MWC 2024 kicks off in Barcelona

Mobile World Congress kicked off on February 26 at Barcelona.

AI stole the show… there’s a new AI-RAN Alliance. The basic premise behind the alliance is that current RAN architectures are incredibly inefficient and with operators revamping their networks, becoming more cloud-oriented and desperately seeking the benefit from the automation and efficiencies that smart AI deployments could deliver, the industry now has the chance to develop blueprints for future RAN architectures that will enable mobile network operators to get a greater potential return on their investments and open up new revenue opportunities as well.

Its founder members include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arm, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, SoftBank and T-Mobile US. It’ll be interesting to see who else joins the alliance. There are only two operators at the moment SoftBank and T-Mobile.

“The telecom industry has, over the last few years, been seeing a significant increase in the CapEx expense required to deliver 4G and 5G services, but those investments haven’t delivered commensurate revenue increases for the service providers,” said Ronny Vasishta, Nvidia’s senior VP of telecom. “In fact, in many cases, we’re seeing declining revenues for the operators and the relative market size remains small… On the other hand, in terms of AI, we’re now experiencing a very large growth in AI infrastructure investments, and we anticipate that growth to continue and become a very large market… This is the dichotomy that is the backdrop to the AI-RAN Alliance,” he added.

There are three main focus areas for the alliance:

• AI for RAN – the use of AI tools to improve the performance and efficiency of radio access networks
• AI and RAN – the integration of AI and RAN processes on the same underlying infrastructure, so that the resources are constantly being used even if there is no mobile customer activity on the network, though with RAN processes prioritised when there is network activity
• AI on RAN – the development and deployment of AI-enabled applications at the edge of the network that can be delivered over 5G connections.

The GSMA doubled down on its Open Gateway initiative. The body outlined the strong progress the mobile industry, and technology partners, are making in unlocking the full potential of 5G networks and commercialising network APIs through the initiative. A year since GSMA Open Gateway was unveiled at MWC 2023, 47 mobile operator groups, representing 239 mobile networks and 65% of connections around the world, have now signed up to the initiative. Working with technology partners and cloud providers, including AWS, Infobip, Microsoft, Nokia and Vonage, a part of Ericsson, more than 40 mobile operator networks have now made a combined total of 94 APIs commercially available to enterprise developers in 21 markets across Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.

The European telcos continued their call for regulatory reform.

Analysts and vendors on the ground in Barcelona were still intrigued by what had caused the major AT&T outage last week. Many said they expected to see more major outages in the future. There are so many ways for networks to fail — physical media (fiber cut), network equipment failure (despite redundancy), network software failure, human errors, automation failures, cyberattacks. However, the duration of the failure and the mean time to service restoration (MTTR) should hopefully reduce as we adopt improved automation is improved and autonomous resilient systems become better, was the consensus.

The 5G & Beyond keynote explored attitudes toward cloud and AI from major global operators, including emerging markets heavyweights Veon and Ethio Telecom.

Docomo expands its Open RAN commercialisation efforts with NEC, Microsoft unveiled a pair of AI-based solutions for telcos, a generative AI tool to help network techs diagnose and respond to issues using natural language prompts. Fibocom announced the launch of the industry-first T300-based 5G RedCap Module FM330 series in collaboration with MediaTek. Huawei launched three innovative all-optical products to Open Up F5.5G commercial use. ZTE is talking up the efficiency of its 5G-A solutions, while Intelsat has announced an agreement with AMN that will connect remote communities in Madagascar. Vodafone Idea has partnered with Mavenir for a 5G Open RAN pilot.

CT Bureau