Mahesh Krishnaswamy, Founder & General Manager, explains Taara’s mission and the market traction they have seen to date.

The post Partner Interview: Taara at Alphabet’s X appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Mahmoud Sherif, Head of Innovation & Technico Business Development, highlights the evolution of 5G advanced and reveals du’s 5G-Advanced network strategy.

The post Partner Interview: du appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Rajen Vagadia, VP Business Development at Qualcomm, discusses innovations the company is delivering for operators on the road to standalone 5G, as he joined executives representing fellow industry heavyweights including e&, Zain KSA, Verizon, Huawei, du and Nokia at the 5G Futures Summit at MWC Barcelona 2024.

The post Partner Feature Video: Towards a Standalone Future with 5G-Advanced appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Kenneth Hardat, Telco Strategy Lead, discusses the evolution of the telco industry and how BICS supports operators with the roll out of 5G services. Kenneth also highlights the role of private networks in this evolution and how BICS further supports innovation in the ecosystem.

The post Partner Interview: BICS appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Stewart Marsh, Head of Aerospace at Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Invent, explores the deep tech opportunities to advance non-terrestrial network innovation.

The post Partner Interview: Cambridge Consultants appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Speaking to Mobile World Live at MWC Barcelona 2024, Qiang explained recent research by World Bank found that the digital gap between developed and developing countries is “multi-dimensional” and continues to widen.

She highlighted the fact that 850 million people do not have “any kind of digital ID” and women are still less likely to have access to handsets and online services today. 

This has led to what she described as “the spill-over effect”, with IT services in the industrial sector doubling over the last decade in higher income countries, deepening the divide. 

Part of the problem is, according to Qiang, the lack of access to pocket-friendly handsets, which also factors into the gender gap as mobile phones are traditionally more likely to be owned by the head of the household. 

“Although some of the [devices] prices are already as low as $20 to $30 dollars per month, in low-income countries that is actually a big percentage of their household income”, she explained, adding data costs also increases the burden. 

World Bank is partnering with MNOs and financial institutions to provide initiatives including loans and subsidies for mobile plans.  

Qiang explained actors in the private sector are “willing to do more to improve the whole digital ecosystem”, but added policymakers also need to eliminate existing barriers to cut handset costs. 

To watch the full interview, click here.

The post World Bank warns of growing digital divide appeared first on Mobile World Live.

In an interview with Mobile World Live at MWC Barcelona 2024, Pena positioned digitalisation as integral to Paraguay’s development and recovery from past territorial conflicts, outlining bullish goals around the sector.

Plans include ramping up educational initiatives through exchange programmes. Paraguay is also part of the EllaLink submarine cable linking Europe, South America and Asia, which strategically puts the country as “the centre of integration” between the continents, said Pena.

The President also pointed to the nation’s production of renewable electricity, being a top exporter of sustainable energy. This puts Paraguay in a position of advantage at a time when power consumption continues to increase. For example, 80 per cent of power consumed in Paraguay comes from hydro plants, he added.

As for mobile developments, Pena noted there is a “strong penetration” of smartphones, pointing out Paraguay has the youngest population in Latin America.

Crediting Africa’s achievements in mobile money landscape, Pena noted he has “pushed for a legislation to authorise telecoms to provide financial services”, making Paraguay the only country outside Africa with more mobile banking accounts than traditional bank accounts.

“This is a testimony of how Paraguay has been able to incorporate the use of technology in day-to-day needs for the population,” he said, adding mobile services are key to connect more isolated parts of the nation.

To watch the full interview, click here.

The post Paraguay President targets tech leadership appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Harel Givon, GM of Amdocs Israel, Division President iMEA & Vodafone Global at Amdocs, elaborates on the significance of the Amdocs Subscription Marketplace agreement with CK Hutchison IOD and Amdocs’ role in helping CK Hutchison IOD realize its vision of an extensive ecosystem of partners.

The post Partner Interview: Amdocs appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Lawrence Chu, Global Head of Telecom, discusses Jefferies role in the evolution of the mobile ecosystem and the opportunities Jefferies will be diving into in 2024 and beyond.

The post Partner Interview: Jefferies appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Dr Derek Long, SVP of Telecommunications at Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Invent, explores the key opportunities to facilitate business growth in the telecoms industry.

The post Partner Interview: Cambridge Consultants appeared first on Mobile World Live.

“The value we create is not about how we charge for the APIs. The value we create is how much benefit we gain by reducing fraud,” he said, adding this is just one example.

Yuen declared many mobile operators are “excited about the move”, noting for the first time in many years they are able to look at opening up their APIs in a standardised and consistent manner which “gives us the global scale we need to attract applications to solve real-world problems”.

He explained with so many different operators around the world participating, “we’ve made tremendous progress in just one year”, with the focus on deploying commercial solutions rather than just agreeing standards. 

In its first Open Gateway offering, Singtel last week partnered with rival M1 to introduce a suite of APIs enabling enterprises to access real-time network data for authentication and fraud detection.

To view the full interview, click here.

The post Singtel CEO insists open APIs can drive revenue gains appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During a wide-ranging interview at MWC Barcelona 2024, Watson told Mobile World Live the company was seeing “great usage” of its 5G network from consumers and was “starting to see a little bit of green shoots of the promise of enterprise use cases”, describing the latter as “where the money will hopefully be”.  

“I think the whole industry would say that’s come a bit later than we’d hoped.”

The executive highlighted BT was “getting ready for a really good” standalone 5G launch, which is earmarked to happen later this year and likely to open a range of new use cases.

Open RAN delay
Another highly-hyped architecture in the industry is open RAN, an approach Watson believes will start to be used more widely “towards the end of the decade”.

“We’re very active in parts of it,” he said. “We’re part of the O-RAN Alliance, we’ve done research, we’re experimenting with the RIC part of it. I just don’t yet see it as the real vehicle increasing the supplier diversity.”

He expressed confidence open RAN “will come”, adding he is “probably taking more of a watching brief than a leading brief on it”.  

To view the full interview, which includes the executive’s insight on the types of security risks facing today’s networks, click here.

The post BT network guru offers hope for enterprise 5G payoff appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Rajendra Sadhu, Senior Vice President HiTech SBU, discusses the invention of VESAG Health watch and future plans for 2024.

The post Partner Interview: Innova Solutions appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Barbara Pareglio, Senior Technical Director at the GSMA anticipates the arrival of the complete set of capabilities of 5G-Advanced in 2024 along with the expectation of more AI and machine-learning functionality being built into the network.

The post Partner Interview: GSMA appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Rose explained GenAI use cases had begun to evolve over the past eight months, with numerous trials underway as the industry moves to understand the benefits the technology could bring to different technology sectors and domains.

“The hype is now becoming much more reality,” he stated during MWC Barcelona 2024.

Rose noted use cases involve large and small language models, the latter of which allows operators and companies to employ AI technology in specific domains.

He said the industry also needs to tackle challenges associated with governance and trust, noting everything related to the use of AI “has to work within ethical boundaries”.

The governance of AI within an organisation is established through an internal board which examines the policies, processes and procedures around each use case.

“That board is prosecuting the efficacy and the ethics behind that particular use case.”

He explained while most companies have great sets of organisational ethics and policies, governance also includes knowing where the data came to ensure there are no issues with privacy or the use of someone else’s IP.

“If I’m using specialist domains, or I’m working on niche kind of domains, I really want to know where the data comes from,” he stated.

Rose also recommends scrutinising the data for potential bias or the use of profanity.

“There are simple things to do, but the corporate culture is really going to govern the way in which you behave.”

View the full interview here.

The post IBM exec outlines ethical use of AI appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Tariq Al Awadhi, Executive Director, Spectrum Affairs Department, introduces the key results of WRC-23 and explains the the most important next steps for the Arab world in the mobile industry.

The post Partner Interview: TDRA UAE appeared first on Mobile World Live.

The operator executive and GSMA chair told Mobile World Live the move to open APIs to developers is a no-brainer because it uses elements of 5G and fibre networks which already exist, meaning there is little to no cost involved.

He believes there is a “massive market” for operators willing to take a leap of faith, explaining exposing the capabilities of networks “in a standardised manner is relatively simple” if there is agreement among service providers.

Alvarez-Pallete noted when operators collaborated on roaming 37 years ago, “we changed the world”, predicting the Open Gateway initiative would have the same impact.

Figures released by the GSMA during MWC Barcelona 2024 show the initiative is gathering pace, with 47 operator groups already on board.

Alvarez-Pallete noted fibre and 5G are no-longer simply telecommunications networks, instead effectively being “something much more powerful, some massively decentralised supercomputer”.

“So at the end of the day, exposing the capabilities of this thing to everybody to make sure that we are able to monetise elements of the network” operators are “building anyhow”, means they can exploit those to generate revenue.

The executive also discussed Telefonica’s initial Open Gateway plays in Brazil and Spain, and why collaboration should be easier today than when roaming moves were first implemented. Click here to view.

The post Telefonica chief likens API impact to roaming appeared first on Mobile World Live.

0: 00: Intro

3:45: Team highlights

6:10: The show of AI?

9:48: Stand-out devices

14:35: The big regulation debate

16:25: Progress of APIs

18:45: Interview with Paolo Pescatore

25:05: What was missing from the show?

The post Podcast: Our MWC24 Ramblas appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Lilac Ilan of NVIDIA and Suresh Raam of Dell Technologies discuss what the recent advances in artificial intelligence mean for telcos, outlining the opportunities to enrich the customer experience, enhance operations and improve the performance of networks

The post Partner Discussion: How AI will change telecoms appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Leighton Carroll, CEO, discusses the benefit of Multibeam antennas and Galtronics’ growth strategy for the future.

The post Partner Interview: Galtronics appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Following a sojourn into the world of gambling, the one-time Telenor chief returned to the fold earlier this year as the replacement for Allison Kirkby.

At his first MWC since 2017, Hofbauer told Mobile World Live a key focus for his Telia tenure will be on how the company can improve its “day-to-day execution” to drive improvement in “what we are delivering to our customers”.

He believes execution, rather than strategy alone, is “the winning concept” and highlighted a need for efficiency to “free up funds…so we can continue to afford to invest in growth”.

Hofbauer joined Telia from Sweden’s national gambling company, a role he said is relevant in terms of being as data-driven and customer focused as the telecoms sector, along with providing experience of working with regulators.

But he also offered perspectives on the telecom industry’s progress, in particular the subject of generating revenue from 5G, a discussion he said was happening “when I left this sector at the beginning of 2018” and is still ongoing.

With rollouts of the technology at an advanced stage, Hofbauer noted there are now “some use cases”, but argued the need “to improve them”.

Click here for the full interview, in which Hofbauer also tackles operator APIs and the rise of AI for both consumer and operator uses.

The post Telia chief highlights familiar 5G challenges on return to telecoms appeared first on Mobile World Live.

During MWC Barcelona 2024, Allera noted the refreshed EE consumer brand was striking partnerships which enable it to offer new services in finance, gaming and connectivity without the hefty capex required in the past.

The so-called new EE is employing a software-as-a-service model “that makes it much easier to flood these partners in”, with the operator providing the “icing on the cake, which is all of the bundling and convergence services that we can bring to the customer”.

Crucially “we’re not spending hundreds of millions of pounds on capex creating a product and services ourselves”.

Gaming is proving a front-runner, with Allera asserting EE was now “one of the biggest console retailers in the UK”. It is blending the new with the old, tapping its long experience of providing handsets to customers through finance and trade-in packages to branch out into the new field.

Allera of course argued the backing of “a brilliant network” is a key factor in this success, later going on to explain how 2024 was set to be a pivotal year in providing standalone 5G access which, after years of talk, is now “within touching distance” in terms of realising its “real promise”.

He also commented on a pending merger of rivals 3 UK and Vodafone, network sunsets and how brand relevance is now just as important as the network itself.

View the full interview.

The post BT consumer chief Allera targets next level with EE brand refresh appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Gautam Bhagra of Dell Technologies, Henrik Jansson of Samsung Networks and Cristina Rodriguez of Intel discuss how mobile operators can quickly and efficiently deploy disaggregated radio access networks. They explain how their three companies are working together to integrate the technologies operators need to build a cutting-edge network.

The post Deploying Disaggregated RAN: Integrating Cutting-Edge Technologies appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Ron Poulin, President of Business Development and Sales talks about the hype around private 5G and the enterprise.

The post Partner Interview: BTI Wireless appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Yoke Kong Seow of Globe Telecom, Manish Singh of Dell Technologies and Tomer Gingold of Amdocs explain how Globe is building an open cloud-native network. They highlight the key challenges, how they can be addressed and point to some lessons for other telcos.

The post Partner Discussion: Globe Telecom’s Cloud Transformation appeared first on Mobile World Live.

At MWC Barcelona 2024 Alex Sinclair, CTO, highlights the key plans and prospects for developing 5G Advanced technology.

The post Partner Interview: GSMA appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Fan Zhang, Marketing Director, highlights the solutions Sunwave delivers and discusses how O-Ran is supported by their products.

The post Partner Interview: Sunwave Communications appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Dennis Hoffman of Dell Technologies and Fredrik Jejdling of Ericsson discuss the evolution of the telecoms cloud ecosystem, while explaining how their companies are working together to enable mobile operators to deploy cloud-based open networks.

The post Partner Discussion: Dell Technologies and Ericsson Redefine the Telecom Cloud Landscape appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Former Open RAN pioneer and Rakuten boss Tareq Amin is back as the head of Saudi oil giant Aramco’s new digital business. Mobile World Live finds out his plans.

The post MWC24 Interview: Aramco Digital CEO appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Join the whole Mobile World Live team as we bring you our review of the big event – the four major themes that made headlines at the huge show.

The post Show review: MWC24 Barcelona appeared first on Mobile World Live.