Mobile World Congress Americas: who’s got the cutting edge?  

In June 2016, CTIA partnered with the GSMA with the objective of bringing more diversity to the US’s largest telecoms trade show. And so, ‘GSMA Mobile World Congress Americas’ – otherwise known as MWC Americas – debuted in September last year, replacing CTIA’s annual Super Mobility event.

We are now under six weeks away from the second MWC Americas, which takes place from 7^th to 9^th September. The location has moved from the United States’ home of technology, San Francisco, to Los Angeles, ‘the entertainment capital of the world’, so says the GSMA. LA’s profile as a tech hub has been bolstered in recent years by a number of successful start-ups choosing to set up shop there, including Tinder, SpaceX and Scopey. MWC Americas will only help to enhance the city’s reputation as a breeding ground for tech start-ups and a dynamic new home for established businesses.

MWC Americas is shifting its focus this year to the ‘intersection of mobile with content, entertainment and media,’ which resonates with the show’s new location. This is unsurprising given the current level of M&A activity among telecoms and media companies. AT&T and Time Warner’s agreed merger and Comcast’s proposed bid to take over Sky suggest we’re heading towards a new era in which mobile devices dominate video content consumption. MWC Americas is the perfect platform for discussion around what this new and exciting future will look like.

The slogan for this year’s event is ‘Imagine a better future’, which indicates a focus on innovations of tomorrow as well as those that are benefiting us today. Contrary to what its name suggests, MWC Americas is not strictly a wireless ‘mobile’ technology event, and instead aims to demonstrate the impact of mobile on business, industry and the personal lives of consumers.

Over 1,000 companies and 200 speakers from around the globe will showcase how connected technology is impacting a huge range of sectors such as automotive, healthcare, transport and logistics. We’ll see new innovations and use cases for 5G technology, as the industry gears up to the commercialisation of the new radio standard. We can also expect to hear about new developments in artificial intelligence, the IoT, edge computing, smart cities and connected vehicles, among others.

MWC Americas’ broad scope is indicative of the size of the mobile ecosystem. This situation does, however, create a double edge sword for companies operating in the space. With such a broad range of companies speaking and exhibiting, each must ensure its messages are clear, interesting, unique, and targeted, cutting through the noise of others at the show and reaching relevant influencers.

Amdocs is among the clients Babel is representing at MWC Americas year. Amdocs is already sowing seeds ahead of the event, demonstrating that it can be a vital partner for CSPs and media companies as they converge and look to develop new video content offerings. Only this week it announced that Vubiquity, an Amdocs company, has been selected by Verizon to provide the processing and packaging of the operator’s video on-demand and Pay Per View portfolio. Relevant customer wins such as this, supplemented by a strong thought leadership campaign, can place a company on the radar of those that matter, before, during and after major events.

This is the perfect time for other companies to take a similar approach and develop communications strategies that will give them a head start on their competitors, which are also vying for share of voice. At Babel, we have a huge amount of experience in all things mobile, events like MWC Americas are our bread and butter, and we’re always ready to help companies develop new narratives by providing PR services that ensures exposure to the right audiences.