Mobile World Congress crystal ball

THE NETWORK RATHER THAN DEVICES is set to be the focus of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

There will definitely be some shiny new toys unveiled, but if the hundreds of invites clogging our mailbox this year is any indication, the focus seems much more on the networks and services that make our phones the indispensable devices they have become.

Don't panic, it's a big show and there will be new devices from most of the big mobile phone makers including Sony Ericsson, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and LG all set to be trotted out the cumulative oooh's and aaah's of the audience.

Furthermore, with Steve Ballmer set to be giving Microsoft's press conference on Monday, rumours suggest that Windows Mobile 7 is on the cards for unveiling.

However, while these and similar announcements will set the tongues wagging and cameras flashing, a much bigger, quieter Mobile World Congress will be going on at the same time, where operators, telecoms firms, regulatory bodies and other interest groups try and tackle the problems of how to cope with the mobile data explosion and how to make money from it.

Like a dog chasing a car, operators spent years trying to get people to use data on their phones when suddenly, thanks largely to flat rate data plans, they caught the car and now have to deal with the consequences.

The rapid explosion of mobile data, coupled with the limited revenue from these flat rate plans has meant, as demand has grown the mobile network operators have found themselves at the bottom of an ever deepening hole. This is exacerbated by the tremendous growth of video and other bandwidth heavy applications. Last year Youtube was responsible for as much traffic as the entire Internet in 2000 and as this moves from our desktops to our phones and laptops, so the sound of the creaking mobile networks gets ever louder.

These guys now have to figure out how to cope with this and sort out sustainable revenue streams from avenues they've never considered before.

It's generally accepted that, with a few niche exceptions, LTE will win the day over Wimax as the next generation of mobile data access technology. But LTE still has some pretty big issues to overcome before it sees wide scale global rollout. These are predominately around spectrum allocation which can only be addressed through the cooperation of operators, equipment providers, device manufacturers, governments and regulators. Mobile World Congress provides the ideal environment for these discussions to take place and genuine headway being made.

There is also the massive growth of machine-to-machine communications to consider. Even once just about every person on the planet has a phone, there are expected to be around ten times as many M2M connections as not just your phone has a SIM card, but your GPS, your laptop, your media player, your ebook reader and your car all have them as well. This 'internet of things' is set to far outpace the growth of human subscribers and adds another piece to the puzzle.

Throw in the continued meshing of fixed and mobile, with routers starting to pack in SIM cards as a backup for if the fixed line fails and femtocells starting to help ensure connectivity while offloading backhaul problems, and the landscape becomes nightmarishly complex.

All this stuff may not seem like the most scintillating topics of conversation for most consumers, who just want it to all work simply and seamlessly, but the fact of the matter is that without addressing these, the lovely devices we have stashed in our pockets become nothing more than expensive paperweights.

As the boundaries of traditional telecommunications services and business models fall away, and the market that operators can serve continues to expand, the telecommunications industry is poised for tremendous growth. It is critical that operators equip themselves not only to manage the upcoming rise in flow volumes and costs, but also to adapt rapidly so that they can grow with this constantly evolving industry.

This year more than ever, Mobile World Congress plays a critical role in seeing how the next year of mobile development will pan out. But don't worry, we'll tell you all about the shiny gadgets as well. µ