Mobile World Congress is right around the corner. While there are some constants, such as crowds, lots of walking, even more meetings and those ubiquitous cheese and/or jamon sandwiches for lunch, there are changes in messaging from year to year.  This year’s theme is “The Edge of Innovation” but I’m not sure MWC is the place to go for intense innovation.  Sure, there will be new smartphones announced which are innovative from a continued evolution standpoint, and I think we’ll see a spate of 5G messaging (even though it’s not defined yet) but you’ll have to dig deep for some innovation.  It’s really a place for the big guys to make announcements, and for everyone else to have meetings.

Beyond some silly 5G messaging springing up, I expect we’ll see NFV messaging throughout. This is the hot topic in the industry nowadays and we’ll see people tagging NFV to everything they can.  This is no different than any other year when messaging is tied to the hot topic.  It will be up to you to determine who offers a truly good message worth talking to.

I expect we’ll see VoLTE messaging, too.   While some may consider this an old message, there aren’t really that many VoLTE implemtations out there.  But VoLTE offers advantages (see my previous blog on this topic) and is starting to be deployed. So for those companies that want to sell something this year, you’ll find this type of messaging.

In the same camp is video.  Video obviously is a large driver for LTE in general.  Just look at the screens continuing to increase in size.  It’s not for people like me who have degrading eyesight so they can read their emails easier.  It’s for people to watch video.   But more and more video means more and more data on the network.  At some point, LTE will slow down from this video.  So I would guess we’ll see a resurgence of some video optimization messaging of various sorts at MWC.

We’ll see for sure when we show up.  And I’m looking forward to it.