The week in AI-native telco (24-30 Oct 2026)

• System simplification, AI-related revenues and AI-RAN trials captured the week’s main AI-native telco news headlines 
• Sovereign AI investments, physical AI deployments, enterprise B2B applications and major funding rounds were also prominent themes across the industry

Practical advice and reportable revenues featured in our most recent week of AI-native telco coverage, while mobile operators pushed ahead with AI-RAN trials and edge computing partnerships, and telcos and their investment arms continued to back sovereign AI developers and datacentre infrastructure projects on several continents. 

Meanwhile, funding rounds, strategic stakes and a landmark potential IPO underlined how deeply capital is flowing into AI across the telecom ecosystem. 

So here are the main developments from the seven days that ended on Friday 30 Oct…

Swisscom CTIO Mark Düsener used Ericsson’s recent OSS/BSS Summit in Zurich to explain why simplifying legacy infrastructure, decoupling services and establishing a common data foundation are essential to unlocking autonomous networks and AI-driven innovation. Swisscom is stripping out legacy complexity in order to accelerate innovation and pave the way for autonomous networks, noted Düsener, arguing that operators must simplify their architecture before they can realise the full potential of AI. Speaking at the event, Düsener described how the Swiss operator is converging its IP networks, decoupling services through application programming interfaces (APIs) and building a unified data platform to enable faster changes and more autonomous operations. “Without that, you die in complexity,” he said, explaining the rationale behind why Swisscom began a transformation programme around six years ago. At the time, the operator had 15 disparate IP networks; it is now converging towards a single IP network, with the final stage scheduled for completion in March 2027. Read the full story. 

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH), the second-largest operator in Indonesia and one of Asia Pacific’s leading AI-native telcos, is doing something that many of its telco peers are not yet ready or able to do – it is identifying AI service revenues in its financial statements and, although the numbers are modest, it is reporting accelerating growth from its AI-enabled services. But such growth doesn’t come without upfront investments and, right now, accelerated AI investments are giving investors some cause for concern. The telco has just reported its financials for the first nine months of 2026 and most, if not all, of its numbers are heading in the right direction. IOH, which is still in the early days of provisioning AI-related services, reported AI cloud revenues of $50m for the first nine months of 2026, but it expects its full year AI cloud service revenues to hit $100m, compared with just $28m for the whole of 2025, “reflecting growing demand for AI computing and cloud services,” the operator noted. Those numbers are going to continue to grow quickly, as, in its slide deck for investors, IOH noted that it has AI cloud contracted revenues worth more than $300m for 2027. It also has plenty of other AI-related service plans to implement, including the recently-announced Indosat Intelligence Suite, developed with security tech specialist F5, which aims to provide enterprises with “a trusted and governed environment that simplifies how businesses access and deploy AI, without requiring them to build and manage complex infrastructure themselves.” Read the full story. 

UK mobile operator O2 has partnered with Nokia to deploy what its claims is the country’s first live trial of AI-RAN. The operator – which is part of Virgin Media O2 – deployed the technology at one of its so-called ‘Giga Sites’ in London Paddington to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can improve 5G network efficiency in a live environment. Paddington is one of the UK’s busiest transport hubs, with the rail station seeing on average some 191,499 passenger journeys every single day. It also brings unique challenges, such as major fluctuations in network traffic depending on the time of day. O2’s trial saw the AI-RAN boost spectral efficiency by 20%, enabling the site to carry more data using existing network capacity. Throughput was also improved and the network remained stable throughout consistent periods of high demand. Jeanie York, chief technology officer at O2, said: “Mobile data demand continues to grow, so we need smarter ways to make the most of the spectrum and infrastructure we already have. This live trial with Nokia showed how AI can improve network efficiency and help us respond more effectively to changing customer demand. By making better use of existing network resources, we can deliver a better experience for customers while supporting future traffic growth.” Nokia has been one of the major proponents of AI-RAN, but its efforts have accelerated since Nvidia, which is keen to see its technology deployed by mobile operators around the world as quickly as possible, pumped $1bn into Nokia in October last year. Just last week the AI tech giant announced an AI-RAN field trial with SoftBank in Japan.

Tata Communications has unveiled plans to invest around $450m to build a high-speed network connecting India’s AI datacentre corridors. The Indian-based telco will deploy around 10,000km of long-haul fibre cables across the country, with the buildout set to take place in three phases: Starting with the Mumbai-Pune-Chennai corridor, subsequent phases will expand connectivity into emerging east-coast and Western India datacentre hubs, such as Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City. The new network will also link into Tata Communications’ existing network fabric, which includes more than 500,000km of subsea cables and 200,000km of terrestrial fibre. Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, MD and CEO of Tata Communications, said: “We are excited about the opportunity in the India datacentre-to-datacentre connectivity, which we believe could evolve into a market exceeding $1bn over the medium term. With our planned investments, we are building on our existing strengths to create one of the most comprehensive datacentre connectivity platforms in the market, positioning us to capture this significant growth opportunity.”

Anthropic filed initial documents for a blockbuster IPO that could surpass SpaceX’s record-breaking public listing earlier this year, highlighting that AI could pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity”. The AI firm, which develops chatbots including Claude, did not disclose the number of shares it plans to release, nor did it reveal a price range or date for the planned listing. But it did disclose it had generated $16.3bn of revenue in the first half of the year, against losses surpassing $80bn. In its filing, Anthropic acknowledged concerns that have been raised by policymakers, regulators and researchers about the risks AI could pose to humanity. Despite this, the filing sets up the San Francisco-based company for an upcoming Wall Street debut that could be the biggest ever initial public sale of stock, with reports claiming the company is seeking to raise as much as $100bn at a valuation of up to $2tn. Anthropic’s planned listing could deliver a substantial boost for other tech firms who have invested in the AI company, most notably in South Korea, with SK Telecom (SKT) set to be a key beneficiary. The South Korean telco invested around $100m in Anthropic in August 2023, when the startup was valued at around $5bn, and went on to invest a further $100m during a funding round earlier this year. Reporting from Chosun Biz calculates that, should Anthropic achieve the higher-end valuation of around $2tn, SKT’s equity could be worth as much as $4.9bn – or 25 times the principal investment. SKT isn’t the only Korean firm from a telecom or tech background firm to have invested in Anthropic, the reporting adds. The Korea Herald claims both Samsung and SK Hynix have invested more than $750m each in the AI firm, while LG CNS, the IT consulting and digital transformation arm of LG Corp, which also owns operator LG Uplus, has also invested in the company and has struck partnerships with it.

Deutsche Telekom is one of a number of companies to have invested in Tandem Health, a Stockholm-based developer of sovereign AI for healthcare, through the German telco’s investment arm T Capital. The Swedish healthcare firm raised some $100m (€90m) in a Series B funding round last month for its AI medical assistant, which currently serves more than 10,000 healthcare facilities across 14 European countries providing AI transcription, clinical documentation, coding and decision support. Tandem’s solution is already integrated into around 130 electronic healthcare record systems and holds a Class IIa medical device certification under the EU Medical Device Regulation. “Healthcare needs trustworthy, secure AI solutions that are ready for immediate deployment. Tandem Health shows how modern technology can improve clinical workflows without compromising data privacy and patient safety,” said Gottfried Ludewig, senior vice president for the health industry and head of public sector at T-Systems, in an announcement. “Together, we want to accelerate the adoption of innovations in healthcare delivery and continue advancing the digital transformation of healthcare.” Other backers include the EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and LG Technology Ventures, while the round also saw participation from existing investors Kinnevik, Northzone, Amino Collective and Visionaries.

Telefónica España has bought a 10% stake and struck a commercial and technical partnership with Seville-based AI firm OGA. OGA specialises in using AI to transform data into actionable decision-making capabilities for complex and mission-critical environments for businesses across the logistics, retail, energy, healthcare and defence sectors. Founded in 2007, the company employs 75 staff, including mathematicians, statisticians, engineers and data scientists, according to a press announcement. Telefónica was already working with OGA and, as part of the investment agreement, the Spanish telco will not join OGA’s governing board, allowing OGA to preserve its independence. Javier López Gutiérrez, director of defence and security at Telefónica España, said: “Our stake in OGA will enable us to strengthen our strategy in AI solutions applied to industry, with a particular focus on defence. In doing so, we continue to enhance our B2B offering as the best gateway to digital technologies for businesses and public administrations seeking to improve their competitiveness and innovation capabilities.”

T-Mobile US reported a 6% year-on-year increase in service revenues to $19.36bn for the third quarter, while its core adjusted EBITDA grew by 11% to $9.62bn. The operator’s CEO Srini Gopalan stated in the operator’s earnings release: “Q3 marked another strong quarter and is further proof that our winning formula of the best network, best value, and best experiences drives durable and profitable growth. More families and businesses are choosing T‑Mobile, fueling our industry-leading financial growth. Our value proposition is clearly resonating for all customers, with our network as a significant driver of differentiation. We’re continuing to push the envelope on customer experience and innovation, with our best-in-class NPS underscoring our customer-first orientation. We have a tremendous growth runway ahead across core wireless, broadband, and smart adjacencies, and we’re just getting started.” And in the company’s third quarter webcast, Gopalan called out T-Mobile US’s ongoing AI service developments, especially with regards to supporting physical AI deployments. He noted that the operator continues to “see more proof points in the physical AI opportunity where we've progressed beyond connecting humanoid robots with eSIMs and are now testing how the network helps deliver the intelligence itself. To enable all of these use cases, we're partnering with Amazon Web Services, AWS, to build the first instances of our Kinetic Edge… a distributed intelligence infrastructure for physical AI. It combines our nationwide 5G Advanced network and distributed edge with AWS's cloud orchestration and AI services. This puts together deterministic connectivity, compute, and intelligence closer to the machines and gives enterprises exactly what they need to take physical AI from isolated demos to production at scale.” For more on the Kinetic Edge, see this blog from John Saw, CTO at T-Mobile US.

Japan’s KDDI and its datacentre subsidiary Telehouse have acquired land worth more than £220m in London’s Docklands as part of its plans to build a new, high-density, AI-ready datacentre. The land, which was bought from LaSalle Investment Management and Trilogy Real Estate, will be used to expand Telehouse’s existing London Docklands campus, which the company first opened on the site in 1990 as one of the first purpose-built carrier-neutral datacentres in Europe. In its announcement, Telehouse said it has already secured 65 MVA (Megavolt-Ampere) of power capacity for the site, which will also enable future expansion plans. It is located close to Telehouse’s existing Docklands campus and currently features two office buildings totaling 483,000 sq ft (44,862 sqm). Planning consent is in place for a 376,000 sq ft (35,000 sqm) facility on the land. The company has already broken ground on a nine-story datacentre building on the Docklands site, which it is calling Telehouse West Two, due for completion in 2028. Takayo Takamuro, who is Europe CEO at KDDI, and who sits on the Telehouse Board, said: “This acquisition supports the next phase of our growth and our commitment to supporting customers’ AI ambitions. The new datacentre will be one of the largest facilities in the Telehouse London Docklands campus, reinforcing its role as the leading connectivity hub in Europe.”

With the demands from enterprise users growing for greater security and AI capabilities, Lumen Technologies has announced “three new initiatives using intelligent networking to address AI energy challenges, future quantum connectivity, and emerging security threats”. The operator, which says it is “turning its network into an active platform for innovation [by] combining fibre connectivity scale, programmable control, software intelligence, and a connected ecosystem of partners to help enable the next generation of computing”, has: launched Emerald AI, which “enables AI workloads to automatically shift to alternate locations based on power availability, cost, and other factors”; invested in research at The Ohio State University to “explore how its fibre infrastructure could support quantum connectivity over distances”; and is “preparing to introduce quantum-resistant security capabilities through its Fortinet -based Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution to help enterprises protect sensitive information against future quantum threats”. Lumen’s CEO Kate Johnson noted: “The network must do more than just connect. It must help solve the defining challenges of our time. We’re innovating our network to help AI computing adapt to available energy, lay the foundation for a connected quantum future, and prepare enterprises for continuous and emerging security threats. These are distinct challenges that demand a network built for what’s next.”

Bell Canada’s investment arm, Bell Ventures, and Nvidia are among the companies to have committed to a new funding round for Canadian sovereign AI developer Cohere, which is seeking to raise C7bn(US5bn) at a company valuation of C35.7bn(US25.54bn). Cohere has raised some of its Series E round total so far, with Schwarz Group, “one of Europe's largest investors in AI and cloud infrastructure”, as the lead investor, and with commitments from Bullhound Capital, the Government of Canada, Inovia Capital and Prosperity7 Ventures, as well as Bell Ventures and Nvidia. “The round marks the largest private financing round ever undertaken by a Canadian technology company and underscores a broader global shift toward sovereign AI,” noted Cohere. “As AI becomes increasingly mission-critical, organizations are seeking independent alternatives that provide greater control over their data, infrastructure, governance, and deployment environments,” it added. The funding will “advance product development across Cohere's model portfolio and full–stack platform, which saw its biggest upgrade yet this year with the launch of North 2.” It added that in 2026, “Cohere introduced new models and capabilities across generation, search, speech, code, and translation, including Command A+, Cohere Transcribe, Parse 5, Embed 5, Rerank 5, North Mini Code, and North Small Translate”. Bell Canada has been working closely with Cohere on the development of its Bell AI Fabric and in June this year the telco teamed up with Cohere, AI computer infrastructure developer Hypertec and BUZZ High Performance Computing (HPC), a subsidiary of Hive Digital Technologies, to announce “a major AI infrastructure deal, marking a significant step forward in the development and deployment of advanced AI workloads on sovereign Canadian infrastructure,” the Canadian telco announced.

That Schwarz Group is leading Cohere’s latest round is not a surprise: The German company earlier this year committed to invest €500m in Cohere’s next financing round as part of a merger agreement between Cohere and German AI firm Aleph Alpha, in which Schwarz Group has been a major investor: Schwarz also committed to partner with the combined company to deploy a “sovereign offering” on Stackit, its cloud platform that is also being used for the development of innovative telecom applications. (The merger agreement between Cohere and Aleph Alpha was signed in September and is close to completion but still requires some regulatory approvals.) Christian Müller, CEO of the German firm’s digital division, Schwarz Digits, stated: "The companies of Schwarz Group are proud to lead Cohere's Series E investment at a pivotal moment for AI, where digital sovereignty has become a strategic imperative for global competitiveness. Digital sovereignty is about strategic choice, interoperability and holding the keys to our own data. Following the [almost completed] strategic business combination of Cohere and Aleph Alpha, this investment marks the next logical milestone on a roadmap that we have methodically built: uniting European research excellence and explainability with global enterprise scale. Our partnership brings together Canadian AI leadership and trusted European infrastructure, giving customers greater choice and control over how they deploy secure AI. Our clear goal is to anchor these frontier capabilities in our sovereign Stackit cloud infrastructure. We are excited to support its continued growth across Europe and around the world.”

French tech giant Bull has teamed up with Czech telecom and digital infrastructure operator České Radiokomunikace (CRA) to “develop a sovereign AI offering designed to accelerate AI adoption across the Czech Republic and Central and Eastern Europe” and join the Czech firm’s AI Gigafactory consortium. According to Bull, the “collaboration brings together CRA’s infrastructure expertise and Bull’s capabilities across AI systems, software and services, strengthening the consortium led by CRA in its candidacy under the European AI Gigafactories programme. The Czech AI Gigafactory initiative is open to serve and incorporate companies from broader Central and Eastern European countries in accordance with the Prague declaration, in which nine CEE countries have committed to greater coordination on European AI policy, computing infrastructure and sharing of best practices: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Romania,” noted Bull. CRA’s CEO Miloš Mastník stated: "Our ambition is to build an ecosystem in the Czech Republic that combines computing infrastructure with the development and practical use of artificial intelligence. The Memorandum of Understanding with Bull opens up opportunities for cooperation in both hardware and software – the two key components of an AI Gigafactory. We want international and Czech companies, public administrations and researchers to be able to develop their own AI solutions here, helping the Czech Republic become a major centre for artificial intelligence in Europe." Bull’s CEO Emmanuel Le Roux added: “AI Gigafactories are where Bull’s hardware, AI software and expertise in real-world AI applications come together. Joining the Czech consortium is an important step in our European AI strategy and further strengthens the Czech-French cooperation at its heart, building on the expertise of our 200 DataSentics AI engineers in Prague and Brno. It reflects the kind of AI we want to build in Europe: open, sustainable and sovereign to give organisations greater control over their technology and data.”

- The staff, TelecomTV