Highlights From Mobile World Congress Americas 2018

There a few events each year that we really look forward to and Mobile World Congress is one of them. This year, The city of L.A. welcomed Mobile World Congress Americas 2018 at the new home of the event, the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC).

The three-day event featured innovative exhibitions, a diverse agenda of conference sessions, GSMA summits & seminars, partner programs, and exclusive networking events and nearly 22,000 attendees.

Over three days, the conference program featured over 400 speakers highlighting themes and topics focused on 5G, artificial intelligence, IoT, content and media, drones, blockchain, policy and regulation, and many others.

A Look Inside Mobile World Congress Americas 2018

The conference was the perfect mix of meeting with valued partners, exploring new opportunities, learning from other industry experts, working with vendors on new projects and opportunities, networking and attending industry events after the show hours.

One particular highlight was being able to attend the IoT 101 – Digital Transformation University and hear from experts across various industries and disciplines. Presenters included top executives from the major carriers, technology experts and industry disruptors.

Topics included the common challenges companies face with IoT adoption, the economics of IoT, the importance of managed services in IoT, security of IoT, sunsetting networks and investing in IoT opportunities.

Many companies try their hand at IoT integration, but without the right partners and managed services, far too many of those projects stall, flail and ultimately fail to achieve the results the company originally set out to accomplish. According to Cisco, close to 75% of IoT projects are failing.

Additionally, 60% of IoT initiatives stall at the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and only 26% of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success. Why so much failure? Companies get outside of their core competencies and waste time and money.

Understanding the business case for IoT integration is vital, but so is picking the right partners along the way in order to successfully implement a solution by drawing upon others’ expertise to make up for areas a company is lacking internally.

According to the Cisco study, “the most successful organizations engage the IoT partner ecosystem at every stage, implying that strong partnerships throughout the process can smooth out the learning curve.

Partnering with OptConnect for managed wireless solution needs will provide you with a partnership you can trust and connectivity you can rely on. As we continue to innovate and push the boundaries of IoT, we know that valuable partnerships will play an integral role in our success.

"OptConnect is being proactive and doing all they can to make the migration process as simple as possible, they have created a migration path that insures no interruption of service" said John Horn, IoT expert and Advisor at Graham Partners.

"All I can say is stay tuned, amazing things are coming from OptConnect."