Mobile World Congress heralds 'The IQ Era'

Mobile World Congress, the giant annual telecommunications show in Barcelona, gathered the global industry this year under the banner of "The IQ Era," a theme capturing the pervasive drive to fuse artificial intelligence with connectivity and to reimagine networks, devices and services around intelligent systems.

The event, one of the largest gatherings in the technology and telecommunications world, drew enormous numbers of attendees from countries around the globe, reflecting the continued importance of mobile connectivity and the industry's central role in the digital economy.

The theme underscored how deeply artificial intelligence had permeated the telecommunications sector, from the management and optimisation of networks to the devices and applications that run on them, as the industry sought to harness AI to improve efficiency, capability and services.

Announcements and exhibits spanned advances in mobile connectivity, the continued rollout and evolution of high-speed networks, new devices, and the integration of AI across the ecosystem, as companies positioned themselves for a future in which intelligence and connectivity were inseparable.

The gathering also addressed the infrastructure challenges of the AI age, including the enormous demands that AI places on networks and computing, and the role of connectivity in enabling the deployment of intelligent systems across society and the economy.

Mobile World Congress offered a barometer of the state and direction of the global telecommunications industry, and its framing around intelligence reflected the broader transformation sweeping technology. As networks grew faster and more capable and as AI became ever more central, the industry envisioned a future of seamless, intelligent connectivity, even as it grappled with the practical, economic and societal challenges of building and sustaining the infrastructure of an increasingly AI-driven world.