MWC25: How Nokia is Prioritising AI and Network Automation
Nokia is intensifying its focus on autonomous networks, cloud technology and artificial intelligence as the telecommunications industry progresses into what Jitin Bhandari, Chief Technology Officer for Cloud and Network Services at Nokia, describes as "the 2.0 era of 5G".
In an exclusive interview at Mobile World Congress 2025, Jitin Bandari, outlined how Nokia is currently responding to industry challenges and opportunities.
“We are in a very interesting juncture here. Clearly we have come a long way when it comes to maturity in the cloud,” he says. “That option of cloud and hybrid cloud is definitely a relevant thing. AI is emerging fast.”
Nokia continues to position itself at the intersection of cloud technology and AI, with network automation experiencing substantial growth across the telecommunications sector.
“We are talking quite a bit about automation and autonomous networks operations, which is picking up a lot of steam this time around,” Jitin says. “We have seen traditional ecosystems of AI from machine learning (ML) ops or ML aspects, but now with the transformer models, conversational aspects of AI into the network are being talked about quite a bit.”
Hybrid solutions to tackle telco complexity
A central theme of Nokia's presence at MWC Barcelona 2025 was assisting telecommunications companies in navigating hybrid cloud environments, which present unique challenges for the sector.
“How do you use cloud tools in a hybrid context? I mean that's the most relevant for telcos,” Jitin explains. “You’ve got to be on-prem and cloud, so we’re looking at how we can make toll sets use these technologies in a more impactful way.”
Nokia has well-established itself in cloud technologies for telecommunications and is now focusing on helping customers accelerate the adoption of 5G Standalone (5G SA).
“This is where the cloud is really accelerating, especially around the core of the network,” Jitin says. “A lot of software methodologies are being adopted, so that is a good acceleration. We are finally now seeing our service provider friends adopting an autonomous networks framework.”
Driving network business transformation
Beyond cloud and AI, Nokia reports progress in network programmability across global markets, with the company prioritising strategic partnerships to form a stronger ecosystem around telecommunications providers.
“Networks play a very critical role to leverage the benefits of cloud and AI.”
“We've got now 50-plus service providers out in the world who are accelerating the programmability concepts, including the GSMA on One API frameworks,” Jitin explains.
“We have also announced quite a lot of partnerships specifically focused on AI. We are seeing quite a bit of momentum both on the traditional pieces, such as how we solve data challenges in networks, as well as how we harness the power of transformer models in generative AI (Gen AI).”
These collaborations will serve a critical function within the telecommunications landscape as it transforms.
“Networks play a very critical role to leverage the benefits of cloud and AI. If you want to see the maximum benefit, it's all about the ecosystem and partnerships,” he says. “You need to have that ecosystem of applications which can harness data and actually build up applications that leverage this AI context.”
A collaborative approach from Nokia also extends to its programmability efforts, with the telco working to make its use cases relevant for key industries globally.
“The ecosystem becomes critical,” Jitin says. “If you want to cross that bridge of B2B and B2C for more use cases, one has to focus on that.”
He adds: “It's all about going beyond the technology challenges. How do you make yourself ready for B2B transformation? A large part of it needs to be making mobile networks and conversion networks more relevant for industries and enterprises.”
Looking past the technology
When it comes to thinking about how the future of the telecommunications industry, Nokia understands that technology must be relevant to a company’s business model.
Nokia confronts this by working closely with customers to develop scaled business use cases before even applying the technology.
“If you start thinking from that perspective and start thinking about scaled business use cases and then apply technologies like cloud, AI and quantum, you'll probably get better business outcomes,” Jitin explains.
“The true benefit of cloud agility needs to be understood both from an infrastructure play and from an autonomous operations play. Autonomous decision-making and autonomous networks paradigms need to be implemented both from top-down and bottom-up.”
Data management presents another significant consideration for telecommunications companies. “When it comes to AI, there are two pieces to it. One is around the data and how you harness complex data structures,” Jitin says.
“Now we are talking about both structured and unstructured data. It’s about how you build up data practises within telcos because we do see real time and non-real time data.”
“I see more of a sense of urgency with autonomous networks.”
Looking at Nokia’s announcements at MWC, including the development of an Open Telecom AI Platform with AMD, Cisco and Jio Platforms and its AI-RAN transformations, the telco is prioritising automation to open new possibilities.
“I see more of a sense of urgency with autonomous networks, which is very good because tools like cloud and AI help us go back to the basics of how to build automation,” Jitin says.
“Having that focus on autonomous networks and autonomous operations will carve our way to creating more revenue-generating opportunities towards B2B.”
He adds: “Automation is foundational. I'm very excited this year and hopefully we'll see some execution at scale around those topics and the industry will turn around by next year.”
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