I haven’t left home to attend a work-related event in 20 months, and I don’t think I’ve missed much other than in-person interaction. Last week’s MWC Los Angeles, the wireless industry’s largest annual event in the U.S. and a mere 25 miles from my house, was just the latest event to come and go generating no ripples of note. 

Not a single CEO from a major wireless carrier, radio access network (RAN) equipment vendor, or cloud provider joined the stage. Worse yet, much of the programming was pre-recorded or heavily scripted.

I miss traveling, and acknowledge this is a personal choice to remain hunkered down and away from big crowds. But I don’t regret missing this in-person event — or any others that have occurred since the beginning of the pandemic. 

I worry the pandemic has permanently reduced these major industry events to mostly news-free infomercials. Industry leaders must be held accountable in public forums and taken to task by impartial moderators. None of that occurred last week, and many of the top keynoters phoned it in via remote locations.

I don’t fault anyone for staying home amid all this seemingly never-ending uncertainty and worry. But that’s no excuse for how event organizers repeatedly fail to provide meaningful discussions about the challenges and changes impacting the wireless industry and the billions of people it serves.

T-Mobile US should have faced tough questions about its inability to stop a recent cyberattack that exposed personal data on at least 54 million people. Instead we got a repeat performance of Neville Ray’s greatest hits, the president of technology’s favorite undertaking: bashing domestic rivals Verizon and AT&T. 

Verizon announced a minor IoT update and plans to augment its 5G mobile network with Amazon’s not-yet-launched low Earth orbit satellite network. AT&T introduced a managed firewall service for 5G network deployments, and private 5G deployments with Ford and General Electric.

Ericsson released software to reduce latency on public and private 5G networks for mixed reality applications. Dish Network announced yet another vendor for its not-yet-launched 5G network — something about blockchain and shared spectrum. Rakuten Symphony linked up with Intel and Juniper Networks to develop an edge computing appliance for open RAN cell site deployments. 

VMware shared plans to release a RAN intelligent controller six months from now. Samsung announced a pair of lower end dual-band massive MIMO radios and plans to pair its RAN and core offerings with Ciena’s routing and switching portfolio. Nokia generally treated it as a typical week.

Interesting developments, I guess, but nothing that captures what 5G networks and operators are delivering today. Indeed, much of the discussion live streamed from last week’s event was about what 5G might do in the future. We heard the same thing last year, and the year before, and — you get the point. 

5G is here now, in many but not all places. We know what it is and what it most certainly is not. So let’s just admit it. The 5G killer app remains elusive because it doesn’t exist.

Even if advancements such as mobile edge computing and network slicing fulfill the utmost aspirations proclaimed by operators and vendors, what changes will that bring?

Private networks might flourish, although mobile network operators haven’t yet proven their necessity in that role. Virtual and augmented reality apps might gain some momentum, but does anyone honestly believe latency is the biggest roadblock to more immersive experiences in a virtual universe? Good luck with that, metaverse.

Back here in the real world, people matter. Technology that fuels innovation among us and changes the world for the better matters.

We got none of that last week, but maybe it was hidden from view. It would have been nice to talk with some of the iconoclasts that typically attend these annual gatherings, the leaders making decisions about how, where, and when technology comes to us all in meaningful form. The most thought-provoking conversations always happen off stage. 

I do regret missing that, and that’s why I remain hopeful. MWC Barcelona is the most important work event on my calendar every year. With a little luck and a lot of soul searching, I hope the industry’s biggest cheerleader GSMA regains sight of that. We all deserve it after these past two years. 

Industry events exist to give us something to chew on, challenge our preconceptions, and identify the extent to which mistakes of the past can be corrected. We need big thinkers, dreamers, and reluctantly accountable leaders.

None of us should be asked to sit through another meeting or event that could’ve been an email.