At the Mobile World Congress 2026, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted that 6G is designed from the ground up as AI-native, with AI deeply integrated into the network to enable channel prediction and coordinated computing. In September, Qualcomm completed interoperability testing of base stations and 6G terminal prototypes in the U6G band with China Mobile. In November, the world’s first 6G terminal prototype compliant with 3GPP standards was unveiled at the China International Import Expo, marking the transition of the technology from research to system validation. Qualcomm anticipates that 6G will give rise to a new category of "intelligent agent AI devices," driving a new ecosystem that converges communications, AI, and computing.Author and source: AIBase
At this week’s Mobile World Congress 2026, Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, made a bold prediction: 6G will be AI-native from the ground up—AI will no longer be an add-on feature, but deeply integrated into the network itself. His vision is that, through seamless connectivity, contextual information will continuously flow between devices, edge nodes, and the cloud, with AI directly embedded into wireless communication systems. These systems won’t just estimate channel conditions, but predict their changes—even under weak signal conditions—while maintaining optimal performance. Meanwhile, computation will be distributed across the entire network, from base stations to edge nodes and data centers, enabling inference tasks to be processed across multiple nodes.
A prototype moves out of the lab first.
This blueprint is not just theoretical. In September this year, Qualcomm and China Mobile completed the world’s first interoperability test between a U6G band base station prototype and a 6G terminal prototype, based on the latest 3GPP specifications. Anand Rajaraman called this a critical step from technical research to system validation, with the entire industry advancing toward commercial deployment by 2029. On November 5 at the CIIE, Qualcomm publicly unveiled the world’s first 6G terminal prototype compliant with 3GPP standards, which the CIIE organizers labeled as a “hard technology exhibit” and “world premiere.” Qualcomm has already collaborated with China Mobile, ZTE, and other partners to conduct interoperability validation.
The terminal must evolve into an "agent" form.
Unlike 5G, which emphasizes the widespread adoption of mobile broadband, 6G, scheduled for deployment in 2029, is built on the foundations of AI-native design, integrated communication and sensing, and ubiquitous computing collaboration. Qualcomm Executive Vice President Madhavapeddy predicts that 6G will give rise to an entirely new category of "intelligent agent AI devices," a trend already emerging in China. As the boundaries between communications, AI, and computing rapidly dissolve, industry leaders are no longer betting solely on faster networks, but on an entirely new ecosystem of devices and business models.