MWC 2023 Summary

I recently had the privilege to attend Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas last week, and I spent two full days networking and learning about the rapid evolution and convergence of the cellular and satellite industries, which historically have been quite competitive and adversarial.??Note: My personal view is obviously influenced by previous employment @ two MNO’s and now with the industry leading SNO (Satellite Network Operator), but nonetheless, working on global connectivity solutions for over a decade gives me a unique perspective.

One of the emerging show themes this year was the increased demand for Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) to fill in Terrestrial Tier-1 operators’ coverage gaps, as surprisingly, their networks only reach ~15% of the earth’s surface.??This contemporary tone and basic acquiescence from the MNO’s/MVNO’s that “they need help” was quite different than previous shows, with multiple new roaming partnerships being announced and multi-party alliances forming that are now complementary, potentially promising a cost effective turnkey global connectivity solution at scale.??Also, in the midst of all the synchronized press releases and typical event noise, it’s important to keep in mind that not all satellite constellations are created equal, with LEO and GEO service outages making the headlines now almost monthly.

Another game changing reality related to Apple and Android is that in ~18 months, basically all new higher end phones will have Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) capability in them. So as a result, most leading smartphones will come preloaded with satellite connectivity, but the business models are not yet fully mature.??(However, NR NTN is completely different than NB NTN, but that’s for another post.)

?It’s worth highlighting too, that even with all of this newfound cross-industry collaboration, the incumbent satellite leaders are not waiting for the global 3GPP standards to be defined and deployed, which most GSMA members closely follow.??In other words, we’re still quite a few years away from the seamless dual-mode connectivity that some are claiming has already arrived in 2023 and there are still lots of use cases to solve for and customer opportunities to monetize and deliver on - NOW!??Some might argue that standardization is needed to drive the predicted hyper growth, but clearly, there’s plenty of multi-orbit business happening now without it.??The reality is that standardization is needed more for the mass market and not as much for Enterprises, but the first movers launching and deploying now pre-standard, may have a temporary advantage.?

During the conference I was fortunate to attend a few IoT panels and keynotes and the underlying theme was that both sides need to “work together” to deliver the holy grail, which is seamless cellular and satellite ubiquity via a single low cost LPWA module.??With this HW confluence, antennas, RF modules and chipsets will no longer need a separate “satellite” version, further reducing cost and complexity - which is good for all players.??In this scenario, a separate SAT sku is not needed anymore and the user experience is predicted to be just like GSMA network roaming, which has been around for decades (i.e. transparent and seamless switching).??Think about that for a minute.??Never Lose Coverage Ever Again.??Game over, right???Not so fast though.??One problem with this standardized approach is that “best effort” found in the roaming world may not be acceptable for certain business and mission critical use cases - and maybe that’s why the satellite industry has historically been so proprietary and closed for so long???And with all of the recent LPWA network proliferation, 5G Roaming is actually not any easier than it was in the past with 2G/3G/4G.??Consumer and Enterprise wireless customers simply want these types of technical difficulties to be abstracted.??To truly be global with a multi-mode solution, uniformity is needed across all the countries and regionally speaking, local breakout and data sovereignty needs to be closely examined as part of the overall strategy.??On a high level, I’m also personally curious about what are the business rules or logic to "automagically" switch from cellular to SAT when coverage is missing - and then back to cell to avoid bill shock???Is it based on signal strength, time, or profitability???For that matter, should premium low-latency SAT connectivity cost more because it just works better?

Other visible themes:

• Multi-mode is a significant growth opportunity
• w/r/t SIM management we’re seeing a transition to digital profile enablement?
• Industry needs to strive harder for simplicity: to use, to buy and to authenticate
• Digitalization of the ground infrastructure
• Digitalization and Virtualization are 'enablers', democratizing access to hybrid and layered services??
• We’re slowly migrating to common standards, waveforms and interfaces?
• Technology sunsets are extremely painful, so naturally, customers want to go slow while trying to futureproof their next deployment

Some of the newer buzz words I heard mentioned were: transformational, softwareazation, regenerative payload, and space hardened.?? RedCap was mentioned on the carrier panel as well, but honestly, I’m not that familiar with it. Complementary to CAT-M and NB-IoT, it’s a “new radio” feature that enables a whole new class of 5G devices with reduced capability, lower power and lower cost - bridging the gap between technologies.??But from what I could tell, the jury is still out if it has any real legs.? Lastly, with LoRaWAN’s undisputed protocol domination of unlicensed spectrum, I was hoping to find a LoRA gateway on the show floor with built-in satellite connectivity for the back haul to the cloud.??However, I did not see one, but I suspect we’ll see some released in 2024.

As I look back on the 48-hour whirlwind, I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to represent Iridium Satellite and participate in the wireless industry’s premiere North American event and it was gratifying to help further the conversation with my peers.??I’m also really looking forward to continuing to learn about the newest, evolving technologies and strategic partnerships needed to connect things and people from literally anywhere on the earth’s surface - and then sharing that knowledge with my current accounts and future prospects.??Please let me know in the comments what was memorable to you as well, and I hope to see you there next year !!

?