Why network monetization, AI, APIs and geopolitics dominated MWC

In a different decade, this year’s MWC would have focused on the next G. Instead, Barcelona hosted a telecoms industry that has little appetite for building new networks when it is still trying to figure out how to monetize existing ones.

Without a next G to pin its hopes on the industry’s growth focus at this event was very much centred on creating new products and value propositions from existing networks. The GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative was front and center with Aduna – the Ericsson-fronted initiative to aggregate network APIs – signing up four new operators to join the founding partners. The initiative certainly has strong momentum and many speakers alluded to strong early results from network API monetization initiatives. Only time will tell whether Aduna – the latest attempt by operators to federate their services and capabilities - becomes a success. Previous attempts for operators to partner on a commercial level have floundered because of differing commercial priorities and visions.

While network API monetization is not just a 5G story, or initiative, it is very much a hope for the industry to recoup its investment in the new network technology. Operators and vendors alike are keen to point out that we are only at half-time in the 5G game. Only a small minority have launched the 5G standalone services that are needed to offer network slicing and low latency services. Network slicing (or as some are now starting to call it, differentiated connectivity) very much feels like yesterday’s story although operators are only now, with 5GSA, in a position where they can start to experiment with commercial propositions.

Everything everywhere all at once

AI was everywhere at MWC2025. The big change from 2024 was the arrival of agentic AI which only came onto the scene during the course of 2024. With its focus on autonomy and decision-making agentic AI is a perfect complement to the network automation and autonomous networks narrative which were front of mind at this year’s MWC. There was, inevitably, a huge amount of AI washing – both from vendors and telecoms operators alike at MWC – but unlike many of the technology and services initiatives AI is indisputably real. It will massively reshape the telecoms business regardless of whether or not telecoms operators do the shaping.

For the time being AI is very much a force for good in the telecoms business and many of the operators speaking at the event have already launched use cases, particularly in customer services and operations. In 2026 we can expect to hear more about the improvements that AI have made to their top or bottom lines. French telecoms group Orange says it has already derived Euro200m of value from AI in 2024 and expects this to grow to Euro300m in 2025.

Geopolitics are a growing threat to our industry

Geopolitics was never very far under the surface at MWC2025. Telecoms is a global technology business but the changing landscape of global politics is causing considerable anxiety among those operators that fear falling on the wrong side of their government’s politics. European mobile operators have spent five years or more ripping out the networks and systems made by Chinese companies and many would privately admit that this has severely hindered their ability to deliver successful transformation programs.

Having complied with US requests to boycott certain vendors, European operators are now nervous about potential trade rifts with the Trump administration. During the time that it has taken to transition aways from Chinese vendors European telecoms operators have become increasingly reliant upon US companies for cloud computing services and, increasingly, for AI tools and solutions. It is too early to tell whether this will have any significant impact on the migration to public cloud services. But at least one operator that delivered analyst briefings at MWC said that US trade issues were now having an impact on its use of commercial rather than opensource foundational models. The EU’s AI Act is also a growing consideration.

Operators from outside of Europe, and who have been free to choose who they buy from until now are also starting to feel the pinch of global politics. The products and solutions that telecoms operators need to buy increasingly embed technology from two or even three regions (North America, Europe, Asia). Software vendors from outside of Europe are delivering services over US public cloud platforms. The CEO of one north African telecoms operator told us that he was now having to be extremely careful about understanding the origin of the components of all of its products, and from all of its vendors, in case its government-imposed restrictions on vendors from certain regions.

But at the same time geopolitics can represent an opportunity. Outside of network API monetization, security services represented the growth opportunity most often referenced by telecoms operators. And the growth in demand for sovereign cloud services is fuelling telecoms operator interest and investment in their own cloud data centers.