GSMA Launches MENA AI Initiative and Khalifa University-AMD Telecom Model Pact at MWC26 Doha

The AI for Impact MENA initiative is meant to bring mobile operators, governments, international organisations, universities and private companies together to develop and scale AI-powered services in the region, with a focus on partnerships and skills, the GSMA said. It did not give funding figures or name launch members.

The Khalifa University and AMD collaboration is the more technical of the announcements. Radio frequency foundation models are AI models trained on wireless signal data, and the GSMA said the aim is to make them available to operators. The Abu Dhabi university's involvement adds to the UAE's efforts to build AI for telecom networks. The GSMA also said it agreed with the ITU to accelerate what it called trusted, open AI for telecoms. It gave no timelines for either agreement.

The three-day event in Qatar, held in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, was co-located for the first time with the opening days of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, the UN agency's highest decision-making body, which meets every four years to set its strategy and finances and elect its leaders.

The GSMA put attendance at more than 10,000 people from 100 countries and territories, 14 per cent of them in the C-suite. Its ministerial programme hosted 86 delegations, including 36 ministers and 34 heads of national regulators, and 42 partnerships and announcements were signed at the show, the association said. Other agreements covered operator-run digital marketplaces for small businesses with Axonect, smartphone affordability in Côte d'Ivoire, and spatial computing for connected healthcare between GSMA Foundry and apoQlar.

Vivek Badrinath, the GSMA's director general, said the collaboration with Qatar "brought regional priorities onto the global stage". The next Doha edition is scheduled for November 15 to 17, 2027, and the GSMA's next event is MWC27 Barcelona on March 1 to 4.