Carriers View AI as Important to Managing Networks and Growing Business

The four largest companies invested more than $200 billion last year in AI and the cloud, said Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile's president-technology. “Somebody said that AI should be native into the network -- yes, it's becoming that very quickly,” he said. “AI and cloud transformation utilization is driving … the mobile sector to a very large degree.”

AI is baked into 5G advanced, and T-Mobile recently announced that its entire network is running that next-stage technology, Ewaldsson said. “We've been focused on 5G advanced since last summer, and now it's out there, and we can see the fruits already of what it's bringing to us.”

Ewaldsson challenged claims that the U.S. no longer leads the world on 5G. “The momentum here is probably stronger than it is anywhere else in the world,” with 5G covering more than 90% of the population, he said. More than 70% of devices in this market are 5G-capable, “and fixed wireless access is just thriving.”

Kyle Malady, CEO of Verizon Business, said that in his role, he talks to a lot of chief information officers at other companies. “Everybody sees the promise of AI, and they're trying to figure out how they unlock [it] to really get great benefits for their operations and their firms.”

Verizon customers want the technology they use to be mobile and “solutions not to be tethered in a factory,” Malady said. They also want wide bandwidth and the ability to control their networks, which means a growing focus on private 5G. “I've been in the industry a long, long time, and people ask me all the time, ‘Well, what's the next killer app?’" he said. “I've stopped guessing because I never know because the pace of change is quick, and it's only getting quicker.”

Malady said the wireless industry needs clarity, which will come only when Congress restores FCC auction authority and there’s once again a spectrum pipeline. “People aren't going to invest money in something they don’t have clarity on,” he said. Having certainty “allows people to make bets and invest.”

Global Race

“It's important for our nation to win in this global race of AI,” said Caroline Chan, vice president of Intel’s network and edge group. AI in the radio access network is happening, she said, adding that Intel has worked with all the carriers at the summit on using AI in their networks. “AI has been the driving force to drive a lot of the intelligence moving from the cloud all the way to the edge.”

Samsung likewise "is committed to AI for all,” said Magnus Ojert, senior vice president of its network business. “We're adding integrated AI into almost-everyday life across all of our devices, all of our services, focusing on personalized and connected experiences for consumers and businesses.”

Another theme was the growth of open radio access network (ORAN) technology.

Eben Albertyn, chief technology officer for EchoStar’s Boost Mobile, said the company was right to go all in on ORAN. In 2019, it wanted to build a network but didn’t yet own a single tower, he said. “We saw the promise of what open RAN could give us in terms of having a system where architecture could change very quickly.”

ORAN “is not a science experiment -- it really works,” Albertyn said. The company recently made changes to its network architecture without customers noticing, he added. “We did so in days, not months or years, like we would have if we used a different architecture,” he said. “We're able to do that because we live in the cloud, and therefore we can innovate at the speed of the cloud. And we used open RAN, which gives us open interfaces together with security.”

Yigal Elbaz, AT&T's network chief technology officer, said the carrier’s goal is for 70% of its traffic to run through open interfaces by the end of 2026 “because we're going to have an open and modern and programmable network,” and it's good for the broader industry since it will “foster innovation,” he said.

Elbaz agreed with Albertyn that ORAN is no longer experimental. “What I would add to this, it's not designed only for greenfield networks,” Elbaz said. “There's not enough scale with greenfield networks. So this is why established networks like AT&T should make those moves, so we can push the industry forward.”