As the telecommunications landscape shifts under the weight of massive workforce reductions and a cooling 5G market, the industry’s premier gatherings are facing an identity crisis. Vladislav Zaimov, a seasoned expert in enterprise telecommunications and network risk management, joins us to discuss how giants like Ericsson and Nokia are recalibrating their physical presence in an era of “cost discipline.” With global RAN revenues sliding and the rise of AI-centric “hyperscalers” redefining the showroom floor, Zaimov provides a deep dive into how companies maintain influence when their headcounts are shrinking.
The following discussion explores the tension between record-breaking event attendance and the reality of a decaying industry core, examining how leadership is being redefined in the shadow of shifting geopolitical and technological dominance.
Ericsson is reducing its on-site presence at major industry events by 10% following a global workforce reduction of over 15,000 employees since 2022. How does a smaller delegation impact the ability to facilitate high-level dealmaking, and what specific strategies can teams use to maintain their influence with fewer people?
A smaller delegation certainly changes the optics of a company’s “gravity” on the showroom floor, but Ericsson’s move toward “cost discipline” is a pragmatic response to having fewer than 89,000 employees remaining from a peak of 105,500 just three years ago. In high-level dealmaking, the loss of mid-level support staff means the remaining executives must be more surgical, focusing on “ecosystem collaboration” rather than broad-spectrum networking. We are seeing a shift where human interaction is reserved for high-value relationship building—the “tapas-eating and ski-trip comparisons”—while the technical validation is increasingly handled through pre-event digital briefings. To maintain influence, teams must leverage their 2% organic sales growth as a narrative of efficiency, proving that a leaner organization can still dominate the US market and outperform rivals like Nokia despite a reduced physical footprint.
The radio access network market has seen annual sales plummet from $45 billion to $35 billion in just two years. Given this sharp decline in spending, what specific metrics should companies now use to justify the cost of massive exhibition stands, and how has the focus of these demonstrations shifted?
With the RAN market shrinking by $10 billion since 2022, the old metric of “booth traffic” is effectively dead; companies are now looking at “revenue per square meter” and the maturity of AI integration. Instead of showing off 5G hardware that telcos have already finished buying, demonstrations have pivoted toward how AI and cloud technologies can act as “enablers” to extract profit from existing infrastructure. For a company like Ericsson, which reported 236.7 billion Swedish kronor in revenue last year, the stand is no longer a sales floor but a proof-of-concept lab for AI-RAN and cloud maturity. The focus has moved from the physical radio units to the software layers that promise to fatten profit margins for cash-strapped operators.
While traditional telecom giants are cutting staff, attendance at major tech summits has returned to record highs of 109,000 people. What are the practical implications of this “attendance paradox” for the industry, and how do organizations ensure that the quality of networking remains high as the workforce shrinks?
This paradox suggests that while the “telecom” heart of these events is shrinking, the “tech” lungs are expanding, with the 109,000-strong crowd now being bolstered by government bodies, industrial groups, and hyperscalers. The practical implication is a dilution of specialized expertise; there are more people in the room, but fewer of them are traditional network engineers who understand the “plumbing” of the internet. To ensure quality networking, organizations are creating “events within events,” moving away from the crowded Hall 1 or Hall 3 floors into private meeting suites where they can filter out the noise. They are essentially cordoning off the remaining 75,000 to 89,000 industry professionals from the “gate-crashers” to ensure that the $35 billion remaining in the market is discussed by the right people.
Major carriers like AT&T and Verizon have collectively cut over 140,000 jobs recently, yet they continue to occupy vast spaces at global trade shows. What are the trade-offs of maintaining a large physical brand presence during aggressive downsizing, and how does this affect the morale of the remaining staff?
There is a jarring disconnect when a company like AT&T cuts 98,000 jobs—nearly 42% of its workforce—while simultaneously funding a massive, expensive installation in Barcelona. The primary trade-off is brand perception versus internal morale; the large stand is meant to signal stability to investors and “market leadership” to competitors, but for the remaining staff, it can feel like a wasteful vanity project while their departments are gutted. This “physical branding” acts as a defensive shield to prevent a narrative of decline, but it risks alienating the survivors who are left to do the work of two or three former colleagues. When you see Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Telefónica offloading 55,000 jobs while keeping their vast stands in Hall 3, it highlights a desperate need to appear “too big to fail” in a stagnant market.
International players like Huawei are expanding their workforce and exhibition footprint while many Western firms are scaling back. How does this shift in physical dominance influence the perception of market leadership, and what steps can smaller vendors take to ensure they aren’t overshadowed by these massive installations?
Huawei’s expansion to 208,000 employees and its near-total occupation of Hall 1 creates a visual hegemony that is hard for Western firms to counter as they retract. This dominance fuels the perception that the center of gravity in telecommunications is shifting East, a “Chinese-centric” MWC that worries various Western stakeholders. Smaller vendors cannot compete on floor space, so they must pivot to “niche authority,” focusing on specific high-growth sectors like private 5G or specialized security. By abandoning the “generalist” approach of the giants, smaller players can use their agility to host intimate, high-impact technical sessions that offer the depth a massive, 200,000-person organization sometimes lacks.
Industry events are pivoting away from pure mobile connectivity toward general tech, artificial intelligence, and hyperscaler cloud services. How should traditional network engineers adapt to this change, and what specific technical skills are now most valuable for those navigating these increasingly crowded cross-sector ecosystems?
The traditional network engineer must evolve into a “systems architect” who understands how telco infrastructure interfaces with Nvidia’s AI-RAN vision or AWS cloud layers. As MWC becomes a “general tech affair,” the most valuable skills are no longer just radio frequency optimization, but data orchestration and AI integration. Engineers need to learn the language of the hyperscalers who have gate-crashed the party, as these companies are the ones now driving the innovation that operators are actually willing to fund. The “malaise” in traditional telecom means that the only path forward is to become indispensable to the AI and cloud providers who are currently consuming the industry’s oxygen.
What is your forecast for the future of mobile trade shows?
I forecast that we will see a permanent “bifurcation” of these events; the public-facing side will continue to break attendance records by rebranding as general “AI and Tech” summits to attract the 100,000+ crowds the GSMA craves, while the actual telecom business will retreat into smaller, invite-only “executive summits.” As Western vendors like Nokia and Ericsson continue their workforce reductions and “cost discipline,” their physical presence will likely stabilize at a much smaller, more tactical level, leaving the massive, Hall-sized installations to either Chinese giants like Huawei or the American hyperscalers. The era of the “mobile-only” trade show is over, replaced by a broader digital ecosystem where connectivity is just a background utility for the AI revolution.
