Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was the top telecommunications event of February, with more than 49,000 (including delegates, exhibitors, contractors and media) in attendance from over 200 countries, according to the GSM Association. The event included 1,300 exhibiting companies and occupied more than 56,000 square meters of exhibition and business meeting space, GSMA added.
During his keynote address, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt's keynote told a standing-room only crowd that smartphone sales would surpass that of PCs within three years if not sooner. Android handsets are already shipping at a rate of more than 60,000 a day. He also predicted that Google would soon offer a phone capable of translating conversations and would also offer optical character recognition with translation capabilities.
Schmidt pointed out that Google phones already had voice recognition and can translate some spoken phrases into different languages, "so why can't I just talk on the phone to someone who doesn't speak my language?"
"Implementing multiple-level data pricing for business users has proven to be very complex."
"Implementing multiple-level data pricing for business users has proven to be very complex," Onodera said. "What we're looking at as an example is how content and traffic is bundled together, as we've seen with the Kindle e-reader device."
Bandwidth shortage is becoming an increasing concern, Onodera added "WiMAX might be a
Pricing a Top MWC Concern
Mobile World Congress is a focused event, and by keeping that focus the show enjoyed strong attendance figures despite a worldwide economy and travel budgets that have yet to recover to the levels of a few years ago.
One of those areas of focus was the continuing growth of mobile data traffic while fees remain relatively stable.
Tadashi Onodera, president and chairman of Japanese operator KDDI, said discussed the problem during his mobile broadband keynote address at the Mobile World Congress.
good remedy for resolving this issue, given that LTE might not be the best solution for high-density population areas in Japan."
Hans Vestberg, president and CEO of Ericsson, added that many mobile operators are starting to look at different charging models. "High speed networks are an enabler... but we must make them easier to manage, and move away from simplistic flat-rate charging."
Telecom operators will need to adopt variable pricing models for mobile data as network traffic rises and capacity gets strained, said
Pipeline
Publishing, Volume 6, Issue 10
