At the end of February, the connectivity industry gathered in Barcelona for MWC, the world’s biggest mobile event. Airspan was there, demonstrating our products, announcing new partnerships, and catching up with friends and colleagues from around the world. Abel Mayal, SVP of Technology and Marketing, explains why it was such an important event for the company. 

After two years of pandemic disruption, the buzz was finally back at MWC. As a Barcelona native, it was a pleasure for me to welcome the industry back to my hometown for four days of face-to-face catch ups. People were eager to see each other, particularly those who had worked together remotely but never met in person. 

This MWC was special for Airspan because it was the first one since we became a public company last August. As such, we were proud to exhibit in Hall 2, alongside the likes of Ericsson and HPE. A big theme this year was Open RAN and private networks. Fittingly, one of the products we demonstrated in our booth was our prize-winning ‘network in a box’, a private 5G network consisting of just a server, a switch, and a radio connector. The beauty of it is its scalability: simply add more servers and, before you know it, it’s suitable for MNOs to use. This highlighted the benefits of software in an off-the-shelf service.  

Airspan also announced a raft of new partnerships with leading companies like Cisco, Dell, and AWS, which used our ‘network in a box’ in its booth to breathe life into a Boston Dynamics robot dog! Some of those companies may not sound like natural attendees at MWC, but it’s a sign of how far private networks have come that we’re now seeing system integrators, hyperscalers, and server vendors coming to the event.

Welcoming so many newcomers was definitely one of the highlights of this year’s MWC, and what better way to do it than over some local Spanish wine and cheese? Airspan hosted a reception for over 100 people, which was a great opportunity to share in each other’s successes and make new friends.

But all of this feels like a distant memory now that we’re back in the office, working hard on the products that we’ll be showing off in Barcelona next year.