Fierce Network editors returned from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, where we met with AT&T, BT, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia and Orange to name a few. We found out where the industry is headed with AI, network automation, AI-RAN, 5G-Advanced, 6G, network sensing, private 5G and so much more.
Tune into this latest episode of The Five Nine to hear what host Diana Goovaerts, Elizabeth Coyne, Monica Alleven and Dan Jones had to say about the biggest telecom event of the year.
To learn more about the topics in this episode, check out our MWC coverage hub here.
Catch the video at top, listen to the audio edition and read our transcript with embedded story links below, or watch this and future episodes on YouTube.
This podcast is written and hosted by Diana Goovaerts. It is edited by Diana Goovaerts and Matt Rickman. Liz Coyne is our executive producer. Special thanks to guests Liz Coyne, Monica Alleven and Dan Jones.
Diana Goovaerts, Executive Editor, Fierce Network: What was the coolest thing that came out of MWC? Was it 6G, AI? did the robots take over? I'm Diana Goovaerts and this is The Five Nine.
So, we are back from MWC Barcelona. We had a full week there. It was a chaotic scene, but it was an awesome scene. We got a lot of information, learned so much, and now know where the industry is headed for 2026. So I wanted to get our thoughts from the team about what the most interesting thing each of you heard at the show was.
I know our calendars were all packed, but Liz, maybe, why don't you kick us off?
What was the coolest thing you heard about in Barcelona?
Liz Coyne, Editor in Chief, Fierce Network: Sure. So, the robots didn't take over. Um, that's one good thing. If they did. Then I should have taken the red pill instead of the blue pill because maybe I'm in a, in an alternate reality. But last week at Mobile World Congress, the biggest shift I saw wasn't about whether AI matters for telecom. That debate is over.
What's changed now is, seriously, the industry is talking about putting AI to work inside live networks. The tone was more grounded than in past years. Instead of flashy demos and future promises and the word's AI slapped on press releases and walls and inside booths, it was really, uh, vendors are really focused on how AI is being embedded into core networks, RAN, in operations to improve efficiency, resilience and automation.
So, AI isn't being sold as a product anymore. It's being framed as infrastructure, which I thought was really interesting. One idea that kept coming up was the agentic network and agentic AI. I'm sure everybody who was at the show knows that. Also the notion that networks will function as coordinated systems of AI agents making decisions based on intent rather than manual configuration.
This is something that I thought was really interesting. T-Mobile and others at the show describe this as a path toward a more autonomous self-optimizing networks. But the subtext was more important. This only works if the underlying network architecture and data flows are ready for it.
So, that's where some skepticism came in. Hyperscalers like Google Cloud are pushing hard to run more of the telco AI stack using AI. They're promising higher levels of automation. Operators are interested, but they're still really cautious. There's a real question about control, like who owns the network intelligence and how much autonomy is too much.
Another reality check I found interesting was data. This is something that I've been thinking about and we've been writing about on Fierce Network for the past year. Multiple companies stress that AI doesn't need more data, it needs better curated network data. So, without that automation and observability breakdown quickly.
So, my biggest takeaway is that telecom is entering a more pragmatic phase of the AI cycle. The ambition is there, but now it's starting to collide with real constraints like infrastructure, data quality and business models.
So, for this year ahead, the question isn't whether AI belongs in the network, it's whether the network is actually ready for AI. Does that make sense, Diana?
Diana Goovaerts: It does, and it's really interesting that you're, you're talking about pragmatism, and I know that you spoke to Google Cloud. I actually spoke to Microsoft, not at the show, but immediately after, as you know, schedules were just a little bit crazy and, and I finally got someone to admit an AI use case on the network that doesn't work.
I was speaking to Microsoft's Telco, CTO, and he was saying that as recently as six months ago, they were still pushing the line that predictive maintenance or not predictive maintenance, but you know, being able to predict anomalies was a thing to do. But what he kind of said is over the past period of time, they've kind of realized that all of the complexity that that model brought into the network and those algorithms and trying to feed all that data, it was basically in a nutshell, more trouble than it's worth, right?
It created so much complexity that the returns just didn't pan out. So, they're kind of pivoting more towards network operations and speeding time to repair, as well as interestingly enough BSS. But I thought that was really interesting.
The other thing for me that came out of the show was wireless sensing, right? So, I am kind of stuck in the world of data centers and cloud and AI, but I heard a lot of people talking about ISAC, which I think is integrated sensing and communications. And basically, what that means is in future networks – I don't want to throw 6G around 'cause I'm sure we'll talk about that more – but in those future networks, the network will actually be able to sense things around it.
So, objects and all of that great stuff, the environment, it will be able to spot movement. And so what that opens up is a whole new realm of use cases that might be useful to operators.
Now, I heard that in conversations with Qualcomm and Rohde and Schwartz and Viavi, and Nokia. Of course they have a vested interest in kind of talking up the future potential. And again, a little bit of skepticism there because we heard so much about the promise of 5G and then it hasn't really panned out. They're still looking for the killer use case that'll make the investment in 5G worthwhile. And so, I wonder if even if they do have sensing in a 6G world, will they actually be able to convert that into revenue?
I don't know. I certainly think it was an interesting possibility. And again, it's still very early in the conversations around future networks, but for me, that was one of the cooler ideas that came out of MWC. I think there are actually already some people who do this with wireline networks, fiber, I think we've written about that before, using it to, for instance, detect, accidents or other kinds of disturbances in the ground. But it'll be interesting to see whether or not that'll be a thing on wireless networks.
But I was busy in a studio. Monica, you were on the ground talking to a ton of wireless executives, an absolute ton. What was the coolest thing they said to you?
Monica Alleven, Executive Editor, Fierce Network: Well, a lot of cool things. I don't know if I'd call it necessarily cool, but interesting: the number of people who said open RAN is not dead. It's in every operator's RFP. So, to say that it's dead is really not true. But, yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
Also, I had asked this question a couple years ago when it comes to open RAN, like, isn't that maybe a 6G thing?
It kind of is because you're not gonna rip out your stuff to put in open RAN. You're gonna put it in when you do the next cycle of new infrastructure. So that kind of makes sense.
And then that leads to 6G. Well, 6G is also AI-RAN. AI is in the RAN. And I agree with what Liz said earlier – They’re no longer just sticking AI in every press release and on their booth everywhere. It's actually becoming more of a real thing, although like, think they still need to work on the use cases.
But to another point about AI is that almost everybody had Nvidia in their press release. It was funny. Nvidia World Congress is what it's really summed up to be. But, yeah, that's some interesting things that I noticed.
And also the non-terrestrial network stuff, NTN, which is really basically satellites in your phone. SpaceX was there during a keynote where we learned how they’re really gonna beef up their next generation satellites to do a lot more and with a lot more operators. And their theme was ‘satellite is complimentary to terrestrial networks,’ which was a good, a good thing to say when they're standing in front of operators. That was pretty exciting too.
And again, we'll see how all that shakes out.
Diana Goovaerts: That's really interesting that you mentioned SpaceX, because I saw that Starlink, I think, had their own booth, if you will. I think it was between Hall 3 and 5 and I didn't get a chance to stop in, but I, I did pass by, so it was interesting to see them on the show floor. I wonder if in future we'll see more satellite companies, kind of the way we saw cloud kind of float into the MWC world not that long ago.
But Dan, you also had a ton of meetings with a ton of people.
Dan Jones, Senior Reporter, Fierce Network: I did.
Diana Goovaerts: What was your biggest takeaway from the show?
Dan Jones: Well, like the rest of us, I mean, satellite was clearly up in the air at the Mobile World Congress. I spoke to a Rakuten Symphony who are releasing an OSS for satellite services, which sounds very unusual. And they said the main reason that there was a satellite services OSS is because they've added a fourth dimension: time.
Diana Goovaerts: It sounds very futuristic for sure.
Dan Jones: Other than that, obviously I talk to a lot of 6G people and I guess one of the things that I hadn't really kind of grasped before was it's gonna require 400 megahertz to roll out macro 6G, at least in its initial form, which is a lot of spectrum.
Diana Goovaerts: So Dan, maybe give us some context before we keep moving ahead. I mean, 400 megahertz today, I think it's only what, like people deal in five and 20, but you know, the channels are maybe what, maybe a hundred megahertz.
Dan Jones: Channels are like a hundred, 190MHz.
Diana Goovaerts: So, we're talking doubling here.
Dan Jones: Yeah.
Diana Goovaerts: That’s a big deal, especially because isn't spectrum scarce? I think that's one of the things we've covered a lot. Where are we gonna get this, outta thin air or are they gonna go up higher in the spectrum bands?
Dan Jones: Up higher in the spectrum bands. I'm hearing 4.5, 6 and 7, most likely kind of global and U.S. kind of bands for the 2028 kind of timeframe. And again, 2028 is gonna be an important year, although that's not gonna be the year that 6G actually kind of becomes commercial. That is gonna be the year it gets standardized, and that is gonna be the year where operators and vendors to show off initial 6G kind of pilots at the LA Olympics.
Diana Goovaerts: Okay. So. I saw something on our bingo board. I hope everybody played along with us. I certainly played. It makes MWC a little bit more fun, a very busy event, but it injects some life into it. I actually saw not one, but two people wearing the Meta RayBan AI glasses. Shout out to Anshel Sag, who is from Moore Insights and Strategy. He's a friend of the pod.
I was surprised that I did not see puppies on the show floor. Dan, did you end up hearing anything about Giga-MIMO?
Dan Jones: Not so much, but I did hear a little bit about distributed MIMO.
Diana Goovaerts: Oh, okay. What is that?
Dan Jones: That is where people kind of combine radios over time to kind of form little MIMO squares.
Diana Goovaerts: I was also looking at the bingo board again. I was expecting to see someone asleep, but I did not. Did anybody else?
Liz Coyne: I did not. I think I was the one who actually put that one on there because I remember last year I saw like three people just passed out. I did not see anybody. I did see somebody wearing high heels, but I think we took that off the card, um, stilettos to be in fact.
Diana Goovaerts: Wearing heels?!.
Liz Coyne: Yes, they were stilettos and it was her first show and I said, Don't wear…
Diana Goovaerts: Bless her.
Liz Coyne: Next year, just wear sneakers like everyone else is.
Diana Goovaerts: Oh my goodness. She’ll never make that mistake again.
Liz Coyne: Yeah, no kidding. What else did we have on that?
Diana Goovaerts: I think we also had “a canceled meeting.” I had a canceled meeting.
Liz Coyne: I did too.
Diana Goovaerts, Executive Editor, Fierce Network: There was also saw someone for the first time in a year. I saw many people for the first time in a year.
Dan Jones: Yep.
Liz Coyne: Yep.
Diana Goovaerts: And then let's see, what else do we have? We heard plenty of talk about standards. We talked about satellite connectivity. Anybody see a dancing robot? Where was it? Do you remember?
Dan Jones: It was on the Honor stand in Hall 3.
Diana Goovaerts: Oh, good memory, Dan. All right and then my last question for you all: did everyone get to eat their favorite tapas dish?
Dan Jones: Yes.
Monica Alleven: Yes.
Diana Goovaerts : Good. Awesome. I'm so stoked.
Liz Coyne: I just wanna say before we wrap, Monica discovered the her love of olives, which is my favorite food.
Monica Alleven: From Spain. They have to be in Spain. From Spain.
Diana Goovaerts: Only in Spain. Yeah, I generally am not a fan of olives either, but Liz, I was happy to let you have 'em when we went out for tapas together.
All right, so that is a wrap from us from MWC 2026. Make sure you check out our coverage tracker. It is titled Mobile World Congress 2026: Complete Coverage from Fierce Network. It is on our website. Don't miss it. You'll find every story that we wrote last week and you don't wanna miss any of those 'cause they were truly wonderful.
So thank you all for your time and remember wherever you're listening or watching like and subscribe so you get more from us and we will see you again next time.