Spectrum Effect President and CRO: ‘MWC is going to be dominated by AI again, of course’
With Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2026 hitting the halfway point, AI is dominating the headlines. That’s to be expected. But beneath the buzz, deeper questions around economics, coexistence, and next-generation investment cycles are surfacing. Spectrum Effect’s President and CRO, Shaun McCarthy, shared with RCR Wireless News what conversations he expects to define the week.
1. AI everywhere — but especially in the RAN
“It’s going to be dominated by AI again, of course,” he said. From AI-native RAN operations to GPU-enabled base stations, AI will frame nearly every technical discussion. But there’s healthy skepticism around whether AI RAN — particularly the idea of embedding GPUs directly into base stations — represents a true architectural shift or a replay of edge computing hype.
“The whole concept of putting GPUs in a base station… feels like a MEC 2.0 to me. I’m sure really smart people have interesting use cases that I’m looking forward to seeing,” he said, adding that MEC struggled not because of technology limitations, but because the economics never justified the deployment model.
The key question is, will AI RAN finally solve that equation?
2. Satellite-terrestrial integration gets real
Non-terrestrial network (NTN) integration is moving from novelty to serious architectural consideration. The convergence of satellite and terrestrial infrastructure is expected to be one of the more substantive — and less hyped — conversations on the show floor.
3. 6G momentum — and economic caution
The industry’s rally around 6G remains powerful. “I don’t know any other industry that rallies once every 10 years around a North Star,” he said.
But enthusiasm is tempered by operator realities. With returns on invested capital under pressure, operators may have limited appetite for another major hardware refresh without a clearly defined revenue model. McCarthy asked: “If the revenue is going to come from the enterprise, is it coming from private networks or public networks? How is the capital being invested in 6G aligning with the revenues?”
So, the lesson from 5G? Understand the economics before scaling the hype, he said.
4. Coexistence and shared spectrum expansion
While AI captures attention, spectrum coexistence and shared access frameworks remain foundational to enabling next-generation services. As networks densify and spectrum environments grow more complex, coexistence, particularly across federal, satellite, and commercial users, will remain a core operational and policy discussion.
“Telco was pretty uncool for a while there,” McCarthy admitted. He added, however, that there are now a lot of exciting things going on in this space — from the acceleration to AI integration to NTN convergence — and it’s becoming an industry worth watching closely.
