Unlocking New Possibilities with Syniverse at MWC 2023

Last week, nearly 80,000 people attended Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona, Spain. Wow, what an incredible experience. It was great to be in-person again. My MWC experience started at the Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. I was immediately running into familiar faces as I checked in for my flight. The energy and excitement were palpable – before we even landed in Barcelona.

We met again, three years after the start of the pandemic that changed so much of our day-to-day lives; I know I am pointing out the obvious. Let me say it plainly, there is simply no substitute for meeting in person with customers, partners, colleagues, and friends. The most valuable part of this event is the conversations that happen face-to-face.  In particular, I value the opportunity to speak with customers face-to-face. In our conversations, I learn so much about how we can help them to operate their business more effectively, including – most importantly – how we can help them drive improved customer experiences. It was an energizing, rewarding week!

For Syniverse, MWC confirmed many of the things we already believed to be true. 

Roaming is Back More Than Ever!
Syniverse hosted a record number of customer meetings at MWC. Our customers and prospective customers wanted to talk about solutions. Top of mind, “How can you help us with 5G Roaming, VoLTE Roaming, 3G network shutdowns, Private Wireless Networks, and Messaging Hub solutions?”

While in Barcelona, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to share some insights and learn more from audience participants. I spoke at the MEF Connects event on Monday. Along with incredible industry experts from Vodafone, Telefonica, PCCW, and Kaleido Intelligence, we shared collective insights on how communications technology providers can help address some of the more challenging solutions within the industry today – while enhancing the customer experience, preserving and increasing roaming revenue, and reducing OpEx costs when retiring legacy 3G network infrastructure. One of the most prominent questions from the panel discussion was, “How do we ensure our industry is offering best-in-class solutions that offer simplicity when it comes to roaming, VoLTE calls, and messaging solutions?”

While I could expand on this for many paragraphs to come, let me distill my thoughts into three key observations.

1. 5G Deployments are Accelerating with Meaningful 5G Deployment Use Cases.  
   (Including Private Wireless)
   Our solutions at Syniverse fit into these 5G deployments. We’ve been here for over 30 years, driving the transformation from 2G to 3G, 3G to 4G/LTE, and now to 5G. Our solutions ensure the seamless interoperability of these different technologies between thousands of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and our Evolved Mobility Inbound & Outbound solution enables MNOs to continue to secure inbound roaming revenues, while at the same time benefiting from OpEx savings associated with retiring legacy networks.
   
   
2. “Everything is in the Cloud” – While cloud-based solutions aren’t new, MWC spotlighted that hyperscalers are playing a dominant role of today’s telecommunications world.  5G mobile core components from traditional network infrastructure vendors like Nokia and Ericsson are fully deployed within the big hyperscalers. In my reflections on these conversations, I was drawn to the fact that we’ve been providing solutions in the cloud for over three decades – long before anyone was talking about ‘the cloud’. 
   Our hosted Carrier Messaging Hub for operators is one of many examples of ‘everything in the cloud’. The quick scalability of our network-based hosted solutions are critical to delivering on-demand capacity to our MNOs. Many of our customers are talking to us about outsourcing their turnkey solutions into scalable, cloud-based solution, such as Anti-Spam, Messaging, Universal Commerce, and Private Wireless hosted core network solutions; they all fit into our Syniverse cloud model: carrier grade reliability while highly- scalable, on-demand solutions.
   
   
3. High-Quality Roaming is More Important than Ever:
   Post-pandemic air travel is close to pre-pandemic numbers.  This means, roaming is back! When you factor in customer expectations associated with 5G, it also suggests that roaming is back with a new set of deliverables. Customers no longer accept poor voice quality on 2G/3G legacy networks, while roaming when they use HD voice quality on VoLTE networks at home. As a result, Syniverse is in demand for global services solutions that help our MNO customers with speeding up VoLTE roaming testing, bi-lateral agreements, and offering the best quality roam-like-home solutions. And, of course, our Evolved Mobility solution was a key topic during MWC to provide VoLTE voice despite 3G network shutdowns.

I realize this post turned out longer than expected, but if you read this far, I would love to hear back from you personally on your thoughts around MWC 2023. Please feel free to email me at: mario.muth@syniverse.com about which trends stood out for you.