Qualcomm

June 2026 showed agentic AI scaling from pilot to platform: industry-wide standards momentum, AI-RAN field trials from Nokia, Amdocs and KDDI, and fresh capital across data centers on three continents. This full roundup covers every deployment, partnership, funding round and governance move from the month, with tools to prioritise AI use cases and plan the network around them.
Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm Technologies have jointly validated Power Class 1 capability for 5G Fixed Wireless Access on a virtualized RAN architecture — a combination the industry has not demonstrated before. Testing showed up to ten times higher uplink throughput at the cell edge and up to 40% greater coverage range versus Power Class 1.5. With field trials already underway on a U.S. Tier-1 operator network and commercial availability targeted for 2027, this milestone signals a meaningful shift in uplink performance, coverage economics, and vRAN capability for operators and enterprise buyers alike.
Bosch and Qualcomm are extending their in-vehicle compute collaboration from digital cockpits into advanced driver-assistance systems, signaling a tighter convergence of safety, user experience, and centralized vehicle compute. Automakers are accelerating the shift from fragmented electronic control units to zonal and centralized architectures that run on fewer, more powerful processors. This deal aligns Bosch’s experience integrating automotive-grade compute with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platforms to create scalable ADAS solutions that can be deployed across mainstream and premium vehicles. As software-defined vehicle strategies mature, consolidating safety, perception, and cockpit functions on shared compute is a pragmatic step to reduce cost and complexity.
Live Streamed on Tues, 3 Mar at 09:30 - 11:00 CET

How will the AI systems we build today define technology, society, and humanity tomorrow? From advanced chip architectures and global networks to generative coding and the next frontier of digital identity, this session brings together pioneering leaders shaping both the systems, and the consequences of the AI world being built today.
Samsung Electronics, working with KT Corporation and Keysight Technologies, has demonstrated 3 Gbps peak downlink in outdoor tests using an ultra‑dense antenna system and X‑MIMO in the 7 GHz band. The field trial took place at Samsung’s Seoul R&D Campus and pushed eight concurrent spatial streams from a base station to a single user device. The key enabler was a radio unit that packs roughly four times the antenna elements of today’s 5G massive MIMO gear into a similar physical footprint. Shorter wavelengths at 7 GHz make that density feasible without expanding the radio size.
OpenAI is reportedly building a portfolio of AI-native devices, signaling a push beyond software and into ambient, multimodal computing that will touch homes, workplaces, and networks. Multiple reports indicate OpenAI has over 200 people developing a family of AI-enabled hardware, with a smart speaker expected to debut first. Early guidance points to a price in the $200–$300 range and a ship window no earlier than February 2027. The device is said to include a camera to capture contextual information about users and surroundings—an explicit bet on multimodal AI that fuses voice, vision, and environment for richer interactions.
An AI‑fueled land grab for advanced memory is squeezing supply for handsets, undercutting Qualcomm’s near‑term outlook even as end‑demand for premium Android devices improves. Memory suppliers are prioritizing high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) and DDR5 for AI accelerators and data center servers, diverting wafer capacity and capex away from mobile‑grade LPDDR5/5X and UFS storage. The result is a classic allocation cycle: supply chases the highest‑margin demand (HBM and enterprise SSDs), while downstream categories like smartphones and some edge devices face tighter availability and rising component costs. For Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon platforms anchor premium Android devices, the constraint limits upside volume and mix in the near term.
The latest 3GPP cycle consolidates 5G-Advanced (Release 18), sets the agenda for Release 19, and frames early 6G studies, with direct implications for operator investment, enterprise use cases, and vendor roadmaps. Release 18, the first phase of 5G-Advanced, is moving from standards completion into implementation, bringing carrier-grade enhancements in spectral efficiency, energy savings, and mobility performance. Release 19 now builds on these foundations, prioritizing further RAN efficiency, XR and video delivery at scale, richer analytics/exposure in the core (NWDAF, NEF/CAPIF), and enterprise-grade reliability across private and public networks.
2025 has seen major telecom and tech M&A activity, including billion-dollar deals in fiber, AI, cloud, and cybersecurity. This monthly tracker details key acquisitions, like AT&T buying Lumen’s fiber assets and Google’s $32B move for Wiz, highlighting how consolidation is shaping the competitive landscape.
New data points to a step-change in cellular IoT adoption as 5G broadens into mid-tier and massive-scale use cases while 4G-era LPWA keeps expanding. Omdia forecasts cellular IoT connections to reach roughly 5.9 billion by 2035, driven by expanding addressable use cases across industrial automation, utilities, transportation, retail, and consumer-adjacent categories such as wearables. The growth profile is no longer tied only to premium 5G performance; instead, scaled adoption is coming from three complementary pillars: 5G RedCap for mid-tier performance at lower cost, 5G Massive IoT (evolving NB-IoT/LTE-M under a 5G core), and 4G LTE Cat-1bis for low-cost devices that still require voice or moderate throughput.
Sponsored by Palo Alto Networks
⚡ Utilities ⏱ 8 min ✓ Free
This tool is built and hosted by TeckNexus.
Launch Tool →
Whitepaper
Airports are deploying AI surveillance, biometrics, and autonomous vehicles faster than most networks can secure them. See what 100 real-world airport deployments reveal about the airside/landside security gap — and the 4-layer framework built to close it....
Scroll to Top