As one would expect, artificial intelligence was a top theme at the recent MWC conference in Barcelona, but 6G was certainly prominent as well. This year, the discussions has pivoted from the maturation of 5G wireless networks to the “seamless path” toward 6G. But for those of us who have spent the better part of two decades watching G-cycles come and go, there was a healthy dose of skepticism at the show.
Enterprises are currently fighting a two-front war. On one side, there is an aggressive push toward AI adoption; on the other, an infrastructure landscape so fractured across edge, cloud and on-premises sites that scaling becomes nearly impossible.
For years, the industry conversation around stadium technology has been stuck on a single, albeit important, metric: How many thousands of fans can simultaneously post a selfie to Instagram? Though the “connected stadium” was once a differentiator, it has rapidly become a baseline requirement. I recently talked to the leadership at Ruckus Networks and the Los Angeles Football Club about the recent deployment of Wi-Fi 7 at BMO Stadium (pictured), and one of the big takeaways is the narrative around high-density Wi-Fi has shifted.
The communications industry is filled with vendors that once dominated one aspect of the “stack” but have been focused on building a unified platform that includes voice, video, meetings, contact center and much more. But the most interesting vendor in the market is Zoom Communications Inc.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. announced new networking, compute hardware, cloud operations software and financing updates for service providers at this past week’s MWC26 in Barcelona. The updates center on meeting the new demands being created by artificial intelligence reshaping every aspect of network design — from centralized data centers to distributed edge environments.