Mobile World Congress, Day 4: It’s a Wrap!

Another Mobile World Congress is over! I have to confess that I say this with a great deal of relief. I am not sure I could have survived one more day of long hours, wall-to-wall meetings, noise, artificial light, irregular (and often missed) meals and lack of sleep!

That said, this year’s event has been truly fantastic for Comptel. Our expectations were very high, but they were easily exceeded. Not only did the vast majority of our pre-set meetings happen, but many very positive unplanned and ad-hoc meetings also took place . Furthermore, unlike many events that contain “world” in their names, this event can genuinely claim to be global. We met operators and partners from all over the globe.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much opportunity to walk around the exhibition halls. However, one thing I did notice (in addition to the omnipresence of Android) is that tablet computers are taking off big time. New models were on display at a number of booths, and many of the sales people trying to convince me to invest in their fabulous events or publications used tablet computers to present their compelling arguments. This is obviously an interesting development for the mobile industry, not least for operators who need to provide and manage the bandwidth necessary to connect all of those devices to the ‘net. Bigger screens mean more data traffic, of course. Interestingly though, I heard from IDC analyst Elisabeth Rainge that the majority of tablet connections are through Wi-Fi rather than mobile networks; in other words, tablets are more of a nomadic tool than a truly mobile one.

As for the highlight of the event for me? It could have been the Light Reading Speed Dating event, which was a great deal of fun, and very useful at the same time. But on balance, I think it was watching England’s Arsenal football team play the mighty Barcelona team in a local bar last night. I can still see the looks TelecomAsia editor Joseph Waring and I got from locals, when we punched the air with delight as Arsenal overturned the Barcelona lead to win 2-1!

Great game, great show!

Mobile World Congress, Day 2: Busy in Barcelona

We’re only half way into this year’s Mobile World Congress, but like I mentioned yesterday, this is the GSMA’s—and Comptel’s—busiest conference yet! Our booth’s three meeting rooms were completely booked up, and there was significant overflow into our general lounge area throughout the day.

Although most of Comptelians’ time was spent at the booth, we were able to participate in a couple of other networking activities around the Fira Barcelona and city. CALA vice president Diego Becker sat down for a few minutes to record a video interview with TeleSemana. In the following Spanish language clip, he discusses our commissioned research showing that consumers are willing to pay extra for a higher quality of experience (QoE) and greater service personalization, as well as how policy control is becoming essential for communications service providers to offer differentiated, convergent broadband services and guarantee that QoE.

And this evening, I attended Light Reading’s Meet the Editors & Analysts ‘Speed Dating’ reception at Gran Foc. It was nice to catch up with old friends from Heavy Reading like Ari Banerjee and Graham Finnie, and meet others from across the OSS and greater telco industry.

Overall, we have been very pleased with the high attendance in Barcelona as well as the productive meetings being conducted with customers, prospects, partners, media and industry analysts. Don’t forget to come visit us in Hall 1 at Stand #1C06 if you have not done so already!