Mobile World Congress is right around the corner. What are some of the trends one might expect to see at Mobile World Congress?

1. First of all, much whingeing.  With the event being moved to a new location in Barcelona, it will take some time for people to get used to getting there and getting around.  I’m sure many vendors will not really like their locations.  I hope I am not one of them. 

2.    With LTE deployments happening, I think you’ll start to see much more about the “surround” that comes with this. How will VoLTE and SMSoLTE work? We’ll see A LOT about Diameter since that is a key protocol for LTE so Diameter gateways, roaming and even Diameter interoperatiblity with IPX.  How will LTE interoperate and co-exist with “legacy” networks?  I would expect we’ll see a lot of this kind of messaging at MWC as the industry starts to tackle these kinds of real-world implementation problems of LTE networks. 

3. Mobile video.  While Dialogic has been talking about mobile video for some time, I was pretty much blown away by the amount of mobile video demonstrations I saw when I went to Gitex in the fall. I believe this trend will continue at Mobile World Congress.

4. As usual, we’ll see complaints in various ways regarding the OTT players using the mobile broadband networks.  One such technology that will enter this fray at MWC will be WebRTC.  See my previous blog on this to get some background.  But I’m guessing you’ll see the big boys talk about this in some way.

5.  And finally, you’ll see us there.  Come visit.