At its AI Investor Day in October, Deutsche Telekom’s incoming CFO, Dhananjay Mirchandani, said the group’s network team had not identified any need to invest in uplink and AI-related traffic beyond its existing radio access network (RAN) modernisation roadmap.
By contrast Etisalat launched, also in October, what it labelled the first 2×2 uplink MIMO with carrier aggregation for smartphones. According to the company, the new solution promises up to three times faster upload speeds on compatible devices running on its 5.5G network.
Why? Because they see AI significantly changing mobile experiences.
“Smartphones are no longer primarily consuming content; they are creating, sharing and increasingly sending richer data to AI and cloud applications in real time,” said Marwan Bin Shakar, Chief Technology Officer at etisalat UAE. “That changes what we need from the network.”
His view falls in line with what vendors have been measuring. The latest Ericsson Mobility Report found that 43 out of 55 service providers experienced a higher uplink growth rate than downlink.
In a recent post, a group of Ericsson researchers indicated that “traffic is no longer dominated by downloading content; instead, users and devices are increasingly sending rich streams of data into the network so the cloud can interpret scenes, generate outputs and return results in real time.”
If we’re indeed en route to an AI-driven network consumption scenario, how can operators adapt?
Two Lane Road
The Etisalat announcement provides some clues.
The technology combines two familiar tools. With 2×2 uplink MIMO, a phone can transmit two data streams at the same time instead of one. Carrier aggregation, meanwhile, bundles capacity from different frequency bands. Together, they let the device push more data at once.
Neither technique is new on the download side,. Both have been staples since LTE Advanced. What is new is applying both to the uplink.
The company offered a use case for the system: When a user asks an AI assistant to interpret an image, analyse a document or react to what the camera sees, that content has to be uploaded first. More upload capacity gets it to the cloud faster, making the exchange feel more responsive.
Bin Shakar framed the launch as getting ahead of the curve. “By bringing this capability to smartphones for the first time globally, we are increasing upload capacity where it matters and ensuring our 5.5G network is ready for how customers will use their devices next,” he added.
Upload or Upsell?
So, where is the money? Etisalat’s announcement doesn’t say. There is no mention of a premium tier or an uplink add-on; for now, the feature is simply described as available on the 5.5G network for compatible smartphones.
Elsewhere, though, the uplink is already being sold as a product. Chinese operators have started bundling high-speed uplink experiences for short-video creators and live streamers, with carriers offering tiered packages based on experience metrics such as latency and upload speed.
Meanwhile, Huawei has argued that devices such as AI glasses need upload speeds of around 20 Mbps, and that a better uplink lets users run more AI tasks. That gives operators more scope to charge for guaranteed performance; although that also means being more transparent with end users about what that performance is.
Etisalat and the Gulf states have a tendency to get to market early with innovations and have paved the way for a potential new revenue stream. Whether there are enough customers willing to pay is still to be determined.
If you find questions such as this important, join our online debate 3pm CET December 1st as we kick off Telco Value Season with Debate: The Network Is No Longer the Product
