GTWN/MWC Welcome Cocktail 02 March 2026 in the Golden Hall of the Casa Llotja de Mar, Barcelona Spain

Colleagues and Friends gathered from around the world to welcome Vivek Badinrath at his first Mobile World Congress since becoming the GSMA CEO as he was introduced by GTWN President Asia Pacific, Myla Villanueva, and to hear his Keynote Speech at the GTWN Welcome Reception about the state of the Mobile Communications Industry, the landscape of which has never been so vibrant and varied, be it AI, D2D, Satellite, and Quantum.

While much of his speech focused on the positive, Badinrath also noted the increase of the Mobile Gender Gap with one notable exception – Pakistan where our GTWN International Board Member, Sarah Faisal has been doing exceptional work as highlighted in our Mobile Century magazine.

As has been so often the case in our 34 year history the GTWN has identified and many times shaped future trends way ahead of their
happening, we were very proud to have a presentation by Natalie Antoshchuk from Trackimo on “Leel“, a sim connectivity and a software
service to protect children online, one of the hottest topics of our times.

Next up, GTWN President America, Michele Merrell introduced Mario Aguirre, EVP of our Gold Sponsor, TM Cell.  From his speech, it was clear that TM Cell lives their motto “Telecommunications for People” every day and it was truly heart-warming in this day and age of Bots and AI to hear how it is people who are driving the gold medal awarded service of TM Cell to their suppliers around the world.

European Competitivity continued to be a topic at the GTWN Welcome Reception and we were most honored to have GTWN President Europe and Member of the Board of the European Union ScaleUp Fund, Victoria Hernandez Valcarcel and Stephane Ouaki, Managing Director of the European Innovation Council, present the most recent efforts for Europe itself to “scale up” their investment and involvement in High-Tech Europe, all the while keeping the human side of technology which has defined Europe’s contribution to the world.

As always, we were thrilled to present our GTWN Mentees who continue to amaze us with their accomplishments.  Blanca Villanueva presented her company, Xalaga, which is building autonomous cardiac ablation for ambulatory surgery centers.  Sarah Freese spoke about the myriad companies she has supported at AWS Space.

 

The evening ended with the presentation of ““FAST FORWARD:  Shaping the future of global connection”, the GTWN Mobile Century magazine and authors by Dora Petranyi, GTWN International Board Member and Co-Chair TMT of CMS, our GTWN Media Partner.