At the 19th edition of the Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit, held under the theme ‘Tech Intelligence Beyond Mobility’ from 10–11 December 2025 in Dubai, UAE, Mikko Lavanti, Senior Vice President of Mobile Networks for MEA, shared exclusive insights on Nokia’s new strategy , breakthrough regional innovations, and its strong commitment to empowering Middle Eastern and African markets.
Nokia announced an updated strategy on its Capital Markets Day 2025. What are the main highlights of the new strategy?
Many people remember the “Connecting People” slogan, which was incredibly strong. This year, we have evolved from that, to “Connecting Intelligence.”
So, what does that mean? If you look at the future, AI is everywhere. At the Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit, we discussed AI, connectivity, and the workloads that will drive huge opportunities. We refer to this shift as the AI super cycle.
What is important is that we have the portfolio to support it, starting with our network infrastructure. We cover everything from secure data centers to maintaining data sovereignty and ensuring quantum-safe protection. Inside the data center, outside, and across connectivity layers, this represents a major growth area.
Earlier this year, we acquired Infinera, which, combined with our capabilities, positions us very strongly on the data center side. On the radio side, NVIDIA invested USD 1 billion into Nokia. Looking ahead, we are talking about AI-for-RAN, AI-andRAN, and AI-on-RAN. By around 2028 and beyon, we expect to see GPUs placed inside millions of base stations around the world. As part of our strategy, we also announced a focus on co-creation with customers. For that, we are aligning our sales teams more closely with customers to enable that co-creation model.
These are some of the elements I am very excited about and discussed [at TRS 2025]. Many of my customers have said this is a game changer, and I personally believe so as well.
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Nokia is a connectivity innovation leader. What are the recent innovations you see as most transformative for the Middle East region’s advanced markets?
During the Summit, we discussed 6G and six-gigahertz spectrum, and we have already completed proof-of-concept trials with customers focused on enhanced performance and new use cases. The positive outcome, as highlighted during Summit discussions, is that we will mostlikely be able to use the same sites. This means that the spectrum supporting 5G-Advanced today can transition to 6G while leveraging essentially the same deployment footprint.
Another regional innovation is network slicing. We recently made an announcement together with du on this, and we are now looking at 5G-Advanced monetization through network slicing. A great example highlighted by du’s CTO, Saleem Alblooshi, was the Autonomous Car Racing League in Abu Dhabi this year, powered by du on a private network. We collaborated closely with du to build this solution.
It may seem futuristic, but AI-driven cars are now almost as fast as human drivers and, next year, they may be faster. When combined with the NVIDIA-powered innovation I mentioned earlier, it’s plausible to imagine the possibility of self-driving cars safely operating on Sheikh Zayed Road; that future is just a few years away.
Additionally, we are advancing local language model development, including our collaboration with du and Khalifa University, among others, on Arabic LLM innovation, while in Saudi Arabia, we developed an in-building solution model that all operators can utilize. These are good examples of regional innovation.
MEA is a very diverse region by nature, and Nokia has always been focused on the entire region without exceptions. Can you please share how Nokia is addressing African customers’ priorities?
What I appreciate about this region is its richness. Here in Dubai, and in Riyadh where I live, we are surrounded by world-leading networks and spectrum innovation. But then there is the other side: our African customers.
We have been significantly increasing our market share in the continent and, recently, 5G deployments have begun to accelerate. Earlier this year, we launched services in Morocco in record time, delivering excellent results ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations, while Egypt also launched its 5G network recently.
If you look at Africa’s needs for rural coverage, I sometimes compare it to India in terms of number of sites, population scale, demographics, and outlook. Geographically, Africa is roughly 10 times larger than India. By 2050, Africa’s population is expected to be almost double that of India.
However, big parts of African networks are still not available. Many areas lack access to electricity and many communities remain under served. We are building solutions and innovations to address this, including how to bring networks to local villages, while also bringing electricity. I am very proud of this Nokia rural connect Solution innovation, that perfectly addresses those needs. Beyond that, we are delivering Innovative fixed wireless solutions for south Africa townships; and we see major opportunities in the country.
We are also driving several sustainability initiaves: we’re for instance committed to talent development in the continent, we operate several innovation centers across Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya, and Ethiopia.and we working with rural CSR-focused programson many fronts across the continent.
These examples show the future we are building, how we are helping communities locally, and how we are improving lives across Africa.
