The 3 things to look for at #MWC19

Curiosity makes me tick. So next week I’m heading off with the rest of the STL Partners team to #MWC19 to take the temperature of the industry and find out what’s going on. 

I’ll be writing up our analysis of what we find to share afterwards, and also talking on the GSMA’s Mobile World Live TV wrap-up show, at 3pm on Thursday, when most sane people have headed off to the airport or a relaxing tapas.

These are the 3 things I’ll be looking for - along with anything else surprising, interesting or fun.

1. Credible #5G strategies

The 5G bandwagon is reaching take-off speed. The wheels are rattling furiously and the sparks are chipping off in all directions.

But what are real people (aka 'customers') going to do with it, in actual real life? That’s different from what they can already do?

I’m particularly looking forward to a panel our team is running with Telenor, Airbus and Sanofi (the pharma giant). They’re going to be talking about their *real* customer needs, and this will be hugely refreshing amongst all the hype. (Please PM me if you want to join us for that).

It will also be interesting to start to hear the feedback on Chris's excellent research piece on what CFOs should be doing to enable transformation - and it's not just 'stump up the dosh for 5G' as Chris makes abundantly clear in his latest punchy article.

2. Evidence of telcos moving up the IoT value chain

I don’t really buy in to the Internet of Things narrative as it stands.

Sure there are plenty of things that are connected. This is good, but it’s not a new Internet - it's a growing 'world of connected things'. And it doesn’t really shed any light on what the whole shooting match is for.

Working on the Coordination Age thinking has changed my outlook.

I still think that most IOT is pretty low value-add at the moment. But what it could be, and the potential of that to deliver fabulously useful new stuff is really exciting.

And telcos can do and are doing some great stuff. I’m inspired by Elisa’s smart factory, for example - we are working on research on that. And what Jurgen Hase is leading at Reliance UNLIMIT in India is fascinating, too.

What more of this will we see? We're looking at a lot of stuff about digital twins at the moment, and I think this is the seedcorn of a really fascinating and far reaching change.

3. People who are actually thinking about the end customers

MWC is classically a tech fest, awash with what one of my former colleagues used to call 'shiny' - new phones and gadgets, acronyms, and the hottest new tech trends.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the telecoms industry just likes to get the newest bit of technology and throw it at the market in the hope that someone might like it. As if?!

It would be nice to see some stuff that's centred on real customer challenges, needs and problems. Not imaginary use cases, but real things. And worked into solutions that don't just fix the first level of the problem, but allow flexibility and adaptability for the classic 'now that we've done this, we find that we actually need that' scenarios.

In other words, customers need agility and flexibility too. It would be nice to see some of that.

See you there? Email [email protected] if possibly so.