an article by Jimmy Jones, Head of Security at ZARIOT
This year, Barcelona approaches its 20th anniversary of hosting Mobile World Congress (MWC). Looking back then, we were at the height of 3G coverage, with the earliest LTE networks still a couple of years away. The technology fundamental to the adoption of the smartphone, which ushered in the biggest global cultural behavioural shift in history.
There have been many other disruptive technologies since. Each accelerating change and adding to our shared connectivity history with varying degrees of social and business technology impact. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a new phenomenon, it could be argued that its impact today is exponential, extending well beyond the connectivity ecosystem we discuss in telecoms and permeating all areas of our lives.
Within telecoms AI influence is two-fold.
Firstly, AI is directly driving new use cases and telecoms must adapt and optimise how we guarantee and secure access to the AI agents. Deployments are moving away from monolithic network structures, where all queries reference centralized instances in the cloud, to more localized agents. This significantly reduces request response times and creates a flatter, more diversified network architecture. This can be seen in many verticals, from sustainable transport and fintech, to industry 4.0 and smart city use cases.
To support this, we need to work more closely with the wider AI and security community. ZARIOT approached our ecosystem partners and can together create an easy abstraction overlay that manages AI connectivity over cellular, but that can also be expanded to any IP access. This establishes a simple to apply, wholistic solution that can be applied across a diverse estate.
Secondly, AI can also be used to improve the offerings of telecoms operators. Internally tools can streamline complex network investigations. Using AI, 24/7 support teams have continual instant access to insights that were once restricted to working hours when third tier support was available.
ZARIOT has already embraced this using the Agentic Network Assistant (ANA), developed by our sister company, Cellusys. This has substantially reduced our overall support ticket resolution time, while also garnering positive feedback from customers regarding the comprehensiveness of support team responses.
The network can also become a hugely valuable resource to AI, providing the end solution enriched data and insights to better optimize connectivity and overall solution performance. This access is standardized by MCP (Model Context Protocol), which provides a universal interface for reading files, executing functions, and handling contextual prompts. Integrating AI systems provides telecoms data and tools making cellular an integral element, rather than just a transport pipe. The ZARIOT portal has always been complemented on its API first design and is looking to fully support MCP by Q3 2026.
Post quantum security and SGP.32 support will also be key initiatives for ZARIOT at MWC. Five years since our GLOMO for “Best Mobile Authentication & Security Solution”, we are still pushing the boundaries and offering a service that embeds flexibility, security and value for our customers at its core.
If you would like to speak to our executive team to understand if and how ZARIOT could improve your connectivity, contact us now via events@zariot.com.