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 that is agnostic to silicon and workloads, and empowers telcos to adapt quickly to market changes and optimize resources. The centerpiece of this approach is the VMware Telco Cloud Platform powered by VMware Cloud Foundation. This has been built to support:
- Flexibility by ensuring smooth technology transitions;
- Modernization and AI readiness by helping telcos transition from legacy systems to cloud-native architectures;
- Scalability and service agility through faster deployments and minimal downtime, which allows telcos to focus on new revenue streams;
- Unified cloud experiences that enable seamless operations across IT and telco environments;
- Cloud-smart automation, which delivers a unified automation layer with a hybrid orchestration framework.
Embracing the Telco Ecosystem
Other key parts of the puzzle are partnerships and standardized application programming interfaces throughout the industry. To succeed in their cloud-native transformations, telcos need high-level collaboration between network equipment providers, silicon vendors, and ecosystem partners.
Operators are modernizing, but they face a dual challenge to adopt cloud-native architectures while still supporting VNFs. Some legacy VNFs are in transition, while others will remain for much longer. VMware Telco Cloud Platform provides ongoing support for VNFs while also enabling the CNFs deployments and network modernization.
Our platform bridges IT and Network standardized API gaps by providing a hybrid orchestration framework that can support different orchestration options like GitOps and ETSI based on customer and NEPs vendor needs.
We are seeing this in practice in Asia Pacific as telcos undergo digital transformation. Across the region, much like telcos in Europe and the United States, they are adopting VMware’s solutions for long-term commitment to support both VNFs and CNFs. - For example, a leading Japanese telecom operator successfully deployed GitOps-based CNF automation alongside ETSI-based orchestration as they transitioned to a cloud-native model.
AI Adoption Readiness
Another key theme at MWC25 is that telcos are preparing to handle much higher levels of traffic as data-hungry AI and machine-learning systems come online worldwide. This data growth will increase operational complexity and the need for automation. In turn, this will require telcos to deploy more AI-powered tools to achieve greater network visibility, support predictive maintenance and intelligent traffic routing, and improve customer experiences and security.
These and other factors, such as cost, latency, and requirements to keep data within sovereign borders, are driving telcos to move workloads from public cloud providers to on-premises and hybrid models. These models make it possible to run AI workloads alongside core network functions in single, highly efficient data centers. Greater simplicity, automation, and flexibility are also helping telcos roll out new features and next-generation services that customers value, allowing the telcos to solve the monetization challenges I mentioned earlier. VMware software delivers AI-ready infrastructure that enables telcos to deploy a range of AI-powered use cases.
In Conclusion
Telcos face unique constraints as they seek to modernize and streamline their operations. They are critical providers of services that consumers, businesses, and governments depend on, and their networks have been built around industry-specific interfaces and standards that shape the pace of technological change. Even so, it’s also clear we’re seeing a convergence of telco and broader IT approaches that’s being accelerated by the current shifts in network technologies, cloud computing models, and AI-driven dataflows and capabilities.
As a major supplier to telcos and enterprise IT customers worldwide, Broadcom is deeply engaged in these trends and building solutions that bridge both worlds. We offer a unified approach to delivering telco cloud infrastructure through a platform that meets the industry’s present requirements for flexibility, scalability, and carrier-grade reliability while being well prepared to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
I encourage you to explore our industry-focused VMware solutions or get in touch with me or our team to discuss your strategies and requirements.