MWC 2024, beyond the spotlight

Cellnex is among the companies that have been committed to holding the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona since its earliest days. We have been present at this benchmark event for the telecommunications sector since its first edition 18 years ago, supporting it not only through our physical presence with a stand that has grown each year, but also by contributing to the smooth running of the event.

Cellnex has an agreement with MWC organizers GSMA to broadcast the television signal of the Congress — Mobile World Live — to hotels and homes in Barcelona over the days the event lasts. This allows attendees and residents alike to access to these exclusive contents even outside the walls of the Fira Gran Via venue, using one of the local DTT channels in Barcelona.

Also, Cellnex has been providing frequency management and interference identification services for many years. With around 2,700 exhibitors performing demonstrations that require different frequencies, it is essential for their correct operation that there should be no interference between the stands. To this end, Cellnex, in coordination with the Spanish Digital Transformation Ministry, deploys a team of experts to ensure the correct planning and use of the spectrum to avoid any interference between the exhibitors and to allow the more than 100,000 visitors to access their content.

Beyond these services, which are often “invisible” and little known, the focus is usually on what happens in the various pavilions where companies showcase their very best using bright and spacious stands over the four days that the event lasts. Cellnex is the only telecommunications infrastructure operator with its own stand at Mobile, specifically in Hall 4, very close to the main stage hosting the “guest stars” and the main players in the sector.

At the stand this year the company seized the opportunity to present the connectivity solutions that it makes available to its customers as well as the necessary operational excellence for the management of this type of solutions and infrastructure.

The Cellnex stand had four different areas:

• The area in which Cellnex has displayed its presence as Europe’s leading operator of wireless telecommunications infrastructures, with a portfolio of 138,000 sites (up to 2030).
• The video wall area, where connectivity solutions were presented. This provides an opportunity to learn about Cellnex’s proposal for dense areas such as camouflaged implementations on rooftops in Rome, Small Cells in London or indoor coverage through DAS systems in stadia or underground rail systems. One aspect that caught visitors’ attention was how Cellnex operationalises sites in low-density areas such as France, sometimes even using helicopters. Also the 5GMED project provided an opportunity to explain Cellnex’s innovation in transport corridors, enabling cases of digitalisation of roads, communication services in trains and vehicle connectivity.

• The Digital Twin area, where Cellnex showcased its operational excellence. Efficiencies achieved using digital key site access solutions, the site alert control service (NOC), infrastructure management using digital twins or our commitment to sustainability and using renewable energy.

• The foundation area, featuring the social startups of the Cellnex Bridge Programme: Biofood Network, Citizens Immigration, Dive, ForestChain and NeurekaLab. This is a very enriching vision of how entrepreneurs can provide social impact solutions through connectivity, constituting a small 4YFN at the Cellnex stand.

Furthermore, and in line with Cellnex’s commitment to the environment and climate change, this year sustainability criteria were incorporated into the design, construction, operation and end-of-life project of the materials used for the stand, helping to minimise the impact and reduce the carbon footprint generated by this activity. Likewise, after the event was over, Cellnex compensated stand emissions that could not be reduced by acquiring compensation credits in the voluntary emissions market, thus achieving carbon neutrality.

But above all, the Mobile World Congress Barcelona managed to become an incomparable setting for holding conversations with customers, partners and institutions about the challenges and opportunities —especially in terms of business— of the sector. In slightly less than a week, the heads of the main global companies and a large number of government delegations gather in Barcelona, turning the event into a magnificent base camp to meet, thereby significantly reducing the travel times and hours of flights that would be needed for them all to travel across the world to see each other.

Furthermore, since Cellnex’s headquarters in Barcelona are so close to the Congress venue, they have also become one of the nearby sites for receiving visits such as that of the Polish government and business delegation participating at MWC for the third year running.

In parallel to this, and led by our CEO Marco Patuano, the Corporation team and the various Cellnex teams in the countries where we operate were able to receive industry leaders at our stand and hear at first-hand their vision about the future of our business. In short, four days of networking around the topics of this edition: GSMA Open Gateway, Artificial Intelligence and infrastructure investments. This is an opportunity to hear the voice of the main operators, who are demanding a change in the market situation at all levels, including on the regulatory level, to allow consolidation, greater investments and more support for innovation. And the industry’s investments in 5G have to come hand in hand with new services that allow networks to be monetised, a task in which there is still a lot of work to be done.

Jose Antonio Aranda

Global Director of Institutional Relations