MWC Las Vegas 2024 Recap and Highlights (with Earl Lum)

At MWC Las Vegas 2024, the absence of major operators and the emphasis on enterprise solutions signaled a shift in the industry. While the hype surrounding private networks generated significant interest, the scarcity of new spectrum and the decline in Capex raised concerns about the industry’s future trajectory. As expected AI was primarily discussed in the context of spectrum sharing and efficiency, with limited practical applications in call centers and network optimization.

Earl Lum of EJL Wireless joins Leonard Lee of neXt Curve to recap this year's MWC Las Vegas show and to share and discuss the highlights and the key takes from the premiere mobile wireless industry event in the Americas.

Earl & Leonard discuss the following topic that mattered from Mobile World Congress Las Vegas 2024:

• What has MWC Las Vegas become? How did it get here? (2:20)
• MWC Las Vegas 2024 in a nutshell according to Earl (4:56)
• The case for rural Open RAN opportunities (7:55)
• The big themes of MWC Las Vegas 2024 (10:34)
• Earl's agenda going in to MWC Las Vegas 2024 - Parental Supervision Advised! (13:16)
• A more practical slant on AI for the RAN and telco (16:17)
• What needs to change for MWC Las Vegas 2025 (21:30)
• The telco industry identity crisis (26:15)

Connect with Earl Lum at www.ejlwireless.com. Hit both of us on LinkedIn and take part in our industry and tech insights. 

Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout - https://nextcurvepodcast.buzzsprout.c... - or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.  

Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights that matter.

Chapters

• 2:20 What has MWC Las Vegas become? How did it get here?
• 4:56 MWC Las Vegas 2024 in a nutshell according to Earl
• 7:55 The case for rural Open RAN opportunities
• 10:34 The big themes of MWC Las Vegas 2024
• 13:16 Earl's agenda going in to MWC Las Vegas 2024 - Parental Supervision Advised!
• 16:17 A more practical slant on AI for the RAN and telco
• 21:30 What needs to change for MWC Las Vegas 2025
• 26:15 The telco industry identity crisis

Transcript

0:06

Next curve.

Leonard Lee: 0:10

Hey everyone. Welcome to next curves, rethink webcast and our series from the radio to the Rick and I'm Leonard Lee, executive analyst at next curve joined my, my very good friend and renowned telco tech analyst and industry analyst or alum of EGL wireless research. Hey dude, how's it going?

Earl Lum: 0:33

I am doing fine over here in Dallas and looking forward to seeing you in a day and a half.

Leonard Lee: 0:39

Yeah. Yeah. For five G Americas. Can't believe I just called you dude. But other

Earl Lum: 0:46

things,

Leonard Lee: 0:48

there's a lot worse things that you, I could have called you, but I'm exactly. Yes. In this episode, we'll be recapping MWC Las Vegas, 2024, which I opted out of this year. And of course it took place in Las Vegas on October 8th to, I think it's like the 11th, right? Something like that. Okay. All right. Around that timeframe that week. And before we get started, remember to like share and comment on this episode and subscribe to the reefing podcast here on YouTube and on buzzsprout. Take us on the road and on your jog, listen to us on your favorite. Podcast platform. And so with that let's get started here, Earl. So how are you doing, my friend?

Earl Lum: 1:41

I am doing fine. And ready to give you a recap of what I saw and thought about Vegas.

Leonard Lee: 1:47

This is going to be, this is going to be good. Yeah,

Earl Lum: 1:51

it will be. And I would say you didn't miss much by opting out and doing your other event that week.

Leonard Lee: 1:58

Yeah, I'm like triple book this whole season is insane. I don't know how I'm going to handle all of this, but you guys didn't hear that. Okay. I'll figure it out. But yeah, this year. Yeah. I opted out this year and heavily relied on you to bring back the story, the MWC. Las Vegas, 2024 story. And, I think the saga that the CTIA and GSMA are going through right now is trying to figure out how to reconstitute MWC, and you know,

Earl Lum: 2:38

in the United States,

Leonard Lee: 2:39

in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been kind of a slog, right. Especially after the pandemic. I think the last time we saw a sizable MWC QS event was in Los Angeles, right? I think it was 2019. 2019

Earl Lum: 3:02

was where it was still somewhat healthy and somewhat alive.

Leonard Lee: 3:07

Yeah. And there was great hope at that time that the media industry would And the telco industry would figure out some kind of 5g infused and powered synergy. And a lot of that hope was due to this massive acquisition that AT& T did of time Warner, I think on the order of 60 billion, or at least that's what they put off. Yeah.

Earl Lum: 3:35

Yes. Small cells were the big talk millimeter wave. Was obviously the exciting new trend that was happening as 5G was just getting launched here in the U. S. by Verizon.

Leonard Lee: 3:48

Yeah, we've come, we've actually come a long way, it's been over 5 years since peak of 5G excitement and anticipation. And now, so what did you see at MWC Las Vegas? What

Earl Lum: 4:01

I saw was after 26 years of CTIA and MWC San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas was a. A show that needs to be either put out of his misery, completely rebooted, because if I was an exhibitor, I don't think I would have been very happy paying what I paid to be there with a booth, with a meeting room or whatever. And I think the show is reached a level where it's not really about. Mobile it's about mobile, but it's not mobile carrier. It's mobile enterprise. It's in building and it's not about the macro network like the other shows that MWC puts on around the world. So I can't say some four letter words that I would use, but I don't think it was a good show. And after again, 26 years of going to this show, this was the low point. I had a great show personally, because of the meetings that I have. And the people that I was meeting with, but if I was going to the show to try to get contacts, to try to justify the amount of money I paid in exhibiting at the show, I would not be looking to come back, or I would only be going to Barcelona because it's not worth it from a time and money perspective. And I think the major thing this year. Even though last year was already on the way down and on life support, we are brain dead now. And should we pull the plug and take everyone off the respirator is how I would describe this year, because the number of exhibitors was still very low. The quality of the exhibitors was again, nowhere near what you would expect from an MWC event. And I think that the majority of the meetings that actually happened were in the food court off the exhibitor floor. Everyone staked out a table and just sat there all day and had their meetings for free.

Leonard Lee: 6:17

Yeah, and maybe the lesson learned here is that they need to get out of the West Hall and go to a different hall where there isn't a massive cafeteria where people will congregate and have their business meetings there, make it, maybe make that a little And can be, I'm sure there's

Earl Lum: 6:37

people in the cafeteria and charge for that because that's not their jurisdiction since their jurisdictions on the show floor and in the meeting rooms. So if they could charge, I'm sure they would.

Leonard Lee: 6:48

Right, right. Yeah, because I've noticed over the last, I think it's like three years that they've been holding MWC U. S. I guess in Las Vegas, that cafeteria or that food court area has become, increasingly populated and used in exactly the capacity that you're talking about. So,

Earl Lum: 7:09

and it was full the whole time while the exhibit floor and hall was mostly empty. And so you could walk down the aisles and you didn't have a problem in getting from any of the aisles down from one end to the other the booths. If you were lucky, maybe you had one person there but most of the exhibitors look like they were bored and waiting for people to come up and talk to them. I'm not sure about the actual panels. I was on 1 panel on the 1st day that was full, but it might have been because it was the 1st day and it was the 1st panel of the event that it was full and standing room only compared to whatever other panels happened after that.

Leonard Lee: 7:51

Yeah. So how was that panel? How was it?

Earl Lum: 7:55

It was on rural open RAN opportunities, and it was moderated by Dave Simpson out of Virginia tech.

8:03

And

Earl Lum: 8:04

it was really focused about with two operators on the panel from the rural markets, how can you deploy open RAN in a rural market? I think the key takeaway was most rural operators do not have a substantial Tech force in their operations. They may have a half a dozen engineers. So if you're an open RAN Company and you want to sell an open RAN solution the amount of hand holding you're going to need to do is Substantial and they're going to need a fully tested turnkey product because they have no time to test it Sure. No resources to test it. So I think that was something where it's not about the cost necessarily, which is also an important thing. But it's the fact that there are no resources at these rural operators. And if you throw them five pieces of open rent equipment and expect that they're going to do something in a lab, you are mistaken. Um, so I think they, they really need a much more integrated and turnkey product from the vendors in the open RAN community. And the question is that even possible at the current stage we are at within the industry?

Leonard Lee: 9:24

Yeah. And it just it harkens back to our episodes now almost going on three years ago of. Open ran squid game. I'm sure a lot of people hate it when I bring that up, but Hey, now we are where we are. We

Earl Lum: 9:40

are having calamari and the squid's been fried in a bunch of delicious ways, but it's still the incumbents, it's still single vendor open RAN, at least on the DU side, with maybe a second or third radio guy, if you're lucky to pick up the scraps, which is a far cry from the initial hopes and expectations of the industry, and it's not cheaper.

Leonard Lee: 10:06

Yeah, and that was always the assertion, right? By the open round for quite some

Earl Lum: 10:12

time, this would drive down costs and that is not happening. And I don't think that will ever happen.

Leonard Lee: 10:18

There's some brutal honesty from Earl. I mean, I wasn't on the, I wasn't on the ground to observe a lot of this stuff. So I'm really counting on your very Frank. And really beyond brutally honest assessment here. What were some of the big themes you mentioned enterprise, but were there any other things I'm sure? Was that still a thing this

Earl Lum: 10:39

year or. So T Mobile's booth, which was one of the biggest and still right at the beginning of the West hall entrance to the exhibit floor was populated with a bunch of enterprise case studies, including their first responder. Solution that they're coming out with from a private networks perspective they were the only operator other than us cellular, which had a meeting room in the way back of the exhibit hall, but no booth. And then Verizon had their meeting rooms, but they didn't have a booth at all on the exhibit hall. So in, in looking at those applications and the fact that it was Verizon business that was there at the show. And T Mobile business at the show, AT& T didn't bother to show up. And again, there are no Canadian operators or no other Latin American operators at the show made it to the point where if your whole goal was to meet with an operator, I don't think that was going to be too successful. Unless you somehow got the meetings with Verizon and AT& T and T Mobile, and you were figuring out that you had an enterprise solution to sell to them or to pitch to them at the show.

Leonard Lee: 11:50

Right. And I think last year GSMA made a point that there were a growing number or percentage of enterprise buyers or influencers coming in and checking out the event to get a feel for at that time, the whole excitement is around private networks. So in

Earl Lum: 12:15

open RAN or on go with CBRS or whatever. Right. It was about what could you do with private networks? And I think that's still bubbling along, but it's certainly not ever increasing. And the open RAN aspects of that, I think, is taking the. A hit at this point in terms of what are the real opportunities. And again, we talked about Erickson neutral hosts as being a complete disruptor for the private network market. And so I think again, there was a lot of DAS in building small cell exhibitors there. The majority of a lot of the boosts that I saw, whether it was from CommScope or GMA Wireless or whoever was all really targeted for in building wireless systems,

13:04

which is

Earl Lum: 13:04

again enterprise, but it's like a Dash show now, and it's supposed to be a mobile macro show.

Leonard Lee: 13:11

Yeah. It's supposed to be. Okay. It's supposed to be. All right. So in terms of like things that you were interested in, you were looking for, what were some of those things that were top of your list?

Earl Lum: 13:23

Going list was going in. I had a bunch of meetings that I wanted to have with friends and people that I've known in the industry for decades. It gave me a up to date pulse on how bad is it? And is it going to get better? And is there any light at the end of the tunnel? And a lot of the vendors that I talked to were macro antenna suppliers, because that's a key part of the macro network build. If no one's shipping antennas and other things are likely not happening. And so that was a very big focus and those meetings went well. And I think one of the vendors that I talked to, it was the most It was the funniest and the saddest quote that I will have from Las Vegas, which was that that particular person had lost all hope in wireless and was thinking about getting out of the industry. So if we go back to every downturn that we've had through all of these cycles, the light at the end of the tunnel was always the possibility that there would be new spectrum that would be unleashed and available auctioned off and that would start the whole cycle again. As we look. If we want to include T Mobile's latest, I want to give back all of the crappy millimeter wave spectrum, and I'll just take the good stuff and redraw the, gerrymander the partial economic area of the FCC's database. Make stream to, there is no N gigahertz spectrum because of the wifi guys to where not, there is no new driver coming out of this downturn. And then the question is if we hit bottom next year, then does it just stay flat for the future? And I think that was a lot of the sentiment that I got from the people that I talked to at the show.

Leonard Lee: 15:22

Wow. That's really cool. Sobering,

Earl Lum: 15:25

lines, but you know, with the capex drops that we're seeing from all the operators, it's not a surprise. But the real question is I'm not sure where the upswing is going to be once we get through the bottom. And is this a very long wide U shaped recovery or is there a recovery after 25, I think should be on everyone's mind. As we go into the end of this year and into next year, what is going to be a key driver? And right now it's always been spectrum. And if that isn't available, then what else is the next opportunity?

Leonard Lee: 15:57

Yeah. Interesting. Any talk about ai? I have to ask that

Earl Lum: 16:03

very little talk about it. Maybe on the security side. There was a security panel that I listened to that I thought was pretty important because again, if you look at open ran, there's just more things to hack.

16:15

Yeah.

Earl Lum: 16:15

But AI was more on spectrum sharing in terms of understanding if I have the new 3. 3 band that's being looked at under the CBRS spectrum, how can I do spectrum sharing and use AI to understand the art conditions that are really out there and then be able to make sure that as I'm sharing a bunch of data Different users or end users of the network. And all of these resources that I'm have the most efficient use of that entire bandwidth. So I was really more focused on spectrum efficiency that I was able to see at the show.

Leonard Lee: 16:55

Yeah. And I guess also it's a big question of what kind of AI are you talking about it? Right. Because there's so much talk about generative AI. Now it's the crypto hype the crypto community appropriated. Blockchain and all of a sudden blockchain became crypto. And so we have something similar happening with AI where there was this whole craze about generative ai. Now everyone calls it ai, but then it's like, okay, wait a minute. There's a lot of different types of ai, right? Generative is one variety. And it's also under a microscope at the moment the return that it can generate for the investment, but also the massive energy consumption. Which basically equates to this is a very inefficient form of compute for its outcome, depending on the outcome. Right? And some of these functions that we're looking at trying to make more intelligent. At the very edge tend to be pretty specific and so it's 1 of the things that I've been wondering is it better just to code this stuff straight, created a static algorithm and make it predictable, right? Over engineering and over and throwing more compute at it to make it dynamic with marginal value, I think that

Earl Lum: 18:23

if we go back to. If we go back to blockchain, at the beginning of 5G, blockchain was synonymous with 5G, yet it never materialized because it was too complicated. If we look at AI today for MNO, the biggest focus is on firing everyone in the call center. Right?

Leonard Lee: 18:44

Yeah, basically

Earl Lum: 18:45

bots take over and you don't ever talk to a real human because the operating cost of that is one of the biggest costs for the M& O. If we look at the reality of where is AI being used in Iran, it's for sleep, deep sleep, ultra deep sleep, whatever the hell you want to call it. But that doesn't mean that you need a GPU at every site to figure out when to turn the stupid radio off because it's pretty easy to figure out what that algorithm is going to be and to set your markers or whatever and or just say at 2 a. m. is going off. I don't need AI to tell me that my load on the network isn't going to be at peak at 2 a. m.

Leonard Lee: 19:27

Well, it's supposed to be a smart radio, not a stupid radio. Okay.

Earl Lum: 19:31

But, but again, it is deep sleep and energy savings monetization. We had this conversation. No, it's saving money and increasing efficiencies, but I'm not generating any money unless we're talking that profit monetization. It's not top line monetization and how sexy is AI for putting things to sleep and saving energy compared to whatever this other generative stuff that everyone's trying to pitch in terms of, I can, I can in real time understand what's happening with my ran and I can move beams everywhere on the antennas and I could follow users and all of those fantasies is I think the word I'm going to use because. The radio environment is so complex that if you wanted to do that, how much is it going to cost you? And are you going to knock back what you paid in compute resources and energy and everything else to figure out what that real life situation looks like?

Leonard Lee: 20:30

Right. I call it the cost to compute that almost, I don't hear hardly anyone talking about it. It's odd. But it's a topic that should be front and center. It's like the whole open RAN argument that it's cheaper somehow. Right. It's like, okay, it's great that you put all these GPUs out there. You have all this intelligence that you're infusing into the RAN for whatever purpose, but at the end of the day, like you're saying, in terms of benefit and outcome is the cost of intelligence worth it? Right. And

Earl Lum: 21:07

I mean, I think the machine learning part of it swamps out the AI part of it in terms of what is most efficiently learned from all of that data that's being generated in the ramp, specifically, if we're talking layer one and how are we going to make that channel better, less noisier or whatever. For the operator to maximize their efficiency and usage of that valuable resource.

Leonard Lee: 21:34

Yeah, that's great insight. So any last takes or thoughts about the event and more importantly, I mean, what do you think needs to really substantially change here? Other than the things that we've already mentioned,

Earl Lum: 21:48

One take away and this was hearsay but being mobile was not very happy and given that they had the biggest booth, that's never a good sign. Thank you. And so you have a huge tier one sponsor that is not happy with who showed up, how many people showed up. We still don't have a final count, which is already telling as to how bad it probably was. And I think one way is. It's an offer. It's always been an operator show about the technology in the use cases. So we've seen in Barcelona where they have a full end to end display of how can I actually implement what your case study is so that I can fully understand. Is it 50 pieces of hardware with software end to end from the I O T sensor and whatever to get me to actually have something working? Or is it going to be only 12 pieces? And Where do I buy these 12 pieces or 50 pieces and do I have to go look for every one of them? Are you going to provide it to me as a turnkey solution? All of these things are Not good examples of the usage that I saw in Las Vegas compared to what we saw in Barcelona. I think having real operators from North of the U S and South of the U S would be helpful in understanding. Again, it should be an America's show. Expanding the market. Yeah, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, America's Vegas. And Again, it's as mad as I had heard they were, that's not a good sign for GSMA to figure out how they're going to turn things around for next year. And if they were scaled down their booth, then, you know, the end is near.

Leonard Lee: 23:32

We have to also remember GSMA, their board is the operators, right? And so this is, this in a way is their own doing as well, right? I mean, I, two years ago,

Earl Lum: 23:43

they should have forced their own show up,

Leonard Lee: 23:46

right? Rather than talking about 5g monetization and gen AI and all this other stuff. What is it that we were saying? Focus on modernization. How do you get these operators to make this transition toward a, a more substantial 5G network, whether it's from a coverage standpoint, or just making that transition to, To essay, and I think missing out on these priorities and then filling the agenda with these aspirational topics, I think, is a complete disservice and we've seen it play out. That's the thing. I mean, we're saying what we're saying and I think we're both being Frank and I think the industry should take it as. Constructive feedback. Yeah, there is a bit of, well, we told you so, but we did tell you and it's time to kick these, these concepts and themes that are too far in the future that are not even within the realm of practical interest. Of the operators kick that stuff to the curb and let's get real and figure out how to fix the,

Earl Lum: 24:56

how can we be more tactical because we're future tripping on all of these technologies and concepts and everything is about what's happening in the future, but it's never about fixing what's wrong today.

Leonard Lee: 25:09

Right. And, one of the things I noticed, I was looking through the agenda, for instance, with the AI topics, these are things we've already seen before, and they're just rehashing old decks from three, four years ago from the previous AI hype and trying to resell them, sell them again in this hype. And I don't know, I don't, I really don't think that's going to help out too much. I

Earl Lum: 25:36

mean, but we're going to see, obviously a ton of it in Barcelona next year, because that's, what's going to happen. And again the use cases, maybe we'll see some new ones on the phones and in the networks or whatever. But at least hopefully the operators can, At least talk about what are real tangible things that they are doing to fix their network and to upgrade it and to be able to make it more efficient. So maybe they can earn more money in some way, shape or form with what new services that they can provide. And whatever APIs are going to do.

Leonard Lee: 26:13

Yeah. And rather than aspiring to become a tech co aspiring to be the next generation communication service provider, don't lose your identity. And I think operators, it's really clear that operators are solving a problem that the cloud vendors just the, those CSPs, right? The cloud service providers have discovered it's kind of tough. Right and so I think. There's always going to be a role for CS, telecoms operators and mobile wireless operators, telco operators in general. And I think that should be appreciated, embraced. And the real question is, how do they evolve their game? And that probably doesn't mean becoming like AWS or Microsoft or, or following this whole tech code. Narrative, right? I don't know. There's a lot to, I think if there's any point in time where the industry really needs to contemplate how it got existential, right? Yeah, this

Earl Lum: 27:18

is,

Leonard Lee: 27:19

yeah, this is about that time, and I don't think. Generative AI or any or enterprise X, Y, Z, or edge computing is going to be the solution. So they may be,

Earl Lum: 27:33

I think there was little discussion about 6g at the show. I'm sure we're going to hear more in Barcelona. But again, The recent rumblings of terahertz frequency bands and things associated with 6G should just be off the table. It's a fantasy for if you want to spend money on R& D, go and do that. But the practicalities of that have not emerged. Even in 5g, when we talked about using D band for backhaul 5g base stations, because the density would be so high that every a hundred feet, we would need to use 124 gigahertz backhaul link or link to be able to connect everything. And that was a pipe dream and that never materialized. And 6g realm of we'll talk about it there because we didn't get it.

Leonard Lee: 28:27

That might be fine. That might actually be the right timing for it, right? It will probably solve a problem that's actually a problem and it will be a solution at that point. And maybe now it's just a solution looking for the problem. There's a, you know, we have a bigger fish to fry and so

Earl Lum: 28:51

exactly. I mean, it's again, trying to solve our problem. We don't know exists today. That might happen in five years from now. And at that point, then maybe that's the right tool. In the toolbox, or maybe there's going to be a better tool that comes up that gets in. Yeah,

Leonard Lee: 29:06

I think this is a great opportunity for the industry to rethink itself. It has to, I mean, if what you're saying is, and I'm sure that is, is pretty accurate. A lot more accurate than other accounts that will probably see I think it, the matter is urgent and it's time to get real. So, but anyway, Hey, Earl, thank you so much for the update. I was there. So I perspective, man really good stuff. And so, hey, folks, if you want to reach out to Earl, just, check out EJL wireless research at www. ejlwireless. com and connect with him on LinkedIn. He's a really cool guy. Very, very knowledgeable. I think he's the, one of the top analysts out there, great head on his shoulders and it's all, you know, it's great to do this collaboration with you. So, thanks for sharing. Thanks, dude. And please subscribe to the next YouTube channel. The easiest thing to do is subscribe to the next research portal and media center@www.next-curve.com for a constant diet of the tech and industry insights that matter. And we will see you next time.