Generative AI makes progress but challenges remain in reliability and information provision

If 2024 was about establishing the strategic rationale for AI, 2025 is about assessing progress. To this end, GSMA Intelligence has evolved this research series to establish a baseline that can be tracked over time for the industry, its supply chain and partnership ecosystem. As well as recent developments from the telco AI space and the Telco AI tracker, this edition provides a deep dive of AI at the edge, looking at the strategic value of different AI inference options.

Enterprises need to understand that where inferencing happens – whether at the user edge (device and enterprise/on-premises) or network edge (far edge, near edge and telco private cloud) – will have major implications for application performance, data sovereignty, resilience and energy efficiency. This analysis focuses on how running AI workloads on the enterprise edge (on-premises) can deliver improved outcomes.

MWC Shanghai is in the books for another year, having attracted 45,000 visitors (from 12,500 companies), along with 400 exhibitors and partner groups. The numbers were up from the 2024 event by 13% and 92% respectively. This analysis highlights the key takeaways and implications from meetings, summits and announcements at the event – and in particular, whether the progress seen in China can be mapped to other regions.