Iain Morris shares his take on Mobile World Congress, discusses themes that emerged at the event such as the metaverse and explains why he's still waiting on a drink from a 5G-powered barman.

A session at last week's big trade show featured speakers from Nokia, Qualcomm, Verizon, Telstra and other companies, and focused on the economic business case supporting mmWave transmissions.

The mobile industry's giant shindig was back with 61,000 visitors, even if the big news stories had nothing to do with it.

The deployment so far, in partnership with Nokia, Mavenir and AWS, had already yielded lessons in how the new architecture can drastically change a telco operations and business.

Asian operators came together at Mobile World Congress to talk about decarbonizing network equipment and other efforts to go carbon neutral.

'We are seeing good coverage exactly where we thought,' Verizon's Sampath Sowmyanarayan said of the company's C-band 5G network. And he said that's helping sales of edge computing and private wireless.
Charles Miller, co-founder and CEO of Lynk, discusses his company's technology and its ambition to help existing mobile network operators connect rural, remote and underserved communities all over the world.

Duo commit to making Galaxy models 'greener' and join forces on testing 5G SA devices.
Day three brings the flight spare for the Mars helicopter, industrial cobots and other automation, virtual auction houses and middle-aged men getting down to K-pop in the metaverse.

The Swedish kit maker is facing fines, the potential collapse of its Vonage deal and a loss of business.

The company aims to launch the Ifland metaverse service in 80 countries this year as part of an effort to become a global leader in key next-gen technologies.
Rob Shuter, CEO of BT Enterprise, joins Fiona Graham at Mobile World Congress to discuss BT's 5G use cases in the enterprise market, how private networks, cybersecurity and edge/cloud intersect for their customers, and his predictions for the role of the metaverse in the future of work.
Liren Chen, president and CEO of InterDigital, shares his perspective on advancements in 5G, and how his company is planning ahead for 6G and the metaverse.

The chair of the FCC discussed the importance of midband spectrum over mmWave spectrum in Barcelona, and said that the agency would auction 2.5GHz spectrum in July.

As Facebook demands network improvements, operators gathered at MWC weigh the impact of the metaverse and call for new business models.

According to Meta, the 5G industry needs to support reductions in network latency, symmetrical bandwidth and a 'common framework' for data sharing. Good luck with that.
Rima Qureshi, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Verizon, joins Iain Morris on the show floor to discuss a demo of the company's work in advanced 5G and robotics.
Howard Watson, CTIO of BT Group, discusses the operator's shift from non-standalone to standalone 5G, why it matters for customers and the technological hurdles to standing up a 5G core.
It's day two at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, and Light Reading's Fiona Graham is back with another update. Ukraine, cyberdogs, the metaverse, rollable phones and more – find out what's been going on from the show floor.

Telecom equipment giant Ericsson bribed officials and paid protection money to grow its business in Iraq, according to new reporting from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.