*By Vinícius Boemeke
Between February 27th and March 2nd, the city of Barcelona, Spain, will host the main connectivity event on the planet. Mobile World Congress 2023 promises to bring together more than 80,000 participants from hundreds of countries. It is a great opportunity to connect with ideas and projects from the most renowned exhibitors and companies in the field.
This year’s edition will address several topics, focusing not only on mobile technology players, but beyond: one of the highlights is the acceleration of 5G. To get an idea of the Brazilian reality, last year we had not yet connected to this technology, and nowadays there are talks of advancing towards 6G.
The shutdown of 3G and 4G networks should also be discussed, although I think any discussion in this regard is premature for Brazil. Whether by the dimension of the installed bases or 5G coverage capacity, in my day to day life, for example, I still use the 4G connection a good part of the time.
Another point of attention for MWC 2023 is how immersive technology and 5G are changing the way we live, work and consume information and media. In my view, what is considered equivalent is augmented reality which is closely linked to how 5G is allowing technologies to evolve with this differentiated experience.
The change from CloudNet to OpenNet should also be something to be discussed. This emphasis on “Open” provides greater integration of hardware from different manufacturers, in addition to the fact that open protocols tend to be future-proof, because they provide greater autonomy and the possibility of optimizing implementation costs for network setups, in the case of the MWC, one of the most positively impacted audiences are the telecom operators.
Fintech, although it might seem something a bit distant from mobile, has been gaining more and more space, and remains one of the event’s highlights. Here we are talking, in particular, about the emergence of non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Fintechs depend heavily on this technology and on 5G and 6G connections, which have the capacity to add more value and data traffic capacity, with a super important point of attention for these markets: low latency.
On the theme of everything digital, the event evolved the concept of “Internet of Everything”, featured in the 2020 edition, to “Everything Digital”. In my point of view, the evolution of the concept shows a maturity that transfers the focus of connecting things to a much broader vision, focused on delivering the value that digital can offer, opening up new possibilities for industries, ranging from entertainment, manufacturing and smart mobility. For instance, we hear a lot about digital twins to facilitate strategies within the industry.
This is my 3rd edition as a participant, and every year I realize that MWC has reinvented itself and evolved. This is an extremely relevant point when dealing with an event that could have maintained bias in infrastructure, operators, etc. In addition to a pavilion focused on innovation and future technologies – 4YFN, I see the event also becoming a platform for the evolution and export of technologies from different countries.
Walking through the space, we come across several stands of export promotion and investment agencies from countries such as the United Kingdom, Israel, Argentina, Germany, among many others, which use the event to globally present a selection of technologies that the country develops and understands to have global potential.
In general, they are stands with several companies, many of them startups, that perhaps would not be able to participate as exhibitors in an event this big, and that have the opportunity to show their technologies and validate market potential on a global scale.
Brazil’s presence is marked through the Brasil IT+ Project, developed by Softex and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil), which are facilitating the presence of 20 national companies. One of these companies is Pulsus, a Brazilian startup that is a reference in mobile device management solutions, and one of the 10 global ones with the Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended seal.
It is a great opportunity to show the strength that these national technologies can generate for the world, and a pride for us Brazilians to be at an event of this magnitude, showing our ability to impact at a global level. I will be there, as an M&M correspondent, closely following trends and insights in this extremely broad and innovative technological market. I take this opportunity to thank you for the partnership and invite everyone to embark on this journey with me. See you soon!
*Vinícius Boemeke is the CEO at Pulsus