The two key developments at this years event, for an African communicator, are enterprise platforms and network performance
Platform
One of the key takeaways from MWC15 is a reappraisal of the platform as a portfolio of products to enhance enterprise operations.
So, Tangoe is at work in South Africa, offering scalable lifecycle IT tools. It has expanded its business model, moving from mobile network operators to verticals, and it has recently sealed a deal with SABMiller to support enterprise-scale network and device management.
Included in this dynamic is Movius, which has become a silver partner in the Samsung Enterprise Alliance programme on the back of its development of device management solutions.
Performance
If we look at operators themselves, another key point is the growth of LTE deployments in Africa, and what this means in terms of the network and also the consumer experience. The trends are quite intriguing. Firstly, LTE adoption means a more agile, more sophisticated telco, more concerned about the customer experience because of the greater options for revenue generation available.
So, TEOCO (The Employee Owned Company) is addressing enterprise networks' requirements to serve its customers more efficiently, with support for operators such as Mcel in Mozambique and Tunisiana in Tunisia.
Second, and it is an interesting point, is the subscriber-side push for LTE, in the form of increasingly affluent populations buying smarter devices. The point to note is that, increasingly, the devices are not made by big-hitters such as Samsung, HTC or LG, or even Nokia or Microsoft. They are Chinese OEMs, such as Xiaomi, producing Android-based devices.
