Ahead of next month’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona, network vendor Ericsson outlined the company’s intention to put AI at the heart of its overall strategy.

During the vendor’s press and analyst event in London this week, Ericsson, which is celebrating its 150th birthday this year, showcased its latest portfolio of technology that it notes will support this push.

According to Erik Ekudden, SVP, chief technology officer, Ericsson, AI is at an inflection point as the industry moves away from legacy technologies.

“Ericsson’s strategy is to be the provider of the best networks for AI,” said Ekudden.

He explained that the strategy will see the vendor leverage its 5G technology to move into new sectors, such as enterprises, governments, defense, and mission-critical.

“Everything is swirling around AI, and of course, moving from generative AI to agentic AI is happening faster than some anticipated just a year or two ago, but AI will not reach its full length potential unless you combine it with advanced connectivity and with computer cloud infrastructure, moving from today’s more sovereign discussion into distributed cloud.”

Ahead of MWC, Ericsson unveiled its latest suite of radio, antenna, and AI RAN software solutions. This includes 10 AI-ready radios, which the vendor claims will deliver higher downlink efficiency and uplink performance breakthroughs through its next-generation of Massive MIMO and remote radios.

“As AI transforms traffic patterns and raises consumer expectations, networks must provide precise performance where and when it’s needed most,” said Mårten Lerner, head of networks strategy and product management, Ericsson.

“We are also embedding AI solutions across our full portfolio, introducing AI RAN software solutions that deliver revolutionary improvements in spectral efficiency. We are now taking the final step to full AI enablement across our portfolio by introducing neural network accelerators in our leading Massive MIMO portfolio.”

The vendor’s new antennas will also help deliver improved downlink and uplink efficiency, explained the company, with five new antennas launched.

Ericsson’s updated antenna line-up features the expanded Interleaved AIR portfolio, which now adds three new configurations to the two already launched, supporting full flexibility for TDD and FDD M‑MIMO deployments.

Positioned for AI

In order to support its AI-powered hardware, Ericsson outlined its latest RAN software, which again focused heavily on AI.

The vendor explained that its RAN software is using AI to improve efficiency and reliability, while meeting the latency requirements demanded by AI applications.

Ericsson states that its software consists of AI-managed Beamforming, AI-powered outdoor positioning, and a state-of-the-art AI model for instant coverage prediction.

In its own words, Ericsson envisions that its latest products will “integrate AI more deeply into the RAN, enabling real-time optimization of performance and energy usage.

“It’s about new capabilities, precise positioning, sensing, all kinds of security and identity services,” said Ekudden, who explained today’s 5G AI-powered networks will lead to an AI-native 6G in the future.

“We’re not stopping with AI in the network. We are really adding capabilities to host AI, not just on the phone for the glasses, not just on the data center, but actually hosting these new AI experiences in the network.” He teased that Ericsson will showcase some of these capabilities in Barcelona with its partners, early next month.

AI-ready RAN at the Edge

During the event, Ericsson also delved into how it views Edge as an opportunity for network carriers.

Jenny Lindqvist, SVP, head of cloud software and services, Ericsson, pointed out that it seems a natural fit to explore AI inferencing at the Edge, highlighting reasons such as sovereignty, privacy, and security.

“We’re adding a colocation opportunity for AI application inferencing together with the user framework,” said Lindqvist. “So we’re working here together with some of our infrastructure partners. We’re working with Intel and Dell in order to see how we can cost-effectively colocate the user plane function together with the application inferencing at the Edge.”

“In our labs, we are running our user plane function (UPF) together with Cloud RAN on a single server, and then in addition colocating with an AI application. Needless to say, that’s a very footprint-efficient way to deliver those types of workloads very far up in the Edge.”

Ericsson’s event this week in London also featured network carriers that use its network equipment, including VodafoneThree.

Iain Milligan, network development & infrastructure director, VodafoneThree, noted that the telco, which completed its merger last year, is using Ericsson’s RAN to usher in a new era of AI connectivity.

“We’re embedding AI throughout our network, reducing operational complexity, boosting energy efficiency, and delivering faster, more reliable connectivity for our customers in every corner of the country,” said Milligan.

Separately this week, Ericsson also launched an agentic rApp service on Amazon Web Services (AWS), as the vendor expanded its relationship with the hyperscaler alongside its Open RAN footprint. DCD’s sister publication, SDx Central, covered this in more detail here.