• Germany’s O2 Telefónica is leading a consortium dubbed SPINE that aims to develop sovereign AI applications for mobile networks
• The consortium has a target budget of €43m and is applying for funding from the European Commission
• It aims to strengthen Europe’s mobile technology ecosystem 

German telco O2 Telefónica is at the helm of a new consortium dubbed Sovereign Platform for Intelligent Network Evolution (SPINE) that has applied for European Commission funding for the development of home-grown AI-based applications for mobile networks. 

The consortium’s members include: Technology partners Nokia, Capgemini, Sopra Steria, and LTIMindtree; startups AiVader and Highstreet Technologies; and research institutions Fraunhofer FOKUS, Fraunhofer HHI, Fraunhofer IIS, and the Technical University of Darmstadt (which is also collaborating with TU Delft in the Netherlands). The development has a proposed budget of €43m.  

O2 Telefónica is initiating a project proposal for the IPCEI AI (Important Project of Common European Interest – Artificial Intelligence) funding instrument coordinated by the European Commission as part of its AI Continent Action Plan. “This instrument supports strategically relevant artificial intelligence projects that individual companies or states cannot implement on their own,” noted  O2 Telefónica in this announcement (in German). “The goal is to strengthen key European technologies along the entire value chain and to sustainably expand Europe’s digital sovereignty,” it added.  

That overall aim chimes with some of the messaging that came from the major European telcos that sought to light a fire under Europe’s Open RAN research and development sector, an effort that failed to broaden the region’s mobile network technology ecosystem. 

But this is AI and sovereignty, topics of broader appeal than Open RAN. 

Mallik Rao, chief technology and business customer officer at O2 Telefónica, noted: “Digital sovereignty requires strong mobile networks. They are the critical infrastructure on which future AI applications for consumers and businesses will run. With SPINE, we are bringing together European partners from research and industry to further develop networks so that data-intensive services function reliably, quickly and energy efficiently – according to European standards and sovereignly anchored within the networks. The future of artificial intelligence is decided on the network. This is precisely where our proposal comes in. We want to enable AI applications where they have a direct impact on consumers, industry, SMEs and the public sector: Close to data processing, secure, resilient, and with data sovereignty,” added Rao. 

According to O2 Telefónica, the work of this consortium will be influenced by the experience gained by Telefónica in Spain as it deploys a national network of edge computing nodes that will “enable low-latency AI applications, strengthen data sovereignty, and establish open, interoperable architectures” – see Telefónica ramps up its edge datacentre rollout in Spain.

The application scenarios covered by the SPINE group, which will consider the “close integration of mobile networks, modern AI models, operational data and processes within an end-to-end architecture,” include autonomous and connected mobility, smart energy grids, industrial production environments, and real-time applications for areas such as public safety, extended reality services, and telemedicine. The group will consider “the necessary data, anonymisation and governance structures [required] to ensure data protection compliance and sovereign use of the information employed.”

Professor Dr. Slawomir Stanczak of Fraunhofer HHI stated: “Together, we are developing robust and data protection-compliant mobility models that enable intelligent and energy-efficient network control. In this way, we are making a direct contribution to Europe’s technological sovereignty and to high-performance, AI-enabled mobile networks of the next generation.” 

Professor Dr. Marco Zimmerling of the Technical University of Darmstadt, added: “SPINE offers the opportunity to transfer cutting-edge research on reliable and intelligent communication systems directly into the networks of the future. With our work on deterministic, real-time and energy-efficient edge networks, we in Darmstadt – in collaboration with scientists from TU Delft – are making a significant contribution to the foundation for AI-supported mobile communications applications. The close cooperation with industry and research partners in the project accelerates the development of resilient, sovereign, and data-driven 5G and 6G infrastructures for Europe.”

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV