Connecting the dots
Lucy Taffs, our Lead Consultant for Telco & Cloud, is rounding up the major talking points from MWC Barcelona 2024, the world’s largest connectivity event.
MWC Barcelona is the world’s largest event for the connectivity ecosystem, taking a deep dive into the world of mobile tech, devices, operations and content creation – right up our street!
Lucy Taffs, our Lead Consultant for Telco & Cloud, has been keeping up with all the most exciting topics, and there were plenty of talking points to get our teeth stuck into…
Wearable healthcare tech was a major topic. There are plenty of real life, relatable case studies that show how 5G, Edge computing and AI machine learning are increasingly working together to create better, faster and seamless customer experiences while at the same time transforming industries such as healthcare. Take wearable tech as a simple example. From measuring a patient’s glucose level to monitoring blood pressure, Edge computing processes that data at rapid speed and when combined with the 5G network and AI machine learning, medical teams can be alerted to any red flags in pretty much real time. Something that would once have only been picked up during an in/out-patient hospital visit. There you have it – the power of 5G, Edge and AI with IoTs thrown in too.
Another interesting point was the investment in the roll-out of a private 5G network at scale – providing massive opportunities to transform the healthcare sector and the way data is handled – which was discussed by Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture. We’re seeing this now with the migration of medical data into the cloud to enable real-time recording and reviewing of records.
At a recent talk at the OVHcloud Summit in Paris, speakers touched on how the sharing of medical records in the cloud will enable for a more joined up approach, giving medics a fuller, more complete picture of your health in real-time – having your allergy information readily available is just one very simple example that gives an easy tangible benefit that I can really relate to.
Agri-tech was also a sector that saw a lot of attention.
Anthony Goonetilleke at Amdocs highlighted how agric-tech provides a good example of using drone cameras to fly over 1000s of acres of fields, taking pictures of crops in real-time. These pictures are sent via the 5G network back to the farmer having been analysed by AI and updated to a dashboard thanks to Edge computing. The farmer has the information at their fingertips thanks to their smart phone dashboard, allowing them to know which areas of the field need attention – such as water irrigation, crop picking and pesticide control. This creates vast efficiencies in terms of labour, energy, time and wastage.
Meanwhile in manufacturing, Edge computing and AI are being used to improve safety in dangerous jobs.
Dangerous jobs previously put humans at risk, but thanks to new technology they’ve got a whole lot safer. For example, Tang Xue from ZTE explained how temperatures at steelworks are monitored through local sensors and analysed through machine learning, alerting and adjusting temperatures remotely to create efficiencies and safer working environments. So often we hear and read topics around how AI is going to take human jobs, but in this instance it’s good to hear how AI is taking on the danger to humans, increasing workers safety within manufacturing settings.
Europe also reaffirmed its commitment to being at the cutting edge of transformative tech.
Investment in research and technology deployment, a digital single market with a level playing field and protection through resilience and security were three hot topics discussed by Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for Internal Markets, who was speaking at the opening day of the event. The three topics form the pillars of the Digital Network Act outlined by Breton that aims to help Europe meet its digital infrastructure needs over the next five or so years, with heavy investment of around 200 billion euros in its infrastructure such as 5G fibre needed to get where it needs to be by 2030.
As always, MWC was pulling no punches, but there was a lighter note to end on, with a fun thought from Anthony Goonetilleke from Amdocs. He touched on the future with 6G and the ed-tech sector. Imagine your child on a school trip to a sea-life centre or a zoo wearing a headset. They look at a jellyfish and instantly an AI generated model appears before their eyes with all the weird and wonderful information about them – did you know they have roamed the seas for over 600 million years?!
The future for connected tech is certainly bright, exciting, transformative, and ever evolving – and with that comes huge opportunities for our clients and their verticals. It’s so important for us marketers to stay up to date with everything that comes out of events like this. After all, it’s our clients who’ll be making this future possible, and it’s our job to help them on that journey.
Photo credits: © 2024 GSMA / MWC