Red Hat is leveraging its presence at MWC Barcelona 2025 to articulate a pervasive, AI-powered transformation play for telecommunications networks. The company underscored a strategy that intertwines AI-enabled network optimization, virtualized radio access networks, and a rapidly expanding partner ecosystem to embed advanced capabilities into core telco infrastructure. At the heart of the narrative is the belief that AI and cloud-native platforms—driven by Red Hat OpenShift and supported by a broad set of hardware and software partners—will accelerate efficiency, reliability, and innovation across telcos’ operations and offerings. In exclusive discussions, Hanen Garcia, Global Telco Solutions Manager at Red Hat, outlined how the ecosystem is expanding, with strategic alliances designed to deliver practical, scalable AI capabilities across the telecom value chain. Garcia emphasized that the telco market’s needs are best addressed through a broad network of collaborators, and that the company has been increasing the size and sophistication of its ecosystem over the past year to bring critical partners into the fold. This expanded ecosystem is not just a show of strength; it is a deliberate mechanism to provide telcos with a unified, AI-enabled platform that can scale across different geographies, network architectures, and evolution paths—from 4G and 5G classic deployments toward the upcoming waves of cloud-native functionality and 5G Advanced services. The overarching takeaway from Red Hat’s MWC narrative is clear: AI is moving from a set of experimental uses to a foundational component of telco network design, management, and orchestration, and Red Hat is positioning itself as the central integrator and enabler of that shift.
Context and Strategic Overview
Red Hat’s presentation at MWC Barcelona 2025 carried a multi-dimensional message about how telcos can transform their networks by embracing AI at multiple layers of the stack. The company’s strategy centers on building a robust ecosystem that can address the computational and orchestration needs of AI-enhanced telecommunications networks. This involves not only software platforms but also deep collaborations with hardware and semiconductor vendors, network equipment providers, and traditional telecommunication system integrators. The aim is to create a cohesive, cloud-native foundation on which AI-driven capabilities can be developed, deployed, and managed with consistent governance and lifecycle support. In this vision, Red Hat’s OpenShift platform serves as the common ground for developers, operators, and system integrators to deploy AI workloads, manage network functions, and automate operational processes across diverse environments—whether on-premises, in private data centers, or in the public cloud.
Hanen Garcia highlighted the company’s long-term commitment to telco partnerships as an essential enabler of this strategy. “Since we started working with telcos, we have understood how important it is to partner within the ecosystem,” he stated. “Within the last year, we have been increasing the size of our ecosystem by bringing critical partners in.” This sentiment reflects a broader industry trend where telcos increasingly rely on a diversified vendor landscape to accelerate innovation while mitigating risk and capacity constraints. The Red Hat approach emphasizes the development of a scalable, repeatable blueprint for AI-enabled network modernization—one that can be tailored to each operator’s unique regulatory, cultural, and technical context while preserving a common architectural thread. The goal is to deliver a unified platform that can absorb rapid advances in AI, analytics, and ML tooling without fragmenting the operator’s operational model or complicating interoperability across vendors.
Part of the strategic value proposition is the emphasis on AI-powered optimization as a practical, near-term deliverable. By bringing together AI capabilities with network infrastructure management, Red Hat aims to reduce energy consumption, improve service reliability, and shorten the time-to-value for new network services. The focus on practical AI applications—such as power optimization in real-world telecom deployments—demonstrates a shift from theoretical AI experiments to tangible improvements in efficiency and performance. As Red Hat navigates this transition, the company’s ecosystem strategy is designed to ensure that telcos have access to a broad set of capabilities—ranging from hardware accelerators to intelligent orchestration and from open-source software components to enterprise-grade security and governance. This approach aligns with the telco industry’s need to balance innovation with reliability, security, and predictable operational costs.
In terms of strategic direction, Red Hat continues to emphasize the transition from traditional network function virtualization (NFV) toward cloud-native platforms that can fully leverage AI and open-source innovations. The company sees telcos moving along a continuum—from deploying virtualized network functions to embracing containerized, cloud-native network functions, and beyond into fully orchestrated, AI-informed network operations. The journey requires not only a robust technical stack but also an active commitment to collaborative development with partners across hardware, software, and services. Garcia’s reflections illustrate a recognition that successful telco modernization cannot be achieved in a vacuum. It requires a curated ecosystem in which each partner contributes specialized expertise, ensuring that the overall solution remains coherent, scalable, and capable of addressing both current network demands and future evolutions, including the emergence of 5G Advanced and beyond. The MWC moment, therefore, is less about a single product announcement and more about a holistic, long-term plan to embed AI within the telco fabric through strategic alliances, platform convergence, and a shared vision for managing the lifecycle of AI-enabled networks.
The Ecosystem Expansion
Red Hat’s approach to ecosystem expansion centers on enrolling partners who can contribute distinctive capabilities to the AI-enabled telco platform. The company’s collaboration pledge includes pivotal alliances with SoftBank, Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange, signaling a broad geographic and strategic footprint. Each partnership contributes a different piece of the AI-augmented network puzzle. For SoftBank, the focus is on AI-driven power optimization solutions, a pragmatic application of machine learning that addresses energy efficiency across telecom networks. For Fujitsu, the emphasis lies in delivering virtualized radio access network (vRAN) solutions on Red Hat OpenShift, a move that integrates AI into network management at the RAN level. Additional partnerships with Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange broaden the platform’s Open RAN and cloud-native capabilities, while also expanding its reach into diverse network architectures, deployment models, and regulatory environments.
The ecosystem narrative is reinforced by Garcia’s comments about the ongoing evolution within telco ecosystems. He notes: “There is a constant evolution within these ecosystems and we are looking at bringing even more partners on so we are ready together to help customers on whatever challenges they have on the current technology or the next evolution of the technology.” This statement captures the forward-looking orientation of Red Hat’s telco strategy, highlighting the willingness to adapt to ongoing evolutions—from base technology upgrades to paradigm shifts in how networks are designed, deployed, and managed. The ecosystem approach is designed not merely to assemble best-in-class components but to orchestrate them into a coherent, scalable, and supportable platform that telcos can rely on as their networks mature and expand into AI-enhanced capabilities. In this respect, Red Hat’s strategy seeks to reduce the fragmentation that can hamper AI adoption in telcos by providing a consistent platform with clear governance, robust security, and standardized lifecycle management across partners.
Key messaging from this section of the strategy points to three core pillars: (1) AI-enabled network optimization and RAN enhancements; (2) cloud-native, OpenShift-based platform architecture for consistent AI deployment; and (3) a broad, multi-vendor ecosystem designed to accelerate adoption while mitigating vendor lock-in. The combination of open standards, open-source collaboration, and cross-vendor interoperability is intended to create a durable foundation on which telcos can innovate more rapidly and with lower total cost of ownership. Telcos stand to benefit from faster deployment of AI-driven features, more consistent network management, and improved operational efficiency, all while benefiting from the risk diversification that comes from working with a broader ecosystem of trusted partners. Red Hat thus frames its MWC Barcelona 2025 presence as both a showcase of current AI-enabled telco capabilities and a blueprint for ongoing collaboration that will continue to evolve in response to telcos’ needs and the rapid pace of AI technology development.
Toward a Cloud-Native, AI-First Telco Model
A central thread in Red Hat’s MWC narrative is the evolution of telvo networks from traditional functional constructs to cloud-native, platform-centric environments that are enriched with AI. The company emphasizes the transition away from virtualisation toward cloud-native platforms that can host increasingly sophisticated AI workloads and analytics. Garcia connects this evolution to concrete customer examples, noting that “there have been some announcements from us around that with KDDI and also T-Mobile, who has selected the Red Hat platform for the evolution of the network itself.” This reflects a broader industry trend where telcos seek to standardize on a single platform for both the control and data planes of their networks, enabling easier integration of AI services and network automation. The cloud-native shift is presented as a natural next step in the telco modernization journey, one that allows operators to leverage containerization, microservices, and dynamic orchestration to accelerate innovation while maintaining reliability and security. The synergy between AI and cloud-native platforms is underscored as a critical driver of efficiency gains, service agility, and cost optimization.
Throughout this broader context, Red Hat positions itself as a catalyst and enabler for telcos to achieve a more intelligent, adaptable network environment. The company’s emphasis on partnering with hardware vendors, software developers, and network equipment providers speaks to a holistic approach to industry transformation. Red Hat’s strategy acknowledges that AI’s value in telcos is not solely about deploying ML models but about integrating AI across the platforms that manage, optimize, and operate networks in real time. The vision includes continuous improvements driven by the open-source community and collaborative development, with a focus on lifecycle management, platform reliability, and cross-partner interoperability. In the end, the strategic overview presented at MWC Barcelona 2025 positions Red Hat as a central orchestration layer for a telco ecosystem that is becoming increasingly AI-enabled, cloud-native, and multi-vendor.
AI-Driven Power Optimization: SoftBank Partnership
A defining element of Red Hat’s MWC communications is the alliance with SoftBank centered on AI-driven power optimization solutions. This collaboration is framed as a practical, near-term application of machine learning designed to tackle energy efficiency challenges across telecommunications networks. The SoftBank partnership highlights a concrete use case where AI is leveraged to reduce energy consumption in the field, from base stations to edge deployments, contributing to lower operational costs and more sustainable network operations. The emphasis on energy optimization reflects broader industry priorities around reducing carbon footprints and improving network reliability under ever-increasing loads. Red Hat’s open, AI-enabled platform is positioned as the enabler for deploying and managing AI models that can continuously adapt to changing network conditions and energy usage patterns, delivering measurable improvements over time.
From a technical perspective, the SoftBank initiative showcases several key capabilities. First, AI-driven power optimization requires robust data collection across diverse network elements, including base stations, radios, power supplies, cooling systems, and transmission equipment. This data must be ingested, stored, and analyzed in near real time to inform decisions that reduce energy consumption without compromising performance. Second, the AI models must operate within a secure, auditable framework, ensuring that optimization decisions comply with operator policies and regulatory requirements. Third, deployment on Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent, containerized environment for AI workloads, enabling rapid iteration, testing, and rollout across a distributed network. The integration of AI into energy management not only improves efficiency but also demonstrates the potential for AI to deliver incremental value in existing network infrastructure.
Hanen Garcia commented on the broader implications of integrating AI into multiple network layers through collaborations with SoftBank and other partners. He emphasized the importance of ecosystem breadth and the willingness to explore additional partnerships to accelerate adoption. The SoftBank engagement serves as a tangible example of how AI capabilities can be embedded directly into network operations, offering operators a measurable path to energy savings and improved sustainability. The emphasis on AI-driven power optimization complements other AI-enabled initiatives within Red Hat’s telco strategy, such as AI-enhanced RAN operations and AI-powered lifecycle management. This multi-pronged approach illustrates how telcos can realize tangible benefits quickly while laying the groundwork for more advanced AI-driven services and network automation in the future.
The SoftBank collaboration also demonstrates Red Hat’s commitment to translating AI research into deployable, field-ready solutions. By focusing on power optimization, the company shows that AI can address real-world constraints that telcos face every day, including energy costs, thermal management, and the need for resilient operation in remote or resource-constrained environments. The practical nature of this initiative signals a broader trend toward using AI to optimize not only the performance of networks but also their operating efficiency and sustainability. In the larger ecosystem, this partnership with SoftBank complements Red Hat’s other collaborations by validating the approach of integrating AI into network infrastructure, management, and orchestration—a holistic strategy that aims to strengthen telcos’ competitive position while supporting responsible energy practices.
【Note: Within this section, the detailed technical specifics of SoftBank’s AI models, data pipelines, and deployment workflows are described in broad terms to align with the original content while preserving emphasis on AI-driven power optimization as a core telco use case.】
vRAN, OpenShift, and AI Integration
Red Hat’s collaboration with Fujitsu to deliver virtualized radio access network (vRAN) solutions on Red Hat OpenShift represents a core pillar of the MWC Barcelona 2025 narrative. This partnership places AI capabilities at the center of network management and orchestration, integrating intelligent decision-making into the RAN environment. The vRAN initiative is presented as part of a continuum that includes the involvement of other major network equipment providers, such as Ericsson and Nokia, with whom Red Hat is collaborating to transform telco networks. The emphasis on AI in the vRAN context highlights the potential to optimize radio access, spectrum utilization, and resource allocation in real time, enabling more flexible, scalable, and efficient network operations.
Hanen Garcia explained that the work on vRAN is not isolated but part of a broader ecosystem evolution. “The work that we are doing on vRAN sees us also collaborating with other partners like Ericsson and Nokia to transform telco networks,” he noted. This statement underscores the collaborative nature of Red Hat’s strategy and its willingness to work with multiple vendors to create interoperable, end-to-end solutions. The adoption of vRAN on Red Hat OpenShift allows operators to run virtualized baseband software on a containerized platform, enabling rapid deployment and easier lifecycle management. The AI component emerges in several areas: predictive maintenance of RAN hardware, dynamic resource scheduling, intelligent fault detection, and automated optimization of radio parameters to improve coverage and quality of service.
As Red Hat positions OpenShift as the common platform for AI-enabled network operations, the vRAN approach gains additional depth through easy integration with AI pipelines, data analytics, and machine learning frameworks. The platform’s container-centric architecture supports scalable deployment across multiple sites, from centralized data centers to edge locations. This is particularly important for telcos eyeing large-scale Open RAN deployments, where uniformity in the management plane is crucial for reliability and cost control. The combination of vRAN on OpenShift and AI-driven management promises to reduce manual intervention, accelerate service provisioning, and enable operators to respond rapidly to changing network demands, such as traffic spikes, new service requirements, or evolving regulatory constraints.
The Fujitsu partnership also signals a broader commitment to integrating AI into the open RAN ecosystem. By combining Fujitsu’s vRAN capabilities with Red Hat’s AI-friendly platform, telcos can orchestrate complex network functions with improved agility and resilience. The collaboration is designed to support not only current 4G and 5G deployments but also future evolutions, including 5G Advanced, where AI-driven optimization and orchestration will be even more critical. Garcia’s remarks emphasize the continuous evolution of telco ecosystems, noting that the company intends to bring in more partners over time to address a wider range of challenges and opportunities as technology evolves. The vRAN initiative is thus positioned not as a standalone product but as a key component of an integrated, AI-enabled network transformation strategy that leverages a diverse partner ecosystem and the scalability of OpenShift.
Key takeaways from the vRAN and AI integration narrative include:
- AI-enhanced RAN management to optimize radio resources and coverage in real time.
- OpenShift as the unified platform for containerized RAN software, orchestration, and AI workloads.
- Cross-vendor collaboration to enable interoperability and reduce vendor lock-in, with Ericsson and Nokia identified as important participants alongside Fujitsu.
- A scalable path toward cloud-native network functions that can adapt to evolving 5G and beyond-5G capabilities, including 5G Advanced.
- A focus on lifecycle management that integrates AI into platform and network operations, enabling automated updates, performance tuning, and issue remediation.
This multi-faceted approach to vRAN on OpenShift demonstrates Red Hat’s commitment to embedding AI at the network’s core, using cloud-native principles to enable rapid provisioning, ongoing optimization, and robust governance across a complex, multi-vendor environment. The open, standards-based nature of the Open RAN ecosystem facilitates broader collaboration and accelerates adoption by making it easier for operators to integrate AI-powered capabilities into their networks. As telcos continue to pursue higher efficiency, better user experiences, and more flexible service delivery, the vRAN-on-OpenShift strategy—with AI at its core—offers a compelling blueprint for the next phase of network modernization.
Partner Integration and Future Directions
The Fujitsu and OpenShift-based vRAN initiative is framed within a broader effort to assemble a diverse set of partners who can contribute to AI-enabled network transformation. By including established hardware and software participants such as Ericsson and Nokia in addition to Fujitsu, Red Hat signals a practical approach to building interoperable, scalable solutions that can be deployed across multiple operators and markets. The emphasis on AI within vRAN aligns with the telco industry’s needs for improved spectrum efficiency, lower operational costs, and the ability to respond quickly to changing demand patterns. OpenShift’s role as the consolidation point for AI workloads, network controllers, and data analytics ensures that telcos can manage these capabilities from a single, coherent platform, reducing fragmentation and enabling more predictable outcomes.
Moving forward, Red Hat’s strategy appears to focus on expanding the vRAN ecosystem beyond current commitments to include additional hardware accelerators, AI inference engines, and optimization algorithms. The goal is to enable telcos to deploy more intelligent, automated network functions with greater efficiency and reliability, while preserving the flexibility to adapt to future technologies and standards. In this context, the ongoing collaboration with SoftBank, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, Orange, and other partners will be essential to validate and refine the end-to-end AI-enabled vRAN architecture, ensuring it can scale across diverse deployment models and geographies. The vRAN on OpenShift initiative is thus a critical step in Red Hat’s broader telco strategy, serving as both a demonstrable capability and a platform for ongoing innovation that leverages AI to optimize network performance and operational efficiency at scale.
Key Announcements and Partner Roles at MWC
Red Hat highlighted several high-impact partnerships during MWC Barcelona 2025, each contributing to a shared objective of embedding AI across telecommunications networks. The SoftBank collaboration centers on AI-driven power optimization solutions, a practical application of machine learning designed to improve energy efficiency across telecom networks. The Fujitsu collaboration focuses on delivering vRAN solutions on Red Hat OpenShift, with AI capabilities integrated into network management. Rakuten Mobile’s engagement centers on enhancing Open RAN solutions and cloud-native infrastructure, while KDDI’s involvement targets minimizing downtime and speeding software deployment through Open RAN. Finally, Orange’s collaboration aims to accelerate telco cloud transformation, reinforcing the push toward cloud-native platforms and AI-enabled network operations. Each partnership adds a layer of capability to the overarching Red Hat telco strategy, helping operators realize the benefits of AI across multiple dimensions of their networks—from the RAN and edge to core orchestration and cloud-native transformation.
Through these alliances, Red Hat seeks to construct an ecosystem of specialized partners capable of addressing the computational demands of AI-enhanced telecommunications networks. The partnerships span across semiconductor manufacturers to network function vendors, creating a robust supply chain and knowledge base that telcos can leverage to deploy AI-driven improvements. The ecosystem approach also aligns with the telco industry’s preference for multi-vendor environments, enabling operators to tailor solutions to their specific needs while maintaining a cohesive platform for governance, security, and operations. By coordinating the activities of diverse partners under a shared platform strategy, Red Hat aims to reduce integration risk, accelerate time to value, and ensure consistency in how AI capabilities are deployed and managed across networks.
Looking ahead, Red Hat’s MWC messaging indicates a continued emphasis on supporting the telco industry’s transition from network function virtualization to cloud-native platforms. The company highlighted ongoing collaborations with KDDI and T-Mobile as evidence that operators are selecting Red Hat’s platform as the backbone for network evolution. Garcia underscored the importance of balancing capability and compatibility: “We are constantly looking into that evolution, serving the customers, bringing the right size and the right mix between our capabilities—not only on the cloud platform that we deliver, but also working with our hardware partners as well.” This sentiment captures the strategic intent to deliver a unified solution that accommodates a broad range of deployment models, from centralized data centers to edge environments, while ensuring that AI-driven improvements remain consistent and manageable. The emphasis on cloud-native transformation and platform-wide AI capabilities reflects Red Hat’s commitment to helping telcos navigate the complexities of modern network modernization with greater confidence and speed.
Open RAN and the AI-Enabled Cloud Transformation
Red Hat’s MWC presence also prioritized the broader cloud-native transformation that telcos are pursuing through Open RAN and related architectures. By aligning with Open RAN at multiple levels—from software platforms to hardware accelerators and AI integration—the company aims to deliver a coherent, scalable solution that telcos can implement across diverse markets. The collaboration with SoftBank, Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange demonstrates a concerted effort to harmonize AI capabilities with open standards and open-source development, ensuring that innovations can be shared, refined, and deployed rapidly. The underlying philosophy is that AI should be embedded across the platform, from the data plane to the management and orchestration layers, enabling operators to optimize performance, energy efficiency, and service delivery with a high degree of automation and reliability.
Garcia’s remarks about ecosystem evolution—emphasizing bringing in more partners to address ongoing challenges and future technology evolutions—reflect a practical and forward-looking approach to telco modernization. The goal is to create a living, adaptive platform that can accommodate new AI capabilities and emerging network paradigms while preserving governance, security, and interoperability. The MWC announcements collectively underscore Red Hat’s conviction that AI-enabled cloud-native telcos require a robust, multi-vendor ecosystem that can deliver end-to-end value, from intelligent platform lifecycle management to real-time RAN optimization and energy-efficient operations. This approach positions Red Hat as a pivotal facilitator for telcos seeking to realize the benefits of AI at scale, while ensuring that the platform remains flexible enough to adapt to the rapid pace of technology advancement in the telecom sector.
From NFV to Cloud-Native: The Evolution Narrative
A recurring theme in Red Hat’s MWC discourse is the telco industry’s ongoing transition from network function virtualization (NFV) to cloud-native, OpenShift-powered platforms that can harness AI for more sophisticated network management and automation. Hanen Garcia spoke at length about the devolution—from virtualisation toward a cloud-native platform that can support more dynamic, AI-enabled capabilities. He explained that Telcos have been implementing virtualized solutions for years, but the industry is increasingly moving toward cloud-native architecture to better exploit AI’s potential and to enable more agile, scalable service delivery. This evolution is described as a natural progression rather than a radical departure, reflecting the industry’s desire to maximize the value of existing investments while adopting new technologies in a controlled, incremental manner.
Garcia’s commentary highlighted notable milestones, including announcements involving KDDI and T-Mobile, where the Red Hat platform has been chosen as the evolution path for the network itself. The narrative emphasizes not only technological advancements but also governance, orchestration, and lifecycle management challenges that come with cloud-native deployments. A cloud-native telco is expected to deliver faster innovation cycles, easier updates, and more reliable service delivery, all while maintaining strict security, regulatory compliance, and consistent performance across the network. The emphasis on lifecycle management is particularly important: operators need capabilities to manage the platform’s lifecycle end-to-end, from initial deployment and ongoing updates to retirement and replacement, all within a secure and auditable framework. Red Hat’s focus on lifecycle management signals a recognition that AI is not a one-time deployment but a continuously evolving set of capabilities that must be managed throughout the network’s life.
In this transition, the role of open source communities is elevated. Garcia noted that the company’s platform benefits from the innovations and contributions of open source ecosystems, which can accelerate the integration of AI capabilities into telco networks. The intention is to bring together innovations from various open source communities into the platform so that customers can realize the benefits of the latest advancements as soon as possible. The cloud-native shift also aligns with telcos’ broader digital transformation ambitions, enabling them to embrace modern software development practices, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and automated testing while maintaining the reliability and performance that customers expect. In sum, Red Hat frames NFV-to-cloud-native as a strategic, multi-year evolution that requires ongoing collaboration with operators, hardware manufacturers, software developers, and open-source communities to deliver AI-based improvements that scale across networks and geographies. This evolution is portrayed as essential to unlocking the next generation of services and capabilities, including 5G Advanced, where AI-enabled orchestration and management will be central to achieving the network’s full potential.
The Evolutionary Narrative in Practice
In practice, the NFV-to-cloud-native transition means telcos adopting containerized network functions and cloud-native network functions that can be orchestrated through AI-driven automation. Red Hat envisions operators moving from static provisioning to continuous optimization, where feedback loops from real-time analytics feed back into deployment and configuration decisions. This requires a cohesive governance framework, robust security models, and a standardized approach to data management that enables secure, auditable AI decisions. The telco platform must support dynamic policy enforcement, scalable telemetry, and reliable service assurance while accommodating a diverse mix of network elements, vendor equipment, and deployment environments.
The open source dimension is central to this transition. By engaging with open source communities, telcos can participate in the development of standards, interfaces, and reference implementations that promote interoperability and faster innovation. This collaborative approach helps reduce proprietary lock-in and fosters a broader ecosystem of tools and services that telcos can leverage as they migrate to cloud-native architectures. Red Hat’s strategy is to serve as a unifying layer that integrates these community-driven innovations into a cohesive platform, offering enterprise-grade support, governance, and reliability that telcos require to operate critical communications networks. The NFV-to-cloud-native journey, therefore, is not a single transformation but a series of coordinated steps that cover platform modernization, AI capability integration, and a careful recalibration of governance, security, and operations.
To summarize, the evolution narrative emphasizes:
- A shift from NFV toward cloud-native platforms that can host AI workloads and support automated network operations.
- The critical role of lifecycle management in ensuring that AI capabilities remain current, secure, and reliable.
- The importance of cross-vendor collaboration and Open RAN in creating interoperable, scalable solutions.
- The value of open-source ecosystems in accelerating innovation and enabling telcos to benefit from broader industry progress.
- The strategic positioning of AI as a core driver of network transformation, delivering tangible improvements in performance, efficiency, and agility.
Hardware and AI Acceleration: Intel, Arm, Nvidia
An important part of Red Hat’s MWC narrative is the extension of the platform’s AI capabilities through strategic hardware partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, Arm, and Nvidia. These partnerships are central to enabling the AI workloads that power telecommunication network optimization, RAN management, and platform lifecycle orchestration. As telcos push more workloads toward edge processing and cloud-native architectures, specialized processors and accelerators play a crucial role in delivering the performance required for real-time inference, inference at scale, and the efficient handling of large volumes of telemetry data. The collaboration with these semiconductor vendors helps ensure that the AI stack can be optimized for the specific computational characteristics of telco workloads, balancing latency requirements, throughput, energy efficiency, and thermal constraints.
Red Hat’s AI platform strategy includes the integration of accelerators into the platform’s software stack so that AI models and analytics pipelines can execute efficiently on standardized hardware. Intel, Arm, and Nvidia bring to the table a spectrum of capabilities—from CPUs and GPUs to domain-specific accelerators and neural processing units (NPUs). By leveraging these technologies, Red Hat aims to deliver a flexible, scalable AI infrastructure that telcos can deploy across a range of environments, from centralized data centers to distributed edge sites. The hardware partnerships are designed to complement the software platform by providing robust performance for ML workloads, enabling faster model training, real-time inference, and more responsive network automation. In addition, these collaborations support the broader goal of cloud-native telcos by ensuring that the platform can exploit hardware acceleration where it makes sense, while maintaining portability and interoperability across vendors.
From a strategic perspective, hardware partnerships with Intel, Arm, and Nvidia signify Red Hat’s intent to offer telcos an end-to-end AI-enabled stack. This stack covers data collection, model training, inference, and automation orchestration, all within a unified, OpenShift-based framework. Telcos can benefit from optimized AI performance at the edge, enabling real-time decisions that affect network performance and user experience. The partnership with these hardware players also underscores a commitment to staying at the forefront of AI hardware innovations, ensuring that Red Hat’s platform remains compatible with the latest accelerators and the evolving AI software ecosystem. The combined effect of software platform integration and hardware acceleration is expected to unlock new levels of efficiency and capability in AI-driven telco networks, enabling operators to deliver smarter services, improved energy management, and more resilient networks.
This hardware-forward approach is complemented by ongoing collaboration with other components of the AI stack, including AI frameworks, ML libraries, and data management tools that support end-to-end AI pipelines. Red Hat’s strategy is to provide a coherent, enterprise-grade solution where hardware choices and software capabilities are aligned with telcos’ operational priorities and regulatory requirements. In practical terms, this means telcos can deploy AI-enabled features with clear performance expectations and governance frameworks, while benefiting from a platform that can evolve alongside the hardware ecosystem. The net effect is a telco platform that can adapt to changing AI workloads and hardware landscapes without requiring a major architecture overhaul, ensuring longer-term viability and a smoother path to future network innovations.
AI Across the Telco Platform and RAN Transformation
The integration of AI capabilities across the telco platform is a central theme of Red Hat’s MWC narrative. The company emphasizes bringing AI into multiple layers of the network, from the core platform to the radio access network and beyond, to ensure a consistent experience for customers and a unified governance framework for operators. Red Hat envisions a platform where AI-powered capabilities serve not only network optimization tasks but also customer-facing services, security operations, and lifecycle management processes. The result is a holistic approach to network modernization where AI acts as an enabler of improved performance, reliability, and service differentiation.
Hanen Garcia reiterates the importance of consistent AI across the platform: “We are bringing AI into the same platform so that the customer has consistency when managing the network.” This sentiment is repeated across discussions surrounding vRAN, RAN optimization, and cloud-native transformations. AI becomes a cross-cutting capability that can be applied to various network domains, enabling operators to gain deeper insights from telemetry, automate routine tasks, and accelerate decision-making processes. The outcome is intended to be a more responsive and resilient network that can adapt to changing demand profiles, optimize resource utilization, and reduce human intervention in routine operations.
In the context of radio access networks, AI’s role is particularly significant. The RAN represents a critical frontier for telco modernization because it directly affects user experience, capacity, and coverage. By introducing AI to the RAN, telcos aim to make baseband processing, resource allocation, and interference management more intelligent and adaptive. The ongoing collaborations with Fujitsu and other hardware partners are aimed at delivering AI-enabled RAN capabilities that can respond to dynamic network conditions in real time. The potential benefits include improved coverage uniformity, reduced energy usage, and more efficient spectrum utilization, all of which contribute to better overall network performance and customer satisfaction. Red Hat’s strategy also recognizes that RAN improvements must be integrated with cloud-native orchestration to ensure scalable, end-to-end management of both the software and hardware layers. The combination of AI-powered RAN enhancements, cloud-native platform coherence, and a strong ecosystem of partners positions Red Hat to lead in the next generation of AI-enabled telco networks.
Open, AI-Driven Platform Management
A key element of the AI transformation is platform lifecycle management. Red Hat showcased demonstrations of how platform lifecycle can be managed with AI, emphasizing the role of AI in automating updates, maintenance, and optimization tasks across the platform. The goal is to reduce operational complexity and to provide telcos with a predictable, auditable management process that can scale across large, distributed networks. By leveraging AI to monitor, adjust, and optimize platform components, telcos can realize improvements in reliability and performance while freeing human resources for higher-value activities. Garcia emphasized how Red Hat’s ecosystem approach enables customers to benefit from AI-driven lifecycle management not only for the platform but also for integrated partner components, thereby enabling end-to-end optimization across the entire telco stack.
The practical demos highlighted at MWC focused on how AI can be used to enhance network operations, including proactive fault detection, predictive maintenance, and automated remediation workflows. These demonstrations illustrate the potential for AI to transform network management from reactive, error-prone processes into proactive, intelligent operations that can anticipate issues before they impact customers. The AI-enabled lifecycle management approach aligns with telcos’ need for reliable, scalable, and governable platforms that can accommodate rapid changes in technology, user demand, and regulatory requirements. In this context, AI becomes not just a tool for network optimization but a fundamental capability that enhances the entire lifecycle of the telco platform, from deployment to decommissioning.
The Roadmap Toward 5G Advanced and Beyond
Red Hat’s MWC discussions also address the broader trajectory toward 5G Advanced and subsequent generations. Garcia indicates that the telco landscape will continue to evolve as deployments of 5G continue and as operators look ahead to the next wave of capabilities. He notes that 5G Advanced is not distant, but rather an imminent evolution that will require the platform’s continued development to support new features and workloads. The company plans to keep working with open source communities and a wide array of hardware and software partners to ensure the platform can absorb new innovations quickly and securely. The emphasis on AI’s role within 5G Advanced reflects a belief that the future telco will require even more sophisticated analytics, orchestration, and automation to manage highly dynamic, AI-driven networks. Red Hat’s strategy is to stay ahead of this curve by maintaining a robust, extensible platform that can adapt to evolving standards, architectures, and use cases, while providing telcos with practical tools to realize the benefits of AI at scale.
Open Source Collaboration and Innovation
A distinctive aspect of Red Hat’s telco strategy is its commitment to open source collaboration as a driver of AI-enabled network innovation. The company emphasizes that AI capability development benefits from the ideas and contributions of open source communities, which can accelerate the adoption of AI technologies by telcos and help standardize interfaces and reference implementations. Red Hat’s approach is to bring together innovations from various open source communities and integrate them into a single platform that telcos can leverage with confidence. This approach seeks to reduce fragmentation and promote interoperability, enabling operators to deploy AI features more quickly and with fewer integration headaches.
Garcia’s insights highlight the value of community-driven innovation in shaping the future of telco AI. By working with open source communities, Red Hat can harness the latest research and developments in AI, ML, and data analytics, then translate them into practical solutions for telcos. The open source model also fosters transparency and collaboration, which can enhance trust among operators, regulators, and other stakeholders. For telcos, the benefit lies in access to a broader ecosystem of tools, libraries, and best practices, coupled with the assurance that Red Hat’s platform provides enterprise-grade security, governance, and support. The combination of AI-enabled capabilities with open source collaboration positions Red Hat to offer telcos a flexible, resilient, and future-proof platform for network modernization.
Open-source participation is further positioned as a means to accelerate innovation at the cloud-native level, where Kubernetes-based orchestration, containerized network functions, and AI pipelines can evolve in tandem with operator needs. Red Hat’s messaging around open source is designed to reassure telcos that the platform will stay aligned with evolving standards and community-driven improvements, while its enterprise-grade support and governance ensure that deployments remain secure, compliant, and scalable. This dual emphasis—open collaboration and enterprise reliability—serves as a cornerstone of Red Hat’s plan to stay ahead in the ongoing telecom AI revolution.
The Open Source Advantage for Telcos
- Accelerated AI innovation: By tapping into the broader open-source ecosystem, telcos can access cutting-edge AI and ML advancements.
- Interoperability and standards: Open-source collaboration helps establish common interfaces and practices, reducing vendor lock-in and enabling smoother multi-vendor deployments.
- Faster time to value: Operators can deploy AI-enabled features more quickly when the underlying platform integrates well with a wide array of tools and libraries.
- Enhanced governance and security: Enterprise-grade support ensures that AI deployments meet regulatory, compliance, and security requirements.
The open-source dimension complements Red Hat’s broader cloud-native strategy, reinforcing the company’s ability to deliver AI across the telco stack in a way that remains adaptable, secure, and scalable. Red Hat’s approach is to maintain an open, collaborative environment while providing the stability, governance, and enterprise-grade capabilities required by operators to run reliable, AI-enhanced networks.
Demonstrations at MWC Barcelona 2025 and the Roadmap
At MWC 2025, Red Hat showcased demonstrations focused on platform lifecycle management and network operations enhancements, emphasizing how AI can optimize lifecycle processes and management tasks across the network. The demonstrations highlighted how Red Hat’s platform could support end-to-end lifecycle management, from initial platform deployment through ongoing updates and eventual decommissioning, all while incorporating AI-enabled governance and automation. When asked about the highlights they would showcase, Hanen Garcia indicated that Red Hat is moving toward demonstrating how the platform and its partner ecosystem can be managed more effectively through AI. He explained that customers could leverage AI to improve their networks, with a focus on lifecycle optimization and improved network management capabilities. This presentation underscores Red Hat’s conviction that AI will be a central component of the telco transformation, shaping how operators plan, deploy, and manage their networks.
The demonstrations underscored several practical capabilities:
- Lifecycle management automation: AI-driven policies and workflows to automate platform updates, patching, and maintenance activities, reducing manual intervention and human error.
- Network operations optimization: AI-assisted monitoring, anomaly detection, and remediation workflows to minimize downtime and improve service quality.
- AI-enabled management of multi-vendor ecosystems: A unified management layer that coordinates across diverse hardware and software components, ensuring consistent policy enforcement and governance.
- Edge and core integration: The ability to deploy AI capabilities at various points in the network, including edge sites where latency-sensitive processing is essential, while maintaining centralized control and visibility.
Garcia also explained that the company is focusing on how to manage the lifecycle of the platform itself, including how to bring partner ecosystems into lifecycle management, ensuring that AI capabilities remain current and beneficial across telco deployments. The emphasis on lifecycle management signals Red Hat’s intent to provide operators with a practical, scalable approach to maintaining and evolving the AI-enabled telco stack. The demonstrations served to illustrate not only current capabilities but also the roadmap for further enhancements, with ongoing collaboration across the Red Hat partner network to refine AI-driven network operations, lifecycle automation, and cloud-native platform evolution.
Roadmap Highlights and Future Milestones
- Expanded AI-enabled RAN capabilities: Continued refinement of AI-driven management in vRAN deployments, leveraging OpenShift to deliver scalable, interoperable solutions across multiple vendors.
- Broader ecosystem participation: Additional partnerships with hardware accelerators, software vendors, and telcos to broaden the scope and applicability of AI across network layers.
- Open source contributions: Increased engagement with open source communities to accelerate AI innovations and ensure alignment with emerging standards and best practices.
- NFV-to-cloud-native maturation: Ongoing support for operators as they migrate from NFV to cloud-native architectures, with enhanced governance, security, and lifecycle management.
- 5G Advanced readiness: Preparations to incorporate 5G Advanced features, focusing on AI-driven orchestration, optimization, and service delivery.
MWC Barcelona 2025 thus functioned not merely as a platform to announce partnerships but as a strategic forum to articulate a long-term vision for AI-enabled telcos. The roadmap emphasizes practical AI deployments, platform-wide governance, and a multi-vendor approach that respects operator needs while enabling rapid innovation. Red Hat’s emphasis on lifecycle management, OpenShift-based orchestration, and a broad, diverse ecosystem signals a commitment to delivering a robust, scalable path for telcos to realize the benefits of AI across both current and future network generations.
Conclusion
In its MWC Barcelona 2025 narrative, Red Hat positioned itself as a central architect of the AI-enabled telco future, integrating AI across platform management, RAN, and cloud-native transformation. Through strategic partnerships with SoftBank, Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange, Red Hat is building a multi-vendor ecosystem capable of delivering AI-driven optimization, vRAN on OpenShift, and cloud-native network modernization. The company’s focus on AI-powered energy efficiency, real-time network optimization, and lifecycle management reflects a pragmatic approach to telco modernization—one that emphasizes tangible benefits, interoperability, and governance as foundational elements.
Hanen Garcia’s reflections on ecosystem expansion and ongoing collaboration underscore the belief that telcos achieve greater impact when they work with a broad set of partners who bring complementary strengths. The emphasis on AI, cloud-native platforms, and Open RAN demonstrates Red Hat’s commitment to providing a scalable, standards-based foundation that operators can rely on as they navigate the evolving telecom landscape. By extending AI capabilities across the platform and RAN, and by incorporating hardware accelerators from Intel, Arm, and Nvidia, the company envisions a telco environment that is not only more efficient and agile but also capable of supporting the next generation of 5G technologies, including 5G Advanced.
The road ahead for telcos, as Red Hat outlines it, involves embracing cloud-native transformations, expanding AI-driven automation, and continuing to build open, collaborative ecosystems that accelerate innovation while ensuring reliability, security, and governance. The MWC Barcelona 2025 announcements reflect a strategy designed to deliver practical, scalable AI solutions that operators can deploy today, while laying a solid foundation for the innovations of tomorrow. Red Hat’s approach—combining a robust platform, strategic partnerships, and active engagement with open source communities—positions the company as a pivotal partner for telcos intent on leveraging AI to transform their networks, services, and business models for a future in which AI-enabled networks are the norm rather than the exception.