Ookla's Mike Dano ran down the top 3 trends of MWC 2026
Nvidia and AI top of the list, which is no surprise
6G and satellites also got a look-in in Barcelona
Mobile World Congress is always a dissociative experience. The massive halls are peopled with thousands, many rushing between meetings in far apart areas of the Fira de Barcelona, while others simply gawp at and photograph the dancing robots (which are controlled from behind the scenes by bored booth staff with controllers). In all the show halls, booths are plastered with multiple AI-generated and digital images related to all aspects of the telco industry.
Despite the constant marketing fluff and sore feet that make up the day-to-day experience of MWC, the show has become the most important mobile event of the year. So, Fierce asked Ookla’s Lead Analyst — and former Fierce editor, turned contributor — Mike Dano about the top trends he’d seen this year. Dano has been going to the event for nearly 20 years, nearly as long as this writer.
While he couldn't comment on the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of Ookla and other parts of the Ziff Davis connectivity division by services giant Accenture, he could easily discuss all things mobile and comms.
MWC is NWC this year
“This is not MWC, it’s NWC: Nvidia World Congress,” the analyst stated. “Nvidia is obviously the company to watch...they’re coming into telecom in a big way.”
On the financial side of things, the world’s most valuable company is making massive investments into telecom. And then, there is Nvidia's investment in Nokia last year, plus Nvidia has just pumped money into Lumen and Coherent. “That is, for the telecom industry, great,” Dano said.
Similar to other industry figures and commentators, he is not convinced by the picture that Nvidia and the AI RAN Alliance are painting about the AI-RAN. “Conceptually, I understand it.... I almost view it as fixed wireless...it would make a lot of sense in one neighborhood and no sense in another,” Dano said.
This fits with what Verizon CTO, Santiago “Yago” Tenorio, told Fierce last year. The expense and power requirements of AI-RAN mean that it will be rolled out in parts of major cities like Tokyo, New York and L.A. but is unlikely to turn up in Apple Creek, Ohio, and other smaller cities and towns across the world.
Nonetheless, Dano noted, that the demand for GPUs and high-performance processing is growing exponentially across the world. “The demand is certainly far in excess of what I expected,” he said.
6G futures bloom early
As you might expect, 6G is already a hot topic at this year’s show, despite the fact it is around two years before the standard gets standardized and likely four before commercial networks arrive. “The L.A. Olympics in 2028 will be big deal for 6G,” Dano said. That’s because telecom vendors and operators are likely to show off early 6G — or maybe even pre-6G — networks and demos at the games.
While some companies are “also developing increasingly clear stories” about 6G, pointing to T-Mobile CTO John Saw’s talk about kinetic tokens at MWC as important, he compared this to how former T-Mo CTO Neville Ray clarified the use of millimeter wave and mid-band for 5G.
Dano also said that it is clear to him that more spectrum needs to be released for 6G. “The only way it makes sense for me is for a release of additional spectrum,” he said.
He said that 4.5 GHz, 6 GHz and 7 GHz will likely be made available. “7 GHz makes a lot of sense for the U.S. for sure,” he said, while 4.5 and 6 may well arrive for other countries. Whatever happens, 6G will require massive chunks of spectrum to operate, as much as 400 MHz, compared to the 190 MHz - or less - for current macro 5G deployments.
Satellites light up the sky
Finally, Dano said that the growth of direct-to-device (D2D) satellite services was one of his top three trends at the show. “For me, it’s number one,” he said. He noted the Rakuten Mobile deal with AST SpaceMobile, announced at the show, that will see the pair launch D2D services in Japan in the fourth quarter of this year. Rakuten Symphony also announced a satellite-focused OSS system at the show.
Starlink also talked about its version 2 satellites at MWC; Skylo bet on standards for satellites; and the show was abuzz with chatter about non-terrestial networks (NTN). “The developments on the satellite side and the announcements at the show have moved it forward,” Dano said.
Despite his general excitement about the coming satellite services though, the Ookla analyst doesn’t think that satellite services will work indoors without the addition of more terrestrial hardware (i.e. small cells, antennas) into the mix. “I never thought that satellites should be accessible indoors,” he said.
After all, ye cannae change the laws of physics.
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.