After the pandemic in 2020 forced the fair to be canceled and in 2021 it offered us a very weak version, MWC 2022 has given us back an event with pavilions full of stands and tens of thousands of attendees. This edition, moreover, has been the first with Álvarez-Pallete at the head of the GSMA, which in his inaugural speech he took the opportunity to once again demand a fairer regulatory framework.
The most important annual event in the sector It is being held, once again, with the participation of the three major operators and the absence of Grupo MásMóvil and other actors such as DIGI or Finetwork. We are going to review everything that this MWC is leaving us in the midst of rumors about possible mergers, and with Orange and Vodafone actively working for the consolidation.
Telefónica: the race for the metaverse begins
Although during the previous days he was already informing us of the news that he planned to announce at the MWC, Telefónica waited until Sunday to inaugurate his stand in the metaverse. In it, we were able to see different demonstrations and follow the sessions that take place in the Ágora, all this virtually and with an avatar chosen by us among the ten available. And related to this, it has announced the new Open2metaverse in search of startups to squeeze the new virtual world.
Apart from the metaverse, Telefónica has also confirmed various news related to home entertainment, and more specifically, with its Movistar Plus+ Living Apps, which welcome Twitter, to see what’s new on the social network, and ‘Movistar Home Selection’, to buy products on Amazon. Directly on TV, of course.
In addition, Telefónica has extended the agreement with Microsoft to bring Teams and other services to the fourth platform. That is, to Movistar Home, where, by the way, Zoom has also arrived.
There have also been no lack of use cases and demonstrations of the advantages of 5G in terms of latency and speed. And here the drones have had a lot of prominence. In one case, as a surveillance system from the air, and in another, for the maintenance of electrical networks.
Vodafone: from OpenRAN to sustainability
For yet another year, Vodafone is, together with Telefónica, the telecom company that has brought the most novelties to the MWC. And if the Spanish company has opted for the metaverse, the English operator has done the same with OpenRAN. In this sense, Vodafone has confirmed that it will expand its network laboratory in Ciudad Real to create a OpenRAN testbed. And not only that, but he has also made the first commercial video call on this network.
Another important announcement has been the Vodafone DAB platform, with which it wants to make the ‘Things Economy’ available to its customers, or what is the same, a new generation of the Internet of Things (IoT). The first test of this has been done with electric vehicles capable of interacting by themselves with the charging points, but the future possibilities are enormous.
We have also known ‘Home 5G’, a service that will arrive in the coming months and that will include a 5G router as an alternative to fiber. It promises speeds of up to 1 Gbps and, initially, it will be available in 63 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
Incidentally, Vodafone has promised expand your 5G coverage up to 46% of the Spanish population in 2022 (almost 1,000 municipalities) and has created a solution that, through an API, reduces battery consumption when using its networks.
In this edition of the MWC; Vodafone has surprised us with a stand made with sustainable materials in which we could find a vertical garden of 6 meters and a sculpture made with almost 200 mobiles. Both the plants and the telephones will be donated at the end of the fair.
At that stand we have been able to see first-hand the 5G and IoT sensor demos that Vodafone had prepared and whose purposes ranged from combating illegal logging to promoting reforestation, avoiding accidents on cliffs or managing a hospital more efficiently. We have even learned that the operator is already testing mobile network base stations in the United Kingdom that are self-sufficient with renewable energy.
Orange: 5G underwater and tourism
As usual in recent years, the presence of Orange during this MWC has been somewhat discreet. However, the French operator has taken advantage of the framework of the fair to announce that it has chosen Ericsson as its supplier core network in 5G Stand Alone (SA) in Spain. Its roadmap contemplates 2022 as a year of preparation, testing and deployment to facilitate commercial launches from 2023.
Apart from that, at the Orange stand, we have been able to see and test a couple of 5G technology use cases. The first of them has allowed us to control with gestures an underwater ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) located in the Valencia Oceanographic, 400 km away from the Fira de Barcelona. At the same time, on the large screens of the stand, it was possible to see the images of the aquarium transmitted in real time by the ROV.
The other use case that Orange has brought to the fair is a immersive journey through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Thus, and thanks to a Virtual Reality helmet, we have been able to explore some important milestones in the history of the cathedral, from its construction in the Middle Ages to its current restoration.