What happened at India Mobile Congress 2026
India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2026 took place from October 7 to 10 at the Yashobhoomi convention center in New Delhi. It is organized by India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the cellular operators association COAI, and this was its tenth edition, under the theme “Scale Without Boundaries”. According to the organizers, more than 150,000 attendees from over 100 countries were expected.
Central topics included 5G, 6G, next-generation AI networks, semiconductors and cybersecurity. Alongside it, the third Bharat 6G International Symposium was held, organized by the Bharat 6G Alliance, with sessions on AI-native networks, intelligent radio (RAN), autonomous networks and 6G standards. According to GKToday, five memoranda of understanding were signed at the symposium, including one with the GSMA, the global mobile operators association, and nine technical papers were published.
AI-native networks: what operators and vendors showed
An AI-native network is one in which artificial intelligence is not an add-on but part of the design: the network largely configures, optimizes and repairs itself, and it also offers intelligent services to its users. According to Business Standard, these were some of the demonstrations:
- Reliance Jio presented Jio Call Agent, an AI voice agent that works in several Indian languages with the user's consent, along with AI-driven network management and satellite connectivity. The company says it has filed patents on pre-6G technologies.
- Bharti Airtel, through Airtel Business, launched IQ Gateway ahead of the show, bringing SMS, WhatsApp, RCS and business voice together on a single platform, with a silent authentication feature that verifies numbers without OTP codes.
- Vodafone Idea showed AI-powered customer service, private 5G and edge computing for mining and agriculture.
- Ericsson showed AI-powered radio, applications that deploy, optimize and repair the network automatically, and a 6G demonstration with collaborative robots in a warehouse.
- Nokia explained how it is moving its mobile network core toward AI-native infrastructure, with language models and AI agents.
6G: more intelligence than speed
In the panels, reported by The Tribune based on the ANI news agency, several industry leaders agreed that 6G will be, above all, a smarter network. N. G. Subramaniam, chairman of the Bharat 6G Alliance, said 6G will go beyond speed and that communications and AI will evolve together. Vivek Badrinath, director general of the GSMA, said AI will be an important part of what comes next and that the focus is shifting from connecting people to what more than a billion connected people and businesses can do with that infrastructure.
For his part, Etienne Chaponniere of Qualcomm suggested that AI could become the new way of interacting with devices, and that processing more data on the device itself will change the design of future networks. Ericsson stressed that the road to 6G first goes through 5G Standalone (5G that doesn't depend on the 4G network), which makes the network more programmable.
Why India is betting so heavily
India is one of the world's largest mobile markets and wants to go from buying technology to creating it. According to Business Standard, the government has set a goal for the country to contribute 10% of global 6G patents, and the Bharat 6G Alliance is working on technology, spectrum, use cases and intellectual property. Rajkumar Upadhyay, head of the state research center C-DOT, urged local industry to go beyond manufacturing and contribute its own design and equipment, with more investment in security, AI and cybersecurity.
The global context helps explain the urgency: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has defined the 6G framework, called IMT-2030, and the industry expects the first commercial networks around 2030. Whoever influences the standards in these years will have an advantage when the equipment and services arrive.
What it means for businesses in Colombia and Latin America
6G won't reach the region tomorrow, but what was shown in New Delhi already has practical applications today:
- AI voice agents are becoming part of the network. An operator like Jio launching its own calling agent confirms that automated phone service, in the customer's language and with their consent, is a deep trend and not a fad.
- Channels are converging. Platforms like Airtel's bring SMS, WhatsApp and voice together in one place. For a company, serving customers through separate channels with no shared history will be less and less competitive.
- Security travels with the network. Number verification without codes and trust built into the network aim to fight fraud, a growing problem in the region as well.
- 5G is the prior step. Before thinking about 6G, it pays to understand what 5G offers businesses in Colombia and to prepare your systems for cloud communications.
At 19 80 TIC Cloud we support companies through that transition with AI voice agents, WhatsApp Business API and SMS connected to your cloud phone system.
