What You Missed at Mobile World Congress 2024

Amdocs emphasized their significant investments in their Telco GenAI Platform, AmAIz. Amdocs Delivery Division President and Service Group CTO, Yaron Sverdlov, the visionary behind Amdocs GenAI developments, explained that AmAIz isn’t a large language model, but an “AI platform supporting multiple LLMs, with security and a studio for developing use cases.” AmAIZ, which utilizes Microsoft Azure, OpenAI, and Nvidia also have access to all of Amdocs archive of product data, and have been trained to support telco use cases. Recognizing that AI queries can be hugely expensive (the figure $1.5 per telco query was widely quoted), data intensive, and energy intensive, their approach with AmAIz was simple – to get a “better” answer to your telco query, faster, more efficiently and in fewer steps than other platforms by being context aware.

Amdocs wouldn’t commit to a cost reduction figure, but they hinted at an AI platform delivering more reliable, more accurate answers faster and at a much lower cost with all of the benefits that would deliver for a service provider.

Netcracker highlighted their commitment to AI-Driven Digital Transformation, boasting that the company had enjoyed a large number of recent wins in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Netcracker believes that its Netcracker GenAI Telco Solution will be transformative in helping “telcos” transition to “techcos,” which was the theme of their Chairman and CEO, Andrew Feinberg’s keynote presentation.

One of the significant announcements at MWC was a collaboration between e&, DT, SK Telecom, Singtel and China Mobile to establish a joint venture – the Global Telco AI Alliance for Collaboration and Innovation in AI to develop Large Language Models. This is certainly a group big enough, rich enough, and innovative enough to build their own telco specific LLM. With AI and GenAI being a major theme for this year’s MWC, the announcement further contributed to the buzz.

Figure 3 - Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 showcased a broad range of industry innovations including drones, self-driving cars, translucent laptops, and other industrial and connected devices.
click to enlarge

The show floor featured a plethora of fascinating visual and mental stimuli along with innovative presentations that would likely intrigue and entertain even those with little interest or personal investment in the telecom space. G Reigns and Capgemini showed us a demo of their 5G in a Box solution which displayed an AI monitored factory environment, including a robot performing as a driverless forklift, moving items from one place to the next with zero human interaction. A number of companies eagerly unveiled innovative solutions adapted to glistening prototype EVs. Oracle showcased its jaw dropping, ultra performance Formula One race car, while Lenovo excitedly demonstrated a translucent ThinkBook that looked like something out of a Sci-Fi film. ZTE amazed show goers with the world’s first 5G, AI-powered, eye wear-free 3D tablet able to turn basically any media into a 3D model.

With so many intriguing innovations to absorb in such a vast venue the more mundane and biological necessities of life required tactical precision. Fortunately, food and drink were abundant, pleasantly inexpensive, and everywhere diet and allergy friendly. The major exhibitors beckoned audiences with complimentary coffee, food, and some even offered spirits. Indeed, to our pleasant surprise, despite our demanding schedule we remained well fed throughout.

The consensus among the many industry representatives with whom we engaged was that this year’s event was even bigger and more diversely represented than last, both in terms of participants and audience. From our perspective it certainly appeared that they pulled out all the stops to enshrine MWC as the premier event in the industry. All in all it we found it to be a compelling look into the future indeed.