The digital future belongs to everyone: telecommunications companies, big technology companies, developers and, of course, the citizens who make up the new society. This edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) has activated a pioneering ecosystem in which the networks will also serve as open and collaborative platforms, available to the entire sector to promote joint development that brings maximum benefit to end users.
In this spirit, the GSMA Open Gateway initiative was launched, a project announced by José María Álvarez-Pallete, president of Telefónica and also of the global telecommunications association, the GSMA. Open Gateway was presented in Barcelona with the initial support of more than 20 companies capable of reaching 3.8 billion people. In a complex world, simplification is pursued: open and shared infrastructures so that mobile operators and cloud computing services work in the same direction. Thus, the technological goals are not so far away.
This global project will generate industry and provide value to consumers through the sharing and federation of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), standardized and open so that developers can shape the services of the future at high speed and from telecommunications networks. . The scope of application is very broad, covering multiple sectors dependent on digitization and connectivity, from Fintech to Smart Mobility, including Gaming and new fields such as the Metaverse. Through Wayra, Telefónica also launched a global call at the MWC to support startups that are working on disruptive technologies with applications based on Open Gateway with innovation and financing.
“Telcos have come a long way in developing a global platform to connect everyone and everything”, Álvarez-Pallete reviewed in this edition of the MWC. Now, “mobile operators and cloud services are integrated to make a new world of opportunities possible”, advanced the president of Telefónica. Álvarez-Pallete, the first Spaniard to lead the GSMA association, foresees “a tsunami of innovation” as a result of this new open and collaborative paradigm: “We are at the gates of a new change of era driven by the intersection of telco capabilities, computing, Artificial Intelligence and Web 3”.
“Without telcos there is no digital future”, warned Álvarez-Pallete. The deployment undertaken by the telecommunications sector will be even more important in this new stage, which has led the sector to join forces with the entire digital ecosystem to intensify technological progress.
This position also reaches the field of financing, a debate that has gained strength after the European Commission announced a public consultation to address the so-called fair share, a fair contribution from all the large market agents. Just half a dozen technology companies generate more than half of the traffic that circulates through European networks, so the question has been put on the table of whether those big technology companies that enjoy telco deployments should also contribute fairly to their development, with which citizens and companies of the continent would benefit. Europe risks being left behind in the demanding global race for digitalisation.