IoT, M&As to be hot trends at MWC

Mobile industry representatives will gather in Barcelona late this month for the latest annual Mobile World Congress event, the sector’s largest gathering.

This year’s event will take place from 27 February to 2 March. Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2017, experts from across the telecoms spectrum have predicted what they think will be the defining trends of the show.

Among the key themes of the event will be the Internet of Things, the experts predict.

“At Mobile World Congress, there will be a focus on IoT from all sectors and industries attending the show. Markets as diverse as health care and manufacturing are becoming more dependent on automation, IoT and M2M communications to drive business processes and mission-critical systems,” Netscout Area VP for Marketing Strategy Michael Segal said.

“However, progress will be hampered by a new breed of malware threats that use IoT devices as hosts and M2M networks to propagate and run amok in factories, hospitals and smart homes. To date, innocuous devices such as routers, webcams and even printers have been used as a bridgehead for nefarious hackers and botnets. These types of attacks will become more prevalent as we go through the year and will intensify in scale when commercial applications are affected.”

Operators at the show will also be looking for technologies that help them ensure their networks can handle the ever-increasing volumes of data traffic generated by video content, including live streaming and OTT video content.

“At MWC, operators will be looking for technology that delivers additional capacity, cost-effectively and as soon as possible,” Blue Danube CEO Mark Pinto said.

While 5G, the next evolution of mobile technology after 4G or LTE, is expected to be high on the agenda as a solution, its commercialisation is still years away, he noted.

“Operators want to ensure a sustained and high-quality viewing experience for their subscribers now and well into the next decade. Fortunately, it’s possible to achieve this by deploying smart antenna solutions that can be integrated directly into the network to address capacity demands on LTE networks, but also support 5G and fixed wireless applications as and when required.”

BICS CEO Daniel Kurgan meanwhile predicted that the digital revolution will push mobile operators to explore convergence and collaboration.

“This year, we’ll see more M&A activity as mobile operators and pure-play telecoms businesses look to partner with digital service providers, cloud communications companies and even FinTech companies to embed mobile and rich communications services into their core proposition.”

Another potential avenue for M&A activity will be in media content, with operators seeking to follow the trend set by AT&T’s recent US$85 billion ($112.49 billion) acquisition of media giant Time Warner, according to OpenCloud Head of Marketing Chris Haddock.

“Operators will not create their own content, but through strategic partnerships and acquisitions will acquire a range of exclusive content, offering it to subscribers as a way to differentiate their propositions,” he said.

Image courtesy of Kārlis Dambrāns under CC

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