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2027 Intelligence Programs

Mavenir

September 2026's roundup: Verizon, T-Mobile US and Telstra run AI across national networks, AI-RAN moves into national contracts and field results, the economics and portability of AI agents come into focus, and agent safety moves from principles to working controls.
August 2026's roundup: operators from SK Telecom to Ooredoo built or monetized AI infrastructure directly, AI-RAN validation reached the device and per-user level, agentic AI moved deeper into live network operations, and governance caught up with a watermarking mandate, an incident-reporting coalition, and a hard look at why AI inference costs keep rising even as token prices fall.
Deutsche Telekom's transition from Ericsson to Mavenir as its primary 5G standalone core provider represents a fundamental rethinking of how Tier 1 operators architect and operate networks in the cloud-native era. Mavenir now carries all standalone 5G traffic in Germany, while Ericsson handles legacy 4G and non-standalone 5G. Driven by the Horizontal TelCo Cloud initiative, the shift has already produced measurable results including 65% energy savings in live testing and three commercial network slicing deployments, with Apple FaceTime set to leverage these capabilities at consumer scale via iOS 26.
Deutsche Telekom’s early live results showing up to 65% energy savings in its 5G core spotlight a pragmatic path to cut opex and carbon as traffic surges and standalone 5G scales. Operators have wrung out much of the easy efficiency from hardware refreshes; the next gains come from software-driven, demand-aware control. DT is applying that logic to the core, shifting components to run only when needed rather than idling at full power. The results are enabled by DT’s “Horizontal Telco Cloud,” a unified, standards-based platform that replaces fragmented stacks with one common layer for core services. Initial live-network tests have been completed, with broader rollout planned and further detail expected at MWC Barcelona 2026.
CEO Börje Ekholm indicated the company will keep trimming headcount after cutting roughly 5,000 positions over the last year. In Sweden, Ericsson has notified authorities and begun union talks that could affect about 1,600 roles, part of a multi‑year restructuring program. The move follows a 2023 plan to remove around 8,500 jobs worldwide—about 8% of its workforce—with further reductions last year in markets such as Spain and Canada. The rationale remains consistent: reset the cost base, protect profitability, and keep investment firepower for strategic bets amid a slower operator capex cycle.
2027 Intelligence Programs
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