3GSM World Congress in Barcelona from 13-16 Feb 06
Make deals and enjoy brainfood, toys, apps, nets, fun and fashion
For the first time in its history the 3GSM World Congress will take place in Barcelona - my favourite city in Europe. Simply speaking it has outgrown Cannes. Moreover, the organiser forecasts more than €20 million cost reduction for all exhibitors, delegates and visitors. Barcelona will be happy about the invasion of over 40.000 wireless executives showing off their wireless warez, signing big or small deals and initiating new ones. I strongly recommend to join the leading mobile business party in Barcelona from 13-16 Feb 06 and I hope to see you there.
The 3GSM WC agenda will offer again a special mix of brainfood and best practices. Being the leading "host operator" Antonio Viana-Baptista,
Chairman & CEO of Telefónica Móviles, will be giving his keynote even befor Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodaone. For sure, señor Viana-Baptista will explain more about the O2 acquisition and how they will merge these 2 rather different players. Myself, I am curious to find out about i-mode's role in the new technology strategy of Telefónica Móviles.
Another VIP enlightning the audience with his keynote will be Microsoft's Steve Ballmer who is very proud of the latest announcements regarding their new OS Windows Mobile 5.0. Especially Palm's decision to equip their new generation EV-DO Treo 700w with Windows Mobile created a lot of buzz in the industry. The Motorola Q, a cool QWERTY EV-DO device running on Windows Mobile, and the latest offspring of Taiwanese Windows Mobile powerhouse HTC will stand up against Palm's new challenge.
Featured speakers during the congress also include some very interesting small companies. Visage Mobile is the most important MVNE (Mobile Virtual Network Enabler) in the US and one of the companies that not only empowers the MVNO craze but would also argue that their is no limit for the number of co-existing MVNOs trying to serve ever smaller target segments.
Let's talk about VoIP distributed by MVNOs that don't fear to kill the voice star. Thorsten Dirks, Board Member & CIO of German MNO E-Plus, will talk about "Voice Over IP Coming to an Operator Near You". After giving up any i-mode hope, Mr. Dirks has opened his network for voice MVNOs quite frequently in 2005. In 2006, E-Plus plans to ride on the data MVNO wave starting with their inhouse MVNO Base. They already have a Skype deal which I recently put into context in "SkyBayPay". Let's find out if E-Plus will allow VoIP over any protocol, too.
Yes, we need faster wireless networks that can deliver bits at lower cost. For the most UMTS operators the network evolution path is called HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) soon to be followed by HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). Of course, NTTDoCoMo will try to be among the first to launch HSDPA commercially in 2006. Toru Otsu, President & CEO, DoCoMo Communications Laboratories Europe, will sit on the HSDPA panel to provide details.
Before I comment on all the sessions and forget to finish this preview I will just recommend again to do it yourself by joining the biggest mobile business party in beautiful Barcelona.
