I love this show. It has the right mix of news, one-to-one meetings and fun. The show is scheduled to be held in Barcelona next year, but up for grabs after that. It will be interesting to see if the GSMA decides to remain in Barcelona, or move to France or Germany. I was interviewed by local press about that very question. It’s a no-brainer how much a convention that attracts between 50,000 to 60,000 people for a week means to the local economy.
I’m open to new venues, but have to say the metro stations here make for easy travel and the winding roads of Las Ramblas make Barcelona an enjoyable trip.
Now, onto random thoughts the show:
One of the most interesting comments I heard was from Yankee Group analyst Declan Lonergan, who noted that the United States is finally a super power by wireless standards. Apple Inc. and Google Inc. are leading the charge, as well as Verizon Wireless with its rapid LTE rollout. Europe, which traditionally has been a year or two ahead of the U.S., has fallen a bit behind. In my mind, the benefit of being a year or two behind is you get to see what is going to happen rather than watch the wild wireless west taking place in the states.
One of my favorite interviews was with Dr. Rainer Deutschmann and Jurgen Hase of Deutsche Telekom, who are leading DT’s efforts in machine-to-machine communications. DT has been a leader in the M2M space, and the rest of the mobile ecosystem would be wise to watch them. They have run an M2M competency center for a year now, led by Hase. Likewise, Ericsson is turning its attention to M2M, and any time the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer decides to focus on a segment, it’s worth watching.
Speaking of that, is TEM really an accurate name for the Ericssons and Alcatel-Lucents of the world? They are doing so much more beyond infrastructure that we really need to find a new acronym for them. (You simply can’t be in the wireless ecosystem and not have a great three-letter acronym.) Solutions provider is the probably the moniker most bandied about, but that’s just too boring.
Finally, I am trying to wrap my head around small-cell technology, probably because everyone I asked about it had a slightly different take on the subject. A-Lu’s lightRadio is radical if it does what A-Lu says it does. In the press conference the week before, A-Lu’s CEO said the cube would eliminate the need for macro cellular towers. I talked to Powerwave’s CEO, which has a similar product and plans to get to market first, and he said towers would continue to be a component of the network. A Huawei exec implied more intelligence would be stored in the cloud, and the hardware would be more of a dumb pipe, so to speak. Major players are expanding their small-cell portfolios, so it will be interesting to see how revolutionary that business becomes. Beyond the technology advances, small cells should make zoning processes easier.
RCR Wireless News ran its first virtual news desk as we tried to gather more news on video rather than text. Thanks to Juniper Networks, which lent us a portion of its patio, and to the other companies that graciously allowed us to film in their booths. Now I want to know what you thought. Tell me if you preferred to get your MWC news in video or text format.
