AI was front and centre at MWC Barcelona last year and is expected to remain so. How has the focus on AI developed over the last year?

Last year in Barcelona, much of the conversation around AI focused on potential. Since then, the industry has become more candid about where AI is, and isn’t, delivering. The stakes have been raised further as agentic AI enters the mainstream, increasing the urgency for the industry to shift from experimentation to collaboration. This has renewed the impetus for operators, vendors and cloud partners to build shared frameworks, open models and common benchmarks. As we kick off MWC 2026, it feels like we’re at turning point for the industry, with lots of distinct elements coming together to enable concrete progress.

What do you think will be the most significant announcements at MWC this year?

What stands out this year is how broadly AI is being applied across the mobile ecosystem, often through deep collaboration. Ahead of the show, we’ve already seen strong examples such as GSMA Foundry’s partnership with Singapore’s National University Health System, where AI, 5G and robotics are coming together to reimagine healthcare delivery in real clinical environments.

Beyond AI, there is also strong momentum in cross sector innovation. GSMA Foundry’s work with organisations like the European Space Agency shows how mobile technologies are enabling new services far beyond traditional telecoms. At the same time, network APIs are gaining real traction. GSMA Open Gateway announcements from operators and partners point to clear demand for programmable networks and new business models.

AI is helping criminals launch cyber-attacks and scam consumers more easily. How can AI also help the mobile industry tackle this threat?

GSMA data shows that attackers are already using AI to scale scams, phishing and social engineering. However, the same technologies can also be powerful defensive tools when deployed responsibly. Across the industry, AI is being used to detect anomalous patterns, identify scam campaigns earlier, and block malicious activity at network level before it reaches consumers.

We’re also seeing strong results from AI driven spam and scam detection systems that significantly reduce financial harm, alongside new network APIs designed to support fraud prevention. Crucially, AI is most effective when combined with strong cyber hygiene, shared threat intelligence and industry coordination. AI isn’t a silver bullet, but as part of a layered defence it can meaningfully keep the ecosystem safer for subscribers.

What role can agentic APIs play in accelerating the GSMA Open Gateway initiative?

Agentic AI has the potential to transform how developers and enterprises interact with networks. Rather than manually configuring connectivity, agent-based systems can observe conditions, reason about intent and dynamically invoke network APIs to deliver a desired outcome. This aligns closely with the GSMA Open Gateway vision of exposing mobile network capabilities through simple, standardised APIs.

At MWC26 this year, we’re starting to see more innovative combinations of agentic AI and API. Telefonica and Nokia will be demonstrating how this works at MWC, as will Mplify, working with Orange, Colt and Google. It’ll be interesting to see how this is adopted across the ecosystem in the coming year. By combining CAMARA APIs with intelligent orchestration across mobile, fixed and cloud domains, networks become active components in the stack rather than passive infrastructure. For Open Gateway, this means faster innovation, stronger use cases and a clearer path to programmable, outcome driven networks that can achieve global scale.