YOU ARE AT:5GQualcomm and e& partner to boost 5G, edge AI in UAE
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Qualcomm and e& partner to boost 5G, edge AI in UAE

Juan Pedro Tomás
By Juan Pedro Tomás
5GAI InfrastructureEnterprise

Qualcomm Technologies plans to leverage its new engineering center in Abu Dhabi to support its 5G, edge AI initiatives

In sum – what you need to know:

Qualcomm and e& ink strategic 5G-edge AI deal – The new partnership aims to commercialize next-gen 5G and edge AI solutions in the UAE, targeting enterprise, industrial and government sectors.

Focus on edge AI innovation – The companies will co-develop 5G edge AI gateways and Snapdragon-powered devices, integrating large language models for secure, on-device AI and enhanced operational efficiency.

Local R&D support in Abu Dhabi – Qualcomm will use its new Abu Dhabi Engineering Center to test and scale these technologies in key industries like energy, logistics and transport.

Qualcomm Technologies and Emirati-based telco e& UAE have announced a strategic partnership aimed at advancing the development and commercialization of next-generation connectivity, 5G and edge AI technologies.

Qualcomm noted that this collaboration is designed to speed up digital transformation across government, enterprise and industrial sectors.

Under the partnership, Qualcomm Technologies and e& will work together on:

-5G edge AI gateways for industrial and enterprise use, helping major sectors implement AI and other technologies closer to the data source to boost efficiency, performance and connectivity.

-Edge AI devices, including PCs and extended reality (XR) gadgets powered by Snapdragon platforms. These will feature integrated large language models (LLMs) and support on-device generative AI and secure AI processing from edge to cloud — targeted at enterprise and government needs.

-Smart mobility and safety technologies, designed to improve road safety and user experience, while also preparing UAE’s transport infrastructure for the future.

Additionally, Qualcomm Technologies plans to leverage its new Qualcomm Engineering Center in Abu Dhabi to support this initiative. The center will help explore and test new applications to expand the use of 5G and edge AI in sectors such as energy, manufacturing, logistics, retail and transportation.

“The cooperation between Qualcomm Technologies and e& will drive significant collaboration across some of the most transformative technology areas, including 5G, next-generation computing and intelligence at the edge. We look forward to working with e& to accelerate innovation and technology advancement across its ecosystem of enterprise and government customers in the UAE and beyond,” said Cristiano Amon, Qualcommm president and CEO.

“e& and Qualcomm Technologies have a history of cooperation, and this new agreement will help drive the digital transformation of enterprises significantly enhancing the UAE’s role in the global technology landscape. Together, we’re bringing powerful AI to the edge — from smart industrial gateways and wearables to mobility and infrastructure — enabling faster, more reliable, and secure experiences across sectors like manufacturing, transport, and government. These innovations will drive real-time intelligence, operational efficiency, and future-ready public services across the UAE,” said Hatem Dowidar, group CEO at e&.

In November 2024, e& UAE had completed what it claimed to be one of the world’s first deployments of Ericsson’s dual-band Massive MIMO radio, AIR 3229, on e& UAE’s network.

The Swedish vendor noted that this new deployment was aimed at boosting network performance, increase network capacity and reduce carbon footprint.

Ericsson noted that its AIR 3229 dual-band radio enables e& UAE to deliver 5G services simultaneously on both the 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz spectrum layers using a single unit. This makes it possible to double the number of time division duplex (TDD) carrier components from two to four in high-capacity 5G sites, Ericsson added.

The vendor also highlighted that this solution enhances network performance while addressing challenges related to site acquisition, installation complexity and tower load management. Ericsson’s solution reduces power consumption by 20% and minimizes the tower load by 25%.

Ericsson and e& UAE had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the collaborative exploration of 6G technology, its use cases and future network evolution.

Ericsson noted that the 6G agreement with the Arab telco will serve as an early engagement for defining the next generation of future mobile network evolution. It will also include a series of technical discussions and engagements aimed at jointly exploring key 6G technology concepts, added the vendor.

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ABOUT AUTHOR

Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro covers Global Carriers and Global Enterprise IoT. Prior to RCR, Juan Pedro worked for Business News Americas, covering telecoms and IT news in the Latin American markets. He also worked for Telecompaper as their Regional Editor for Latin America and Asia/Pacific. Juan Pedro has also contributed to Latin Trade magazine as the publication's correspondent in Argentina and with political risk consultancy firm Exclusive Analysis, writing reports and providing political and economic information from certain Latin American markets. He has a degree in International Relations and a master in Journalism and is married with two kids.

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Google Cloud Next shows how network operators and vendors are using AI for telecom

We already know that businesses are pushing hard to figure out how artificial intelligence can benefit them. In telecom specifically, an Nvidia survey earlier this year found that 37% of respondents said their companies were investing in AI for telecom to improve network planning and operations, and 33% said that there had already been investments in AI for telecom field operations.

At this week’s Google Cloud Next event, some of Google Cloud’s specific work on advancing the use of AI for telecom is being highlighted, as well as AI for enterprises in other verticals. Here are three perspectives on how companies are leveraging Google Cloud AI for telecom.

–Verizon has integrated Google Cloud’s generative AI into customer operations, which the two companies said has led to “95% comprehensive answerability for customer inquiries” and “demonstrably more efficient and effective customer care interactions.” Verizon is making use of a Google Cloud conversational AI agent that leverages Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, Gemini models and Agent Assist Panel in order to give its customer service reps “real-time, context-aware, and personalized answers” to customer questions, as opposed to the reps having to do manual searches of knowledge bases.

Verizon has deployed this across 28,000 customer care reps and retail stores. Additional features like automated summaries of conversations, and automated follow-up action reminders, are also in the process of being rolled out. Those internal AI agents are in addition to several genAI tools that are directly customer-facing and use Google’s Gemini models for virtual assistants which use natural language.

Background image: Verizon

“Our collaboration with Google Cloud and the integration of Gemini into our customer care platforms mark a significant advancement in our commitment to providing exceptional customer experiences,” said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, CEO of Verizon Consumer. “The tangible results demonstrate the power of AI to enhance efficiency and empower our customer care teams.”

“The impact of Gemini on Verizon’s customer service operations is a testament to our deep partnership and Verizon’s commitment to continued innovation,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “These results demonstrate the potential of AI to not just improve operations, but to create more meaningful and helpful interactions for customers everywhere, ultimately driving significant value for businesses.”

-“We’re really trying hard to build an autonomous network which is going to be obviously driven by AI more and more over time,” said David Sauvageau, director of software development, data and AI for Bell Canada, in a briefing call prior to Google Cloud Next.

In general, he continued, the network operator see AI as a “fundamental building block for the future of telecom, for innovation, for customer operations and for network operations.”

He said in the short-term, Bell Canada is prioritizing AI applications for telecom which “really focus on optimizing our customer experience and network ops.” For the latter in particular, Sauvageau said, “Our goal is really to leverage all the data that we have available in AI in order to predict and prevent issues before they actually impact our customers. So, really moving from reactive to preventive customer experience.”

Additionally, Sauvageau said, that Bell Canada believes AI is crucial for managing the increased complexity of telecom networks. “We need to be much more efficient, [and have] have faster innovations in areas like edge computing, digital twin, 6G or any other future network technologies. And ultimately … our goal is to build and accelerate the development of our AI-powered autonomous networks.”

-Razvan Teslaru, VP and head of strategy and portfolio for cloud software and services at Ericsson, said that the use of AI for telecom encompasses both increased efficiency and increased monetization—the latter being magic words for the telecom industry right now.

Autonomy is both about enabling differentiated connectivity at scale, he said, and monetization of that differentiated connectivity. At this year’s Mobile World Congress Barcelona, one of the things Ericsson spotlights was how it integrates its service orchestration with Google Cloud and its Vertex AI, Teslaru noted.

It’s now possible, he said, for a user to express their intent in natural language: A request to configure a specific type of connectivity to, say, a hospital, over a dedicated slice. “You can have Gemini interpret that intent and break it into service orders. … Then AI agents can take over these service orders and take them into execution, and also observe the results, so we can take corrective action autonomously,” he said.

So ultimately, then, network autonomy is about delivering personalized (or differentiated) connectivity with efficiency, while also doing so at a scale that means more effective and large-scale monetization.

Google Cloud emphasizes AI agents for telecom

Erwan Menard, director (outbound) of product management for cloud AI at Google Cloud, said that “When we look ahead, we envision networks that can largely manage themselves through the use of intelligent software agents.” He continued: “Think of these agents as digital experts that can automatically handle tasks like network configuration, problem solving and resource allocation.This would free up telcos from any routine operational burden, allowing human experts to focus on innovation and new services, ultimately leading to greater efficiency and productivity in network operations.”

In particular, he emphasized, telecoms face the unique challenge of having a “mission-critical duty to maintain knowledge over technologies which could be in service for decades. So the notion of being able to tap accurately through the knowledge of the company to help onboard a new resource or to assist somebody who has a decision to make—technical or business—is quite an important challenge in the telecom industry.” Google Cloud’s Google Agentspace was designed for such knowledge-heavy industries, Menard continued, to retrieve information across multiple systems with the idea of using “agentic workflows to be able to invest a new way of work.”

This week, the company is spotlighting its a new Agent Gallery, so that employees across the telecom organization can get personalized suggestions on which AI agents would be useful to them—either out-of-the-box from Google Cloud, agents built by the company or third-party AI agents. Google Cloud is also offering the ability to design and build agents with a no-code interface, in which people can essentially walk through a series of steps and “convert that sequence into an agent that then becomes your personalized assistant,” Menard explained.

 

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