Omdia view
Summary
Ericsson hosted its pre-MWC event in London in February 2026 and positioned 5G standalone (SA) as the bridge to AI‑native 6G. It urged operators to productize 5G SA amid rising uplink and latency demands and prepare networks with AI.
Ericsson urges operators to move to AI-native networks ahead of 6G
At its pre‑MWC briefing, Ericsson made clear that the preparations for AI‑native networks need to be underway now, well ahead of the expected 6G launches in the 2030s. The company positions 5G SA as the commercial and architectural bridge to AI‑native 6G networks, citing increasing 5G SA case studies across mission‑critical services (e.g., T‑Mobile’s priority slice for first responders), segmented offers (e.g., premium tiers for video calling, gamers, business travelers, event attendees, influencers), and general premium plans with performance‑based or guaranteed speeds.
Ericsson highlighted the network data traffic transformation as a key reason to prepare networks today. Networks were designed for downlink‑heavy, relatively latency‑tolerant smartphone usage, but AI‑centric use cases change the logic. Smartwatches were one of the first use cases to require higher uplink speed, but with a growing number of AI-centric devices coming to market, including AI glasses, robotics, and humanoids, uplink traffic will significantly increase. Ericsson expects uplink traffic to roughly triple every five years. These use cases will also make latency a key commercial parameter, and 5G SA quality of service and slicing will become pivotal to price and performance differentiation.
This change makes the placement of computing within the network a key point of discussion. Processing data close to its source—for instance, in ambulances or factories—reduces latency, strengthens data sovereignty, and aligns with national security priorities. But there will still be non-real-time workloads that can be processed more centrally. Ericsson frames a distributed compute continuum spanning central cloud, regional edge, and far edge depending on use case and latency and jitter requirements.
Ericsson portrayed the network as an intelligent, programmable fabric connecting people, devices, applications, and AI agents. Differentiation moves from coverage to capabilities, enabling operators to diversify into sectors such as oil and gas, healthcare, and defense, and this was underlined by a speaker from the Italian defense company Leonardo, who discussed 5G’s role in the battlefield.
Ericsson’s stance is to build the best network for AI, with AI, ahead of 6G and to align technology with business outcomes to progress toward intent‑driven, programmable, autonomous networks. However, there is a practical issue with this strategy: many operators have not yet launched 5G SA commercially. Omdia’s 5G Service Provider Tracker – 2H25 shows that only 77 operators had launched 5G SA by end‑2025, versus 253 for 5G overall. This indicates that operators still lack SA at scale and, with it, the capabilities that enable tangible differentiation. In other words, some operators still need convincing that 5G SA brings new monetization possibilities.
Appendix
Further reading
5G Service Provider Tracker – 2H25 (January 2026)
Author
Julia Schindler, Principal Analyst, Service Provider Strategy
