From Napa to Delhi: Part 1 – Nova, India Mobile Congress, and universal themes

If you’ve been tuning into the GSMA Intelligence podcast, you know I’ve been on the road for a few weeks, starting off with the GSMA’s inaugural Nova Future Summit in Napa then heading straight to India Mobile Congress (and the GSMA’s Board Meeting) in Delhi. If you haven’t been tuning into our podcast, well, now you know. Oh, and you should consider giving it a listen – it’s not half bad. 

The fact that California and India are half a world apart (12.5 hours from a time zone perspective) is symbolic of how different the two stops were destined to be. Two very unique mobile markets. With very distinct customer bases. Represented by two events ranging from an intimate 500 person invite-only gathering to a full-on trade show and conference drawing about 150,000 attendees. 

As a result, I went into the trip looking for commonalities in terms of where the broader mobile market is headed and what we all need to pay attention to.

• 6G: Use Cases vs. Technology.  India’s made no secret of its 6G aspirations – intending to generate at least 10% of 6G IPR, specifically for standards-essential patents. The US, meanwhile, seems destined to host one of the earliest 6G deployments when the 2028 Olympic Games roll around. At Nova and IMC, however, the big discussions focused less on deployment or development and more on a common quest to understand what we’ll do with the technology when it arrives. 
• AI Implications vs. Investment. Nvidia’s latest “State of AI in Telecommunications” report suggests 66% of operators are actively using AI. This matches the latest GSMA Intelligence network transformation survey data. And it’s true across all regions. Spanning IMC Boardrooms and Nova exhibits, then, it was no surprise to see AI as the dominant theme. And, given the rapid evolution of AI technology it wasn’t too surprising that questions about what AI will mean for businesses (telcos included) and how it will be (and is being) put to use dominated. 
• Monetizing vs. Theorizing. At the end of IMC Day Two, the GSMA Intelligence team ran a session on AI Monetization. It was packed room. At 5pm on a Thursday. I could tell myself that this was due to the incredible GSMA Intelligence content highlighted. Or even the great panel we curated including IBM, Jio, Mediatek and Tech Mahindra. Instead, I know it was likely the title and the mere fact that we were talking about how people will earn a return on AI investments. How will people make money? What investments will be needed? How should we even define monetization? 6G and AI have both benefitted from plenty of technical discussions. Circa Q4 2026 – at IMC and Nova, at least – the focus was on how to monetize the technologies and the services they enable. 

While the big picture themes (at least the ones I was paying attention to) were consistent across the very different locales, there was one clear point of departure – the telco vs. tech innovator vibe. At IMC, national tech aspirations bolstered by local software capabilities meant that the two ecosystems were relatively linked. An aim of Nova, on the other hand, was to bring these two ecosystems together. This made for different dynamics but that’s something for a follow-on. Stay tuned