By: Michael Clegg
As MWC Barcelona 2022 is coming to a close, I look back at a week packed with wonderful opportunities to see old friends again and build new relationships, at a show where new technologies and innovative solutions are shared.
This year, MWC was back in action with an estimated attendance of around 50,000 to 60,000 visitors. Compared to previous years, the show did seem to center more around suppliers, with most operators and keynote speakers being Euro-centric.
Looking at the exhibits and announcements we saw this week, it became clear that the industry has matured, with 5G coverage encompassing most of the population, albeit mostly in non-standalone mode. Standalone deployments are starting to increase and we’re seeing the first announcements of network slicing in action. The transition to standalone is bringing full cloud-native operators and they are evolving to a new way of deploying and running networks. Hyperscalers were also visible, with AWS giving the first keynote from a hyperscaler, although overall their presence was more muted than expected.
Open RAN seemed to have found its feet at the show. There were many announcements of new Distributed Unit (DU) solutions with Qualcomm and Marvell announcing partnerships. This will expand the ecosystem beyond Intel, which has been a critical consideration and a milestone for operators to feel comfortable deploying Open RAN at scale. I expect the control plane will remain x86, although more ARM solutions are being demonstrated. Rakuten managed to disrupt the industry again with its reference to a design that will be available for anybody to use.
While some analysts feel Open RAN is too late, in reality, mobile deployment has a long tail outside of the leading operators, and emerging markets can arguably benefit more from a software-defined network using common IT assets. A clearly focused battlefront in legacy versus Open RAN has emerged around power consumption. Operators have made extensive green commitments and there is a general sense that legacy appliance style deployments are cheaper. Countering that, we saw an exciting announcement by AT&T and Intel to dynamically optimize server usage based on workload, allowing servers to be idled or used for other purposes. This is where the promise of auto-scaling cloud native shows real differentiation.
With 5G utilization still in its infancy, and now the remit of the network operations staff, the technologists have moved onto 6G with several 6G-themed stands and sessions.
Private 5G is continuing to gain in stature, with hyperscalers and large enterprise IT vendors announcing complete solutions. In addition, we’ve seen many independent software vendors showing their wares. This is a very broad swathe and a large market, with room for many different players to achieve success.
At the Supermicro booth, we have demonstrated our full range of edge to cloud products covering application, core, and RAN. We also showcased some applications that can truly benefit from 5G in areas such as smart retail, industry 4.0, smart cities, and more.
It has been great to welcome so many prospective customers and partners to our booth. We are still in the early days of 5G, and in every generation, new applications emerge that no one could have expected. Based on the innovations and energy at the show, there is an excellent sense that 5G will provide us with some awe-inspiring new solutions. I am already looking forward to next year’s MWC Barcelona, where we will undoubtedly see some of those.
Michael Clegg is Vice President and General Manager for 5G and Edge at Supermicro.
