MTN Group and Huawei signed a 2026 Strategic MoU targeting AI-driven intelligent networks, digital inclusion, home broadband, and Autonomous Networks Level 4 to drive Africa’s transformation. Ericsson signed an MoU with Econet Wireless Zimbabwe at MWC 2026 for AI, 5G Advanced, and enhanced security services, and Ericsson powered a world-first emergency service location positioning trial with Optus and FrontierSI on a live 5G Standalone network for better situational awareness in search and rescue.

Test and measurement initiatives featured Spirent launching SimXTRACT for field-to-lab PNT realism, Rohde & Schwarz validating Wi-Fi 8 with Qualcomm and collaborating with NETGEAR, Keysight advancing massive MIMO digital twins with Qualcomm, VIAVI introducing true-phase DAS with embedded AI for real-time event classification, Anritsu launching multicore fiber evaluation, and Keysight releasing FITS-8CH for interconnect validation.

Satellite and LEO developments included Gilat securing U.S. Army orders, Gilat also demonstrating virtualized SATCOM with AWS, SES, and WAVE, NEC completing satellite tech demo equipment, Contrivian launching unified multi-constellation LEO service, and Spire launching ten satellites.

Geographic network expansion and modernization efforts included Conecta Infra launching neutral optical infrastructure in South America, LTT signing an MoU with ZTE for Libya modernization, and Vodafone opening a Luxembourg logistics hub. Subsea cable capacity upgrades included TIME dotcom deploying Ciena on the FASTER transpacific cable and Lightstorm quadrupling JGA cable capacity with Ciena. Adtran supported Jackson County REMC in transforming broadband across southern Indiana to close the digital divide for homes, businesses, and farms.

Partnerships, collaborations, ecosystem, and deal announcements included Shabodi supporting GMS Network API aggregation, Alkira launching its Connect Partner Program, Antevia Networks partnering with Benetel for O-RAN outdoor coverage, Ericsson expanding North American private 5G with Future Technologies, PBS Cellular selecting Qvantel for HBCU services, Amdocs launching eSIM Traveler for roaming monetization, Connectbase collaborating with Converge in Southeast Asia, DE-CIX taking a majority stake in BIX.BG, Cerillion achieving TM Forum Diamond-level API conformance, MetTel aiding POTS transformation, Visa joining Canton Network as Super Validator, and Rakuten extending its Netcracker BSS partnership.

Wireless network technologies and intelligent systems news included RANsemi powering mission-critical 5G tactical systems, Spirent releasing Landslide M6 for complex 5G SA validation, ZTE launching the Livebox 7 smart home terminal with Orange Morocco, ZTE also unveiling the Telco Service Agent for intent-driven intelligent networking, HP introducing NearSense for effortless cross-device connectivity, and SAP collaborating with UnternehmerTUM on the SafetyGuard AI-robotics prototype for workplace hazard detection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Automation News

NVIDIA joined global telecom leaders in pledging AI-native open platforms for 6G, while Nokia launched Doksuri Remote Radio Heads engineered for AI-era performance and sustainability, and Nokia collaborated with Telia to co-create AI-RAN use cases. Amdocs partnered with Google Cloud and Amdocs with AWS on agentic AI for telco contact centers and modernization, and ServiceNow announced autonomous roaming resolution with NTT DOCOMO and StarHub. IBM announced it acquired Confluent to create a smart data platform delivering real-time trusted data for AI models and agents across hybrid clouds.

Mavenir teamed with Turkcell for AI-enabled voice and messaging, ZTE showcased AI immersive communication prototypes in the U6G band, and ZTE unveiled the world’s first embodied intelligent guide robot for sustained operation in dense crowds. ABB Robotics partnered with NVIDIA to bring industrial-grade physical AI to factory floors, NEC developed physical AI that anticipates human movement and stress levels, and NVIDIA worked with T-Mobile, Nokia, and developers to integrate physical AI over distributed edge networks.

NVIDIA launched Vera Rubin with seven chips in production for massive AI factories supporting pretraining to agentic inference, introduced BlueField-4 STX for long-context storage, unveiled the Vera CPU with twice the efficiency of traditional CPUs for reinforcement learning, released Nemotron 3 Super as a 120B-parameter open model for complex agentic systems, expanded open model families for agentic/physical/healthcare AI, announced the Nemotron Coalition for frontier open models, introduced the NemoClaw stack for trustworthy autonomous agents, and revealed the open Physical AI Data Factory Blueprint along with Isaac and GR00T models for robotics ecosystems. Dell made not one, but two announcements related to developing advanced AI data platforms with NVIDIA, demonstrating up to 2.6x ROI for early adopters through end-to-end infrastructure.

CoreWeave introduced Flexible Capacity Plans including Flex Reservations and Spot for dynamic AI workloads and was later selected by Zonos to power AI-driven duty/tax systems with reduced latency. HPE unveiled next-generation AI Factory innovations focused on efficient large-scale deployments, and Bell expanded its AI Fabric with a 300 MW data center in Saskatchewan while partnering with BUZZ HPC for sovereign accelerated GPU infrastructure in British Columbia.