MWC 2026 in Barcelona marked a turning point for AI-native networking. Unlike previous years, where the conversation centered on future potential, this year’s event produced field trial results, commercial launches, open-source toolkits, and a multi-operator coalition formally committing to build 6G on AI-native foundations.
Nvidia Anchors a 6G Coalition
The week’s most consequential announcement came from Nvidia, which secured commitments from more than a dozen global operators and technology companies to build 6G on open, secure, AI-native software-defined platforms. Partners include BT Group, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Nokia, SK Telecom, SoftBank, T-Mobile, Cisco, and Booz Allen. The initiative carries backing from governments across the US, UK, Europe, Japan, and Korea.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and CEO, framed the moment directly: “AI is redefining computing and driving the largest infrastructure buildout in human history–and telecommunications is next.”
Nvidia is a founding member of the AI-RAN Alliance, which now counts over 130 participating companies. The company also joined the FutureG Office-led OCUDU Initiative in the US to accelerate open, software-defined, AI-native 6G architectures.
On the tooling side, Nvidia released a 30-billion-parameter Nemotron Large Telco Model, developed with AdaptKey AI and fine-tuned on telecom datasets including industry standards and synthetic logs. It also published an open-source guide with Tech Mahindra for building AI agents that reason like network operations center engineers, along with new Nvidia Blueprints targeting RAN energy efficiency and network configuration.
Real-world deployment of those blueprints is already active. Cassava Technologies is using the network configuration blueprint for an autonomous network platform across Africa’s multi-vendor mobile environment. NTT DATA is applying it with a tier-one operator in Japan to manage traffic surges following network outages.
Nokia Moves Validation Into Live Networks
Nokia reported meaningful progress in its AI-RAN partnership with Nvidia, completing functional tests of its anyRAN software on Nvidia’s GPU-accelerated platform with T-Mobile US, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, and SoftBank Corp. Critically, these tests moved out of controlled lab environments and into live, over-the-air conditions.
At T-Mobile’s AI-RAN Innovation Centre in Seattle, Nokia’s AirScale Massive MIMO radio in the 3.7GHz band ran concurrent AI and RAN workloads on a single Nvidia Grace Hopper 200 server alongside commercial 5G traffic. Workloads included video streaming, generative AI queries, and AI-powered video captioning.
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison achieved Southeast Asia’s first AI-RAN-powered Layer 3 5G call at MWC, with AI and RAN workloads running simultaneously on shared GPU infrastructure. Vikram Sinha, IOH’s President Director and CEO, said the milestone was “not just about proving that the technology works” but about ensuring every Indonesian can access the benefits of the digital and AI era.
SoftBank demonstrated how spare compute capacity identified by its AITRAS Orchestrator can run third-party AI workloads, pointing toward a model where operators monetise RAN infrastructure beyond basic connectivity. Nokia’s expanded ecosystem now includes Dell Technologies, Quanta, Supermicro, and Red Hat OpenShift for orchestration. Nokia shares rose 5.4% on the day of the announcement.
Ericsson Takes a Different Bet
Ericsson arrived at MWC 2026 with a contrasting strategy. While Nokia has aligned tightly with Nvidia GPU acceleration, backed by a $1 billion Nvidia investment, Ericsson unveiled ten new AI-ready radios built on its own purpose-built silicon, featuring neural network accelerators embedded directly into the hardware. The divergence between these two approaches reflects a broader industry debate about where AI processing in the RAN should actually live.
Photo by 🇻🇪 Jose G. Ortega Castro 🇲🇽 on Unsplash
This article is a curated summary based on third-party sources. Source: Read the original article
