Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:07):
Thank you for joining us here in Barcelona for MWC Edition 2026, where we are going to discuss 6G in the AI era. And to do so, we are delighted to be joined by George Tsirtsis. George is Senior Director of Technology at Qualcomm. George, thank you for joining us.

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (00:27):
Oh, very happy to be here. Nice to meet you.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:29):
So George, tell us, how is Qualcomm's deep systems expertise informing the technical and architectural leap required for the AI era?

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (00:40):
So Qualcomm is bringing 40 years of connectivity, communications, engineering expertise, standardisation expertise, as well as intelligent compute and AI on the table. And we are feeling very, very comfortable about our position

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:56):
In 6G. So George, how is 6G changing how we think about connectivity and what's the opportunity for AI there?

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (01:01):
We call 6G an AI-native platform. And what do we mean by that? In fact, it would be very strange if at this day and age, we designed a brand new platform like 6G and did not make full use of AI in its making. And actually this is exactly what is happening. AI is pervasive from the physical layer up and is linking many parts of the system together. As a specific example, you will hear about 6G sensing a lot. In communications, we have to predict how the channel will behave between the device and the network. And now with 6G, we are actually using RF signals to map the network accurately and make much better use of the airlink in that way. But exactly the same technology that is mapping the environment can be used to create digital twins, which are incredibly useful data when you try to provide AI services to smart cities or even to consumers.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (02:01):
And how well positioned is Qualcomm to deliver on this blend of compute and connectivity required for 6G?

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (02:09):
So Qualcomm is now involved with all parts of the system. We are delivering the technology that drives the devices, but also the RAN system. We have QRU, QDU systems you can see here in the Mobile World Congress. The management system that monitors and optimises the RAN network. And increasingly we are getting into the core of the network with data centre solutions. Just behind me there, there is a big AI rack. So not only do we understand the full scale of the technology involved in designing 6G, but we have a firsthand view of how 6G is going to be used and what the requirements are for the use case of the future.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (02:54):
So we are seeing mobile carriers transition to AI service operators. So how does your autonomous networking roadmap facilitate this shift beyond traditional connectivity?

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (03:06):
Mobile operators in the 6G era will not only provide connectivity, they will provide AI services. And 6G is actually set up to help them do that. We use AI across the system. We are full believers in AI inference happening in a hybrid way. We're talking about hybrid AI where inference is happening on device when it's possible because that's the cheapest, lowest latency way of doing that. At the edge network, which is the cellular operators, and also of course in the core. And operators will provide AI services together with the sensing data that now they will have access to for services that they provide themselves, but also for third parties. And this is the transformation that is happening. In parallel, as I said, the way they manage and operate the network is increasingly helped by AI RAN automation systems like the one we provide from Qualcomm. And this is happening actually already.

(04:14):
We're not waiting for 6G for that. Operators are leveraging this already. By the time we do 6G, I think this will be business as usual.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (04:21):
And finally, George, how do current high performance connectivity standards serve as a bridge to the 6G era and how do they integrate into the broader vision for the intelligent

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (04:34):
Edge? 6G connectivity, of course, is a key part of 6G. And there is a lot of new technology that is coming for that. So there is new spectrum, new frequencies, wide carriers, much wider carriers in the lower frequencies to provide high throughput very efficiently. A lot of work has been done to improve coverage, to provide 6G truly on a global scale and everywhere in the globe, using both terrestrial and now increasingly satellite mechanisms. Any modulation and channel estimation mechanisms, esoteric, I talked about it earlier, but is using AI fundamentally to do that better. And very, very importantly, uplink. Uplink is going to be a key technology for 6G because we expect not only sensing data from the RF layer that we talked about, but every device that will be connected to the network, we need to provide rich context for AI to perform better. And that is a lot of uplink data that we'll have to deal with.

(05:43):
So we are really excited to be involved in all this. Actually, everything I talked about, there is a demonstration somewhere around here that can already show you how this is done and how it will come together with 6G.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (05:57):
George, thank you for sharing your insights with us today at MWC in Barcelona. Thank you.

George Tsirtsis, Qualcomm (06:02):
You're very welcome. My pleasure.