BARCELONA, Spain, March 2, 2026 -- At MWC Barcelona 2026, Li Peng, Huawei's Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, delivered a keynote on how carriers can maximize the value of 5G-A and AI to accelerate towards the agentic Internet era. Li proposed that, as networks converge with AI, carriers have the opportunity to redefine the value of connectivity by upgrading to "5G-A x AI". This will allow them to not only monetize traffic and experience, but also AI services.
Leap in industry value: Entering a 10-trillion-dollar agentic Internet era
Over the past few years, the mobile industry has steadily evolved from 4G to 5G, and some carriers have begun deploying 5G-A. As networks are stronger than ever, they are bringing intelligent applications to all kinds of devices.
Li said, "This year, we're entering the agentic Internet era. Networks will not only connect people. They will also connect hundreds of billions of agents." The rise of agent applications over the next decade, however, will increase connectivity demands, as networks will not simply facilitate human communication but also communication between agents. This will drive carriers to shift from offering traffic to offering high-value services and open up a new market worth of ten trillion dollars.
Business model upgrade: Elevating brands and offerings to unlock new revenue streams
The evolution of network capabilities will also result in changes to carrier business models. In the seven years since the commercialization of 5G, more than 300 carriers around the world have launched new packages to monetize traffic, and this has helped them grow both their revenue and userbase.
As 5G networks continue to mature, experience monetization will be more essential to carriers' success. 5G SA and 5G-A provide more diverse network resources that more than 30 leading carriers have used to launch experience-based packages to monetize speeds, latency, and more.
By dynamically scheduling resources, carriers can go beyond "best-effort" service to deterministic experience. This helps them strengthen brand reputation and users' willingness to spend on premium services. By offering services like custom logo displays and multi-level speed boosts, carriers are able to guarantee network performance at critical moments and enhance users' perception of network quality.
Connectivity and AI service convergence: Unleashing new growth potential with AI-powered consumer, home, and enterprise services
Li also explained how carriers will be able to transform their main services and improve consumer satisfaction by applying AI models.
- AI for consumers: First, AI can be integrated into traditional calling services. There are currently 5.4 billion calling service users around the world, and AI can be used to unlock features like transcription, translation, and AI assistants. Many of these features have already entered large-scale commercial use in China and South Korea. In addition, more and more carriers are launching AI phones to act as portals for the agentic era. They are using these phones to upgrade their B2C services—the largest source of revenue for most carriers.
- AI for homes: In addition to the recent initiatives by carriers to upgrade home broadband towards ultra-gigabit, AI is also being implemented to enable smart home services. For example, acceleration assistants can guarantee deterministic speeds for key services like gaming and livestreaming. Network assistants can help people optimize their Wi-Fi, and resolve network faults via voice commands. AI lifestyle assistants are also a promising avenue for carriers looking to unlock new value from traditional services. By integrating AI with video and storage services, they do things like automatically generating cloud-based family albums that can be shared between devices.
- AI for business: In industrial scenarios, the convergence of 5G-A and AI can be used to transform core workflows and significantly improve production efficiency. For example, in flexible manufacturing, AI-enabled factories will be able to respond to demand in seconds, schedule new production runs in minutes, and deliver new products in hours.
New vision: Helping carriers upgrade their portfolio with AI services
"Looking ahead, there are still many opportunities just waiting to be unlocked with 5G-A and AI. And carriers are in the best position to explore future applications like massive IoT and embodied AI," said Li. He also recommended three courses of action for carriers to seize these opportunities. First, carriers should evolve all services, devices, and frequency bands to 5G-A to create a thriving network ecosystem. Second, carriers should introduce AI into B.O.M. (business, operations, management) domains. This will provide a foundation for diversified O&M services. Third, carriers should bring intelligence to infrastructure to support the evolution of future network architecture.
"Huawei is ready to work closely with carriers to make the most of 5G-A and AI and help them evolve into AI service providers," concluded Li. "We can work with carriers to upgrade their main services through the multi-agent collaboration platform. We can also help them build AI-centric networks for more efficient operations. Together, we can unlock a world of new opportunities, and lay a strong foundation for future networks."
MWC Barcelona 2026 will be held from March 2 to March 5 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
The era of agentic networks is now approaching fast, and the commercial adoption of 5G-A at scale is gaining speed. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to unleash the full potential of 5G-A and pave the way for the evolution to 6G. We are also creating AI-Centric Network solutions to enable intelligent services, networks, and network elements (NEs), speeding up the large-scale deployment of level-4 autonomous networks (AN L4), and using AI to upgrade our core business. Together with other industry players, we will create leading value-driven networks and AI computing backbones for a fully intelligent future.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/minisite/events/mwc2026/
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