This year, the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles will be buzzing with everything telco between October 14-16, 2025. With more than 5,500 telecom professionals and around 1,500 operators, it brings many opportunities to meet with decision-makers, vendors, standards bodies, service providers, and others.
Network X promises to be even more immersive than previous years, featuring hands-on exhibits and demonstrations from major telco companies. Co-located events will include the Wireless Global Congress (EMEA) and the Broadband Development Congress (AFP), along with other activities such as expo stages and Data Center World. Discussions will focus on a wide range of topics, including agentic AI, monetization, fiber, 5G, APIs, 6G, non-terrestrial networks, cloud, and more.
We expect three key topics to take center stage at the event:
Progress to Network Automation
The drive toward autonomous networks will be a subject of discussion, as it has clearly become a business imperative. Currently, only 6% of communication service providers (CSPs) have achieved level 4, highly autonomous networks. However, this is likely to change, as another 22% of surveyed professionals expect to transition to level 4 within the next three years, and the majority—73%—have tangible roadmaps to transition to true automation soon.
The push to autonomous networks is largely driven by the need for greater efficiency, enhanced customer experiences and lower operational costs. At Network X, discussions may focus on the best journey to achieve this, as operators often prefer a step-by-step approach rather than the “rip and replace” methods seen in previous network generations. Operators moving toward automation require a clear roadmap and must prioritize technology investments such as cloud infrastructure and AI-powered intelligence.
AI-Native Networks
Have operators felt AI-fatigue yet?
Traditional approaches to network management are increasingly becoming inadequate. As operators strive for more autonomy, there will be greater demand for AI-driven technologies to handle the complexity and scale of both the data and the networks.
According to IDC, AI spending worldwide is expected to grow by 31.9% between 2025 and 2029. Expect discussions at the conference to include everything AI such as the burgeoning agentic AI and multimodal agents and copilots, to addressing the need for interoperability between solutions. Another challenge which may be tackled is the accuracy of the output that depends on the quality of the input. In other words, effective decision-making requires accurate, complete, and reliable data to be fed into the models.
Furthermore, we anticipate conversations about the increasing challenges AI poses to telecom support systems. As AI adoption accelerates, it will place greater demands on data lakes, data center infrastructure, high density power architectures and even memory bandwidth. Dialogue and collaboration, key aspects of Network X, will be critical for the industry to manage the expected increase in demand. Ultimately, AI can only be as scalable as the systems that support it.
Back to the 5G Quandary
Operators have long faced challenges in realizing the ROI from 5G networks. While this challenge remains, 5G SA currently stands as the ideal platform to power the AI-driven technologies poised for implementation. AI is expected to go beyond boosting telecom networks, if it hasn’t already. It will fundamentally drive demand as it offers faster speeds, new infrastructure, ultra-reliable low latency, and more.
Furthermore, the services and applications enabled by AI will have to reside somewhere. This is where 5G holds significant potential, with the power to operate at the Edge. With 5G control and user plane separation (CUPS), operators can move the user plane closer to the network edge, unlocking lower latency and higher performance for next-generation experiences.
At the end of the day, AI needs 5G. We anticipate discussions around the 5G bridge linking consumers and Industry 4.0 to the AI-enabled era.
See you at Network X
There has never been a more exciting time to be in telecom than right now, and Network X is the ideal place to discover the latest innovations, industry trends, software, services, hardware, and more. Whether you are seeking edge solutions, cloud strategies, or improved operational efficiencies, you are bound to find them in the Pavilion.
And of course, RADCOM will be there, be sure to book a time to meet with us here.
