by Roy Murdock | 11/04/2019

VDC attended MWC Americas recently, the third instantiation of the regional MWC event that saw over 22,000 attendees converge in downtown Los Angeles for the three-day show.  Keynotes Included LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, FCC Chariman Ajit Pai, and Director General of the GSMA Mats Granryd, among other key individuals within the telecom space. Along with the obvious topic of 5G, the conference focused specifically on the adoption of LTE-M/Cat M1 and NB-IoT, which have now been deployed commercially by 36 mobile operators in 33 countries. Worldwide there are 35 LTE-M networks and 87 NB-IoT networks deployed.

With our focus on IoT and embedded technology, most of our conversations revolved around the automotive and video surveillance applications that faster, higher-volume, wide area networks could provide – two of the most highly-anticipated applications of 5G outside of the consumer/mobile phone context. Conversations with technology suppliers and network operators/resellers reconfirmed the general industry sentiment that 5G will be a boon for vendors selling into the in the industrial and enterprise space, although the current 5G hype may be just a tad over-the-top.

Interesting discussions included an update with Semtech on new developments within the LoRa community and their new ruggedized IIoT sensor products, Polte’s continued focus on becoming “the IoT location provider” with its 4G/5G cellular positioning algorithms and cloud platform, and Sprint’s redoubled efforts into the IoT after bringing on Ivo Rook from Vodaphone and announcing the full availability of its newly-deployed NB-IoT network through its Curiosity IoT platform.

We look forward to attending MWC Global in Barcelona early next year, and potentially returning to MWC Americas next year to take another reading on the convergence of 5G, IoT, and all-things-connectivity.

View the 2019 IoT & Embedded Technology Research Outline to learn more.