Global telcos decide the future of comms at GSMA event in Dublin

22 Nov 2016

Anam CEO Dr Noel Kelly and CCO Brian D'Arcy. Image: Connor McKenna

Over 16,000 meetings among 1,200 delegates responsible for half of the world’s mobile traffic were held at a GSMA summit in Dublin recently.

Dublin recently scored a coup when the GSMA, organisers of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, held the Wholesale Agreements and Solutions (WAS) Group summit at the Convention Centre in the city.

More than 1,200 senior executives from mobile giants including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Hutchison and China Mobile attended the GSMA Wholesale Agreements and Solutions Group (WAS#4) Summit, which previously took place in Asia and Europe.

Hard business matters

The decision to bring the summit to Ireland was the brainchild of Irish mobile technology company Anam.

Anam is a mobile software company headquartered in Dublin with worldwide operations in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi. We spoke to the leaders at Anam, CEO Dr Noel Kelly and CCO Brian D’Arcy, about how they landed the pivotal event.

According to Kelly, the event was worth over €3m to Dublin over the week it took place. “There are over 142 countries represented and over 1,200 delegates from over 300 companies,” he said.

His colleague D’Arcy said that the operators who attended were responsible for over half of the world’s mobile traffic and that billions of euros worth of business was conducted.

“We believe there were over 16,000 meetings taking place where roaming agreements were done. A lot of hard business was done and there is a serious commercial element to it.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com