Telecoms · 27 February 2019

MWC Barcelona 2019 – notes from the mobile industry's biggest fair

Five video dispatches from MWC 2019: 5G is everywhere on the show floor, but the killer application and business model are still missing.

Five video dispatches from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 2019 – the world’s largest telecoms trade fair. Together they sketch a pivotal moment: 5G is everywhere on the exhibition floor, but the killer application and the business model are still nowhere to be found.

The series covers the main themes of MWC 2019: Huawei’s network equipment under scrutiny as a US delegation lobbied for a European ban; the edge-computing showcase from Deutsche Telekom’s MobiledgeX subsidiary, with a Pokémon Go–style demo game named Neon; Xiaomi’s new flagship smartphones arriving at aggressive 5G prices; and the question of fast home broadband – how operators plan to deliver fibre speeds without digging up gardens.

I reported from MWC for Handelsblatt. The full article analyses how 5G hype is meeting reality.

Published in Handelsblatt

February 24, 2019 ·MWC Barcelona

At Mobile World Congress, 5G hype meets reality

Real-time mobile is supposed to revolutionise the economy – with billions in investment from telecoms companies. But a viable business model is still missing.

Machine translation. The verbatim German original is on handelsblatt.com (link below).

Pokémon are supposed to save the telecoms industry. More than that: they are supposed to save the entire sector of network operators. The man behind the idea is Jason Hoffman, president and CEO of MobiledgeX – a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary that has struck a partnership with Niantic, the US studio behind Pokémon Go. The aim of the collaboration is to showcase the strengths of the next mobile generation: 5G.

Softly humming, three computers sit in a technical room concealed at the rear of Deutsche Telekom's stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Those three black servers form the basis of Jason Hoffman's showcase project, providing an especially fast connection. Just a few metres away Hoffman, together with Telekom and Niantic, has set up the first demonstration of the new technology. Code-name: Neon.

It is a kind of virtual dodgeball. There are no Pokémon – but the game logic is similar: the real world is linked with the virtual. The twist is that players can only truly compete together because of the direct connection to the fast nearby servers. For now the test still runs on 4G. In future, the new technology is meant to come into its own. Ideally the creators want to build on the Pokémon Go hype to help 5G break through.

The mobile game Pokémon Go demonstrated for the first time how the fusion of digital and real worlds could become a mass phenomenon. For months enthusiastic players gathered in city centres across Germany in search of special treasures, strengthening their Pokémon and competing against each other. Hoffman wants to use exactly this principle to unlock the strengths of 5G. The Neon demonstration is meant to be just the beginning.

5G real-time mobile is supposed to become the saviour of the telecoms industry – the decisive catalyst for Industry 4.0. But network operators still have almost no idea how they plan to make money from 5G. The build-out will swallow billions of euros, on top of spectrum auction costs. Everyone is searching for the magic formula that will turn 5G from hype into genuine profit.