Unlocking business opportunities by combining network slicing and Artificial Intelligence
AI usage is expanding at an extraordinary pace, adding millions of new users annually and reshaping how we live, conduct business, and deliver products and services. Enterprises are deploying AI, including agentic AI, across a vast variety of sectors, including customer service, media, finance, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, automotive, etc. Also, consumers are increasingly engaging with generative AI through chatbots, smart search, video/image/text creation and more.
AI applications span from end devices to private and public cloud data centers, located centrally and at the metropolitan edge. As inference shifts closer to users and data is processed across distributed environments, mission-critical enterprise and consumer use cases depend on optimized connectivity between devices and AI & cloud data centers. Network slicing addresses this need by delivering secure, high-capacity, low-latency and reliable end-to-end connectivity across the entire path—from device, RAN/FAN, transport, core and applications—while preserving isolation and predictable quality of service. Slices can be tailored to specific customer use cases and application profiles, through capabilities such as bitrate, quality, latency, traffic routing and security aligned with SLA requirements, ensuring that each workload receives the connectivity it needs.
In this blog, I will highlight how combining network slicing with AI unlocks new business opportunities for operators, powering successful deployments.
Agentic AI for advanced network slicing
Nokia has been pioneering agentic AI-powered advanced network slicing with AWS, du and Orange. At Mobile World Congress 2026, we will unveil our first-in-the-industry, intent-based 5G slicing solution combining Nokia’s advanced network slicing and AWS AI platform technologies, empowering operators to deliver premium services precisely where and when needed. By leveraging open Internet (e.g. locations, events, traffic, incidents, maps), slicing and operator data for the network slicing business, operators can unlock significant new customer value and offerings. Autonomous network slicing intelligence dynamically adapts and manages even the most challenging traffic conditions.
Agentic AI slicing caters to demanding business, enterprise, industry, governmental and consumer customers for diverse applications and use cases:
- Intent-based enterprise and industrial slicing autonomously adjusts RAN policies based on live KPIs to meet SLAs for critical applications (manufacturing, IoT, smart cities, healthcare, transportation, drones and sensors) across various geographies.
- On-demand slicing with agentic AI boosts performance for first responders during emergencies and maintains QoS for premium 5G+/FWA customers (gaming, streaming, XR) by utilizing an AI Agent responding to traffic surges or environmental changes.
- Agentic AI for mass events sets slicing policies based on network data for scheduled events, enabling premium 5G for VIPs, payments, fan engagement and operational crews.
Nokia's advanced network slicing, powered by agentic AI and built on 5G AirScale BTS, MantaRay SMO and agentic AI modules, seamlessly integrates with AWS Bedrock AI to coordinate data analytics, AI inferences, and slicing policies via APIs. Additionally, our Edge Slicing solution enhances agentic AI applications by delivering cloud and AI workloads directly to mobile users and devices over high-capacity, secure, low-latency networks.
Network slicing for AI applications and use cases
To give broader context, the network slicing market is accelerating, as leading operators (outlined below) offer wide-scale services to enterprises and consumers. These differentiated services enhance AI application usage and experiences, creating new business opportunities:
- Premium 5G+ slicing (e.g. Orange, SFR, NOS) offers assured capacity, low latency and stable connectivity for consumers, bundling well with AI applications like chatbots.
- Premium FWA slicing (e.g. Elisa, Jio, Verizon) ensures high, predictable performance for homes and small offices, also optimizing AI-intensive applications (gaming, video, XR) and remote work.
- Virtualized, sliced 4G/5G network services (e.g. TMO US, Telia, e&) provide secure, high-performance, low-latency connectivity for enterprise, industrial and government customers, enabling AI-driven applications across various sectors and use cases, including drones, sensors and robots.
- URSP-enabled slicing (e.g. DT, Singtel) can optimize Gen AI applications like chatbots and video on smartphones, improving inference speed and interaction quality through dedicated slices.
- Event-specific slices provide assured performance during peak demand (e.g., TMO US, BT at sports events), supporting payment, ticketing, fan engagement including AI experiences, and operational needs.
- Multi-access slicing across 5G Mobile, FWA and Fixed Access (PON) unifies subscriber and service experience by combining mobile and fixed assets.
Slicing supports private and virtual private networks. It enhances applications through sliced edge/MEC, which places compute close to users for high-capacity, secure, low-latency AI service delivery. AI workloads can be flexibly deployed across cloud, operator, and enterprise edges, both locally and centrally.
AI-native advanced network slicing with Nokia
At Nokia, we are proud to be a market-leading provider of end-to-end network slicing solutions, offering an advanced product and services portfolio that enables telecommunication providers to monetize 5G opportunities across the entire ecosystem: devices, RAN/FAN transport, core and cloud applications (including AI), integrating management, control, orchestration, and assurance. With deep technical and business expertise, and extensive field experience, we enable telecommunication providers to design and deploy valuable differentiated network services. Collaboration with customers and AI & cloud providers like AWS, du and Orange on innovative agentic AI with network slicing solutions further solidifies our leadership in next-generation technologies.
For more information, visit our Network Slicing webpage. Also, don’t miss our groundbreaking Agentic AI Network Slicing solution live demo at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona. Find out more on our MWC’26 webpage.
