Artificial Intelligence

The call for speakers for the CW International Conference 2026 has now opened. 

On 15th January, Digital Catapult and University of Bristol brought together over 140 people from across the telecoms and AI sectors to share the latest insights, challenges, research and innovation being undertaken in this exciting space.

Hello, I’m Jay Gupta, the Global Head of Industry Solutions for the TMT sector at Quantexa, a British software company; we are one of the few ‘unicorns’ in the UK software space. 

Smartphone makers could be in for a bumpy ride next year, as surging memory prices make devices more costly to produce.

People in the UK largely failed on resolutions to use their phones less in 2025, according to new data from Virgin Media O2, which shows that, amongst other things, AI usage is on the up.

Artificial intelligence is "becoming increasingly normalised," VMO2 declared as it published its Year in Review on Wednesday.

• Deutsche Telekom, Fraunhofer IAIS, and Kliniken der Stadt Köln collaborate to develop AI agents for emergency room support
• Structured by medical priorities and serving as a documentation framework
• Blueprint for highly secure AI solutions within the AI Foundation Services

The Linux Foundation has teamed up with key AI players, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to launch the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).

The Council has agreed on an amendment to the regulation that sets the framework for the activities of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU). The amendment aims to establish Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactories in Europe and create a dedicated quantum pillar in the activities of the EuroHPC JU.

To ensure that SMEs have a front-row seat to telecoms standards making, our Standards Champion, Andy Reid, attends key standards meetings to observe, participate in conversations and report back on key themes and discussion points.

Here, Reid shares his reflections from FYUZ.

BT announced the launch of a sovereign platform which will deliver a pioneering suite of new digital sovereignty services for the UK private and public sector.

Semiconductor solutions firm Marvell has agreed to acquire Celestial AI, which makes an optical interconnect technology platform for AI computing called Photonic Fabric.

• Softbank and Yaskawa Electric are collaborating on the social implementation of a new type of AI by exploiting AI-RAN
• They will carry out integration analysis of different types of data in real time to offer robots capable of multiskilled functionality in multiple roles
• Data from sen

Photo Credit: Nathan Pitt - University of Cambridge

• Network faults remain one of the biggest and most costly challenges facing telcos
• Root cause analysis (RCA) processes still require innovation
• Major industry bodies are supporting the AI Telco Troubleshooting Challenge, which aims to ultimately improve RCA
• AT

Some AI and 5G trials at a stadium in Milton Keynes promise to improve signal for sporting events.

The trials were developed through Project ARANA, a collaboration between the University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab, AI operation Madevo, as well as some other industry partners, led by Weaver Labs.

Five UK-led European satellite projects will get a bit of public money to help them, while promising to incubate ‘promising’ UK AI startups.

As 2025 approaches the rearview mirror, a survey of over 200 telecom professionals places security at the forefront of 2026.

Orange France and Ericsson are collaborating on several trials covering things like Massive MIMO radios, 5G energy-saving features powered by automation and AI, and cloud and Open RAN deployments.

• The tests confirm the importance of the 6 GHz band, considered the last opportunity for spectrum in mid-bands to deliver the mobile services of the future, offering high capacity and coverage comparable to the one offered by the 3.5 GHz band thanks to innovations such as Nokia's active antenna solutions.
• The pilot was carried out at

NTT Docomo has conducted what it says is the world’s first outdoor demonstration using real-time transceiver systems with AI-powered wireless tech, pitched as a 6G play.

New data released by analyst firm Omdia reveals that 41% of CSPs identified network management as the most significant area of impact for agentic AI.

Critics fear the European Commission’s upcoming digital omnibus will relax AI and GDPR rules to placate big tech companies and Washington.

The European Commission is preparing to ease some of its most stringent digital and AI regulations, with critics blasting the commission of sacrificing privacy to secure big tech investment.

Revenues from telecoms and pay TV services will come in at north of US$1.5 trillion this year with growth exceeding expectations, but telcos will still need to look to AI to help them cut costs and maintain margins.

Telco regulators from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance have pledged to work more closely with one another to counter cyberattacks targeting telco infrastructure.