Huawei Maps Out the AI Agentverse at MWC 2026

Details: STAFF WRITER; Category: Vendors; 16 March 2026; 6928 views

AI agents will be an integral and all-pervasive component of the developing mobile AI ecosystem and be deeply embedded in the fabric of mobile networks. In order to function effectively, these agents will need to be supported by a raft of new, advanced network features and capabilities.

Among the takeaways from Huawei’s Media & Analyst Roundtable held during MWC2026 in Barcelona on the theme of “unveiling the agent-oriented network”, were what these new features are, where they will be applied, and how the company is meeting the challenges of mobile network agentification.

Eric Zhao, VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Wireless Solutions at Huawei said that the rapid growth of mobile AI means that agents in some form are already being used in our mobile phones, in our cars, and at work. In the future, every industry, organization, terminal and individual will be served by agents, which will interact with people and with other agents.

Agent adoption means the introduction of far-reaching changes in communication methods and communication objects, explained Zhao. Huawei is readying for these changes by proposing what it calls the Agentverse, a concept that builds on the Mobile AI ecosystem proposed by Huawei in 2025, and which is already applying AI to increase the spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, and O&M efficiency of its wireless networks.

Defining the Agentverse

Huawei believes the year ahead will see AI being introduced more widely into industry verticals, where in B2B alone there were already 30 million agents applied in different sectors during 2025, significantly improving productivity. Zhao quoted estimates that by 2030, the amount of work handled by agents will grow by 10,000 times.

However, wireless networks need to change to support the needs of verticals, said Zhao. “That's the reason that we are proposing the Agentverse this year. Simply put, last year we talked about AI for the wireless network, and this year we are talking about the network for AI.”

Zhao identified three key attributes of the agent-oriented network: multimodal interaction (text, image and video rather than the traditional single mode model), collaboration between agents, and intelligent connections going beyond traditional data.

The Agentverse will put greater emphasis on real-time experience assurance (not waiting for information to download), as well as security and reliability, said Zhao. Also, there will be a much greater focus on the uplink, where the rate must fit the requirement of the agent.

Since the industry is already seeing the commercial results of adopting AI centric network solutions, the Agentverse will help to grow revenue in the near future, said Zhao. This incremental revenue for telcos will come from three areas: the new traffic created by Agentverse, the new tariff system introduced by telcos in order to assure Agentverse services, and the new connections in vertical industries enabled by Agentverse.

Supporting the evolving AI network paradigm

In anticipation of the new demands put on networks by the Agentverse. Huawei has also announced Agentic MBB. The company said that Agentic MBB will “integrate intelligence into services and networks” by employing capabilities such as Huawei’s RAN Agent and Adaptive Air solutions to adapt network resources to services, maximizing network potential for enhancing experience and industry value.

Agentic MBB means that Huawei can provide a lot of functions based on AI to support agents, explained Zhao. The first is about downlink and uplink enhancement, for example, by employing Huawei’s MetaAAU active antenna technology capable of supporting triple frequency bands in order to enhance both downlink and uplink capacity.

Huawei is eyeing the upper 6GHz spectrum band which it believes will be very important spectrum in the future, not only for 5G but also for the future 6G. Huawei said its new AAU for the upper 6GHz band takes advantage of the band’s 700MHz of spectrum to provide good power range and low latency for the new services, including agent service.

To illustrate the importance of uplink capacity required to support new AI-based network traffic, Zhao cited the experience of the Shanghai Art Gallery’s spring festival, where AI agent-enabled guides were offered to visitors to explore the exhibition by uploading high resolution videos of the art on display for identification.

The resulting demand for uplink bandwidth was in the ratio of 63 per cent, compared with the traditional ratio which would be 90/10 downlink to uplink, said Zhao. If just 10 people use the agent to finish the guide service and achieve a response within 2 minutes, it would mean pushing the uplink demand as high as 20Mbps, he explained. Even with China’s very good coverage, uplink speeds are typically no higher than around 2Mbps to 3Mbps.

With this scenario, the capacity is no longer sufficient, said Zhao. “From this interesting case we see, in the future, if we want to support the agents in our various networks, we have to upgrade the multi-dimensional capabilities (downlink versus uplink), and enhance the experience by providing service not by best effort, but by end to end assurance. We know that China Mobile already wants to change the downlink to uplink ratio in its network from 7:3 to a new ratio of 3:2.”

Standardization and Industry Collaboration

In order to support a growing number of agent services, network capabilities must also be opened to OTT providers, and provide the benefits of on-demand invocation, said Zhao. In this respect, Huawei is also helping to drive new standardization efforts around agentic AI.

This is why Huawei has defined Agent-over-New Radio (AONR), said Zhao. The initiative calls for cross-industry collaboration on the basis that if different stakeholders have a common understanding of the network requirements from the agents, such as the need for high-capacity uplink and high reliability, then they can make separate efforts to realize the goal. “AoNR provides these network capabilities.”

To evaluate the multimodal experience, Huawei is also supporting work in the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on a new standard – AI MOS - for end-to-end quality assurance for AI agents. The function of AI MOS is similar to user-perceived quality measurements for traditional services such as voice and video, said Zhao. Huawei is already in discussions with operators and other third party partners in this connection.

“Based on the standard, we must know our network will support agents,” explained Zhao. “We use different lanes in our network. For video data, we use fast lanes. For control data, we use a priority lane. We call this ‘new agent over agent over new radio’ based on the AI MOS standards. So in the first place we have a powerful foundation network, and secondly we have end to end experience assurance.”

Huawei is also supporting the new A2A-T interface, a variant of the A2A interface introduced by Google but adapted for use in telecom networks for agent-to-agent communication, to ensure that network resources and service requirements are fully aligned with the demands and requirements of agent-based services. A2A-T is currently under discussion at 3GPP and the TM Forum.

Traditionally, we always use a fixed open API interface, meaning that for one service we need one APIs, for the other, we need another one, Zhao explained. Using the A2A-T interface means that network services and capabilities can be provided based on the intention. “The OTT can send intention to our network and it can understand and finish. We don't need to define so many APIs. So I think it's a very big achievement to our network openness.”

Embracing the Agentverse

Huawei expects that the Agentverse concept will be able to support and help future revenue growth in the same way that adopting the AI centric network has already done. “I think we should embrace the boundless possibility of Agentverse, because in the future everything will have the agent service, and together we should try our best to provide this reliability,” said Zhao.