MWC - Maybe...Whatever...Cool
A fre days before the event, Nick Hunn sent over a couple of pieces that he had written about his findings at MWC18. For this blog piece, we will be applying what Nick discussed at the event as well as taking excerpts from his articles.
On the evening of Tuesday the 20th of March, attendees were having obligatory drinks and having their fill of pizza before being ushered to the auditorium for the evening's event.
Welcoming attendees to the event was Tim Whittaker of Cambridge Consultants who then introduced attendees to the evening's first speaker of the night, Nick Hunn, CTO of WiFore Consulting.
IoT at MWC 2018
For this section of the article, we will be including content from both of Nick's blogs and CW's own observations of Nick's discussion.
Before detailing his findings at this years MWC, Nick first described the event space as big, huge even! This included a birds-eye view of the exhibition centre.
This year around 2,300 companies were exhibiting, several with stands large enough to fit a passenger jet in; over 100,000 visitors were wandering around it, including senior politicians and royalty and the organising industry body [...]
Nick Hunn, Four Highlights from MWC2018
Nick went on to show off his photographs from the 4-day congress, which included aesthetically pleasing stands, lots of visitors wearing headsets, a 5G connected car and a highly-illuminated Huawei stand.
Nick then went on to discuss the fact that there is a NB-IoT revolution hapening in China, with 13 companies announcing their plans to curate NB-IoT chips. In further detail, Nick explains in his article 13 companies anounce NB-IoT Chips, that even though these companies have expressed their interest in NB-IoT chip deployments, it's still early days as their are probably fewer than 10 million NB-IoT chips deployed. This figure came from CW member Huawei, the company who are leading the way in the field.
Huawei is predicting that by the end of 2018, the number of chip shipments will reach 150 million [...]
- Nick Hunn, 13 Companies announce NB-IoT Chips
The thirteen companies who announced the role-out of NB-IoT chips were:
- HiSilicon (part of Huawei)
- Sanechips (a division of ZTE)
- RDA
- Altait (owned by Sony)
- Sequans
- Nordic Semidconductor
- Goodix
- Riot Micro
- Nesslab
which also includes CW members:
Nick also mentioned the use of NB-IoT chips for texting, which he discusses in more detail in his Four Highlights from MWC2018 article.
CW member Vodafone tha you could text from anywhere, (including the moon), from your smartphone using NB-IoT extended coverage.
The theory behind this application is that all of the new LPWAN standards have a better link budget, which means that the radio has a better chance of penetrating buildings and getting through in places where [...] GPRS struggles and newer standards like LTE fail.
- Nick Hunn, Four highlights from MWC2018
Nick went on to explain that this type of smartphone messaging would come as a fall-back for those situations when SMS simply does not suffice.
Another one of Nick's highlights from this year's MWC was on the next generation mobile network, 5G.
5G is an important field to CW as we are the lead partner in the consoritum, (which includes the KTN and the TMForum), chosen to run the UK's 5G Innovation Network, which CEO Robert Driver announced at this year's MWC.
Nick explained that the infrastructure suppilers are pushing 5G upon the consumers hard, as they're concerned that network operators wil choose to stop upgrading and use what they already have.
Aside from mentioning the fact that 5G was one of the big players at MWC18, Nick also mentioned that, while it's not unusual to see booths offering massages to visitors after a long day of trawling through the vast amount of stands and salesfolk, one booth in particular was offering an on-site hypnotist.
In his article, Four Highlights from MWC18, Nick mentioned that offering hypnotists at booths could become a mojor innovation for shows such as MWC;
As attendees become more scpetical about the technology being thrust upon them, what better answer than an explosion of hypnotists funded by the various elements of the industry that want us to believe that their most outrageous claims are true.
- Nick Hunn, Four Highlights from MWC18
Nick suggested that these hypnotists could help keep us on the 'straight and narrow' as we run out of technical or business arguments on 5G with Nick believing that providing hypnotists for attendees would be a brilliant addition to the MWC experience.
Nick concluded his talk with a five-minute Q&A, with 5G again, becoming the most popular topic in the room.
MWC 2018 - The Final Score
Next to discuss their findings was Derek Long, Head of Telecoms and Mobiles at Cambridge Consultants. Derek started his discussion with the key facts about this year's MWC and his own opinons on said facts.
For this year's MWC, the GSMA focused on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals which was a major difference to previous MWC's. Derek believed this to be a sign of growing confidence of the GSMA and the indsutry in general, but also a natural extension of the interest areas driven by IoT. Derek went on to explain that by focusing the show around the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, this paved way for a new focus area for the show, mainly due to the role that the mobile industry play's in todays society.
A key fact that Derek mentioned was that at MWC, it's very easy to be dismissive of new technologies at MWC with vendors saying that a technology is the perfect solution for all possible challenges. The reality, according to Derek, is that a shakeout has to happen driven by business cases in order to seperate viable applications from hype.
After discussing the key facts and opinons, Derek went on to list the topics that led the way at this year's MWC and his own thoughts on these topics. Some of these leading topics were:
- 5G (especially NR, mmWave) Focus in on US and China, Japan and Korea
- Digital Transformation
- IoT & 5G Use Cases
- IoT Platforms
- AI - The Augmented human
- Small Cells/ Neutral Host/Private LTE Networks/CBRS/Multefire
- Cybersecurity
Derek showed the attendees two paintings which followed a minimalistic, artistic style and looked to be professionally painted, but both paintings were infact created by visitors of MWC and AI. Visitors would draw an image which an AI program would then paint and create a masterpiece out of!
The Rising Stars of MWC 18 were next to be listed as Derek went on to explain his thoughts on these rising stars. Some of the topics mentioned were:
- Multi Access Edge compute
- Software defined fronthaul
- Connected Cras
- Voice is making a comeback (particulary for services with AI empowered virtual assistants)
- Smart Cities
- URLLC
Derek went on to show pictures of two cars that were very different in appearance, but were both ultimately 'Connected Cars'. Both cars had logos plastered over them from Parken+ to Dell. Unfortunately for visitors, these cars weren't allowed to be trialled and tested!
Next up was Derek's regulation league which saw the likes of many popular topics such as Drones, Robotics & Wearables. A few more of the topics that were listed in the regulation league were:
- New phones (Samsung S9 and S9+), (Nokia HMD 8910, Scirocco)
- Wearables (Hearables, smart glasses)
- Wifi (802.11ax)
- Content & Media - AR/VR, 360 Degree real-time streaming
- Empty hallways!
It was unsure as to why some of these topics were in the regulation league, but this may be due to the emergence in new technologie, such as 5G, which has become a constant, buzzed about topic amongst the mobile industry.
In other cases, it was quite clear as to why some of these listed in the regulation league were in their in the first place, with the empty hallways comment being one of them! Derek showcased a couple of pictures that he took of visitors lounging around in derelict looking hallways which took the atmospheric, energized feeling away from MWC and made it seem like any other convention.
To conclude his talk, Derek went through a slideshow of some more, unconventional photos he took. One photo that Derek captured was of a gorilla holding a banana with 'Gary Bananas' written underneath, which the attendees of the evening's event, nor Derek got much explanation for, other than it may have been used for comical reasons.
The last photo in Derek's deck was of the Cambridge Consultant team at their pictureesque exhibition stand, awaiting the three days that were ahead of them!
Open Forum
To wrap up the evening's engaging talks, Tim Whittaker from Cambridge Consultants went on to hold an open forum for the attendees to ask Nick and Derek questions on their findings.
One topic of conversation that was continuously brought up was 5G, with Derek explaining that 5G will be portrayed as islands of coverage within a sea of 4G for many years.