March 19, 2018
A handful of memories from Mobile World Congress 2018
by Michal Niec
The GSMA Mobile World Congress is surely the largest mobile technology oriented exhibition on the globe and we could not miss it! The MWC took place in Barcelona, Spain, from February 26th to the first day of March. To our surprise this year the sunny capital of Catalonia welcomed us with snow.
We attended the event thanks to the kindness of Małopolska Agencja Rozwoju Regionalnego, which sponsored our tickets and invited us to co-exhibit on their stand. It was an excellent networking opportunity to meet numerous companies from all over the world, each of them more or less willing to exchange experience or some mutual business plans. We literally run out of our company business cards!
The congress itself was a massive yet unforgettable event. It gathered over 100 thousand participants from all over the world. The number of exhibitions was truly impressive – among them everything from start-ups to big names in the field of mobile technology.
This year the upcoming revolutionary 5th generation wireless systems were on everyone’s lips. 5G is expected to be operational by 2020 and probably will make the dream of omnipresent IoT come true.
Moreover, the science-fiction of smart city is on the brink of getting rid of its “fiction” half. Lots of smart city devices are waiting to be introduced into our everyday reality. We noticed strong representation of drone companies, which widely demonstrated new drone-connected applications. The MWC also showed that new VR and AR technologies are blurring the border between technology and our sensual perception.
As one could expect, featured mobile phone companies, particularly those utilizing Android, showed lots of new devices, but unfortunately no new innovative solutions. We are still waiting for a breakthrough.
Coming back home we are certain of one thing. The world of mobile will desperately need the new ways of handling such a huge amount of traffic and data. The possibilities of a scalability will be more and more acclaimed. With an advent of 5G, it is unavoidable.