Enterprise connectivity was at the heart of MWC Las Vegas last week, with experts presenting compelling reasons for the adoption of 5G and providing a bullish assessment of the opportunities ahead for a wide range of businesses.

Here, Mobile World Live assesses the top enterprise takeaways from the GSMA’s flagship North America event.

Enterprise call to action
Lara Dewar, CMO at the GSMA, set the tone on the keynote stage by presenting a four point action plan intended to guide mobile industry efforts in powering the future of enterprise, as she argued connectivity lies at the heart of AI and all other new technologies.

She noted while 60 per cent of connections across North America will be powered by 5G by end-2024, the enterprise sector holds the key for the next phase of growth. She explained while “enterprises needs are vast”, so are the capabilities of 5G, “so this really is a match made in heaven”.

AI is more than just a buzzword
AI and generative AI (genAI) were the connective tissue across various keynote addresses, panels and the show floor.

Durga Malladi, SVP and GM, technology planning and edge solutions at Qualcomm, stated enterprises sat on treasure troves of their own data, which could be used to train their own large language models.

Malladi noted genAI can translate text from one language to another or summarise documents to create detailed notes.

On the productivity side of genAI, software engineers can ask large language models to create code for a specific topic, which saves time and reduces the need for debugging.

The expert explained “productivity tools are clearly transforming a lot of the enterprises, and it’s important to actually embrace them so that employees get to use them as much as possible”.

Paula Goldman, chief ethical and humane use officer at Salesforce, advised enterprises to take a hard look at how they could employ “agentic AI” in the workplace.

Agentic AI, she noted, can act independently to achieve company goals or make decisions on its own, but there needs to be railings in place.

She explained agentic AI should be viewed as a partner by enterprises and not just a tool.

SMB opportunity
The main theme of MWC Las Vegas was 5G for enterprise IT and T-Mobile US Business Group SVP Mishka Dehghan told Mobile World Live her company has seen “a tonne of momentum” across small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

According to a US government agency, there were 33,185,550 small businesses in the US in 2023, employing 61.7 million people.

Dehghan said SMBs and mid-market enterprises are seeking managed services to improve their operations, which the operator supplies through “a very intentional portfolio to serve all the segments”. She noted SMBs are looking for custom services and applications of their own.

Potential of open APIs
GSMA Intelligence head Peter Jarich appeared on the Mobile World Live podcast recorded on the show floor to provide some additional colour on a report by the organisation on the potential of 5G for businesses.

A survey of 4,200 global enterprises found while they understand what they want from 5G, there was an interest in learning more about the use of open APIs.

As enterprises undergo digital transformation, Jarich explained it is up to mobile operators to help them understand how to best use open APIs.

Collaboration key for private 5G
Jeff Pittman, head of the enterprise market unit for Mobile Networks at Nokia, told MWL “partnerships are extremely important” for enterprises when it comes to deploying private 5G networks.

While businesses want help in solving their pain points, vendors, operators and system integrators need to help them understand all the pieces of their connectivity puzzles, the expert noted.

Those pieces include a carrier grade 5G network, a device ecosystem, real-time analytics through AI and machine learning, and security.

Enterprises typically do not have the IT bandwidth to deal with new services such as private 5G networks, he added, which is why they need strong partnerships for their digital transformations.

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