I would have to say up front that the calibre of exhibitors this year was very disappointing. If CTIA sees its main competition as Mobile World Congress, then it is losing out badly in comparison. I couldn’t get round all the halls and see all the exhibitors at MWC this year – at CTIA I did the hall in half a day. Perhaps the calendar scheduling doesn’t help. It is too close to CES and MWC so it’s no surprise to see it shift to September for next year and combine with MobileCon (the mobile IT facing event). CTIA say it will create a ‘super’ wireless industry show. I won’t be holding my breath. CTIA still thinks the wireless industry in confined within the US borders. It lacks an international vision, agenda and speaker line up.

Maybe this was evident when one takes a look at who is here – and more crucially, who was not. None of the Tier 1s were to be seen in a way that would persuade the visitor that they were talking this convention seriously. None! The mobile ‘newbies’ like Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, MS, et al, all of whom had noticeable presence at MWC earlier in the year, were also absent here. Handset vendors? HTC yes (a sign of desperation maybe?) but Samsung, LG, Apple, Sony, RIM, Motorola, forget it. Dip into Tier 2 vendors; Acision, Mavinir, Comverse, Amdocs, and again no one anywhere to be seen.
The show seems to have adopted a policy of running a number of partner events specialising in a number of niches such as Co Location, small cell summit, M2M and the world of tablets. Perhaps this is how CTIA sees its future but for me it relegates into the minor league of conferences.

The exhibition hall was about the size of one of the new large halls at the new MWC venue and that’s it. It takes about one hour to walk it all. Compare that with MWCs 8 monster halls over 1.2km and you begin to get an idea on the difference in scale now between the two events. So who was exhibiting in the hall? There was a large retail area with vendors selling accessories such as cases, headsets, chargers etc. There were a lot of component suppliers but I can’t quite see what they achieve from being at the show and a lot of second SIM offerings and device distributors.

So in terms of the exhibition, nothing worthwhile at all. The keynote speaker line up is also pretty much second division stuff. So is it all worthwhile? Well, not if one hasn’t arranged a lot of meetings and the real value for the likes of Azenby is in who we can we meet there that it would be hard to get to at any other time or location.

There wasn’t too much in the way of notable announcements at the show. I think CES and MWC steal the lion’s share of major announcements and most of the device manufacturers now put on their own shoes for product launches.

Qualcomm said that mobile networks will need to carry 1,000 times more data in less than 10 years’ time and that only wide deployment of small cells could support this. (Might also need some more spectrum I think!) There will be 25 billion wireless connected devices and we will need eMBMS to offload data (where it gets off loaded to, they didn’t say).

Lots of talk amongst MNOs and carriers about the fight back against OTT ‘parasites’ (just as there was at MWC) but not much substance behind all the ranting. Some said MNOs will always be in the value chain because they issue phone numbers – but don’t bank on that being the case forever (I say) – others said we ‘control’ the device market (by that I think they mean that they subsidise it (hardly sustainable!) – and others said we can develop our own, better, OTT Apps. I think it is becoming harder to find an MNO with a grasp of the impending market changes and a coherent forward strategy.
Interestingly OTT players seemed more consolatory towards MNOs. Typical of this was Harri Koponen COO at Rovio who said ‘we see operators as friends and partners. Of course ‘Arri is ex CEO of Telia Sonera so perhaps is not totally representative of the wider OTT market but there was a wider held view that OTT players need to avoid outright hostility from MNOs.

This show is not jammed full of major announcements or much else in the way of breaking news. As I mentioned the exhibition was poor form a new technology perspective. So what’s the value in this show? It seems to me that it is not unlike MWC. It’s all about the networking and the meetings. There were a lot of companies here with private meeting rooms only who didn’t even bother with putting up a stand. A growing trend I feel.

So, can CTIA re-invent itself? After 28 years it has lost its way for sure. I am sure that it still grasps mobile in an international industry and there is more to life than lobbying the FCC on behalf of US carriers. Touch and go whether we return to CTIA next year but it is going to take something special to make us want to return.

Joining Charles on the panel were experts from Telefonica, Blackberry and Mubaloo and between them they represented a wide range of views on BYOD, around security, standardisation, usability and functionality.

Charles’ position is clear – “it certainly is a pact with the devil: for all the opportunities of bringing your new, shiny devices come a lot of security risks.”  However, the positive side is also clear (in an ideal world) with cost advantages through increased productivity, flexibility and convenience for staff.

David Rogers, Gemma Coles from Mubaloo, David Arnold from BlackBerry, Caroline Maloney from Telefonica and our Charles, of course!

Perhaps the best thing to do is accept that it is happening and try to bring in policies that protect the organisation through employee education – but there are lots of areas that need thinking through:

* How, as an organisation can you make sure that confidential data is not compromised?
* What about the dangers that Bluetooth, the camera and tethering bring?
* Are company policies effective? (think about prohibiting special websites vs configuring firewalls instead)
* The whole basis of the working day is being challenged…is it better to allow employees to work when, where and how the tasks require or switch off the email servers at the end of every working day? What about work/life balance?
* Do people really know the impacts of having certain settings on or off and what the consequences are?  Thus the options of dual SIM, embedded SIM and Soft-Sim solutions are raised – with switchable profiles…

To hear a full recording of what happened, you can listen here at The Fonecast, courtesy of Mark Bridge.

Charles showed me a demo yesterday, where he hovered an NFC device near to his smartphone, which pushed his browser to a webpage – that is how easy it is – imagine that this was a poisoned webpage.  Some of the group gasped when they realised that this could happen to them if they had the setting switched on.  More gasps when he told the audience that Angry Birds on Android reads the last number you have dialled – the information is going to them.  How many people have bluetooth on?  As shown by some of the audience responses – Charles points out that most people are not aware of these sorts of security risks. Are you?

We feel that same way about engineering support contracts and having been both sides of the fence – as a customer and vendor, I can put both sides to you:

To the vendor, the cost of support is a certainty; it is baked into the sales and bonus target at the financial year’s outset. It is a very profitable annuity (a Golden Goose) stemming from the past year’s equipment sales efforts, it inevitably will be renewed.

For the operations team, last year’s support cost for key network elements is a foundation stone for their cost budget, (a Sacred Cow), in times of financial stress other items have to be cut first.

This does not have to be the case, all operations teams should target support contracts for continuous cost reduction in real and per network element terms. Are the contracts required? Is the response acceptable? Is the scope of service too broad?

Take a tough stance with your vendors, despite their threats to withdraw support unless the established fees are paid. My experience is that it only takes two calls to get the support action required, one to the support centre, if that fails, the second to their CEO.  In 2013 I implore you not to just renew contracts like I did for the central heating, step back and see what value if any has been delivered, cast aside the traditional “x%” of cost calculations and set an ambitious target for cost reduction and delivery.

Before I go on, you can see my interview all about the awards with Mobile World Live TV here. I had over 100 texts when this went out from people that saw me on the big screens!

It has been my honour and privilege to act as Chair of the judging panel for the last six years. During this time we have evolved the awards to reflect the vast and ever-spreading nature of the mobile industry. This means adding new categories – dropping some along the way – and of course finding new judges. I cannot claim to do this all on my own. The GSMA and their agencies have an impressive team working on the awards for the previous six months to deliver the highly polished programme we saw again this year. But the GSMA is very keen to ensure that these awards are independent of the GSMA itself. Therefore is does not involve itself in the judging or the selection of judges. This insures the independence of the awards and one of my jobs as Chairman of the Judges is to make sure that the awards are conducting with the highest integrity and remain fully independent of any outside influence. The winners are picked by the judges and the judges alone.

Another thing that has happened over the last few years is that the awards ceremony itself has moved from a black tie evening event to a more open house ceremony now held as part of MWC in the main auditorium. I have mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand it is now accessible to far more people but on the other hand the celebration party is very different now!

I mentioned our 150 judges before and let me say a few more words about them. They come from all over the world, from many different industries, from varying backgrounds and they all give up their time to read and study every entry before awarding marks and selecting the winners. I think we can safely say that this is a very impressive selection of judges. One of the great pleasures of chairing the judging panel is having the opportunity to meet so many knowledgeable people.

The awards ceremony itself is always hosted by an international celebrity. This year it was David Walliams, last year Tim Minchin and previously we have been equally richly entertained by Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry, Michael McIntyre and Clive Anderson to name but a few. Hey, this job has to have some perks!

The programme this year was the fullest it has ever been. The Connected Life category brought in many new industry sectors such as Health, Education, Automotive as well as established previous categories such as mobile finance and mobile money. We tried to have a ‘where does it all come together category’ we called Smart Cities. Other recent innovations has been the Best Mobile Device Launched at Mobile world Congress where our judges do some real time judging to hunt down the best new device unveiled at the show.

Hugh Bradlow - CTO Telstra, Bill Best, IP Hong, Head of Global Marketing Group, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd & David Walliams

We have also created a very prestigious CTO panel of judges and this year we asked them to pick the overall best technology in the awards programme. Amongst our star studied CTO line up is Hugh Bradlow from Telstra – Hugh and I had the privilege of presenting the award this year to Samsung.

If you want see a full list of the winners and find out more about the Global Mobile Awards programme, go take a look at globalmobileawards.com. I hope this has sparked your interest in the awards and why not find a category that suits your business and make an entry next year. You never know we might just be meeting on stage next year!

What’s wrong with this picture?

Here’s a clue. It was taken at the GSMA Mobile World Congress – so, at the annual gathering of the biggest cellular gathering of the planet, the communication vehicle of choice was……………………………….Wi-Fi. 

Now call me picky but I find it more than a bit odd that at the world’s premier gathering of the 2G, 3G and 4G industry, we don’t use our own product! Hey, if we don’t, why do we think our customers will? Is it simply down to pricing (and outrageous roaming charges)? Is it a convenience thing? Is it users just think Wi-Fi is better? Whatever it is, shouldn’t we be worried about it?  The strangest thing of all is that no one in the industry seemed to bat and eyelid or even stop to think about this!  

The next Elephant is more of the common-or-garden variety

Add to this the need to assure consistent quality to customers, interworking between networks and roaming, one can begin to see that offering voice on LTE networks is far from straightforward. The final conundrum is how will Operators charge for a voice call or will they even be able to charge for voice? If voice is just part of the data package then recouping all the costs on voice is going to be very challenging for MNOs. This elephant seems to me to be getting bigger by the month.

And so to the last Elephant and this one was another biggy but the difference being this one looks a bit like a white elephant.

It’s RCS or bust. There is no plan B, no other option, and not a lot of imagination being applied to countering the OTT threat. If RCS is the answer, then someone has asked the wrong question. On the upside, and clutching at straws, if an MNO has dug deep into the pocket for an IMS core for VoLTE then at least RCS will help with the investment case. The real issue for me is that it’s too little, too late and all still happening far too slowly. The concept was around in the early part of the last decade but MNOs dragged their heels, thought they could go it alone and eventually wasted the best part of 10 years. Had RCS been deployed 5 years ago it would have been an effective counter to OTT challengers but having it finally arrive as a fully interoperable global platform in 5 years from now seems to me like the horse will have bolted and the white elephant still struggling for balance.

So how about some good things from MWC? Plenty of them, we should not be too despondent.

• NFC is gathering pace nicely with good device support from all the leading manufacturers (Apple apart) and lots of ways to use it being demonstrated here at MWC. We could even use NFC to gain entry to the halls each day.
• Connected Life and Connect City is coming together. The life changing and enhancing things happening around what we call mHealth, mEducation, mFinance and we had a good demo of the futuristic connected city which was good fun.
• Also new this year was the Mobile World Capital Centre which is nicely located on the lovely Plaça de Cataluña. This is well worth a visit. It’s a very impressive exhibition of all things mobile both past and present.

My final reflection is that MWC continues to get bigger and bigger every year – the mobile industry continues to spread well beyond the boundaries we all became familiar with over the years. A wander round the halls is evidence enough. I counted countless exhibitors that I would never have dreamt I would be seeing at MWC when it first came to Barcelona in 2006.  The mobile ride might be a bit bumpy these days and it might continue to have some dips on its collective roller-coaster ride but one thing is for sure. We are nowhere near the top of the ride yet. 

The Cybersecurity presentation was part of the UK Trade and Industry sessions, where I described the work of the Standards Institutions and the various World and European initiatives. I pointed out that although there was general agreement that it was about the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, nobody had yet agreed on how to spell Cybersecurity (or Cyber security or Cyber-security!).

So what did I find that was new? Well, I guess the messages for me was Data (using up all the capacity and stretching the networks), the rise of the Machine to Machine, the Connected City demonstration was well thought out and provoking, and Near Field Communications demonstrations were fun (I also beamed one Business Card, transferred two photos and got in and out quickly without the usual Photo Identity all with NFC). They all have security issues as well – so I will be busy!

The GSMA Android App was really great, a few bugs, but helped find and time talks and stands, let’s hope it stays for next year, it will make the experience almost truly paperless!

So I guess there was really nothing really new, a few more shiny things and some of the more significant announcements being held over: Like the one that the Samsung S4 would be shown at New York next month. Not forgetting the big players, who did not come to the party, but who also held biggest parties off in the City. 

You know what? I’ve always had mixed feelings about it. On the plane back home, on the Thursday afternoon, I used to think, once again, that I didn’t quite get what I wanted out of the trip.

On the one hand, it was and still is great just being there. Without doubt, ‘the’ event of the year for the Mobile industry. One place, one time, where all players come together. An annual celebration of the success of Mobile – let’s not be modest here; Mobile has changed the lives of people – as well as a commercial trade fair where businesses talk to one another under one roof, quickly and efficiently. Well done, GSMA!

On the other hand, one’s schedule was predetermined. Your meetings had been planned. Your Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up by formal meetings with companies and people who you saw quite a few times during the year – people you did or might do business with … people who you saw several times outside of the conference, anyway.

So, you only had the Thursday morning to do something different.. when people are beginning to pack up and get ready to go home! OK, now you can see why I sat on the plane Thursday afternoon having mixed feelings.

For me, it will be different this year. Having stopped full-time, executive working last year, I am going to Barcelona as Chairman of Azenby, a specialist wireless advisory firm based in London and a guest of GSMA.. who have asked me to chair, to moderate a discussion panel on Emerging Network Business Models.

The session is, provocatively, called “Whose Network Is It”. You will know that this was not by accident, if you happen to know me and what I’ve been up to during the last 4-5 years. If you want to find out who is on my discussion panel and what they think about the future of our industry, watch this space. One thing is for sure. This will not be a techy session but a ‘business discussion’. It’s about re-shaping/evolving our industry. It will be a real discussion amongst 4-5 people with ideas, strategies, plans, and indeed, initiatives actually in action.

All in all, it will not be one of my usual trips to Barcelona this year. Watch this space.

I look forward to being able to talk about the Global Mobile Awards Winners
I will have the pleasure of attending the Global Mobile Awards ceremony, now in their 18th year. I think we can safely say that they are the most prestigious and influential awards in our industry. As honorary Chair of the judging panel it has been my pleasure to oversee the judging process. Given that there are 37 categories this year and well over 150 judges in all, it has been quite a task. Loved every minute though!

Why Chief Technology Officers should come out of hiding!
During my time as a CTO I think I visited the show only once. Some of my team attended but overall probably only about five people from the whole company used to attend the show. I still find today attendance by CTOs to be patchy and most that I meet are there because they are speaking or are on a panel session. I find it interesting to analyse why this should be given that this is a technology show, nearly all the world’s main vendors and manufacturers are there and often announcing new products, and all that is new and bright in our industry is in one place for one week. Maybe it’s because the CTO is a ‘hunted’ animal at these types of show. I remember being stalked by no end of suppliers thrusting their business cards in my direction. I enjoy my current anonymity!
I think another reason is that a CTO can get any vendor to visit them at any time and would expect to be kept up to date on product road maps without having to go to trade show. All of this is true but the CTO does miss out by not coming to MWC. True the CTO can pick up the phone and any supplier will come running but it is what and who the CTO doesn’t know that he is missing out on and MWC is that once-a-year chance to go and discover it – perhaps from a vendor that would never ordinarily get to meet despite having called his or her PA 20 times.

What I am looking forward to
So I think I am all ready to go. Have worked out what I want to focus on – small cells and RAN sharing – have set up a lot of meets already and looking forward to the annual ‘bump’ – those people we only ever seem to bump into at MWC.

I’ve been going to the Mobile World Congress for many a year. My first appearance was pre-Cannes, on the Athens stage. Over the years I’ve given presentations, chaired panels, judged the awards and partied the nights away! My main interest is in Security, having been in it from the start, but I also like to check out the main theme for the year which in the past have been GPRS, 3G, Apps, LTE and M2M.

I have to come early, as there are lots of meetings before the main event begins, so will be arriving on the Thursday before. Because I booked just after the last one, I have IBIS rooms at 50 euros a night. You should think about planning for next year now!

I usually work out a few things beforehand, as otherwise you waste a lot of time: Key note speeches to attend, talks to go to (in my case the security ones), and talks to give (this year just the UK Cybersecurity one), people I must see (arrange appointments), exhibits I must see (security related and gadgets!). I go through the plan of the exhibits and make a list, and the important evening events to attend. The evening events are most important, as these are where you meet other useful people to catch up with them. I usually have a few invites, and there are some I have to attend where I am a minor functionary (such as ETSI). Others, like the whisky tasting at the Scottish Stand are where everyone meets!

I carry as little as possible, but take an umbrella and water bottle. I also bring my small teddy bear along, and try and blag a pass for him, a sort of security test! Comfortable shoes are a must, as well as stacks of business cards. I also have a Spanish SIM with prepaid data which I recharge every year – the WiFi is not always the fastest. Most of the faces are the same, but everyone moves around companies so you have to keep up with them! I always take time to look through the daily newspaper every day to catch up with the announcements, press releases and themes. Afterwards I type up a small report, and try and follow up the key contacts and ToDo list.

My security tasks for this year? Thinking about Embedded SIMs and Machine to Machine; are people building in security to devices yet? How useful is the latest blast of publicity we get on malware and viruses? I am hoping none of it is too exaggerated! And of course I will be spreading the message about the importance of security in products and services as it has a direct influence on your profit……. too often I see the technology used wrongly, with unrealistic expectations, leading to insecure networks, products and services. Mind you, it keeps me in a job!

So get ready for long treks, long nights and tired feet and heed my top tip – you will get the most out of it if you plan.

I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds.

Interestingly, the Euro note makes no such assurance or promise and perhaps with what’s going on in the Eurozone, that’s no bad thing! Well, our promise to pay the bearer is about to be condemned to history. The mobile revolution is coming and pretty soon we’ll just wave our mobile phone in the air and its job done. At least that’s the message coming out of the Mobile Money Summit in Milan this month.

If anyone was in any doubt about this they could pick up a free mobile phone at the summit (on loan of course) and use it to buy their tickets on the tram, get around town, and even buy goods in the shops – and hey, it all worked. Pretty impressive. A quick spin round the summit convinced me that the technology works just fine so why is Mobile Money taking so long to come to reality? Perhaps I should clarify that and say why is it taking so long in the developed markets for mobile money to become a reality, as emerging and developing markets are streets ahead.

From MPESA onwards mobile operators have been the pioneers of bringing money services to the un-banked. In fact I am pretty proud of the way the mobile operators have gone where the banks have feared to tread and provided life changing services to whole communities. Make no mistake, mobile money has changed the lives and prospects of millions of people around the world. Where banks and other financial institutions saw credit risks and bad debt, mobile operators have seen customers in need of help and have delivered beyond expectations.

More evidence of emerging markets leading the way came from mBank, a joint venture which launched nationally in the Philippines three weeks ago, between Smart and PlaNet, and claims to be the first microfinance bank to be fully based on mobile technology.

In the developed world where the vast majority have the ‘privilege’ of being banked, we are perhaps more interested in Near Field Communication (NFC) which made up the other half of this summit. Thanks to a good demo from Telecom Italia, I could use my mobile phone to open my Alfa Romeo (well, not mine but I can dream) start the engine and drive away. I like this – you know the damage that car keys can do to your pockets. I can even give permission for my son or daughter to drive the car but that’s a feature too far for me!

This was a theme expanded by the CEO of mobile money technology provider, Oberthur Technologies, Xavier Drilhon. During a good presentation he said mobile money is not the ‘killer app’ but it is probably the first app. It’s the driver and first step many of us will take before embracing the full range of future NFC services such as transport, event ticketing, and access control and loyalty schemes. I think he’s right. But why isn’t it happening all around us today? Of course it takes the building of complete eco systems across multiple industries to join up all the necessary dots and summits like this help push us a little nearer to making this happen.

Another barrier is perceived to be the security and integrity of mobile money services. This seems a bit strange to me given the inherent underlying security measures being used in mobile networks and mobile money services and when I think of the (relatively) pathetic measures involved in PC on-line banking I can’t help but to raise a smile. A very good gathering of regulators were in attendance here to find out a lot more about mobile money services and not just the security aspects. The GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked program was active behind the scenes mobilising all the movers and shakers to promote new services.

The focus of the Summit was very much around mobile services – Google and their wallet along with Apple and their Passport were not in attendance – but who cares? Their own view of a mobile money is much more self-serving and working with partners is hardly their modus operandi. So safe to say they weren’t missed in the slightest.

Is there still a lot to be done? Yes, for sure. We won’t be using our mobile phone for everything and anything just yet but it is coming together – slowly. Recognised at this Summit was the need for a greater emphasis on NFC open specifications and the need to convince merchants of the benefits to them. The GSMA is certainly doing its bit to facilitate progress but fragmentation remains the big danger.

Let’s finish on a positive note though, because this was an upbeat summit. Philippe Vallée, from Gemalto, told us that the mobile NFC market is gaining traction in several countries around the world. Vallée said there is now a growing list of countries adopting NFC technology in a big way, with Singapore, the US, Canada, UK and Italy following in the footsteps of France, Japan and South Korea. “This is moving very fast,” he said.

Good, we are all waiting!