MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2026, BARCELONA – Public transportation headed to the Fira de Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2026 was delayed this morning and as a result, the trains were packed to the limit. We felt like tokens trying to get through a network that is not AI-ready.
(Ed. Note: A shoutout to Jürgen Hatheier, VP of business development and CTO, global partnerships at Ciena, who gave us that highly appropriate AI token metaphor.)
Scroll down to see what we’ve got for you by the end of Day 2 in Barca.
What is our written coverage from Day 2?
MWC: Wind River shows how V2X, physical AI can drive monetization
MWC: T-Mobile CTO talks big autonomous network ambitions
A MWC surprise: Ookla to be acquired by Accenture
MWC: HPE presses ahead with AI-driven networking strategy
MWC: SoftBank expects to deliver initial 6G services in 2029
MWC: Skylo bets on standards to make satellite just another cell site
What are our key tech quotes for the day?
Regarding the current state of open RAN: “We have been a big proponent of open RAN,” said Masum Mir, SVP and GM, Cisco Provider Mobility. “Maybe I'm a little bit of an optimist. I do have optimism bias, but for technology progression in any industry, you have to have patience.”
Regarding operators not prepping their networks for AI: “They know they need to get on the bus or get run over by it," said Jürgen Hatheier, VP of business development and CTO, global partnerships at Ciena.
What is the tech buzzword for the day? Distributed MIMO
Distributed MIMO: Eridan claims to be the only radio vendor doing distributed MIMO so far. Distributed MIMO is different from massive MIMO in that Eridan is switching radio blocks on and off by using an AI controller, depending on more or less demand.
What is a key telecom fact we learned?
Telcos have a problem knowing when electricity goes down, apparently
We checked in with a 20-person start-up called Gisual today. They provide a plug-and-play open API that acts as an AI correlation engine to tell telcos about power outages. That's all it does — alert telcos to power outages.
Current customers include Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Telus, Altice, Orange Business, Nokia, DT and BT Business. Their partners include big names like Microsoft, ServiceNow and Cognizant.
Vanessa Rivera, director of partnerships, told us that their open API product saved Verizon $15 million or 115,000 truck rolls in one year, alone.
Meeting with smaller companies such as Gisual and Render Networks at MWC is just as interesting as the big ones.
What is our MWC oddity for the day?
A food truck here at the Fira de Barcelona serves square sandwiches cut in half on the diagonal, which is apparently why it's called a bikini.
Why do we love MWC?
We love MWC because during the late networking receptions, we get to know our peers on a more personal level. For example, we discovered that Orange's Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Bruno Zerbib, just released his fourth album called "Quantum Love" on all the various music channels. He recorded all the tracks himself. Listen here.
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.