Fira Gran Via Convention Center
Barcelona, Spain
March 3 – 6, 2025
Attendees: 109,000 (as reported by GSMA)
Exhibitors/Sponsors/Partners: 2,900
Speakers: 1,200
Media/Analysts: 2,900
Calysto’s Take
Throngs of the industry’s most mobile-minded once again descended upon Barcelona’s Fira Gran Via earlier this month for Mobile World Congress 2025, helping to reaffirm that telecom and mobile industry in-person events are truly back. This year’s event set a new attendance record, returning MWC to pre-pandemic attendee levels with more than 109,000 participants from 205 countries. The exhibition was sprawling (as it always is), encompassing more than 2.5 million square feet across all eight of the Fira Gran Via’s halls and featuring an array of towering structures and high-impact visual content.
While the size and growth of MWC 2025 is notable, that kind of expansion does not necessarily always translate into relevance. (In other words, bigger isn’t always better.) Some observers characterized this year’s show as “big but flat” and “huge but a bit messy,” which is a somewhat typical assessment for an event as big and sprawling as MWC. One media attendee reported that the show felt “more like a transitional checkpoint rather than an event full of grand revelations,” and that despite the spectacle of MWC 2025, the industry’s sense of direction remains uncertain.
Other attendees and observers noted that part of MWC 2025’s growth could be attributable to the mobile show’s appeal to attendees outside of the mobile-specific sector—to other adjacent vertical enterprise industries, as well as to the broader telecom industry overall. Reporters from Fierce Network even went so far as to pose the question (an intriguing one for telecom industry veterans) of “Are we witnessing the birth of a new Supercomm? Maybe so.”
“[MWC] is a telecommunications networking ecosystem event,” Joe Cumello, SVP and GM, Blue Planet, told Fierce Network. “It’s certainly mobile, yeah, but it’s everything else as well, and it has become a much more an end-to-end event on the telecommunications or networking infrastructure business vs. five years ago.”
For obvious reasons, it can be difficult for coherent messages to be received and heard at an event as expansive as MWC, particularly for smaller players. That said, MWC’s position as a premiere event for the global mobile world is hard to ignore, and the return of MWC to its former formidable size is a strong indication of the show’s ongoing importance for mobile industry marketers. It remains one of the most noticeable annual venues for the mobile industry, particularly in media and analyst circles (as evidenced by the nearly 3,000 media and analyst attendees at this year’s event).
The Buzz
Outside of the hottest new mobile gadgets—phones, watches, glasses and the like—the overwhelming themes of this year’s show were AI, 5G, and network transformation. MWC’s conference program mirrored those themes, featuring separate summits for both 5G and AI, and programming tracks devoted to IoT, mobile enterprise, 5G and AI.
In his opening keynote, GSMA Director General Mats Granryd focused on the industry’s need to complete the transition to 5G Standalone, harness the potential of AI, drive new revenue models, and secure future spectrum access. Granryd said global 5G connections reached 2 billion by 2024, making it one of the fastest technology rollouts in history. He also addressed the mobile usage gap, pointing out that there are 3.1 billion people covered by mobile networks but not using mobile internet, and that closing the usage gap could unlock a $3.5 trillion economic opportunity.
As expected, AI and its rapidly evolving role as a growth driver in telecom, mobile and enterprise technology took center stage at MWC 2025, with numerous companies showcasing AI-driven innovations and AI themes dominating the show floor and conference agenda. AI is expected to contribute $5 trillion annually to the global economy, with $100 billion of that attributable to the telecom sector.
The Dominance of AI
AI has been a prevalent theme at MWC in past years, but a consensus seems to be growing that the 2025 event demonstrated the beginnings of a shift from AI hype to real-world application, with more of a focus on how AI is being embedded into devices and networks to support functions like predictive maintenance, energy efficiency and autonomous network management.
Carriers and vendors also showcased how AI can be applied to reinvent customer interactions using chatbots, real-time call translations and fraud detection. For example, using AI to enhance the performance of the RAN, also known as AI RAN, was a hot topic at the show, with SoftBank, Nvidia and other members of the AI-RAN Alliance touting their progress with the technology.
Telecom and mobile executives at MWC 2025 appeared optimistic about AI’s potential to spur industry and revenue growth. Orange CEO Christel Heydemann noted that AI has the potential to unlock 5G’s true potential and help 5G networks deliver maximum value. She said that as AI proliferates in mobile networks, consumers will grow to expect uninterrupted functionality across countries, making cross-border collaboration essential.
As the mobile industry continues to embrace and embed AI, the focus is now likely to shift to proving monetization strategies. The next 12 months will determine whether AI’s role in mobile network transformation is hype or reality.
5G—or is it 6G now?
The question of monetization of 5G networks and 5G technology also loomed large at MWC 2025, with much of the buzz focused on 5G-Advanced (5G-A) serving as a bridge to future 6G networks. The slower-than expected global rollout of 5G standalone (5G SA) was also a major talking point at the show, and MWC 2025 saw a resurgence of talk about enterprise and private network 5G deployment and monetization strategies.
GSMA predicts that SA will drive 70% of all enterprise revenue expansion until 2030, representing a $127B opportunity for the industry. But European operators have been slower to deploy 5G SA, as his GSMA Director General Mats Granryd noted in his keynote. As of December 2024, only 60 operators had deployed SA and were offering commercial services, Granryd said. (At one MWC conference session, a moderator asked panelists whether Europe had fallen behind in the 5G era, which led Telefonica CEO Marc Murtra to comment, “Isn’t MWC being held in Europe right now?”)
That focus on the status of 5G SA and 5G-A deployments pushed 6G to the back burner at MWC, with one observer pointing out that 6G is “just now emerging as a study item at 3GPP.”
Final word
The keynotes, conference sessions and vendor and operator announcements at MWC 2025 put a strong spotlight on how innovation in 5G, AI and other technology sectors continue to transform the mobile ecosystem. It’s clear that AI in particular will play a lasting role in mobile network and service innovation, helping to make networks more secure, more dynamic, and better able to meet the varied and evolving needs of mobile users.
What’s also clear from the stats, attendee feedback and buzz surrounding this year’s show is that Mobile World Congress will continue to be the largest and most prominent event in the global mobile sector—and as such, a must-attend for the industry’s media and analysts, and a good venue for companies looking to boost their reputation in and exposure to the mobile industry world. So Calysto hopes to see you at next year’s MWC event, which will be held March 2-5, 2026 at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona.
Articles of interest:
Light Reading:
MWC visitor numbers are up again, but the industry is decaying
Telecoms.com:
There is a lack of understanding on what AI is
TechCrunch:
MWC hears two starkly divided views of AI’s impact
IT Pro:
MWC 2025: How will 5G and AI come together?
Light Reading:
MWC’s dirty little secret: A traffic slowdown. Will AI help?
Total Telecom:
Mobile AI takes center stage at MWC 2025 as an industry-wide consensus
Fierce Network:
Op-Ed: Telco optimism springs at MWC with the hopes of AI at the edge
PC Mag:
The Best of MWC 2025: The Products and Concepts That Stole the Show
Fierce Network:
MWC: Seen and heard on Day 3 – ‘This is no longer just a mobile show’
The Verge:
MWC 2025: all the phones, gadgets, and commentary from Barcelona
Telecoms.com:
MWC 2025: the big, the overhyped, and the underappreciated