The annual telecoms industry pilgrimage saw thousands flocking to Barcelona last week for Mobile World Congress 2025.

In total, more than 109,000 attendees graced the halls of the Fira in the Catalan capital, according to organizers the GSMA.

Usually, there’s a key theme attached to the event, but this year there was no tagline, just plenty of talking points throughout the week, including AI, geopolitics, data centers, and much more.

AI dominates

That said, the show's theme may as well have been AI. There wasn’t a stand that didn’t have AI slapped across it in some shape or form, which wasn’t too much of a surprise given the hype around the technology.

As for the impact of AI on telcos, use cases such as digital twins were once again mentioned, along with others.

Japanese carrier KDDI Corporation told DCD it is putting its network through its paces using AI.

“We're building a digital twin so that we can use AI to test the network and make sure it works, and then we go into production deployment,” said Toru Maruta, executive officer, KDDI. “We're also using AI to analyze the network failures.”

Maruta added that KDDI is shifting its focus from telco to other areas such as data centers and AI, noting that 30 percent of the carrier’s workforce will be moved within the business to focus on those segments.

In truth, the use cases for AI aren’t fully clear yet, though there are some ways in which mobile carriers are looking to utilize the technology.

“AI is a great enabler for us to provide a better service for our customers by harnessing its power to not only optimize the network, but to get insights on what's going on in the network and how that translates into customer experience,” said Karri Kouppamaki, senior vice president, technology development and strategy, T-Mobile.

Although the hype around AI is loud right now, the message coming out of MWC last week wasn’t that of wacky or futuristic use cases, but rather a desire from the industry to put in place the networks to support AI and the demands of it in the future.

Geopolitical tensions?

Another hot topic at the show was the discussion around Europe and whether the continent's mobile industry had fallen behind other regions.

That seems to be the consensus amongst some of Europe’s leading telcos. So much so, that Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges claimed that Europe needs its own version of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Elon Musk runs in the US which has the remit to make cuts to federal agencies.

DOGE has caused considerable controversy on the other side of the Atlantic, with many worrying about the damage it is doing to America's capabilities in areas such as science and defence. But Höttges believes something similar is needed in Europe.

"What Europe needs is a DOGE,” he said. "We need an initiative to cut down this bureaucracy and this administration here because there are tens of thousands of people sitting there and administrating our industries."

Although his comments about DOGE raised a few eyebrows, the message around bureaucracy is nothing new. Nor are the calls for more consolidation in Europe from mobile operators.

“There is no reason that every market has to operate with three or four operators,” says Höttges. “We should build a European single market.”

Telefónica's recently appointed CEO Marc Murtra offered similar comments on consolidation.

Orange, Nokia, and others push data center strategies

Another noticeable theme at this year’s event was the focus on data centers. Although there’s been some data center discussion at MWC in previous years, it’s never felt as salient as it did this time around.

In the words of Ciena’s chief technology officer for international, Jürgen Hatheier, there are not enough data centers currently to deal with the demands of AI.

“You can see that when you use ChatGPT, when the US is awake, it's a pretty lame thing, right?,” says Hatheier.

“There's very little AI in Europe so far, and that means sharing that resource pretty much globally is something that needs to change quickly, and hence we are seeing those multi-gigabyte investments in data centers announced, coming live and online now. But by no means is there enough.”

Telcos have begun to realize this too, notably Nokia, which has made no secret of its data center focus.

Last month, the vendor appointed Justin Hotard as its new CEO. Hotard was previously AI data center lead at Intel.

“Where the growth is happening today is on the data center side,” says Vinai Sirkay, head of business development for Nokia.

“Whether it's inside the data center with data center switching, or between data centers both at the IP layer to connect it to the Internet, or just connecting data centers to each other through IP and optical interconnectivity. We are doubling down there.”

He adds that Nokia’s recently completed $2.3 billion acquisition of Infinera will support its data center focus.

It wasn’t just Nokia. Orange was at it too, with a timely announcement that its Totem tower subsidiary CEO Nicolas Roy will lead Orange Group's data center strategy and business development unit.

"We're experiencing big market growth in data centers. We have been building some assets for our own needs. For instance, in France and other countries as well," says Michaël Trabbia, CEO of Orange Wholesale, who added that Orange plans to utilize its data center assets in a similar way to its towers and open up to third-party customers.

Other telcos also focused on data centers, notably SK Telekom. The Korean operator’s stand focused heavily on data centers. During the course of the week, the company announced several data center-related partnerships with Elice, Schneider, and Giga Computing as it aims to build out its AI offering.

Open RAN progresses

As with previous iterations of the event, Open RAN was spoken about at length.

Progress around the technology has been slow, and that appears to be agreed upon across the industry, be it by analysts, carriers, or vendors.

A Counterpoint Research report in 2023 tipped network carriers to spend $30 billion by 2030.

However, the revenue from Open RAN hasn’t quite translated as hoped for carriers, at least according to Dell’Oro Group, which reported a decline of 30 percent in revenue for the first three quarters of last year.

AT&T lauded the progress it’s making with the technology, around 15 months after signing a high-profile $14 billion Open RAN deal with Ericsson.

"In terms of progression, we have started deploying assets that are either open capable or will be Open RAN ready, and support our ability to help open network management as well as cloud RAN and radios from vendors who aren't the same as the baseband vendors," says Rob Soni, vice president of RAN technology at AT&T.

Soni told DCD that the company is also working with other Open RAN partners in the form of Fujitsu and Mavenir Telecom, though not yet on the same scale as Ericsson.

"We're moving in baby steps," added Soni. "We're introducing them [Fujitsu and Mavenir] in the identification layer in the network for small cells... so replacement of existing small cells which were not open and also not the same power level.”

Ericsson also reflected on its Open RAN goals during the show, noting that Open RAN as a whole is progressing.

When asked about collaboration between other radio providers, Ericsson noted that the industry is learning to do this, albeit at a more cautious pace.

“When you integrate more of the lower layers, then yes, you have to work with other companies. It’s new for everybody, both them and us. And I think we're moving to a stage where there's an appreciation that we do need to work together to move this forward,” says Gillian Leetch, head of product management for Ericsson's SMO product.

“I think Open RAN will evolve as well,” adds Leetch. “So, what's around today and around tomorrow, we'll see some changes, but at least the investments we've made today, we see as a blueprint for future networks.”

Mavenir: Open RAN is far from dead

Over the last few months, the concept of Open RAN has come under scrutiny from some quarters. In some instances, analysts have said the promise of the technology is dead, given the dominance of Tier 1 vendors.

Indeed, Open RAN was expected to allow challengers such as Mavenir to take on the big vendors, but it’s been a struggle.

Even so, Rick Mostaert, vice president of product management, RAN, Mavenir Telecom, told DCD there’s still plenty to play for.

“I think it's more a case of the press saying that Open RAN is dead because Mavenir is in trouble, and that's absolutely not true," he says.

"The foundations are very solid for Open RAN. It's a matter of will. Some of it's a matter of scaling up, and that will happen, whether it's one year or two years."

Elsewhere, Samsung has continued to push on as a network vendor in the last few years. The South Korean giant says Open RAN provides it with the opportunity to compete with the incumbents.

“I think we were a challenger, I don’t think we’re so much a challenger anymore,” says Stephen Wiktorski, vice president and head of Samsung Networks Canada. “I don't think we're so much a challenger anymore.”

Wiktorksi refers to some of the carriers that the company works with in Korea, plus KDDI in Japan, and Verizon as evidence that Samsung means business.

“These are global, tier-one operators. These are not challengers. You don’t take the amount of market share that we have in those networks as a challenger.”

(Check out Issue 56 of DCD Magazine, out later this month, for an in-depth look at the state of the Open RAN market. Subscribe here to receive it direct to your inbox.)

Less 5G chatter

In the last few editions of MWC, 5G has often led the discussion during keynotes and partnerships.

This year, the 5G chatter was a bit quieter than in years gone by, but it was still mentioned.

It may have been quieter due to the struggles some operators have faced with 5G rollouts. European operators, in particular, have struggled during the 5G era, with the continent falling way behind China and the US.

A recent Ookla whitepaper highlighted how big the gap has become with regards to the rollout of 5G Standalone (5G SA) network deployments.

As of Q4 2024, China has 5G SA availability in 80 percent of the country, followed by 52 percent in India and 24 percent in the US. Meanwhile, 5G SA is only available to two percent of Europe's population.

Luke Kehoe, industry analyst for Europe, Ookla, says policies in Europe haven’t favored 5G SA architecture in the same way other markets have.

“The Chinese government has been very ambitious in terms of targets, and I suppose policy support. We haven't seen that in Europe, a lot of the 5G policy support has been focused solely on the NSA architecture. There’s been very little in SA.”

Too soon for 6G... for now

As for what comes next? Well, it’s probably too soon to talk about 6G, but there are more murmurings around the technology now than a year ago.

The technology doesn’t appear to be on the menu just yet for operators, however, the industry knows that 2030, when the technology is expected to launch, isn't a million miles away either

Telcos seemed reluctant to focus on the network that will come after 5G, but that’s probably because they want to maximize their return on investment in the technology.

As the 3GPP continues to update the required standards for the technology, it's more likely that talk around 6G will gather greater pace.

Either way, it's highly likely AI will dominate the discussion again in 2026.