MWC26 Shanghai (June 24-26) is a concrete signal that telecom operators are starting to build and price networks around AI tokens and agents, not just bandwidth, which matters for practitioners deploying models at the edge or over mobile networks. GSMA director-general Vivek Badrinath framed a mobile "IQ era" already live in China through humanoid robotics, drones, and autonomous vehicles. Huawei rotating chairman Wang Tao said mobile networks must evolve from "connecting people and things to connecting intelligence itself," projecting hundreds of billions of AI agents by the 2030s and pitching AI tokens as a new unit of network traffic and revenue. China Mobile chairman Chen Zhongyue described a shift from mobile communication to mobile computing to mobile AI, and GSMA data shown at the event put AI at roughly 20% of enterprise digital-transformation spend through 2030, ahead of 5G, cloud, and IoT.
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