In conjunction with MWC Barcelona 2022 which will be taking place from the 28th of February to the 3rd of March, Tara Neal, Executive Editor of The Fast Mode spoke to Neill Young, Business Development Director and Verticals Lead at Blu Wireless on the company's plans and showcases for this year's event.
Tara: What do you think MWC 2022 will be all about? And what are your MWC 2022 plans?
Neill: MWC 2022 will be about a few things. Obviously a return to normality and meeting friends and partners face to face for the first time in a couple of years will be important for everyone, but it will also provide an opportunity to look at how 5G will develop and evolve over the next few years now that the first networks are well established and new use cases are starting to emerge.
This evolution of 5G will rely on a few things to be successful - how to manage the vast and growing amount of data being generated by consumers and enterprises as well as how to diversify 5G into specific deployment scenarios in both public and private – neutral host networks, dedicated industrial networks and network densification in highly trafficked areas.
For Blu Wireless, MWC 2022 offers an opportunity to showcase how mmWave connectivity can work in all of these scenarios and allow 5G networks to supercharge their performance by taking advantage of the high speed connectivity mmWave can offer at the heart of a 5G radio access network.
Tara: How has the pandemic impacted the operational and business landscape of the tech segment you are operating in?
Neill: It’s impacted the 5G sector in a couple of major ways. Firstly, the supply of components for manufacturing has become much harder, with long lead times in the supply chain the norm now due to factory shutdowns and competition from other sectors for these services. Secondly, the pandemic has driven a huge change in the volume of data generated as people live more of their lives online. This has accelerated the adoption of 5G and particularly high bandwidth technologies such as mmWave fronthaul and backhaul which can meet the demands of fast scaling networks.
Tara: What emerging trends/technologies have you observed in your tech segment in recent months?
Neill: ORAN continues to emerge at pace, with a large number of R&D projects getting underway recently. They offer a glimpse at the future development of 5G into a more open and simpler technology that more than just mobile operators can deploy, with an emerging ecosystem which will enable all types of small and large 5G networks for a wide range of use cases, including private networks, to be deployed.
Neill has over 20 years’ experience of industrial mobile telecommunications from Tetra to 5G. Focused primarily on strategy and delivery of industrial IoT and private networks he has experience across multiple verticals including manufacturing, logistics, utilities, smart cities and transportation. Today, Neill is working on industrial digital transformation through the use of high bandwidth 5G mmWave networks for private networks, backhaul and new data intensive use cases.
