MWC 2025: Rethinking Infrastructure for Long-Term Agility, Security, and Monetization

I was delighted to attend Mobile World Congress 25 (MWC25) in Barcelona last week. The event brought together telecommunications industry leaders from around the world, including many from Asia Pacific. It featured fascinating presentations about technology trends and innovation reshaping the industry. Broadcom’s team was part of the lineup, leading a great session about on-device artificial intelligence and the shift to edge processing.We also appeared on Fierce Networks TV to discuss how telcos are modernizing their network operations, which you can view here. MWC25 Observations from an APAC Perspective Throughout MWC25, there was a lot of excitement about the possibilities presented by traditional and generative AI, the Internet of Things, 5G-Advanced, the cloud repatriation, and even glimpses of 6G. However, it has also been clear that many telcos are struggling with two major challenges: effectively monetizing investments in areas such as 5G, and transforming their networks in ways that improve performance while being cost-effective and secure. Our view is that telcos should see the current period of rapid technology change as an opportunity to reinvent their network infrastructures to be more robust and agile. The transition from 4G to 5G is a good example of how this can work. 4G networks predominantly used virtualized, virtual machine–based functions at their core, while 5G is moving towards cloud- and container-based infrastructures. This aligns with the industry’s broader adoption of modern cloud technologies, but can result in telcos adding disparate and multi-vendor systems to their networks, as well as continuing to maintain siloed, vertical, and vendor-specific technology stacks that can be complex and hard to manage. Our Strategy for Telco Operators Broadcom’s strategy is to help telcos move from siloed, vertical stacks to a more horizontal approach, multi-vendor and interoperable model. Here, the goal is to create on-prem telco cloud infrastructure t