My Reflections on Mobile World Congress 2023

MWC Barcelona is in my view the premiere event of the mobile industry calendar and the place to go to see what the current hot topics of the telecoms industry are. I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on what I found at the event and share some views of my own on what is currently happening in the telecom industry.

Interoperability and exposing the network functions.

Programmable interfaces are now front and centre and the GSMA would like to muscle in on the work being carried out by various standardisation bodies. They have partnered with Microsoft and announced the Open Gateway Initiative which is also supported by the leading Operators. It's amazing what a few years can do, and with the purchase of Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch Networks it gives Microsoft credibility. Many engineers will tell you this is a laudable objective, but in reality, it falls short and is more clever marketing. Certainly, I understand the view engineers might have but I agree with what the initiative is aiming to do and that instead of Operators trying to excel in making things unnecessarily complicated they should be driving for efficiencies and standardisation by working together.

5G and Enterprise  

The GSMA said in the opening keynote that 96% of Operator's investments will be in 5G. The key question is, how is this going to be monetised rather than just being a network upgrade? For several years leading vendors have been able to demonstrate network slicing on their equipment in the labs, but with the drive towards E2E services and the democratisation of networks, disaggregation requires a multi-vendor approach and capability. One of the 5G highlights of the show was the impressive showcase of Inmanta. They demonstrated their capability to instantiate a full multi-vendor E2E fully redundant MPN in less than 10 minutes which is designed to provide the enterprise with choice and the Network Operator with flexibility. 

RAN and O-RAN 

The basic way of deploying RAN has not changed much over the ages and has remained the preserve of the elite NEV vendors. O-RAN is here to democratise the RAN and provide both enterprises and Operators with options. O-RAN has the advantage of being software-driven allowing apps to be built for specific use cases. This makes O-RAN the natural choice of private mobile networks. I think the jury remains out on O-RAN being used in single RAN deployment and in urban and heterogeneous national networks, purely from a perspective of managing different RAN technologies which have different lifecycles. What is for sure is that RAN will need to become more dynamic to serve the use cases E2E which is where I see the monetisation. MicroNova, who are leaders in national RAN provisioning would be a good place to discuss these challenges in more detail.    

Global connectivity needs global solutions.

Focus and collaboration.

Operators realise that in the scheme of things they are involved with so many projects and initiatives that they don’t have the capital or resources to solve problems on their own and are looking to build and collaborate with eco-systems which can add value. To become profitable again Operators will need to focus and be very selective about where they can add value and how. Shareholder patience with connectivity providers spending huge budgets on football rights are strained and are a good example of a lack of focus.

Environmental Impact

The Telecoms industry is one of the most power-hungry industries globally using 2-3% of global energy consumption. Although per bit we are seeing remarkable efforts to achieve efficiencies, the total growth prediction in data far outstrips these efficiencies. With IOT we can collect data on the devastating impact man is having on the planet, but we need to act on this knowledge to effectively change and reduce our impact as we currently are consuming earth's limited resources 3x faster than is sustainable. MWC sees this as an area of growth for Operators who can lead this initiative and be key players in reducing energy consumption across many other sectors as well.

Connecting the 3.6 billion unconnected

Only about half the planet has access to the internet on a regular basis, leaving 3.6 billion people unconnected. We know that connectivity is a wealth enabler, as it gives people vital access to the digital world we now live in. Attendees will have noticed ‘the connectivity gap’ display on the upper walkway which was there as a reminder that we should be thinking about how we can help others to bridge the digital divide. As Ambassador for the unconnected.org this is an important topic I am actively supporting and am keen for others to get involved with. The team did an excellent job at MWC working with the leading vendors such as Kigen, Nordic eSIM, Counterpoint Technology Market Research, Telna, Mobilise, Moflix Group, Gamma, Amdocs, Circles.Life and x-Mobility to promote this worthy cause and are now official supporters playing their part in connecting the unconnected.

Satellite

Heavens above was the title of my blog post from 2015 which is now coming to fruition. We now have at least 7 Satellite constellations and more to come as we realise that terrestrial connectivity is expensive. In addition, it facilitates global IoT coverage and emergency connectivity globally. There are now initiatives to harmonise how terrestrial spectrum is allocated as satellites cross national borders. 

EU and national sovereignty

The EU has now initiated the process of consolidating connectivity, realising that having over 100 Mobile Operators in Europe does not provide the commercial scalability to compete with the other global geopolitical heavyweights as it stifles investment and is both economically as well as environmentally inefficient. This will be an interesting development given the highly sensitive national interests and income national governments have received to date by selling licenses.

GloMo

As a #GloMoawards awards judge, I’d like to congratulate all those involved in the GloMo's which was led by Shaun Collins from CCS Insight. It is a great movement and is growing in stature and recognition with a focus on keeping it relevant and fresh. The only irony is that Apple, who to date have chosen not to exhibit, won the Disruptive Device Innovation award for their iPhone 14 SOS function. Perhaps this will give them the impetus to change their mind and will join the celebration of the best in mobile.  

Lastly, I would like to thank all my team, business partners, Inmanta, MicroNova, friends and colleagues for making the show remarkable and memorable for all the right reasons.

Looking forward to seeing what the industry has to offer over the next 12 months.

See you at next year's MWC!