Contributed Article
According to Li Peng, Huawei’s senior vice president, president of ICT Sales & Services, agentic AI is rapidly transforming the mobile industry into one of seamless multimodal experiences
After years of stagnant growth, this year’s Mobile World Congress felt full of optimism, with agentic AI beginning to deliver tangible benefits across the ecosystem, from network efficiencies to new services.
For Huawei’s Li Peng, the technology’s growing maturity marks a clear inflection point for the industry, presenting telcos with a wealth of opportunities to grow.
“This year, we’re entering the agentic Internet era,” Li told delegates. “This will bring richer, multi-modal content and more real-time interaction.”
In this next phase, networks will “not only connect people” but also “connect hundreds of billions of agents”, becoming “the foundation of an entire agent-based ecosystem,” according to Li.
This emerging agentic economy – where AI agents conduct business with each other on behalf their users – could become a “10-trillion-dollar market” with mobile operators at its centre.
From traffic to experience
Maximising this opportunity, however, will involve a significant paradigm shift for the telcos. The days when telcos could simply focus on traffic monetisation are quickly running out, to be replaced by “experience monetisation” thanks to the new capabilities being delivered by 5G standalone and 5G-A networks.
“Most users only notice network quality when it is bad. We need to make them actually perceive premium service,” said Li, who noted that over 30 telcos have already launched experience-based packages based on high speeds, low latency, and guaranteed network performance. “By offering services like custom logo displays and multi-level speed boosts, carriers are able to guarantee network performance at critical moments and enhance users’ perception of network quality.”
This is what Li terms ‘deterministic experience’, where operators finally move beyond ‘best effort’ towards guaranteed performance when customers need it most. These key scenarios include quality assurance in stadiums, and stable video conferencing on high-speed trains – scenarios where even momentary drops in network performance can be catastrophic for user experience.
“When users can perceive network quality at key moments, they get a true sense of premium status and satisfaction,” said Li.
This, says Li, creates “a clear path forward for 5G business development”, giving customers the connectivity they want when they need it most and operators the chance to better monetise their network investments.
AI to impact each and every customer
This ultra-reliable network foundation will crucial, Li says, for the next phase of the mobile industry’s development: the emergence of a myriad of AI-driven services.
“As adoption of AI grows, we have unlocked a third stage for monetisation with AI-based services,” Li said, adding that these offerings “greatly improve user satisfaction and make higher-end packages more attractive.”
For B2C customers, operators are already using AI to enhance voice services with AI-powered transcription and translation, creating a clearer connection for customers than ever before.
In the home, AI-based network agents can dynamically allocate resources to ensure service quality, helping deliver deterministic performance for bandwidth-intensive applications.
Finally, in the enterprise segment, Li highlighted industrial use cases such as powering autonomous mining in challenging remote locations, arguing that “combining 5G-A and AI” will “redefine flexible manufacturing.”
To capture these opportunities, operators must evolve to become AI service providers. By making this shift, operators can ensure they remain at the centre of the value chain, rather than simply providing the underlying connectivity for other players.
“The agentic Internet era is approaching fast, and the opportunities are real,” said Li in his conclusion, urging the industry to collaborate and foster long-term growth. “Together, we can unlock a world of new opportunities.”
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