The Glomo awards are the Oscars of the Mobile World Congress – without the communications breakdowns. The Glomo’s recognise the companies and people whose inventiveness has helped drive the mobile industry forward in a constant state of rapid evolution.
It takes an extraordinary mindset to brave ourselves for constant innovation in the face of the natural human instinct for stability. In recognition of this, GSMA has added a new category to its awards. The Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G Award is a recognition of the crucial work involved in helping the mobile industry make what is arguably its most difficult transition yet.
The award was contested by five outstanding candidates in a field when many companies have gone far beyond the call of duty to smooth the transition to a very different genre of communications. The top five nominations were for Argela for ProgRAN, Huawei for the Evolution from 4.5G to 5G, KT for PyeongChang 5G Trial Service and world-first LTE-A Pro, Nokia for Nokia 4.5G Pro gigabit LTE and 5G-readiness and Qualcomm for its Snapdragon X16 LTE Modem.
The judgements were drawn from more than 250 independent experts across the globe, including analysts, journalists and academics. They were looking for great examples of bold and aggressive strategies for the next phase of LTE evolution, be they from network operators, infrastructure suppliers, suppliers of network technologies or service platforms. Whether the entrant was a coder or a component maker, the criteria were the same: was their effort unique, did they address an industry challenge, did they advance the industry and did they slash the costs of mobile installations?
In the opinion of the judges, the entrants represented, “a solid end to end suite of solutions which collectively reduce the barriers to entry for operators.”
The winner was Huawei for its Evolution from 4.5G to 5G, which the judges acclaimed as the totemic initiative. It was Huawei’s efforts in this field that persuaded mobile operators that they could invest in the future, protect their original investment and get the maximum value from their network resources.
Differentiating between so many outstanding contributions was particularly difficult this year, according to one judge, Attilio Zani, an independent business analyst. “There was an extra-ordinary group of entries, ranging from individually focused pieces of technology to comprehensive groupings,” says Zani.
The Huawei 4.5G to 5G team are seen here (see pic) receiving their award from guest presenters Suzi Perry and Ortis Deley (from the UK’s Gadget Show) and GSMA CEO John Hoffman.