This year’s MWC was again an amazing tradeshow with a good vibe going on. Here’s a few observations we have from the show.

It’s the place to be!

There were 109,000 attendees this year and we are now matching pre-pandemic levels. While the show is smaller than CES it is amazing to have a show just for the telecommunications industry. There was a great mix of MNOs, Services Providers, Solution Providers and Device Makers. We had a productive week learning from the MNOs and EUMs and talking with our customers.

This is the place where you meet companies face to face, directly with decision makers and make deals for collaborations. We are very excited to be able to announce as the spring progresses everything that was agreed.

eSIM is dead, long live eSIM

We have been talking about eSIM for IoT (SGP.32) for quite a few years now and this was the show that everyone had it in their portfolio. Our Press Release with Intelliterra was well received by the industry and our live demo on a production system with our EIM had an amazing reception. We showed it to some big logo executives, and it was the first time people saw it live. Having the ability to convert a legacy device to an SGP.32 compliant device just by putting a SIM card in it was proof that we have a winner in our hands.

Overall, we received strong confirmation that SGP.32 is the way forward for IoT and we will keep pushing it with the industry.

5G NTN for IoT?

We met with some 5G NTN providers at the show to better understand how the industry looks. It is still very fragmented with Skylo and Starlink leading the headlines. Everyone wants to investigate it but realistically it is still pricy and complicated to implement across the wide IoT verticals. There are some solutions where it fits well however we are a few years from a mass adoption for the tech.

We have the offering for 5G NTN from Simplex Wireless and we are interested to see how the demand will grow as we go forward.

“AI Something something”.

We’d be remised if we did not mention AI. When walking the regular show floor or 4YFN (four years from now) it was clear that there is a big Ai boom. Many companies were after angel money on the market for AI solutions. The market is flooded with different “ChatGPT Wrappers” that claim they will reduce costs and improve your business efficiency. We’re following the market and see how this new technology will trickle into our way of working and doing business!

This article was written by Jan Lattunen, CCO Simplex Wireless

About the Author: Jan Lattunen manages Sales and Marketing for Simplex Wireless. Jan has 20 years’ experience in working with SIM card technology and was involved in launching the eSIM in North America with major carriers and OEMs. His expertise in telecommunications is around SIM cards. On a personal note, Jan is a family man and avid cyclist with advocacy for safety in the roads. You can connect with Jan on https://linkedin.com/in/JanLattunen