Nokia CTO at MWC25: 5G is Entering its '2.0 Era'
Nokia is intensifying its focus on autonomous networks, cloud adoption and AI as the telecommunications industry enters what Jitin Bhandari, Nokia's CTO for Cloud and Network Services, describes as "the 2.0 era of 5G".
In the below interview, Jitin outlined the company's strategy during MWC 2025 in Barcelona, addressing how the company is responding to current industry challenges and opportunities.
“We are in a very interesting juncture here. Clearly we have come a long way when it comes to maturity in the cloud,” he says. “That option of cloud and hybrid cloud is definitely a relevant thing. AI is emerging fast.”
The company continues to position itself at the intersection of cloud technology, with AI and network automation experiencing growth across the telecommunications sector.
“We are talking quite a bit about automation and autonomous networks operations, which is picking up a lot of steam this time around,” Jitin adds. “We have seen traditional ecosystems of AI from machine learning (ML) ops or ML aspects, but now with the transformer models, conversational aspects of AI into the network are being talked about quite a bit.”
Confronting telco challenges
A central theme of Nokia's presence at MWC Barcelona 2025 has been helping telecommunications companies navigate hybrid cloud environments, which present specific challenges for the sector.
“How do you use cloud tools in a hybrid context? I mean that's the most relevant for telcos,” Jitin explains. “You’ve got to be on-prem and cloud, so we’re looking at how we can make toll sets use these technologies in a more impactful way.”
The company has established itself in cloud technologies for telecommunications and is now focusing on helping customers accelerate 5G Standalone (5G SA) adoption.
“This is where the cloud is really accelerating, especially around the core of the network,” he shares. “A lot of software methodologies are being adopted, so that is a good acceleration. We are finally now seeing our service provider friends adopting an autonomous networks framework.”
The importance of network programmability
Beyond cloud and AI, Nokia has reported progress in network programmability across global markets and is prioritising strategic partnerships to form a stronger ecosystem around telecommunications providers.
“Networks play a very critical role to leverage the benefits of cloud and AI.”
“We've got now 50-plus service providers out in the world who are accelerating the programmability concepts, including the GSMA on One API frameworks,” Jitin notes.
“We have also announced quite a lot of partnerships specifically focused on AI. We are seeing quite a bit of momentum both on the traditional pieces, such as how we solve data challenges in networks, as well as how we harness the power of transformer models in generative AI (Gen AI).”
As Jitin shares, these collaborations will serve a function within the telecommunications landscape as it transforms.
“Networks play a very critical role to leverage the benefits of cloud and AI. If you want to see the maximum benefit, it's all about the ecosystem and partnerships,” he says. “You need to have that ecosystem of applications which can harness data and actually build up applications that leverage this AI context.”
A collaborative approach extends to programmability efforts, with Nokia working to make its use cases more relevant for key industries.
“The ecosystem becomes critical,” Jitin says. “If you want to cross that bridge of B2B and B2C for more use cases, one has to focus on that.”
He adds: “It's all about going beyond the technology challenges. How do you make yourself ready for B2B transformation? A large part of it needs to be making mobile networks and conversion networks more relevant for industries and enterprises.”
Transforming an industry: Focusing on business outcomes
When considering the future of the telecommunications industry, Nokia recognises that technology must be relevant to a company's business model.
The company approaches this challenge by working with customers to develop scaled business use cases before applying technology.
“If you start thinking from that perspective and start thinking about scaled business use cases and then apply technologies like cloud, AI and quantum, you'll probably get better business outcomes,” Jitin says.
“The true benefit of cloud agility needs to be understood both from an infrastructure play and from an autonomous operations play. Autonomous decision-making and autonomous networks paradigms need to be implemented both from top-down and bottom-up.”
Data management presents another consideration for telecommunications companies, as Jitin notes: “When it comes to AI, there are two pieces to it. One is around the data and how you harness complex data structures.
“Now we are talking about both structured and unstructured data. It’s about how you build up data practises within telcos because we do see real time and non-real time data.”
“I see more of a sense of urgency with autonomous networks.”
Looking at Nokia’s announcements at MWC, including the development of an Open Telecom AI Platform with AMD, Cisco and Jio Platforms and its AI-RAN transformations, it's clear that the telco is prioritising automation to open new possibilities.
“I see more of a sense of urgency with autonomous networks, which is very good because tools like cloud and AI help us go back to the basics of how to build automation,” Jitin says.
“Having that focus on autonomous networks and autonomous operations will carve our way to creating more revenue-generating opportunities towards B2B.”
He adds: “Automation is foundational. I'm very excited this year and hopefully we'll see some execution at scale around those topics and the industry will turn around by next year.”
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