We are back again with another update from Europe’s leading trade show. Yesterday was day three of Mobile World Congress and the pace had certainly eased off a little from the big announcements of the first two days. Day three was clearly the opportunity for reflection, analysis and future-gazing.
So here’s our insights from day three of MWC….
Smart cities flourishing
Smart cities, as we reported on day one, continued to be a key theme for MWC and we’re hearing about many initiatives that have been put into practice.
For instance, Moscow has rolled out new technologies to make the city safer, including 160,000 outdoor cameras focused on traffic and possible crime areas – making it one of the largest municipal camera installations in Europe. A pilot project that relies on AI to analyse CT scans for lung cancer has also been piloted in the Russian city.
Support for Narrowband IoT (which improves power consumption of user devices and is seen as a critical step towards mass adoption of IoT), looks to be increasing with a rise in global service provider partnerships and demand from enterprises worldwide. Cisco Jasper has completed live trials of NB-IoT across Optus’ core network in Australia and has announced partnerships with Honda, Korea Telecom and wearable health tracking company Jupl. Huawei released its NB-IoT Ecosystem Partner List and revealed its plans to build 30 commercial NB-IoT networks in 20 countries worldwide by the end of the year.
As for the smart home, Accenture warned that telcos need to move quickly and capitalise on the fortunes of the smart phone, before Google and Amazon take full ownership of the living room.
A Glimpse into the Future
Pokémon Go grabbed a slice of the limelight with its creator saying that the future is in Augmented Reality. John Hanke told the BBC that he feels that AR will truly allow people to use their smartphones to interact with the world around them like never before.
NEXTech in Hall 8 was certainly where the cool kids were at. A spectrum of AR/VR, hardware, software, humanoid robots, drones, cognitive computing – MWC is certainly evolving into something much more than a telecoms show.
What’s stitching all of this together is 5G; it may be an evolution rather than a revolution, but it is undoubtedly leading us into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It’s where automation begins to play an increasingly important part in our lives. The Fourth Industrial revolution has been a recurring theme throughout the show but yesterday was the day it was brought to the forefront with a series of keynotes from Nokia, PWC, Tele2 and Smart Dubai.
In case you’re visiting the show for tomorrow’s final day – some sound advice from MWC: clothes ON.
