News has come hard and fast from the major mobile technology event Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, and there has been an ongoing theme – the progress of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has quite clearly been the technology to watch during the event and for good reasons.
The WBA has been active in several ways to convey the message of Wi-Fi at the event, but luckily we found some time to review on-going developments and announcement.
A quick summary of our activities:
GSMA Conference Programme: The WBA CEO Shrikant Shenwai joined a panel discussion, led by Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Technology Research, on the Seismic Spectrum Shake-up, which discussed the (future) role of unlicensed spectrum and also discussed the emerging methods to combine the usage of unlicensed and licensed spectrum bands.
Mobile World Live TV interview with Shrikant Shenwai, on carrier Wi-Fi, NGH and the future of Wi-Fi with mobile communications. You can view the interview here.
Telesemana Video Interview with Tiago Rodriguez, together with the Small Cell Forum on whether VoWi-Fi could cause competition between Wi-Fi and small cells. The interview can been viewed here.
GSMA Seminar Programme: Ton Brand participated in a panel discussion with Telstra, Cisco and GSMA on “Mobile–Wi-Fi continuum: is there room for both licensed and unlicensed networks?”
NGH Live Experience: Following on from our previous NGH activities at our own WBA events, we embarked on a major effort to demonstrate NGH at all public areas at Mobile World Congress. Together with the GSMA and our member partners, 35 (WBA member and non-member) operators offered the largest Live Experience ever, where more than 1500 users benefited from seamless and secure access to the public Wi-Fi network.
Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, Wireless Broadband Alliance
