2018 Mobile World Congress nets 107,000 visitors just below last year's record

Attendance at the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was 107,000 visitors, down slightly from 108,000 attendees in 2017 and compared with 101,000 attendees in 2016.

Some stats for #MWC2018:

• attendees came from 205 countries and territories
• there were 2,400 exhibitors, up from 2,300 last year
• over 55 percent of attendees held senior-level positions, including more than 7,700 CEOs, up from more than 6,100 CEOs in 2017. 
• approximately 24 percent of attendees were female, an increase from 23 percent last year.
• 28 percent of speakers in the conference programme were female, compared with 21 percent in 2017
• there were over 3,500 journalists and analysts in attendance
• preliminary independent economic analysis indicates that the 2018 Mobile World Congress will have contributed approximately €471 million and over 13,000 part-time jobs to the local economy.

“We had another highly successful Mobile World Congress, across so many fronts,” said John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA Ltd. “We are gratified with the number of senior-level attendees, particularly the number of CEOs, as well as the continued strong attendance of government ministers and regulators. However, we are not focused on necessarily having the biggest event – we continually strive to convene the right audience and deliver a high-quality experience across all aspects of the event, the conference, the exhibition, and the many other programmes and events at Mobile World Congress.”

Mobile World Congress 2019 will be held 25-28 February, 2019 in Barcelona.

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Coriant advances its Hyperscale Carrier Architecture

Coriant has announced several advancements to its Hyperscale Carrier Architecture (HCA), which is its open, agile, automated, and software-driven approach to network service innovation and which is aligned to CORD and optimized for Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC). The latest advancements include:

Coriant Transcend Network Control and Orchestration Software enhancements - (1) the addition of an NFV MANO for managing Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) in the highly distributed compute environment. This was developed using the Aricent MANO framework (2) the introduction of an advanced Virtual POD Controller (vPC) for helping network operators to seamlessly scale disaggregated solutions by effective end-to-end network control including service stitching.

Coriant IP/MPLS Network Operating System (C-NOS) – an open, disaggregated approach to packet-based networking. The Coriant NOS is designed to operate on industry-standard COTS whiteboxes as well as application-optimized carrier-grade whiteboxes such as the new Coriant Vibe series.

Coriant Vibe Series of Programmable Packet Platforms – this series of application-optimized, carrier-class whiteboxes boasts important networking features such as hardware acceleration, advanced timing capabilities to enable a variety of MEC services and applications, and support for seamless horizontal scalability. Coriant said its Vibe series can provide the foundation for a disaggregated open networking solution or can be added to a COTS whitebox-based disaggregated networking solution to enable/enhance specific network applications

“In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive services market, network operators need to evolve their multi-layer infrastructure networks to maximize the value of faster innovation cycles in hardware and software components and best-in-class functions and solutions,” said Uwe Fischer, Executive Vice President, R&D and PLM, and CTO, Coriant. “One of the key challenges that operators face is the limitations imposed by proprietary approaches that result in vendor lock-in, especially in the IP routing domain. Our Hyperscale Carrier Architecture breaks that stranglehold and accelerates new service deployment by leveraging an open hardware and software ecosystem that unlocks the barriers to seamless automation and the virtualization of network functions across network layers.”

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