[China, Shanghai, 26 June 2026]: During MWC26 Shanghai, the GSMA Asia-Pacific 5G Industry Community (AP5GIC) successfully hosted the executive roundtable, “Accelerating AI Monetization: Powering APAC Industries with 5G-Advanced”. The roundtable brought together more than 50+ senior executives from telecommunications operators, AI ecosystem partners, technology providers, industry organizations, and enterprises across the Asia-Pacific region to explore how AI and 5G-Advanced can unlock new business growth opportunities.
In his opening remarks, Julian Gorman, Head of Asia Pacific, GSMA, outlined how AI is fast becoming a driver of growth in the region and highlighted how the biggest monetisation and productivity opportunities can be created if mobile operators move fast to bring transformative mobile AI services to small and micro businesses, where the bulk of the Asia Pacific population is employed.
He said: “Asia Pacific leads the world when it comes to 5G rollouts, giving the region’s mobile ecosystem a huge opportunity to further accelerate regional productivity and create an abundance of innovation. By utilizing 5G Advanced capabilities to deliver mobile AI benefits at scale we can seize this economic opportunity and move from potential to performance. But operators, technology partners and businesses must work together at pace to deploy practical, open repeatable solutions that can deliver measurable returns across Asia Pacific.”
Throughout the discussions, participants shared a common view that AI monetization has entered a new phase, one that requires operators to move beyond connectivity and play a broader role in enabling AI services, ecosystem collaboration and new commercial models.
AI Monetization
Sharing China Mobile’s perspective on the AI economy, Shiwei Sun, Deputy General Manager of the Market Operations Department, China Mobile, highlighted: “As AI enters the era of scaled commercialization, Token is becoming the foundation of the AI economy. By enabling Token monetization and connecting computing power, models, applications and users, we can unlock sustainable growth across the AI ecosystem.”
Representing the operator perspective, Yoonho Choi, Head of Consumer AI Business Group at LG U+, shared the achievements of LG U+’s B2C AI service, ixi-O, over the past two years and presented the future evolution of AI services that telecom operators should pursue to further enhance customer value.
Anna Yip, CEO, International Digital Services, Singtel, said “As AI reshapes industries, telecommunications operators have an opportunity to evolve beyond connectivity and become trusted partners in enterprise AI transformation. By combining advanced networks, AI-ready infrastructure and an open ecosystem of partners, we can help enterprises, including SMEs, move from AI experimentation to scalable business outcomes. Through cross-industry and cross-border collaboration, together with innovations such as 5G-Advanced, we can lower barriers to AI adoption, accelerate innovation and unlock sustainable growth across the region.
Steven Xiao, General Manager of China Mobile International (CMI), shared China Mobile is committed to deeply integrating 5G networks, powerful computing capabilities, and robotic products through the self-developed “MENDP” Embodied Intelligence Technical Stack, building a “cloud-edge-device” collaborative intelligent ecosystem to provide end-to-end embodied intelligence solutions from perception and cognition to execution for various industries.
Tammy Lau, General Manager of China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK) highlighted Embracing the ‘Mobile AI’ era, China Mobile Hong Kong is deeply integrating network capabilities like 5G-A and Super Uplink with LLMs and AI Agents. By embedding AI into production and O&M workflows, we are driving our monetization journey, shifting from a cost center to a value center.
AI Ecosystem Collaboration
A key theme throughout the roundtable was the importance of open collaboration between operators and AI ecosystem partners to accelerate enterprise AI adoption and unlock new business opportunities.
Daniel Shi, Global Business Account Executive, MiniMax highlighted, “MiniMax is committed to developing world-leading foundational AI models. We stand ready to partner closely with GSMA member operators across the Asia-Pacific, leveraging 5G infrastructure and regional reach to accelerate AI adoption, expand market presence, and create sustainable value for the entire DICT industry.”
Eddie Ji, APAC Presales Director, iFlyTek emphasized that the key to operators’ AI transformation lies not simply in integrating large language models into existing systems, but in converging foundation models, speech and language AI, and communications network capabilities into a new intelligent service gateway. Leveraging its MaaS and Agent platforms, iFLYTEK combines capabilities such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, machine translation, multilingual understanding and AI agent orchestration with operators’ numbering systems, network capabilities, billing platforms and customer touchpoints. These capabilities enable intelligent customer service, enterprise communications, 5G New Calling, real-time translation, AI call summarization and anti-fraud services. Looking ahead, operators’ competitive advantage will increasingly extend beyond network quality to intelligent interaction quality.
From the enterprise AI application perspective, Damon Gong, Solution Architecture Director of uDesk, noted that the global enterprise services market is entering a pivotal transition from digitalization to intelligence. Building on its “1+2+N” global AI Agent portfolio, uDesk will continue working closely with regional operators, Huawei and industry partners to accelerate AI-driven digital transformation. Powered by 5G-Advanced and its self-developed AI Agent capabilities, the company aims to jointly establish an integrated delivery model that combines AI products, computing resources and localized services.
AI in Vertical Industries
Beyond the telecommunications sector, participants also discussed how AI is driving digital transformation across industries and creating new opportunities through closer collaboration between enterprises, operators and technology partners.
Michelle Chan, General Manager of DCH Motor Hong Kong, shared “At DCH Mobility, we believe that the future of mobility will be shaped by stronger collaboration across the ecosystem, data-driven customer engagement, and seamless digital-to-physical experiences. This roundtable provides a valuable platform for industry leaders to exchange perspectives on how technology and partnership can create more connected, personalised, and sustainable mobility journeys for customers.”
Network Capabilities
Building on this discussion, Barry Hou, VP of Huawei Carrier Marketing, noted that AI has become the defining force driving the communications industry’s next phase of high-quality growth, accelerating the transition toward the Internet of Agents. Compared with the mobile Internet era, communication networks are evolving from carrying traditional traffic to enabling real-time interactions between intelligent agents. To support this transformation, Huawei proposed the industry’s “1+4 AI-Centric Target Network” vision, comprising one AI application experience metric—AI MOS—and four foundational network capabilities: enhanced uplink, enhanced downlink, lossless networking and deterministic assurance. Future communication networks must evolve from being built around traffic to being optimized for intelligent agent experiences, ultimately delivering ubiquitous real-time AI connectivity.
The roundtable concluded with a shared commitment to deepen collaboration between operators and AI ecosystem partners and accelerate the development of commercially viable AI use cases across the region. Discussions among leading operators from China (China Mobile), Hong Kong SAR (CMI, CMHK), Indonesia (Telkomsel, XL Smart), Malaysia (U Mobile), the Philippines (PLDT), South Korea (LG U+), Singapore (Singtel), Vietnam (VNPT), TCCA, Huawei, the discussion reinforced a common industry view: AI monetization is no longer a future opportunity but an immediate business priority.
Through continued collaboration across operators, AI innovators and technology partners, together with the advanced capabilities of 5G-Advanced, the industry is well positioned to unlock the next wave of sustainable AI-driven growth across Asia-Pacific.