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.
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.
One topic that comes up every year at MWC, the telecommunications industry’s largest and de facto standard event, is modernizing telco networks to enable them to create new, revenue-generating services. However, again at this year’s conference in Barcelona, revenue growth for service providers remains elusive, despite the industry having spent billions on building out its 5G infrastructure and introducing many digital experience products.
As MWC 2025, premier telecommunications service provider show still known by many as Mobile World Congress, gets underway this week in Barcelona, Cisco Systems Inc. made a splash early. The networking company issued several product announcements that offer deeper network insights using artificial intelligence and automation. From connected devices to connectivity assurance, the solutions are designed to help service providers deliver reliable AI-powered experiences on a larger scale.
VMware Inc. announced several product updates to its networking and security products at Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, in the first major update for the company since Broadcom Inc. acquired it. Before the event, I had a preview of the developments with Abe Ankumah, head of SASE/SD-WAN, and Padma Sudarsan, the chief of architecture for telco, both leaders in Broadcom’s software-defined edge division.