fill their time listening when it’s convenient for them. One of the things that I’d say about Dan is he loves the education of what he’s learned in the industry. It is a great trait to continue to educate and learn about it. The thing that I would say about the podcast that is so significant is there are a lot of people who make this happen. When we started doing it, it’s been super exciting. You realize that it takes a tribe of people or a group to make this happen for all of us. That was it.

I agree 100%. Where can we find the podcast?

It’s on pretty much any platform that you might listen to podcasts on. If you search 5G Guys, you’ll find us. We have a website, 5GGuys.com. We’re on all the social channels, @5GGuys. It’s pretty easy to find us. We have had people find us not just from the US but from countries all over the place. We’ve heard from people from other countries. It’s pretty interesting to see and hear. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience of where people are listening from.

What we love is through our website and some of the social channels, when our listeners give us feedback, we get some great questions from people that turn into podcast episodes that we would’ve never thought of having. It’s fun. It keeps us honest. When you want to talk about the industry, you have to stay on top of your game. I love it from that perspective too. It’s a good motivator for me.

I love the fact that you talk to a lot of different people. You have a very interesting perspective, not only from the inside of the industry but also from the outside. What I’d like to chat about is what you are hearing out there. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? Let’s say, for 2023, are leaders foolish? Are they excited about the future? Are they concerned about a potential recession? How are they handling their projects for 2023? Is there any uncertainty?

I still think it’s pretty bullish. The wireless industry itself hasn’t had a recessionary time. We have had some supply chain-type issues, but I think we’re bullish moving into 2023. We’re going to see the competition between the top three carriers heated up. Verizon was a leader a few years ago. T-Mobile has claimed that spot. AT&T is coming back strong after its ventures in the media.

We’ll see more projects trying to get done with fewer people in the industry to do it. It’s not only fewer employees but fewer companies out there. Over the last few years, there has been tons of M&A activity in the space. Companies come together. It’s a good thing for the owners and those people who invested their lives, but for the carriers in the work, it’s less pool of people to choose from.

What we’ll see in 2023 is Verizon stepping up to try to get their mid-man deployed and bringing that network back up. That’ll be refreshing on their side. Also, we’re back to trying to get fiber in the ground like it was in the 2000s. That amount of work is insane and crazy. We’re going to see tons of new startup companies trying to compete for some of that work. We’ll see more fiber in the ground as the broadband infrastructure bill starts to take hold and bring broadband to the under-served. It’ll be a big competition place. Overall, I do think it’s going to be a big year for the industry itself.

I love hearing that, Wayne. What do you think, Dan?

I’ll talk about wireless in a couple of different ways. There’s the cellular part of the wireless industry as Wayne is alluding to. That part of the industry, for as long as I’ve been part of it, I describe it as a pendulum. There’s always activity. It’s just where the activity is and how money is being spent is changing on a cyclical basis or as market dynamics change. A lot of people I’m working with in that part of the wireless industry are bullish. I agree with Wayne. There are some concerns behind that bullishness, and there are people that are preparing for it.

Things are going to change. There may be some staffing changes. There may be some companies that are becoming more efficient. That might mean people are changing companies. Everyone is quite bullish within the cellular industry. The players in the C-band, AT&T and Verizon, are looking to still focus on more activity around putting that spectrum to use. I hear that from people I work with.

For example, tower companies. Tower companies are a great lead indicator of activity because they’ve got leasing activity on their towers relative to that work. They see these companies doing things like engineering structurally to make plans and changes on that tower. I do see that in 2023. The other thing we have to remember is dish. Dish is going to have some requirements to launch markets to be compliant with the requirements of the FCC in 2023.

There are going to be a lot of activities around dish that are going to be different from the other three carriers. There’s some diversity of types of activity among the carriers. I have some clients that are not in cellular at all. They work in public safety. They work in broadcast. There’s a lot of activity of new entrants with CBRS, private networks, and infrastructure bill spending. That might be the fiber in the ground or rural broadband, connecting America with a lot of billions of dollars that have been allocated to make those connections happen. That activity is picking up in 2023. When I look at the non-cellular space, I see a lot more new development versus in cellular, I see a lot more shoring up of what they already do.

I’m excited about the future. I’m also bullish. We need people to accomplish what we need to accomplish. I know we’re going to talk about the workforce in a minute. There are not enough people. There are not enough human beings to do what we need to do. Are you seeing that companies are talking more about developing software programs and platforms where people are not required so they can become more efficient? What do you see on the forefront there?

That’s what we’ve done with Active Oversight. We’ve made it where we can take the project from the tail end and make sure all the tasks are done so we can do more volume. When we speak to doing 4,000 or 5,000 projects, we’re doing that with 50 or so employees at the company. We became more efficient. In software, the tough part about it is where can you build efficiency in your workforce that allows them to reduce duplication of work.

One of the things about the industry is every company has a different tool you have to do. Let’s say you had a construction manager. They were good at implementation and building a sales force. Half their day is doing Zoom calls because we’re Zooming it in. We’re doing data entry. We’ve turned those construction people into data-entering people. It’s not a very good transition in all cases. It’s finding that happy medium within tools that allow the person to shine through with their skills and their experience, getting the data that you need to transform the business, and reporting on what’s happening and why that data is important.

All the carriers in public companies use public investment to build infrastructure. It needs to be done to spend that money investment wisely. You have to do reporting to allow those stockholders and shareholders to understand what’s getting done on a daily basis. Employee efficiency is always at the top tier of how we do not overburden them with software, and let them do their true skills, whether it’s construction or project management. That’s the happy medium that we’re all trying to work towards

Dan, are you seeing your clients using more tech and adopting or even creating for themselves as Wayne has done?

Yeah. They’re self-creating and buying things off the shelf. It’s a combination or a hybrid of customization, and a lot of development of processes and procedures as well. To Wayne’s point, the key is becoming more efficient in how we do things. It’s driven. This is not to say that there’s a reduction in the workforce as a result. It’s the exact opposite. There’s such a shortage of workforce that the industry has to become more efficient to fill the gap between the number of workers we need and the number of workers we have.

The 5G industry has become more efficient to fill the gap between the number of workers it needs and the number it currently has.

There’s still a huge workforce shortage. In fact, I had a call with four other individuals from different facets of the industry. We were talking about workforce development, how we can reach more people and make them aware of the industry, and recruit them into the industry because there is still such a shortage. Digital transformation is a necessity to keep up with the demand, not to reduce what we need in the industry.

On the workforce shortages, are you hearing that this is going to continue into 2023? There are a lot of layoffs we’re hearing about too. Is this going to increase the talent pool and put companies and leaders more in the driver’s seat?

What’s happening is on the micro level, there are individual companies that are going to be laying folks off because they’re trying to get more efficient, or they’re in an economic cycle where they need to reduce spending. There are plenty of other people that are going to take those workers on. It’s more of a shell game of people moving around between jobs as opposed to people losing jobs.

I’m seeing a lot of people move into the industry. For example, there are programs that are helping people that are leaving their military careers and moving into wireless. That’s what I’m seeing. Anybody in the industry that has a good skillset, there’s a place for them. It’s a matter of finding where that place is after they make a change.

There is always a place for anybody with a good skillset in the 5G industry. It’s just a matter of finding where that place is after they make a change.

What we forget sometimes is that the talent pool with telecom or telecommunications skills is still pretty high. What hurts companies is when you lose all your back-office people. That change is dramatic. You need billing analysts, project coordinators, and marketing people. Those kinds of skills and jobs are tough to fill compared to doing the actual physical work.

If you’re a construction company, it may be different. When I talked with some of the vendors about getting a project coordinator, the opportunities are so great. As soon as they get skilled, they’re gone. They’re moving up too rapidly that you’re consistently trying to get your back office. What’s important about the back office is it keeps paying the bills and the checks coming in. It’s a dual piece.

One of the things that we did for the telecom side is we’ve taken a lot of the standards that the telecom carriers have created. We created the thing called the Vertex Training Cloud. Each one of our employees goes through a 90-day onboarding process to get certified in the architectural, civil and mechanical parts of it. It gives them something to take on. What we’re doing is creating a good opportunity for them to move up in their career. I do think wireless has always been about that. Especially from a company like ours that are consultants or staffing-type scope of work models. You’re a stepping stone to a different career path and carriers for other companies. That’s where I see it. It’s hard to get the back office when those people move up. That affects your ability to produce.

I agree with you there. Speaking of the office, are we seeing a return to the office? Are leaders planning to have a hybrid schedule and have everybody back in? I have leaders tell me, “I’m going to put my foot down in January and say, “You all have to get back in the office.” I read a statistic that 90% of leaders are going to demand that employees come back to the office, even if it’s hybrid. What are you seeing out there?

From a construction point, let’s talk about that a little bit. We manage data center projects. They’re anywhere from $5 million to $70 million in projects. Even the GCs and the subcontractors are Zooming in. You lose that valuable part of coordination in it. I do think in some of the roles, they need to come in. We work in a hybrid environment. We do require once a month that we have a monthly business review that all the managers and people come together to solve, go through projects, and talk about them. It’s been valuable through 2022, but we’re still flexible.

I don’t think you need to come in every day, but you need to come in with your peers to solve complex business problems. No matter which generation of 5G or 4G, those problems still exist. There are people with logistical cultural problems that need to come together so that you can build a cohesive team. That’s how I look at that. You got to be flexible or you’re going to limit your pool to a very small building.

You are so right, Wayne.

I see the same thing. A lot of my clients are moving to more of a hybrid. That would be the case more on the professional services side of things. Clients that are construction contractors never left the office. There was no return to the office for them. They’ve continued through the pandemic having to figure out a way to safely be in the office. There’s no way to warehouse equipment, pick that equipment up, and go to the job site virtually. It’s not possible. They are becoming maybe a little bit hybrid with some of their back office staff. For the most part, they never left. That’s not even an issue.

Let’s talk about company culture. Wayne, I want to hear more about your company culture at Vertex. Is there anything that you’re doing that’s different or that your employees love and helps you retain your team?

We’re doing a lot. Hats off to my CFO and HR teams. We had our company party. We did a virtual party for everyone to come in. We did this thing where everyone got a random gift and we all opened them on Zoom. We made that happen. Company culture comes down to this for me. I’ve been in the industry a long time with Dan. I live by my values. My values at the company are pretty easy. They’re integrity, accountability, commitment, respect, performance and urgency. When you find it on a set of values, you don’t have to remember it. When we onboard, we talk about those things. What that does for culture is that there’s nothing different.

There’s been a lot of different terms in society with wokeness or different things. For me, it comes down to our values. When we make a commitment, we keep it. We want to be accountable for what our word is. We want to act with urgency. As a vendor to big customers, they want to know that you care, you’ll pick up the phone, you’ll solve their problems, and you won’t create problems for them. More importantly, with performance in this day and age, we want to be measured on what we promise in our commitments. If you can do those things, our culture stands up pretty strong.

The thing that we work on the most is communication. In the remote hybrid world, you start to develop the silo mentality of your work. You got to remember this is a team effort. We do things like that. We did a bunch. We did a giant swag buy this 2022. It’s important to provide for your employees. We all went together, got them, and sent them all out. That’s the kind of feedback and the things that we’re doing.

We honor all birthdays and anniversaries too. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Snappy Gifts, but it’s pretty cool. Every employee is already set up. They can go out, pick something else they want, and add to the workforce. We’re trying to do everything that we can. We have good benefits. In Vertex, we do a pension program and retirement. We work with PEO models. We have fifteen different healthcare plans that meet every place in life wherever you are. Healthcare demands changing from entry-level to when you are a more senior employee. Those are some of the things that we do with culture. I stand behind my word. We try to get it done. That’s it. It goes a long way.

I stand behind my word. As the leader of a company, that’s everything. Thanks for sharing that, Wayne. Dan, what have you seen with your clients and the companies that you consult with?

I would agree with what Wayne was saying. Overall, there is a higher degree of accountability. I’m working with leaders that are forward-thinking, want to progress, and want to change in a positive way. There are companies that I’m not working with that aren’t thinking that way. I recognize that I probably have a bit of a bias based on who I work with, but I’m seeing that accountability is bidirectional. It’s not just leaders expecting their employees to be accountable to them, but vice versa, and leaders realizing that. I’m seeing an increase in transparency by leadership to allow employees to be more bought in. I’m seeing an improved bidirectional communication flow, which is essential for a hybrid.

I’m seeing a lot more of a focus on it’s not just about the paycheck, but it’s becoming more about a lot of the things Wayne was talking about. It’s the culture, the accountability, and everyone feeling like they make a difference and they’re not just fulfilling a task and going home. That’s what I’m starting to see. I love it because I’ve had plenty of jobs myself where you’re just an employee that’s taking an order, fulfilling a task, and then going home. I don’t see that being the case as much anymore.

That is so true. We can’t finish this episode without talking about 5G because I’m with the 5G Guys. We’re on 5G Talent Talk. With 5G, we’ve seen it and felt it moving forward. It doesn’t seem to be moving fast. What’s happening?

We talk about this a lot on the show. This topic is pretty regular. The point that we try to make to people is going from 3G to 4G was so impactful to all of us as consumers. It moved the needle so significantly in terms of our experience on our phones. The ability to stream video is a big one. Video is a huge impact with going from 3G to 4G. What’s going on with 5G is some deployment is going maybe a little slower than people anticipated.

Also, what 5G is doing for us is not as upfront and obvious as 4G was. It’s changing the world around us. For example, smart cities, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare. Those aren’t things that we necessarily see when we go to YouTube on our phone as we did with 4G. To a lot of us, it doesn’t feel like the impact has been there. In fact, behind the scenes, the world is changing significantly.

We’re going to wake up one day and realize there are cars driving around without people in them, and there’s a 5G network behind that. It could be that a manufacturing plant has no lights on because there are no people in it because it’s all driven by a 5G-enabled wireless automation system and things like that. That’s what we talk a lot about. There’s a lot of activity on that front that we don’t see as consumers.

Having said that, there have been delays in 5G because of the pandemic, supply chain, and regulatory things that happened. We talked about that in some of our episodes at the beginning of 2022. This time last year, Wayne and I were doing Flash Pods on the last-second change with the FAA and the aviation industry that stopped AT&T and Verizon from deploying their C-band spectrum as scheduled as approved by the FCC. Those ripple effects did occur in 2022 and have slowed down the deployment of 5G.

It’s a little of both. Every generation typically is a five-year cycle, whether it was 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G. From the start of that to the point that it could be considered a mature deployment, it is about a five-year cycle. We’re in maybe years 2 to 3 of that cycle with 5G. Would you agree with that, Wayne?

Early on in 5G, we thought we were going to get gigabit speeds, and then we learned the limitations of the equipment and what was available to the market. All the carriers pivoted to the different low-band or mid-band. I have tested a spectrum at 3.6 gigs on my phone. I don’t know what I would do with it at that point yet, but I do see that part.

I would echo what Dan is saying as this. Here’s what 5G means to me. We’re going to get a lot of data. We’re going to start to understand as companies and leaders how to use the data to make ourselves more efficient. The workforce problem is not going to go anytime soon. We need to use the technology, the speed of data, and how to utilize it to get a real snapshot of where we are.

For companies all through the scale, it’s going to take a while to get that out there and understand these benefits. IoT is the benefit of 5G and it’s happening everywhere. I still don’t know why my oven has wireless and IoT, or my fridge does. I’m not getting any good data yet about it. All of this stuff will start to stack. It’s like anything in life. If you read a book every day or once a year for a period of years, you gain that knowledge over time and you’re better for it. I do believe that with 5G and where we’re at, as we work through the issues and the ups and downs of regular business, we’ll start to gain more things that will impact our lives. It’s hard to see it right now because it’s being developed.

With the current 5G technology, we can start to gain more things that will impact our lives. It’s just hard to see right now because it is still being developed.

I saw an event. It was a conference on 6G. I thought, “What are we going to do? We have 5G podcasts. Are we going to have to change the name of our podcasts?”

Maybe we’ll all be retired by then. Who knows?

To your point, Carrie, it started with 3G. There’s the marketing side of the technology. From the marketing side, everybody wants to start talking about the next one way before the next one is there. Thankfully, there are also some smart people that are working on 6G and the technology behind the scenes so that it will do its thing when the time is there. We’ll register the 6G Guys URL in case, but I don’t know if we’ll be lucky enough to be around that long or not. Let’s see.

I hope that we all are. Wayne and Dan, this has been my pleasure. How can we find out more about you and your companies?

Vertex, you can find us at Vertex-US.com. We have some exciting things in 2023. We’re diving into network inventory for enterprises where they can manage how we manage those things. It’s quality management. You can find us all over the web. I’m on LinkedIn. I’ve been on there a little. It’s a lot of noise, but you can always pick up the phone, call us, and look us up on the web. Dan, what’s your website?

Probably the easiest thing is 5GGuys.com and @5GGuys on all your social platforms. Through 5GGuys.com, you can connect to Wayne or me directly, our companies, and what we do outside of the podcast. If there’s only one thing to remember, 5GGuys.com will get you to us. There’s also LinkedIn and what have you.

I appreciate you coming to the show. This has been fantastic. Thank you for having me on 5G Guys. That was a lot of fun. We’re going to have an amazing 2023 and beyond. Thank you again.

Thanks, Carrie.

Important Links

• 5G Guys Podcast
• Carrie Charles guesting on 5G Guys Podcast
• Colorado Wireless Association
• Vertex Innovations
• Active Oversight
• 5GGuys.com
• @5GGuys – Twitter
• LinkedIn – Dan McVaugh

About Dan McVaugh

About Wayne R. Smith

Wayne R Smith is the President of Vertex Innovations and the CEO of Active Oversight. Wayne’s passion started back in the early 90’s in commercial construction and he quickly saw the opportunity in Telecommunications and took his construction skills over to building the US Broadband and Wireless Networks over the last few decades. As President of Vertex Innovations Wayne and his team have managed over 30,000 network infrastructure projects in the United States. With a clear directive of providing Network Engineering, Project & Construction Management to the nations wireless carriers and enterprise clients, his teams have fundamentally changed the way people communicate and engage in their daily lives. In 2015 Wayne founded Active Oversight a Quality Management Software that puts accountability in the delivery of service based work. Active Oversight’s vision is to enhance an organizations ability to use data to improve project delivery and reduce the duplication of work. The 5G Guys Podcast has been a great way for Wayne to continue as a lifelong learner and discover things in an ever changing technical landscape.

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