EVENTS

Tremendous Success of the ITU/NGMN Conference Stream “Mobile Broadband 2010+” at ITU Telecom World 2009

Geneva (Switzerland) / Frankfurt (Germany), October 7th, 2009 – NGMN presented a joint ITU/NGMN full-day conference stream on 7th October, 2009, at the ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland.

© 2009 Next Generation Mobile Networks Ltd.

The auditorium appreciated the first-hand insight given by top management representatives of NGMN partner companies and the wider mobile ecosystem on the status, the challenges and the customer impact of mobile broadband networks in the coming years. The ITU/NGMN event took place on 7th October at the ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland and attracted a substantial portion of the 1.500 ITU Forum participants.

“Mobile Broadband 2010+” proved to be one of the most successful sessions of the conference – attendance already exceeded expectations in the morning at the Open Expert Forum session reaching capacity limits with more than 200 participants. Also the keynotes of NGMN Board members and the afternoon sessions on “Operational Efficiency” and “Customer Impact” saw extremely high attendance of ITU Forum participants and lively discussion.

© 2009 Next Generation Mobile Networks Ltd.

The opening session of NGMN’s “Mobile Broadband 2010+” day brought insights from top speakers of the NGMN Sponsor community on “Infrastructure Innovations” to more than 200 participants. The participants stayed on to listen to the following panel discussion on one of the currently hottest topics in the mobile industry: “Future Mobile Applications”. This topic was moderated by the NGMN co-operation partner WIP with representatives of the wider mobile ecosystem on the panel. Focus of the two morning sessions laid on backhaul, antenna embedded radio, network migration and mobile application developer challenges.

At the keynote session, NGMN Board members from NTT DOCOMO, Telefonica, AT&T and SK Telecom provided an overview on next generation mobile network deployment scenarios and migration plans. The speakers also highlighted the major challenges that still have to be addressed in the next months in the areas of spectrum harmonisation and availability of devices and chipsets.

As efficiency improvements will be a key challenge for the network deployment and operations, the following NGMN session on “Operational Excellence” drew a lot of attention from many of the ITU Forum participants. Executives from Operators gave insights into their requirements and the audience took the chance to discuss the open issues with representatives from the leading vendors present in a panel. All speakers clearly emphasised NGMN’s role in driving the development to enhance “Operational Excellence” through projects like OBRI or Operational Efficiency, but also stressed the importance of further joint industry efforts to lead these efforts towards implementation.

The ITU/NGMN day closed with the session “Customer Impact” on the current status and plans of major device and chipset manufacturers in the area of wireless broadband devices. Besides giving first information on the data devices and chipsets available for 2010, the speakers also provided an outlook on services (e.g. in the area of M2M), on wireless broadband for CEs and on the requirements for wide adoption. Here, a common voice evolution path, common application platforms, enhanced device management and security were named as the most important success factors.

Please find the full programme and all available presentations for download:

ITU_NGMN_Mobile_Broadband_2010+_07-Oct-2009