Mobile World Congress 2026: AI, Trust and Sovereignty Reshape the Telecom Landscape

 
In this episode of “TBR Talks,” TBR Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz joins host Patrick Heffernan to share his top takeaways from Mobile World Congress 2026, including the growing importance of AI, sovereignty and trust in the telecom ecosystem. Chris digs into how telcos are positioning themselves as trusted stewards of data, the early-stage reality of agentic AI, and why sovereignty could emerge as a meaningful revenue opportunity.
 
Additionally, the pair discuss emerging technologies like quantum and integrated sensing and what they signal for the future of telecom innovation.

Episode highlights:

• Trust as a competitive differentiator
• Agentic AI and trust
• Sovereignty and tech advancements

“For this year, sovereignty is actually a revenue opportunity for telco — one of the few things that they can actually grow from. And I think there is some legitimacy here in certain markets, certain countries, I want to be clear. So, we [TBR] will be looking at that and sizing that in some way, that opportunity, and kind of unpacking it. Because sovereignty is this word that, it kind of, you have to peel back all the layers to understand, what does this really mean from an opportunity standpoint?” said Antlitz.
 
Listen and learn today!

Mobile World Congress 2026: AI, Trust and Sovereignty Reshape the Telecom Landscape

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms. Where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors, and chip manufacturers to value-added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors.

I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about Mobile World Congress 2026 with Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst for TBR’s Telecom Practice.

MWC 26 theme: Trust as a competitive differentiator

Chris, welcome back to TBR Talks. Every year at this time, we have to have you come on and talk about Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. So how was it this year? What sort of jumped out at you as the biggest parts of a really big event?

Chris Antlitz, TBR Principal Analyst: Yeah, so it was a typical MWC. I think the big three topics this year were sovereignty, agentic AI, of course, AI, and I would say the other thing is trust, if I had to boil it down to three of the main topics.

Patrick: So out of those three, trust is one that I don’t typically think of as being something important in the telco space as much as I think of it more in the AI and the services space. So, what’s the trust component at Mobile World Congress?

Chris: Yeah, so I was surprised about that keyword as well, but basically trust was conveyed in different ways. But the one way that resonates best with telecom is who do you trust with your data? Who do you trust with your privacy in general? Who do you trust with your, you know, how you’re living your life, your lifestyle? And really there’s questions being asked about, so for example, fraud and scams is a massive problem globally, especially in emerging markets, because there’s a lot less protections in place.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And there’s people losing their life savings, and you have these terrible things that are happening. And a lot of that fraud and scam comes over digital infrastructure. And you have the telcos, you have the hyperscalers, you have OTT players, you have all kinds of players in that ecosystem that are participating that, what is their role? Are they supposed to provide those protections? Where do you draw that line? And the idea is, well, the telcos, what if they could be positioned as a more trustworthy provider of digital infrastructure? And because of that, they can get loyalty, maybe more market share. Maybe they can have- they can embed some protections for their subscribers into their technology stack. That was one flavor of how trust was conveyed at the event.

Patrick: Right. And were there certain companies that stood out for being able to sort of sing that song really well, very convincingly?

Chris: So, there was one telco that really hammered this point home. So, it was Sunil Mittal, who’s the founder of Bharti Airtel in India. And I mentioned the emerging markets is really where there’s a lot of- this is a massive problem. It’s a problem everywhere.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: But in the emerging markets, it’s a particularly large problem because there’s even fewer protections. And he has tasked his company with, let’s try and think about trust as a competitive differentiator. And not only is it the right thing to do, and we should be doing more to prevent these things, but what if we could tweak that to our messaging and really try and bring people in and build loyalty with our customers and differentiate from other players providing similar services that they do.

Patrick: So, in that specific Indian market, the competitors, that competitive landscape includes like the hyperscalers and includes others, not just traditional telcos, right?

Chris: Yes.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: They have the traditional hyperscalers, they have the US hyperscalers are all there. You have India-centric hyperscalers. You have other multinational- you have Chinese hyperscalers in India. It’s an ecosystem.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: You have all kinds of players there that are participating.

Patrick: Right, and trust as a differentiator.

MWC 26 theme: Agentic AI and trust

How about, so you mentioned agentic AI, and I think in the special report that you wrote up, you talk about AI and agentic AI as being certainly present, certainly top of mind, everybody’s discussing it, but not really mature in the sense of this is where we see it making the most significant impacts and effects on the mobile market overall. So, what’s your sense of where agentic AI is sort of- is now and is going within the telco space?

Chris: So, the telcos are using AI today, but there’s different flavors or different types of AI. So, you have your traditional AI where you’re using structured data and pattern recognition. Then you have your generative AI, then you have agentic AI, then your physical AI. All types of AI were discussed at the event, but agentic was the primary focus.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And the agentic is the next phase of generative AI where you’re having the bots essentially carry out tasks on behalf of someone else, the agent aspect of it. And the industry is not there yet in terms of really using that. There’s a few examples of what some are calling agentic AI, but I think it’s still very early days for the telcos and they usually are slow adopters anyway. So, for example, Anthropic, they have some agents now, like one does, you know, different types of content editing or content production type things. You have another agent that can do legal tasks. You have another one that can do financial services oriented tasks. And these are basically bots that are specifically trained with models that are expert on those topics.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And then the agent is empowered through technology to actually carry out different tasks, like create a lease agreement for this. And you give it all the- it’ll ask you like all those questions it needs to ask you, just like a lawyer would. And then it’ll generate something that is a, you know, a legally relevant document. Stuff like that.

Patrick: Yeah. And that gets back to trust, because you have to trust that whoever is providing that agent and managing that agent and eventually retiring that agent knows what they’re doing. And so, the more trust you have in the company that’s doing all that.

Chris: It’s not only trusting what they’re doing with the output that you’re getting, it’s what’s happening with what you’re putting in.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, you’re telling them, like say it’s legal, you’re telling that agent very sensitive information, potentially. And where does that go? That’s a big question.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: How is- what’s the governance framework around the data? How do you understand and have clarity around like, where’s my information going?

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Is that being used to train other models? And if so, how? And is there, you know, what if there’s a cyber breach or something? Like is my important documents or something going to get spilled out? Like this is a major enterprise concern. And it’s also one of the reasons why, you know, companies like telcos, they’re a little hesitant to go, you know, what we see right now is experimentation. We see lab trials, we see some POCs. We’ve seen some very limited deployments, what we consider to be a production deployment use case. But that’s kind of where we’re at right now.

MWC attendees: Differences and similarities to years past

Patrick: Right. I want to get back to the data and where does it go and that component. But before that, you mentioned Anthropic. So, a company that was probably not there a couple of years ago. Were there companies that you saw that had a bigger presence at MWC this year, notably than years past. And was there anybody who wasn’t there that you’re surprised didn’t show up?

Chris: So, it was the usual suspects. I did not see any major changes in terms of composition of who was there. What I did notice was there was fewer people there. And the key reason was there were airports shut down because of the Middle East stuff.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And you have a lot of people coming through Dubai and those airports in the GCC region. And you have some other countries that had some challenges there getting people out of their country. So, I mean, the issue started literally, I think 2 days before the event started. So, you had many thousands of people that just, they couldn’t get out. They couldn’t get there. They couldn’t get there.

Patrick: Yeah. But in terms of companies that really stood out this year, so you mentioned Anthropic, anybody else that had a larger than expected or a bigger presence in previous years?

Chris: I didn’t see anything like that.

Patrick: No.

Chris: I usually do notice something like that. I did not notice that this time.

Patrick: So usual suspects. Alright, fair enough.

Chris: Usual suspects, usual presence. A few vendors had a booth that was a little smaller this year, which I thought was interesting, but not too interesting because some companies are struggling a bit. So, they would have, those booths are expensive, very expensive.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And they’re customized every year. And there’s a lot that goes into that. And then they fly a lot of people there to- there’s a lot of costs associated.

Patrick: So staffing, yeah, it’s a huge marketing effort.

Chris: So, I did notice some vendors, maybe their booth was a little smaller this year. Some vendors that are doing better than others, they have maybe a little bit more space, or they had a more prominent location on the show floors.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, I did notice a little bit of shuffling like that, but I didn’t notice any major changes in terms of who was actually there.

MWC 26 theme: Is the sovereignty FUD strong enough to prompt action?

Patrick: Okay. All right. And then you mentioned sovereignty. And so, this is something, I know it’s in the report that you wrote, talking about national champions and AI sovereignty. And just when I read it, my sort of gut reaction to that was like, this is not- this is not a great path for technology as a whole to be headed down. This sort of, they’re not economic reasons necessarily that you want to have national champions. They’re very political reasons and motivated by something else. And at the end of the day, sometimes that just gets in the way. It doesn’t make things better. What’s your sense of where things are headed in the telco space with respect to sovereignty and AI sovereignty and national champions and all that.

Chris: So, the telcos are at a very interesting position because they are national champions already. They are technology companies.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: They have a extremely important role to play in society. Think about internet. Internet is a basic human right. If you think about how integrated it is in our life now, you can’t pay bills. You can’t do anything without internet access in some way.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: So, the telcos are a critical, central aspect of that. And because of that, they could be playing a much more important role. Right now, you have other technology companies that are playing that role, and they’ve taken a lot of opportunities away from the telcos over the last 20 years. The question is, sovereignty going to be, is the FUD strong enough to prompt real action this time? Europe loves to talk, and they love to regulate and they make action on regulation. But will they make action on other very important things like national security and sovereignty, data, data privacy, things like that.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: There’s regulation around that, but it needs to go further than that. You need governance structures in place. You need a rules of engagement of the companies that participate in a market. You need inter-country, not only within the EU, but outside of the EU what are those alliances and structures look like? What are the rules of engagement? Who’s able to do what? You know, I’m talking about Europe because they are the ones usually people will talk about, but it goes far beyond Europe.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: If you think about Canada’s in this situation, basically any major world country, think like G20 type country that is not the US or China is facing these questions right now and what does that mean for them? And we’ll see what happens. I mean, what will have to happen is there’s going to be a lot of money spent and there may be a lot of misallocation of capital because you have subscale players. You might be like reinventing the wheel that’s not economically viable long term. So, there’s a lot of really profound questions that are being asked now and telcos are, in some cases, they are part of these conversations.

Patrick: Right. Do you foresee like another sort of GDPR coming out of the EU in terms of like GDPR specifically for AI and for sovereignty around AI?

Chris: So, there is the EU AI Act, which is relatively recent.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, I’d say that’s the closest thing they have right now. I think the first major, the first major societal challenge that comes up. It could be a cyber event that really causes problems where there’s like, you know, either people’s lives are in jeopardy or something profound happens and it’s tied to digital infrastructure. I’m going to loop AI into that umbrella.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: There’s going to be a major rethink- more action. Right now, there’s a lot of talk. There’s some action. There needs to be a lot more. And then the other thing that we haven’t even discussed yet here is quantum, which I did see quite a bit of quantum at the event. And quantum is, it’s improving. Every year I go to MWC and I see the quantum stuff that’s there. I can see a lot of progress, even in just one year intervals.

Quantum advancements over the years at MWC

Patrick: Are the use cases still primarily like pharmaceuticals and government and like sort of in academia? Or are you seeing quantum use cases that break out of that sort of traditional space it’s been in.

Chris: So, there’s a, so yes, all those use cases you just mentioned, there’s a whole bunch of others, some that are going to probably help society, some that are probably not. But then, but that’s not even counting the government stuff. Then you have the government stuff, and now you’re talking about, you know, post-quantum encryption and post-quantum security and, you know, the encryption keys and how do you protect bank records and the IRS, your tax documents and things when those are encrypted files being transmitted through the internet?

Patrick: Right.

Chris: So, there’s a lot of changes that are going to need to be made because of quantum that people are just starting to get their heads around that now. But again, once you have an event where people are impacted in a very profound way, that’s going to prompt governments and businesses into action.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: They’re going to make changes and make behavioral changes and decisions based on the state of play and what is actually going. Where’s the trend line heading towards?

Patrick: Yeah. So it’ll be, you know, just by my mind when you say like post-quantum encryption, I think about how many movies and TV shows have featured that hacker that’s able to like break through the system and, you know, hack into whatever. Eventually there’s going to have to be a movie where that hacker has to somehow tap into a quantum computer in order to do it. So maybe that’s when we’ll know it’s actually sort of, it’s made the jump into sort of the mainstream. Because I think quantum is still, as fascinating as it is, it’s still, it’s a niche play. And I understand the long-term scaled prospects for it, but at the moment it just still feels very niche.

Chris: It is, but one of the earliest use cases is going to be the security because the encryption, it can break the encryption keys very quickly. Like within a few minutes, you can break any encryption key that’s been produced like pre-quantum.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: Like anything could be broken almost instantly. And that could be utilized. You don’t need quantum everywhere to be able to carry something out from that. If you can break the keys, you can, a hacker or whatever nefarious actor can do something with that.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So yeah, quantum’s down the road, but for certain use cases and threat vectors, it’s very much a this decade problem.

Patrick: Right, I remember last summer talking to some people in the cybersecurity space and they were talking about, was it harvest now, decrypt later. And so, the idea being just, you get into a system and you gather up all the intel, all the data that you can, even if it’s encrypted, then you can decrypt it later. And if you had that quantum capability, that would even speed things up even more.

Chris: Yeah.

Patrick: Because then it’s no longer a matter of, I want to decrypt so I can see what I have and make a judgment about whether I really want it. It’s just take everything and then throw quantum at it and solve that. So, yeah. Scary stuff.

Major topics of interest for this year and next year: Sovereignty and tech advancements like ISAC 

So, let’s wrap up with this. What- when you think ahead to next year’s MWC, like what are two questions on this? One, what are you going to spend the year looking at? Like what are some of the top issues that you’ll be thinking about over the course of the year because of this year’s MWC? And then what do you think will be the biggest topic next year?

Chris: So, for this year, sovereignty is actually a revenue opportunity for telco, one of the few things that they can actually grow from. And I think there is some legitimacy here in certain markets, certain countries, I want to be clear. So we will be looking at that and sizing that in some way, that opportunity and kind of unpacking it because sovereignty is this word that kind of, you have to peel back all the layers to understand like what does this really mean from an opportunity standpoint.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, we’re going to be doing that this year. And then at MWC next year, I would expect we’re just going to see more advancement in the current slate of technologies that are out there. There’s one technology though that I think we might see more of, and that’s ISAC, Integrated Sensing and Communications. Now, that has become even more important with what’s going on in the Russia-Ukraine situation and what’s going on down in the Middle East.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: But also even before that, the drone incursions in the States that have happened over the last few years at major military bases. And the military doesn’t have, they struggle to detect these things and they can’t do anything about it once it’s detected. We’ve seen that.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: We’ve seen that clearly on the news. So that is a clear vulnerability. And ISAC is a critical technology that can combat that and address that need. And there’s actually some preliminary ISAC companies. I talked to one when I was at the event that has some pre-6G ISAC technology, they have a solution and they’ve been selling it. It’s been selling like hotcakes to all the usual suspects that would want that technology. So, I think we’re going to see a lot more of that before 6G is actually ready.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: We’re going to see ways for technology makers to, innovators to build those types of solutions sooner rather than later. Because originally, we were expecting ISAC to be ready in the early 2030s. That was the original roadmap.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: But given what’s happened in the last few years, that roadmap, there’s so much pressure on the industry to pull that forward that I started to see that at the event this year, that it is being pulled forward. And there are some very compelling startups with some technology that doesn’t need 6G to do it with a high enough level of accuracy where it’s useful.

Patrick: So, what’s the role of the traditional telcos in ISAC?

Chris: So, think about turning all of the towers into radars.

Patrick: Ah, okay.

Chris: You could basically turn them all into a radar, and they can radar low airspace.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, several hundred feet up, maybe you can get a few thousand feet up of, depending on how they actually- actually you could, depending on how it’s architected, you could go above lower airspace, depending on where you’re pointing your antenna arrays.

Patrick: Yeah. So, this is an opportunity for hardware and even software that the traditional telcos have already installed.

Chris: Potentially.

Patrick: Potentially. Okay.

Chris: Potentially, yes. So the hope is that the existing 5G base stations, those boxes on the towers, that those are able to, through a software upgrade, they’re able to leverage the sensing algorithms and use the radio pulses that come out of the- that they emit from the radios to do it. That’s the hope. Maybe they’ll be able to figure that out and do that at scale. If not, there are some workarounds where you can, from the outcomes, you can workaround and you don’t actually have to wait for the 6G specs to do it.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: There’s some workarounds now that they can do.

Patrick: That’s pretty fascinating. I didn’t know about that and now I’m going to go out and read a little bit more on ISAC. That’s a really cool thing.

Reflecting on career aspirations at 22

So last question, this season, I’ve been asking the same question of everyone at the end of all these episodes because our daughter is in her last semester of college. So, she’s 22, the whole world is in front of her. She’s got all kinds of ideas about what she wants to do with her life. And it just made me reflect, and I’ve been asking a lot of people reflect on their 22-year-old self and what did they think they were going to do. I am positive you didn’t think you were going to be sitting here talking to me in however many years it’s been since you were 22. But when you were 22, what did you think? Like, this is what I want to do with my life. What was your sort of, what was your dream job heading into your 22s?

Chris: Yeah, I wanted to work in financial services. I actually, originally, I wanted to go to Wall Street and I decided- there were some upperclassmen that actually did it. And they explained to me what the lifestyle was like and what sacrifices they had to make to do that.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I did want to do it, but I also didn’t.

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: And I wound up transitioning to doing something else. I, you know, we still, like doing this job is still very relevant in a way, because I still get to do, like I still get to follow the companies and the new technology. And, you know, we dig into the financial statements and, we do some similar tangential things that an equity analyst would do.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: So, I do, from that perspective, like I am doing what I wanted to do at 22, but it’s just a little different and not maybe exactly the way that I originally thought, but it’s similar.

Patrick: Yeah. And credit to those guys for sharing like what it was really like. And then at 22, you understood, like, that’s not the path I want to take. Not the sacrifices I want to make, and I know exactly what you mean, like, there’s always that opportunity to do something you think is bigger and better, but it comes at a cost.

Final thoughts

Yeah. Chris, thanks so much. We will chat again soon, I’m sure. Thanks.

Chris: Thank you.

Patrick: Tune in next week for another episode of TBR Talks.

Don’t forget to send us your key intelligence questions on business strategy, ecosystems, and management consulting through the form in the show notes below. Visit tbri.com to learn how we help tech companies, large and small, answer these questions with the research, data, and analysis that my guests bring to this conversation every week.

Once again, I’m your host, Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst at TBR. Thanks for joining us, and see you next week.

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