5G networks are ubiquitous. With further expansions and private 5G initiatives on the horizon, the telco industry is already working on the future technology that will underpin 6G. At Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, the promise becomes clear: autonomous “AI-native” networks based on an open ecosystem. What does that actually mean?
6G will be the fundamental network for physical AI, promises Nvidia. Think of self-driving cars, robots in warehouses, or even AI-driven surgery. It’s all very futuristic; to actually deliver on these promises, a wide range of industry players will be needed, each developing the functionality of 6G. The technology is expected to appear by 2030, but we shouldn’t place too much faith in that year. There is still much more that is unknown about 6G than is known.
Openness and trust
The vague nature of 6G at present is evident from the announcement of a new initiative by Nvidia, Cisco, Ericsson, MITRE, Nokia, and various telecom operators, among others. The objectives of this group revolve around integrating AI at all layers of the 6G network, open standards, and a resilient supply chain. In short: “open, software-defined, AI-native.” It is an extension of the rhetoric surrounding the AI-RAN Alliance, the AI-Native Wireless Networks project, and various other collaborations. In other words, the MWC announcement is above all a confirmation that 6G is full of good intentions that will be worked out at a later stage.
Meanwhile, Ericsson is also working separately with Intel on 6G, also referred to as “AI-native.” CEO of the former company, Börje Ekholm, states that the network will form the basis for spreading AI across devices, the edge, and the cloud. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan adds that future Ericsson chips will be manufactured in Intel factories, enabling flexible deployment.
Ironically, the 6G future is best reflected in companies that are not specifically talking about 6G at all. The “engine of the agentic telco” is already taking shape within 5G, but it is so ambitious that we will probably only see its real impact in half a decade. That is precisely when 6G should emerge for the first time.
Autonomous networks
With its MWC announcement, Google is talking about the “agentic telco,” a network that requires as little human intervention as possible. According to the company, telecom operators have a dual nature, requiring rapid responses and layered pattern recognition in the long term. To accomplish these tasks, Google Cloud provides the Spanner Graph. This combines relational, graph-based, textual, and vector data in a single database. Google’s offering for telcos is now expanding with functionality for a digital twin of the entire network, a unified graph data layer, and real-time predictions based on Graph Neural Networks via Vertex AI.
The ultimate goal for network operators is full automation, or “Level 5” automation. However, this seems too ambitious for now in the pre-6G era. Google refers to the twilight zone between Levels 4 and 5, with 4 assuming fully autonomous operation in certain circumstances. Currently, the obvious example of this type of automation is a partially self-driving car. As a user, you must always be ready to intervene, but ideally, the vehicle will travel without corrections. A Waymo car, which regularly drives around without a driver, is officially Level 4.
What would end users notice about a Level 4 autonomous network? Nothing, really, or at least the consequences would be minimal. Because customers simply assume that a 5G network provides connection without interruptions, only the speed and consistency of this connection are proof of a successful automated network. However, a lot is happening behind the scenes. For example, New Zealand operator One NZ is trialing agentic voice core and OSS networks, which automatically reroute network traffic in the event of disruptions and reset settings if the quality of a phone call deteriorates.
The remarkable problem: unremarkability
Strikingly, most users hardly need this ongoing telco innovation. Only exceptionally extensive use of 4K streams, multiple simultaneous downloads, and/or location tracking can exceed the maximum bandwidth of most forms of 5G. Switch to 4G and in most use cases of mobile network traffic, you won’t notice the difference. You will notice a malfunction, regardless of the generation of network technology. However, the idea behind the latest 5G and future 6G networks is that these interruptions will decrease. Predictions for 6G assume a hundredfold increase in speed compared to 5G, with a similar improvement in bandwidth.
This suggests astronomically improved service, but nothing could be further from the truth. The rollout of 6G, however advanced, will be unremarkable in itself. The telco world therefore seems to have realized that connectivity in the future will be more than ever about proactive and resilient networks. Call it AI-native, agentic, or open; the goal of future networks is to enable an increasingly impressive use of connectivity. Today, it is inconceivable that all households and organizations would run on 5G, for example; a wired connection is the standard. But as soon as companies, vehicles, drones, factory robots, and more rely on mobile networks (and only mobile networks), the risk of interruption increases if bandwidth is limited. That is what 6G is primarily intended to prevent, as is the mature version of 5G that will serve as a prelude to that technology in the coming years.
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