This year, everything revolves around AI again at the Mobile World Congress. Above the glitter and glamour on the exhibition floor hangs a dark cloud of geopolitical uncertainty. The loud call for Europe to urgently step up its game echoes through the halls.
The technology world once again flocked to Barcelona this year for the Mobile World Congress. During Europe’s largest technology fair, the big players in the sector pull out all the stops to steal the show. From AI-powered table tennis games, virtual panda mascots to Matrix-like light spectacles: a tour of the exhibition floor is never boring.
However, MWC shows two faces this year. As cheerful and playful as it is at the stands, the tone during keynotes and panel discussions is just as bitterly serious. Europe is struggling with a digital identity crisis and this is also felt during the conference. Prominent players from the European technology sector have one clear message for politics: if Europe wants to play a role on the global AI stage, it urgently needs to change its approach.
Invasion of AI Agents
Since last year, AI has been the dominant theme. Every company present must show that it is involved with artificial intelligence in one way or another. At a fair like MWC, the visual often wins over the substantive. Like skilled market vendors, the exhibitors play with light, sound, holograms, and physical artifacts. Anything that attracts the attention of passers-by is allowed. Sometimes it makes us a bit uncomfortable: we wonder what that China Mobile panda has to hide.
The MWC floor is a reflection of current trends. And the trend par excellence this year is clearly agentic AI. The term is everywhere and new AI agents are being announced in droves. In short, AI agents are capable of performing actions in other applications or IT systems completely autonomously, without the need for human intervention. For a more detailed analysis, you can go here.
During MWC, there’s open fantasizing about how AI agents will infiltrate not only your work but also your personal life. In the vision of Samsung, Google, and other smartphone companies, everyone will soon have a personal AI assistant in their pocket. It helps you with the most banal things. Whether we feel comfortable with AI always watching and listening is another matter, but when it comes to rolling out new AI features, users’ opinions no longer count.
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Seatbelt Without a Car
MWC is an international occasion, but it’s mainly American and Asian companies that steal the show. European telecom operators such as Orange, T-Mobile, and home player Telefónica bravely defend Europe’s honor. This has not escaped Arthur Mensch, CEO of the French AI company Mistral, either. He puts his finger on the sore spot during his keynote.
“The conversation around AI is led by the United States and China. Europe is being left out”. With this threatening message, Mensch calls for more investments and a different policy around AI from European institutions, and he won’t be the only one making this cry for help. Mistral AI is one of the few European AI companies allowed to sit at the same table as Google and OpenAI.
The evening before Mensch’s appearance, Claudia Nemat, board member of Deutsche Telekom, gave her unvarnished opinion during a panel on AI and regulation. “In Europe, we invented the seatbelt while the car doesn’t even exist yet. How do we expect to be taken seriously on the global stage like this? Excessive bureaucracy is making big companies smaller”.
Geopolitical tensions loom over MWC, but Europe should not retreat into its own technological bubble, says Richard Benjamins, founder of the Spanish AI company Raight.ai. “You need to be able to separate the geopolitical context from the business context. The whole world practically runs on three clouds, and they don’t come from Europe either.” When asked if every country should develop its own LLM, Francisco Montalvo of Télefonica has a short and powerful answer: “That would be really crazy, and above all a waste of time and energy.”
Every country its own LLM? That would be insane.
Francisco Montalvo, CDO Director Telefónica
The fact that the US and the EU are at odds with each other can open doors for other parties. Huawei will watch this happen with a hidden smile. The MWC exhibition is an important appointment for the Chinese company to extend a hand to Europe, and their booth is one of the busiest during MWC. You can’t get in without a special pass.
“Europe remains an important market for us. We are still investing heavily in local production and R&D. The Benelux was once the international springboard for Huawei,” says Gert-Jan Van Eck, COO for the Benelux and Ireland. “Gold plating comes at a cost. Politicization does not help with safety and competition.”
Van Eck is supported by his colleague Victor Qian, who serves as CEO in the Benelux. “We are used to everyone looking at us. But in conversations with customers, even here during MWC, we notice that companies are primarily interested in business, not politics. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world, but digitalization and the green transition are certainties.”
Bureaucracy over innovation
The European Commission does not just wave rules around. The regulation so reviled by Big Tech serves as a leash to keep them in check. But even within the European tech sector, the support is low, concludes Lazslo Toth, Head of Europe at GSMA. “I even dare to say that there is chronic overregulation. The regulatory framework is too fragmented and lags behind reality. Our position is not that there should be fewer rules, but they need to be simpler.”
According to Toth, Europe has also put itself at an insurmountable disadvantage with the 5G rollout. “Connectivity is a key enabler for industry. It is not that operators are not investing in 5G, but they are getting too few results from it. For AI, you need the right network: that network threatens to become a bottleneck in Europe.”
Nia Castelly represents a similar view on behalf of Google. “Europe takes a different approach than the US when it comes to regulation. Companies should be given more room to think for themselves about the ethical use of their technology. The chain is too complex to be cast into rules. Every link carries a responsibility.” Nice words, which at the same time sound ambiguous, knowing that Google seems to find military use of AI within the bounds of what is permissible.
“We should no longer be afraid of AI,” Montalvo chimes in. “Sometimes you have to dare to fail to learn from it and become better. But then companies need to be given that margin. We do not necessarily have to want to be the fastest, it is better to be the most efficient. But honestly, and I know this is a controversial standpoint: many companies are still far from human-centric thinking when it comes to AI. The focus is often on optimization.”
Operators invest in 5G, but they’re not getting results.
Lazslo Toth, Head of Europe GSMA
Time for action
After four days, the MWC circus leaves Barcelona again, but the geopolitical uncertainty will not subside so quickly. Toth hopes that European leaders have understood the message. “A lot is changing that will have a major impact on the entire ecosystem. These evolutions should be a wake-up call to do things differently.”
“Let this be an opportunity to review things anew, from a fresh approach and in function of technological developments. We advocate for fair regulation that promotes the competitiveness of European companies. Many studies were conducted last year. If 2024 was the year of studies, then I hope 2025 will be the year of concrete actions,” Toth concludes.