MWC ‘26: Trust, Space, and of course AI

Author: Triona Mullane

At MWC last week in Barcelona, three ideas dominated the conversations with service providers: trust, connectivity, and AI. All great top-of-mind topics. However, in speaking with senior mobile execs, there's a gap between the aspiration and the actual capability that exists today. But that gap also reveals something else: where the real opportunity actually sits for service providers today.

The Trust Paradox: How can providers truly protect users?

One of the main narratives from the show was about providers as the trusted underpinning. The idea that providers sit in a unique position to protect users and keep them safe makes sense. Google and Airtel announced a deal around RCS, saying how they'll tackle spam and bad actors at the network level around calling and Messaging.

It's important work. But there's an interesting limitation with just a network-level approach. Providers are often technically blind to what's happening inside encrypted apps. When you're behind HTTPS, the provider can see the plumbing but not what actually flows through it. They can't spot deepfakes for example   operating in those spaces.

What if the answer lies in expanding beyond the network to include the device itself?   On-device intelligence operates where user behaviour actually happens. It understands which apps are being used, whether the device is plugged in, what wireless networks it's connected to. It spots patterns and anomalies without shipping user data anywhere, a privacy-first architecture where data and intelligence stays on the device. That's where the trust conversation becomes technically real. Combine that with AI, and you're creating a trusted space built on advanced reasoning on behalf of the user.

The Real Battle: It's Not in Space, It's in Your Living Room

 Another narrative at the show centered on the uncharted territory of space with the emergence of hybrid networks where satellites and ground towers merge. Space captures the imagination, and the long-term thinking is genuinely interesting. But here's the reality today: while space is an aspiration, the real competitive battle for providers is happening on the ground.  It's about who can offer broadband to households faster and smarter in an increasingly competitive mobile market. That's where the revenue opportunity is.

A lot of providers can't see today which broadband networks or services their mobile customers are connected to. That data lives on the device, invisible to them at the network level, but accessible though the device. The ability to monitor network conditions, know when household broadband is connected to a competitor network, and make real time decisions about the right moment to engage with a broadband upsell offer is available right now on the device. Yet many providers still aren't taking advantage of it. Instead, in many cases they rely on batch jobs or marketing automation sending the same message to everyone. They're leaving money on the table.

AI Everywhere

No doubt everyone at MWC was talking about AI. However, there was a bit of a jaded feeling in conversations. A sense that people are just sticking "AI" in front of everything and calling it innovation. The emperor's new clothes, right? Things companies have been doing for years are getting rebranded under an AI badge.

But here's what I think matters from the conversations I had throughout the week. The real value isn't in chasing new AI use cases. It's in solving the billion-dollar business challenges that already keep providers awake at night: churn, upsell, customer experience. AI hasn’t changed these. What's changed is the way it can approach them.

There was a lot of talk about "AI Agents," representing a brand-new paradigm, but the underlying intelligence has been around for years. What's new is how you channel and process that intelligence to make real-time decisions around complex, multifaceted use cases. That's the agentic opportunity.

In Summary

Providers are promising trust at the network level, however, if they want to be the trusted underpinning, they ultimately need to work from the device, where the user maintains control and where data doesn't leak out. The space narrative is compelling, but the real battle is household connectivity on the ground. The winner will be whoever can apply intelligence at scale. Hyper-targeted, locally-aware, and continuously optimized. On-device intelligence makes that possible.

And AI? It's not about finding new problems to solve. It's about solving the problems providers have always had. Churn, upsell, and customer experience. But in a smarter way. When that intelligence is agentic and on-device, you get outcomes that feel less like automation and more like partnership.