Mobile World Congress, known as MWC, never fails to awe and inspire. And this year was no different. Over 100,00 attendees from over 200 countries assembled in Barcelona to experience the latest telecommunications industry innovation from more than 2,700 exhibitors (GSMA).
We saw the unveiling of groundbreaking technologies poised to change how operators manage the network, run the business, and deliver jaw-dropping digital experiences and initial discussions on 6G.
It was exciting to see how the industry is coming together to bring the future of connectivity right now.
Here, I will focus on the three topics that stood out above the rest regarding the breadth and depth of impact they will continue to bring to telecoms worldwide – AI/Generative AI, 5G, and cloud.
Taking center stage: AI and Generative AI
It probably comes as no surprise that AI and generative AI were the show’s stars. More than 40 sessions were devoted to these technologies, and countless vendors whose booths and product demonstrations were deeply invested in articulating the value of this technology for operators.
Vendors, speakers, and attendees were also deeply engaged with one of the hottest topics that are at the top of mind and at the top of strategy today – generative AI.
During the session entitled ” Harnessing Gen AI at Telco Scale,” the chief operating officer of Sweden’s Telia said that businesses should build a solid data foundation if they are to unlock the power of generative AI. Having the right approach to data is the key to driving telco-focused GenAI.
At the same session, Verizon’s SVP and Chief Product Development Officer, Srini Kalapala, shared how the operator uses GenAI to improve customer experience and fraud detection.
While understanding GenAI’s impact on operations, business models, and customer experience is still a work in progress, practical steps are being taken across the industry to bring GenAI’s promise to life. Indonesia’s Telkomsel, for example, announced a strategic collaboration with Google Cloud to integrate enterprise-grade generative AI into its operations and products for consumers and businesses.
Telco-focused generative AI will undoubtedly continue to play an increasingly critical role in the industry. According to McKinsey, GenAI already has a double-digit percentage impact on operators around the world. For some, marketing campaign conversion rates have increased by 40%, and call center agent productivity has increased by 25%. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The best is undoubtedly yet to come.
The 5G trajectory
Grand View Research estimated that the 5G services market will exceed $2.2 billion by 2030, so it’s no surprise that “5G and Beyond” was one of the key themes of MWC this year.
From policy to monetization and 5G-advanced (Release 18) – the next evolutionary step in 5G, dozens of sessions were devoted to discussing how 5G shapes the future.
There was a keynote by Mats Granryd, Director General of GSMA, on Open Gateway, the universal mobile network open API for developers. This follows last year’s MWC announcement about this initiative, which aims to attract the application developer community to the 5G cloud and encourage increased innovation.
Multiple sessions also addressed 5G standalone (5G SA), which was noted to be pivotal in driving the 5G evolution. In fact, according to the GSMA, of the 261 commercial 5G services available today, 47 are provided by 5G SA networks, and 89 are planned for deployment in the near term.
In addition, vendors and operators alike were eager to announce their initiatives around 5G. For example, Cisco and Canadian operator Telus revealed that they launched new 5G capabilities to support IoT use cases in North America.
Ericsson announced that Toyota Material Handling will modernize its production operations with Ericsson Private 5G. This comes amidst a notable increase in the rates of 5G being adopted for Industry 4.0.
Ultimately, this means that operators will need to ensure they can support and assure commitments and other SLAs for the relevant use cases.
The discussions didn’t end with 5G, 5G SA, or even 5G-advanced. A few sessions also provided valuable insights into what the industry needs to do when building out the 6G networks of the future.
The state of cloud
Cloud continues to be a driving theme for the industry. Cloud hyperscaling, the importance of a cloud-first strategy for meeting the evolving demands of today’s customers, and the need for cloud-native network architectures to fully realize the potential of AI – were among the main cloud topics covered at the event.
Industry stakeholders were also keen to share recent successes, such as Amazon, which announced that NTT DOCOMO had selected AWS for its nationwide deployment of a 5G open RAN.
The cloud was also highlighted as the platform of choice for accelerating the deployment of generative AI-powered applications. On the event’s final day, Korea’s KT announced that it is partnering with AWS to develop GenAI applications on Amazon Bedrock, the AWS platform for AI development.
AI-powered automated assurance is the key enabler
When considering the industry’s current and future state in these three key focus areas, AI-powered automated assurance is at the center of it all.
Deploying, orchestrating, and monetizing strategic technologies demands the highest network performance, whether 5G, cloud, or for running generative AI applications.
And this is made possible by leveraging the wealth of insights generated by assurance.
AI-powered automated assurance is vital for:
- Detecting anomalies as they occur and even predicting them to improve operations
- Identifying trends, patterns, and outliers that indicate performance issues
- Providing performance insights
- Accelerating resolutions with insights for the required response
- Enabling on-demand network optimization
- Monitoring for adherence with stringent Industry 4.0 demands for latency and performance
- Helping operators ensure that SLAs are met for enterprise customers
Moreover, operators can take their assurance capabilities to a new level when we add generative AI into the mix.
This is where RADCOM comes into play.
How RADCOM can help
RADCOM provides 5G-ready, cloud-native, AI-powered automated assurance. With advanced AI and machine learning, we deliver network visibility, automated service assurance, and network insights for understanding the full scope of the customer’s network experience, troubleshooting issues at both a high and granular level, and optimizing performance in real-time.
Moreover, we recently unveiled new generative AI applications that empower operators to tap into the potential of generative AI and trusted data to manage their network operations faster and more cost-effectively than ever.
With these apps, executives and engineers can use natural language to tap into the wealth of data RADCOM ACE produces as it actively monitors the network.
This enables them to easily understand the impact of issues on network services and how they affect the customer experience, enabling them to optimize 5G network quality, reduce cloud cost, and improve the customer experience.
RADCOM supports all the leading hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, so operators can leverage the public cloud to roll out 5G while ensuring network performance and service quality with RADCOM ACE. Operators benefit from a fully cloud-native assurance solution and extensive telco-cloud expertise.
In conclusion
Coming back from Barcelona over the weekend, it has never been clearer to me that these are probably some of the most exciting times for our industry.
From cloud without boundaries to 5G and beyond and the tectonic shifting powers of generative AI, we can now bring to life digital experiences that were once the stuff of sci-fi daydreams.
What’s just as exciting for us at RADCOM is that at the heart of these evolutions and revolutions is the need to ensure a supremely performing network based on the vast amount of data RADCOM provides visibility to.
To achieve the critical objectives of the three focus areas in this year’s MWC, we provide a smart, efficient, and on-demand approach to 5G network monitoring. We bring field-proven expertise with large-scale assurance implementations in the cloud and integrate seamlessly with hyperscalers to support operators as they build out their GenAI applications.
This way, operators can deliver on the promise of the future today as they generate new revenues and accelerate growth.
Visit www.radcom.com to learn more about how RADCOM can help you transform to 5G, the cloud, and GenAI adoption to tap into data insights. We’ll see you again at MWC 2025.
