Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2023 was back in full force, according to event host GSMA, with more than 88,500 attendees from 202 countries and territories. The show also hosted more than 2,400 exhibitors and sponsors and over 1,000 speakers. In addition, MWC’s start-up platform, Four Years From Now (4YFN), showcased and connected startups and investors with almost 800 exhibitors.
(Source: Pablo Valerio)
This year’s mobile connectivity and technical event focused on “Velocity,” highlighting the industry’s speed of adoption, innovation and change. The shows five key themes – 5G Acceleration, Reality+, OpenNet, Digital Everything and FinTech – reflected the acceleration of these industry trends.
During the event, GSMA launched a new industry-wide initiative called the GSMA Open Gateway with the support of 21 mobile operators. The Open Gateway is a framework of application programmable interfaces (APIs) designed to provide developers with universal access to operator networks. Demos ranged from a live “jam session” in the 5G Future Forum to an immersive gaming and high-definition video showcase.
GSMA also shared key findings from its annual Global Mobile Economy Report. These include the expectation that 5G will overtake 4G in 2029 to become the dominant mobile technology with adoption at over 85% in the top 5G markets by 2030. The report also forecasts that global 5G connections will surpass five billion by the end of the decade, with 1.5 billion connections in 2023, reaching nearly $1 trillion in 2030, led by services and manufacturing sectors. Also, metaverse continues to grow with advances in enabling technologies, include 5G, artificial intelligence and wearables.
The 5G Acceleration theme focused on both digital and hardware developments and how partnerships are accelerating enabling technologies. Open RAN support is a big accelerator for many companies as well as 5G Advanced.
One of the biggest companies at the center of these advances is Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., with numerous new product and partnership announcements. An example is the introduction of the Snapdragon X75 with 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18 features, claimed as the industry’s first 5G Advanced modem-RF system. The sixth-generation modem-to-antenna solution is set to drive new opportunities across a range of industries, including automotive, compute, fixed wireless access, industrial IoT, mobile broadband, private networks and smartphones.
Other topics included open and virtualized infrastructures, satellite connectivity and digital everything, including Industry 4.0, smart factories and smart transportation.
MWC also revealed the wireless industry’s need for partnerships and the value of working with component manufacturers, including silicon vendors, to develop new devices and technologies. These partnerships help drive the adoption of next-generation networks like 5G Advanced, 5G mmWave, 5G NR-Light and Open RAN, driving the industry forward.
One example highlighting innovation in partnerships with silicon vendors is Vodafone’s demo of a prototype 5G network built on a credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi computer and a small advanced silicon chipset. The industry-first solution will enable companies and households increase their 5G coverage with their own private and portable 5G mobile network.
By combining Vodafone’s pan-European 5G network with a Raspberry Pi, Vodafone wants to make 5G-based mobile private networks (MPNs) more accessible to the 22 million small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe.
The 5G network on a Raspberry Pi is no bigger than a home Wi-Fi router, which makes it easy to setup in a public place or extend the coverage of the public network to a remote location, said Vodaphone.
“Beyond the low-cost “network on a chip” aspect, the next most provocative piece of Vodafone’s announcement comes from the vendor’s highlighting of new, large, market segments that can be served by a credit card-sized 5G network,” said John Marcus, principal technology analyst for GlobalData’s Enterprise Technology and Services, in a statement. “The first of these is private 5G for small and medium-sized enterprises, which would represent an exponentially larger number of potential customers than today’s target market of large industrials.”
Marcus further stated: “Vodafone has not launched a product or service, but it is easy to imagine what it might look like when it does. In some ways, it resembles 5G fixed wireless access (FWA), but it could also become part of vertical IoT solutions which require the throughput and latency of 5G but so far cannot justify the cost of private networks.”
The new system is comprised of a Raspberry Pi 4 with a small 5G compatible embeddable software-defined radio (SDR) circuit board, made by Lime Microsystems. The SDR board can turn any computing platform into a miniature 5G base station, making it available as part of a dedicated private network, an extension of a larger MPN or connected to Vodafone’s public network like any other base station. The board is compliant to Open RAN standards.
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