Zuckerberg who intends to connect the next billion internet users with a free suite of basic communications services. LTE and LTE-Advanced continued to make headlines, and security and authentication platforms were also hot, with major announcements from device manufacturers like Samsung, service providers, vendors such as Oracle, and other independent software vendors (ISVs) like Intercede.

The recent $16B acquisition of Whatsapp by Facebook sent ripples through the show floor and Zuckerberg's keynote created standing-room-only crowds in the auditorium and around video monitors throughout the convention center. But GenBand saw an emerging opportunity in the wake of the commotion. "Our solution provides a way to connect the telco world with the over-the-top world almost out of the box," Brad Bush, Chief Marketing Officer at Genband told Pipeline. "We provide a WebRTC gateway that enables operators to offer OTT in months. We've done it in quick as a week. It's game changing as service provider think about over-the-top." Enablers like Genband are going to be essential to competitive strategies as non-traditional players like Facebook and Whatsapp continue take big bites out of traditional mobile revenues.

Social trend analysis has revealed that Samsung had the most mentions in social media, far ahead of number two Nokia, and number three Huawei. The top personality was, not surprisingly, Zuckerberg by a longshot, and the Firefox OS had a greater representation on the floor and in social media than the Windows. Those last two trends are closely related—Facebook’s push into the developing world will rely heavily on low-cost devices like the $25 Firefox smartphone announced at the show.

Pipeline had two editorial teams on the ground, traversing miles of floor space each day as we met with the leading vendors, top communications service providers (CSPs) from every corner of the globe, and innovative upstarts who are poised to make waves in communications and entertainment technology (COMET). Unfortunately, we can’t share the Jamon Iberico and Pulpo a la Gallega, but we can share the following highlights from the event.

Customer experience management (CEM)

It’s no secret that CSPs have turned to CEM as a means to differentiate service offerings, reduce churn, and out-compete over-the-top (OTT) and web-based competitors. Matching this move, vendors have responded with virtually hundreds of fragmented solutions addressing various parts of the customer experience spanning network optimization, subscriber information management, and quality of service (QoS) and experience (QoE). Many companies have re-tooled their legacy products and re-branded capabilities around CEM; in other words, everyone from network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to service assurance, big data, and billing vendors is all about CEM. It makes sense: leverage incremental value from your legacy investments to kill two birds with one stone. But which stone to use? That is the question, and Accanto, Amdocs, Comverse, CSG International, Ericsson, JDSU, NSN, Polystar, SAP, and many others Pipeline met with offered compelling answers.

Clearly, one key theme in improving the customer experience was shifting mobile operators to connectivity providers to becoming personalized content providers."Revenue is not keeping up with the demand for data," says Phil Twist, Head of Portfolio Marketing for NSN. "Operators have to move beyond the connectivity player into connectivity, content, cloud services, something beyond that provides more value." 

SAP has made significant headway in CEM through investments made both organically and through acquisitions in new technology and innovation. However, SAP seems to be taking more of a wholistic approach. "We look at how we can support new experiences," Carl Kehres, Solution Director of SAP told Pipeline at MWC. "While you hear a lot about customer experience management and we have a platform for that, we look at are your customers, employee team members, and partners better able to tap into the flow of information and processes to better understand how the operators are engaging in the customers experience."