Looking Back at the Show of the Future: Reflections on #mwc24
The week I took off after the #mwc24 show in Barcelona was sufficient for the excitement to subside and reflections to form – I’m keen on sharing some here.
The first one: it’s amazing how the event has evolved since I first attended, then still in Cannes: its mobile technology focus shifted significantly to ecosystem play, societal aspects and clearly, business, which is reflected in #GSMA statistics: of the more than 101,000 unique attendees, over 59% came from industries adjacent to the mobile core ecosystem. Which brings me back to a point I raised before – the relevance of #telcos in today’s world is not reflected in their financial outlook (if only telcos could retain their consumer revenues while growing the B2B part to over 50% …).
In terms of trends and hype, the initial promise of #5g gave way to a more somber reality, while #ai was everywhere (heyday for marketers and their slogan creativity). All the impressive demos showcased how AI can help improve user experience and generate incremental revenues, simplify operations, reduce costs, make networks more resilient and easier to run, how it is permeating every aspect of business and our lives to enhance it.
Yet, those were demos based on curated data sets (if any) and limited (if any) integration with other essential systems. Given that data is the foundation of #GenAI, and typically, integration work reflects the mounting #techdebt , significant effort will be required to drive commercial adoption of all those use cases. Personally, I am curious to see which of them will ‘make it’ when #mwc25 opens its doors – maybe a suboptimal question at a show renown for its focus on future rather than checkpoints.
Initiatives such as Global Telco AI Alliance (#GTAA) will certainly have a positive impact. So will the relentless efforts by experts across multiple disciplines. Which makes me proud that we at Singtel, NCS Group and #telcoplus keep working hard on paving the way for #AI to evolve from hype to productive reality.
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2wA pleasure having you on the sofa!