What’s up with… Telco AI at MWC26, 6G partnerships, D2D in Europe

• Telcos unveil their AI plans at MWC26
• NTT Docomo, Ericsson, Intel get in on the 6G act
• MNOs sign up for Satellite Connect Europe’s D2D offering

In today’s industry news roundup: SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank Corp. are among the telcos to have added to the AI-native telco news agenda during the first day of this year’s MWC; there’s plenty of 6G action too, with NTT Docomo, Viavi, Ericsson and Intel hooking up in partnerships; multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) are getting ready to offer satellite-enabled direct-to-device services to their customers across Europe; and much more!

While international events quite rightly command the headlines and make their way into most conversations, the AI rollercoaster continues to pick up speed at MWC26 in Barcelona. As expected, AI is dominating the messaging on the show floor as well as the headline announcements that flood out on the first day of this annual event. Here’s a few that give a flavour of the AI fever that has gripped the industry.

SK Telecom, which has been positioning itself as an AI company for a few years already, unveiled its ‘AI Native’ innovation strategy, which includes a reorganisation of, and further investment in, its AI infrastructure assets. The South Korean operator, which was showing off its existing AI prowess on the show floor at MWC26, is also undertaking a “major overhaul of its integrated IT systems – the foundation of its telecom services – redesigning them to be optimised for AI,” and is is accelerating its “autonomous network operations” strategy, which leverages AI to automate network management. CEO Jung Jai-hun stated: “SKT is currently at a golden time of transformation, where the two tasks of ‘customer value innovation’ and ‘AI innovation’ intersect in a borderless, converged environment that goes beyond telecommunications. SKT defines ‘the customer as the very essence of our business’, and through innovation driven by AI, we will evolve into a company that makes meaningful contributions to our customers and to Korea.”

Deutsche Telekom has expanded its collaborative relationship with Nokia, one of the telco’s key Open RAN partners, to “accelerate the development of cloud-based, disaggregated and AI‑native radio access network (RAN) technologies,” a move that “deepens joint work in cloud RAN, open interfaces and next‑generation AI‑native RAN solutions aimed at enabling high-performance, multivendor mobile networks.” As part of the relationship, Nokia will become DT’s “strategic co-creation partner for AI‑native RAN (AI-RAN) development. The joint initiative aims to accelerate the introduction of intelligent and autonomous RAN functions across cloud, edge and radio domains,” noted Nokia in this announcement. Abdu Mudesir, member of the board of management for product and technology at Deutsche Telekom, noted: “As we move toward fully programmable and autonomous networks, AI‑native RAN and open interfaces are essential building blocks. Nokia has been a trusted partner in our Open RAN journey, and deepening this collaboration is an important step toward achieving multivendor flexibility at scale. With this joint work, we aim to deliver networks that are more efficient, more resilient and ready for the next era of digital services.” 

Japanese operator SoftBank Corp. unveiled a new AI infrastructure vision, dubbed Telco AI Cloud, that integrates a large-scale AI datacentre platform powered by a GPU (graphics processing unit) cloud, an AI-RAN-based multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform, and a software stack for AI datacentres called Infrinia AI Cloud OS. “By optimising AI processing from training to inference and utilising its nationwide telecommunications infrastructure, SoftBank will build a distributed AI infrastructure that delivers low latency, high reliability and sovereign capability (data sovereignty). Through its Telco AI Cloud vision, SoftBank aims to evolve beyond the traditional role of a telecommunications operator and become an AI infrastructure provider,” it noted in this announcement. 

NTT Docomo and test and measurement vendor Viavi Solutions have “successfully completed a joint study demonstrating AI-driven radio access network (RAN) control for next-generation 6G mobile communications,” the Japanese operator announced. According to NTT Docomo, “in conventional beamforming, base stations select and control transmission beams based on network quality measurements reported by user equipment (UEs). In the demonstration, Docomo’s Self-Awareness Network concept was evaluated using Viavi’s digital twin and TeraVM AI RAN Scenario Generator (AI RSG) network simulator.” The operator claims the results, which are on display at Viavi’s stand in Hall 5 at MWC26, confirm that “reducing control overhead improves the system throughput by up to 20% as it frees up wireless resources for data transmission.” 

Still with 6G… Ericsson, which recently claimed a 6G world first, and Intel are to collaborate on getting the industry from 6G research to real-world, deployable technology as quickly as possible, with their joint focus to span compute, connectivity, cloud and “standards leadership across the core network, RAN and edge”, noted the Swedish vendor. Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan stated: “Intel’s ambition is to be the undisputed technology leader in unifying RAN, core and edge AI to enable a seamless transition to AI-native 6G environments. Together with Ericsson, we will continue to demonstrate that the future of network connectivity is open, power-efficient, secure and grounded in intelligent AI inference. With future Ericsson Silicon, powered by Intel’s most advanced process nodes, ongoing multi-year research plans, and flexible AI-RAN-ready cloud RAN powered by Intel Xeon, we are well on our way to delivering the future performance, efficiency and supply security that the world’s leading operators require.”  

But it’s not all AI and 6G – satellite communications developments are fuelling headlines too this week. Last week, Vodafone Group and AST SpaceMobile gave their wholesale direct-to-device SatCo a proper name, Satellite Connect Europe, and fleshed out the details of the venture. Now, with MWC’s doors open, the venture’s operator partners – the ones that will use the wholesale service to offer satellite-to-smartphone services to their customers – are being revealed. As well as Vodafone’s operations in the UK (VodafoneThree), Ireland and Romania, Orange has signed an all-market agreement, with initial testing in Romania, while Telefónica has also signed up for its operations in Spain and Germany. In addition, Swiss operator Sunrise is evaluating the service and CK Hutchison has agreed a deal for 3 Austria, 3 Denmark, 3 Ireland, WindTre in Italy and 3 Sweden, with field demonstrations to begin this summer in Austria and Italy.

Telia Company has reached a €30m agreement to increase its stake in Finnish fibre operator Valokuitunen from 40% to 49%, with Brookfield set to buy the remaining 51% stake. Valokuitunen was formed as a joint venture between Swedish operator Telia and CapMan Infra in 2020 and its network reaches more than 400,000 homes in over 100 municipalities through an open-access model hosting multiple service providers, including Telia. At the same time, Brookfield’s mid-market infrastructure strategy, Brookfield Infrastructure Structured Solutions (BISS), will buy the remaining Capman Infra stake, furthering its relationship with Telia, which includes joint ownership of Telia Towers.

– The staff, TelecomTV