At MWC Shanghai 2026, Huawei highlighted that while artificial intelligence (AI) may be reshaping business models and digital services, the future of connectivity will depend equally on network architectures capable of delivering deterministic performance, ubiquitous computing access and significantly higher capacity.
Central to that vision is 5G Advanced and the emergence of upper 6GHz spectrum (U6GHz), which the company believes will enable commercial 10Gbps mobile experiences and serve as an important stepping stone towards future 6G networks.
Huawei said that industry consensus is beginning to emerge around the role of AI in redefining network infrastructure. “Over the past year, stakeholders across the industry have actively engaged in innovation and practical deployments. A consensus is emerging: AI should be used to redefine user experience, business models, network capabilities and computing infrastructure,” the company said during MWC Shanghai.
The shift reflects broader changes taking place across the communications sector. Mobile networks were initially designed around voice services, prioritising low latency and call quality. The mobile broadband era subsequently focused on video applications, wide-area coverage and high downlink throughput.
According to the company, AI-native services introduce fundamentally different requirements. Human interactions with AI agents, as well as communication among autonomous agents themselves, are expected to generate traffic patterns that differ significantly from traditional video-centric applications.
“Human-agent and agent-agent interactions require immersive, human-like experiences, making network quality directly perceptible to users,” Huawei said. “Service evaluation standards can no longer focus solely on coverage and throughput. Instead, they must emphasise AI service availability, interaction smoothness and output reliability.”
Huawei believes networks will therefore need to evolve beyond a singular emphasis on peak downlink performance towards a more balanced model combining uplink and downlink capacity, low latency, lossless transmission, ubiquitous real-time connectivity and differentiated quality assurance.
Why U6GHz matters for 5G Advanced
Among the technologies highlighted at MWC Shanghai was upper 6GHz spectrum, which Huawei sees as a key enabler for commercial 5G Advanced services.
While most existing 5G deployments across the Gulf region have been built around mid-band spectrum in the 3.5 GHz range, operators are now seeking additional bandwidth to unlock the full capabilities promised by 5G Advanced.
Mohamed Madkour, vice-president of ICT strategy and marketing at Huawei, said operators in the GCC are already moving towards the next phase of network evolution. “The most common spectrum band for 5G today is 3.5GHz,” he said.
“As operators move towards 5G Advanced, additional spectrum becomes essential, and upper 6GHz is emerging as the new candidate.”
Madkour pointed to the UAE as an early example of that transition: “E& in the UAE recently commercialised what we believe is the world’s first upper 6GHz 5G Advanced network,” he said.
The deployment, announced in collaboration with the UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), aims to demonstrate peak downlink speeds exceeding 10Gbps by using 400MHz of bandwidth in the upper 6GHz spectrum.
According to Huawei, the deployment utilises a 256-transmit and receive antenna array architecture and represents the industry’s first pre-commercial implementation of U6GHz technology in a 5G Advanced network.
“With upper 6GHz spectrum, operators can reach speeds of up to 10Gbps,” said Madkour. “This is what 5G Advanced has promised.”
Huawei explains that the technology offers an attractive balance between capacity and coverage, combining wider bandwidth availability than conventional mid-band frequencies while avoiding some of the propagation limitations associated with millimetre wave deployments.
The company also claims that U6GHz can align with existing 3.5GHz network footprints, potentially allowing operators to increase capacity without extensive new site construction.
“This is the right bridge towards 6G,” said Madkour. “6G is a future technology generation, and upper 6GHz is a spectrum band that can help operators realise many of the capabilities envisioned for 5G Advanced.”
AI-native networks
Beyond radio access technologies, Huawei also outlined its broader vision for AI-native communications infrastructure. The company believes communications networks and computing networks are increasingly converging as AI workloads become more distributed.
Where previous generations of telecoms infrastructure focused primarily on transporting data, future networks may also need to support the dynamic scheduling of computing resources, distributed inference and cross-domain orchestration.
The company refers to this concept as “one-hop computing”, an architecture designed to minimise latency by providing direct access to computing resources through flattened optical network designs.
According to them, field deployments have shown that simplified all-optical architectures can reduce latency from tens of milliseconds to approximately one millisecond while improving computing utilisation.
Huawei also proposed what it describes as an AI-centric target network architecture, centred around a unified AI experience framework. Inspired by the Mean Opinion Score methodology historically used for voice services, the company has developed an AI MOS metric designed to evaluate AI applications based on three dimensions: availability, interactivity and intelligence.
Huawei believes future communications infrastructure should ultimately provide ubiquitous uplink rates of 20Mbps, peak uplink speeds approaching 1Gbps, downlink capabilities reaching 10 Gbps, and seamless service continuity across mobility scenarios.
A regional opportunity
For Gulf operators, U6GHz could represent more than just another spectrum expansion initiative. Governments across the UAE and Saudi Arabia are simultaneously investing in sovereign AI strategies, hyperscale datacentres, advanced cloud infrastructure and next-generation connectivity programmes.
As AI applications become increasingly dependent on deterministic communications, guaranteed service levels and ultra-low-latency performance, 5G Advanced deployments may provide operators with new opportunities to differentiate their offerings beyond traditional connectivity.
Madkour believes the region is particularly well-positioned to lead the next phase of mobile evolution. “The GCC has the vision in spectrum licensing,” he said. “This is becoming one of the key developments for the region.”
With operators across the Gulf seeking new ways to monetise network investments and support emerging AI-driven services, upper 6GHz spectrum may increasingly become a strategic asset in enabling the transition towards intelligent, high-capacity and AI-native communications infrastructure.
