Telecoms giant Ericsson has launched a new range of AI-ready radios, antennas and RAN software designed to meet growing demand from AI-enabled and augmented reality devices. The portfolio will be showcased ahead of Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona.
New Massive MIMO and remote radios integrate Ericsson Silicon with neural network accelerators, enabling real-time AI inference and improved uplink performance. Higher-power FDD and TDD configurations aim to support data-intensive AI applications while lowering the total cost of ownership.
Updated RAN software introduces AI-managed beamforming, AI-powered outdoor positioning and instant coverage prediction. Additional latency prioritisation tools are designed to deliver faster response times for AI and AR services.
Five new energy-efficient antennas complete the lineup, enhancing spectrum use and simplifying site design. Ericsson says deeper AI integration across hardware and software will help communications service providers monetise next-generation connectivity.
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Derived from the Latin word ‘superanus’, through the French word ‘souveraineté’, sovereignty can be understood as: ‘the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order’ – Britannica. Digital sovereignty, specifically European digital sovereignty, refers to ‘Europe’s ability to act independently in the digital world’.
In 2020, the European Parliament already identified the consequences of reliance on non-EU technologies. From the economic and social influence of non-EU technology companies, which can undermine user control over their personal data, to the slow growth of the EU technology companies and a limitation on the enforcement of European laws.
Today, these concerns persist. From Romanian election interference on TikTok’s platform, Microsoft’s interference with the ICC, to the Dutch government authentication platform being acquired by a US firm, and booming American and Chinese LLMs compared to European LLMs. The EU is at a crossroads between international reliance and homegrown adoption.
The issue of the EU digital sovereignty has gained momentum in the context of recent and significant shifts in US foreign policy toward its allies. In this environment, the pursuit of the EU digital sovereignty appears as a justified and proportionate response, one that might previously have been perceived as unnecessarily confrontational.
In light of this, this analysis’s main points will discuss the rationale behind the EU digital sovereignty (including dependency, innovation and effective compliance), recent European-centric technological and platform shifts, the steps the EU is taking to successfully be digitally sovereign and finally, examples of European alternatives
Rationale behind the move
The reasons for digital sovereignty can be summed up in three main areas: (I) less dependency on non-EU tech, (ii) leading and innovating technological solutions, and (iii) ensuring better enforcement and subsequent adherence to data protection laws/fundamental rights.
(i) Less dependency: Global geopolitical tensions between US-China/Russia push Europe towards developing its own digital capabilities and secure its supply chains. Insecure supply chain makes Europe vulnerable to failing energy grids.
More recently, US giant Microsoft threatened the International legal order by revoking US-sanctioned International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s Microsoft software access, preventing the Chief Prosecutor from working on his duties at the ICC. In light of these scenarios, Europeans are turning to developing more European-based solutions to reduce upstream dependencies.
(ii) Leaders & innovators: A common argument is that Americans innovate, the Chinese copy, and the Europeans regulate. If the EU aims to be a digital geopolitical player, it must position itself to be a regulator which promotes innovation. It can achieve this by upskilling its workforce of non-digital trades into digital ones to transform its workforce, have more EU digital infrastructure (data centres, cloud storage and management software), further increase innovation spending and create laws that truly allow for the uptake of EU technological development instead of relying on alternative, cheaper non-EU options.
(iii) Effective compliance: Knowing that fines are more difficult to enforce towards non-EU companies than the EU companies (ex., Clearview AI), EU-based technological organisations would allow for corrective measures, warnings, and fines to be enforced more effectively. Thus, enabling more adherence towards the EU’s digital agenda and respect for fundamental rights.
Can the EU achieve Digital Sovereignty?
The main speed bumps towards the EU digital sovereignty are: i) a lack of digital infrastructure (cloud storage & data centres), ii) (critical) raw material dependency and iii) Legislative initiatives to facilitate the path towards digital sovereignty (innovation procurement and fragmented compliance regime).
i) lack of digital infrastructure: In order for the EU to become digitally sovereign it must have its own sovereign digital infrastructure.
In practice, the EU relies heavily on American data centre providers (i.e. Equinix, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services) hosted in the EU. In this case, even though the data is European and hosted in the EU, the company that hosts it is non-European. This poses reliance and legislative challenges, such as ensuring adequate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data when it is in transit to the US. Given the EU-US DPF, there is a legal basis for transferring EU personal data to the US.
However, if the DPF were to be struck down (perhaps due to the US’ Cloud Act), as it has been in the past (twice with Schrems I and Schrems II) and potentially Schrems III, there would no longer be a legal basis for the transfer of the EU personal data to a US data centre.
Previously, the EU’s 2022 Directive on critical entities resilience allowed for the EU countries to identify critical infrastructure and subsequently ensure they take the technical, security and organisational measures to assure their resilience. Part of this Directive covers digital infrastructure, including providers of cloud computing services and providers of data centres. From this, the EU has recently developed guidelines for member states to identify critical entities. However, these guidelines do not anticipate how to achieve resilience and leave this responsibility with member states.
ii) Raw material dependency: The EU cannot be digitally sovereign until it reduces some of its dependencies on other countries’ raw materials to build the hardware necessary to be technologically sovereign. In 2025, the EU’s goals were to create a new roadmap towards critical raw material (CRM) sovereignty to rely on its own energy sources and build infrastructure.
Thus, the RESourceEU Action Plan was born in December 2025. This plan contains 6 pillars: securing supply through knowledge, accelerating and promoting projects, using the circular economy and fostering innovation (recycling products which contain CRMs), increasing European demand for European projects (stockpiling CRMs), protecting the single market and partnering with third countries for long-lasting diversification. Practically speaking, part of this plan is to match Europe and or global raw material supply with European demand for European projects.
iii) Legislative initiatives to facilitate the path towards digital sovereignty:
Tackling difficult innovation procurement: the argument is to facilitate its uptake of innovation procurement across the EU. In 2026, the EU is set to reform its public procurement framework for innovation. The Innovation Procurement Update (IPU) team has representatives from over 33 countries (predominantly through law firms, Bird & Bird being the most represented), which recommends that innovation procurement reach 20% of all public procurement.
Another recommendation would help more costly innovative solutions to be awarded procurement projects, which in the past were awarded to cheaper procurement bids. In practice, the lowest price of a public procurement bid is preferred, and if it meets the remaining procurement conditions, it wins the bid – but de-prioritising this non-pricing criterion would enable companies with more costly innovative solutions to win public procurement bids.
Alleviating compliance challenges: lowering other compliance burdens whilst maintaining the digital aquis: recently announced at the World Economic Forum by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU.inc would help cross-border business operations scaling up by alleviating company, corporate, insolvency, labour and taxation law compliance burdens. By harmonising these into a single framework, businesses can more easily grow and deploy cross-border solutions that would otherwise face hurdles.
Power through data: another legislative measure to help facilitate the path towards the EU digital sovereignty is unlocking the potential behind European data. In order to research innovative solutions, data is required. This can be achieved through personal or non-personal data. The EU’s GDPR regulates personal data and is currently undergoing amendments. If the proposed changes to the GDPR are approved, i.e. a broadening of its scope, data that used to be considered personal (and thus required GDPR compliance) could be deemed non-personal and used more freely for research purposes. The Data Act regulate the reuse and re-sharing of non-personal data. It aims to simplify and bolster the fair reuse of non-personal data. Overall, both personal and non-personal data can give important insight that research can benefit from in developing European innovative sovereign solutions.
European alternatives
European companies have already built a network of European platforms, services and apps with European values at heart:
Category
Currently Used
EU Alternative
Comments
Social media
TikTok, X, Instagram
Monnet (Luxembourg)
‘W’ (Sweden)
Monnet is a social media app prioritises connections and non-addictive scrolling. Recently announced ‘W’ replaces ‘X’ and is gaining major traction with non-advertising models at its heart.
Email
Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s gmail
Tuta (mail/calendar), Proton (Germany), Mailbox (Germany), Mailfence (Belgium)
Replace email and calendar apps with a privacy focused business model.
Search engine
Google Search and DuckDuckGo
Qwant (France) and Ecosia (German)
Qwant has focused on privacy since its launch in 2013. Ecosia is an ecofriendly focused business model which helps plant trees when users search
Video conferencing
Microsoft Teams and Slack a
Visio (France), Wire (Switzerland, Mattermost (US but self hosted), Stackfield (Germany), Nextcloud Talk (Germany) and Threema (Switzerland)
These alternatives are end-to-end encrypted. Visio is used by the French Government
Writing tools
Microsoft’s Word & Excel and Google Sheets, Notion
Most of these options provide cloud storage and NexCloud is a recurring alternative across categories.
Finance
Visa and Mastercard
Wero (EU)
Not only will it provide an EU wide digital wallet option, but it will replace existing national options – providing for fast adoption.
LLM
OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek’s LLM
Mistral AI (France) and DeepL (Germany)
DeepL is already wildly used and Mistral is more transparent with its partially open-source model and ease of reuse for developers
Hardware
Semi conductors: ASML (Dutch) Data Center: GAIA-X (Belgium)
ASML is a chip powerhouse for the EU and GAIA-X set an example of EU based data centres with it open-source federated data infrastructure.
A dedicated website called ‘European Alternatives’ provides exactly what it says, European Alternatives. A list with over 50 categories and 100 alternatives
Conclusion
In recent years, the Union’s policy goals have shifted towards overt digital sovereignty solutions through diversification of materials and increased innovation spending, combined with a restructuring of the legislative framework to create the necessary path towards European digital infrastructure.
Whilst this analysis does not include all speed bumps, nor avenues towards the road of the EU digital sovereignty, it sheds light on the EU’s most recent major policy developments. Key questions remain regarding data reuse, its impact on data protection fundamental rights and whether this reshaping of the framework will yield the intended results.
Therefore, how will the EU tread whilst it becomes a more coherent sovereign geopolitical player?
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The European Parliament has disabled AI features on the tablets it provides to lawmakers, citing cybersecurity and data protection concerns. Built-in AI tools like writing and virtual assistants have been disabled, while third-party apps remain mostly unaffected.
The decision follows an assessment highlighting that some AI features send data to cloud services rather than processing it locally.
Lawmakers have been advised to take similar precautions on their personal devices. Guidance includes reviewing AI settings, disabling unnecessary features, and limiting app permissions to reduce exposure of work emails and documents.
Officials stressed that these measures are intended to prevent sensitive data from being inadvertently shared with service providers.
The move comes amid broader European scrutiny of reliance on overseas digital platforms, particularly US-based services. Concerns over data sovereignty and laws like the US Cloud Act have amplified fears that personal and sensitive information could be accessed by foreign authorities.
AI tools, which require extensive access to user data, have become a key focus in ongoing debates over digital security in the EU.
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Ericsson and Microsoft have integrated advanced 5G into Windows 11 to simplify secure enterprise laptop connectivity. The update embeds AI-driven 5G management, enabling IT teams to automate connections and enforce policy-based controls at scale.
The solution combines Microsoft Intune with Ericsson Enterprise 5G Connect, a cloud-based platform that monitors network quality and optimises performance. Enterprises can switch service providers and automatically apply internal connectivity policies.
IT departments can remotely provision eSIMs, prioritise 5G networks, and enforce secure profiles across laptop fleets. Automation reduces manual configuration and ensures consistent compliance across locations and service providers.
The companies say the integration addresses long-standing barriers to adopting cellular-connected PCs, including complexity and fragmented management. Multi-market pilots have preceded commercial availability in the United States, Sweden, Singapore, and Japan.
Additional launches are planned in 2026 across Spain, Germany, and Finland. Executives from both firms describe the collaboration as a step toward AI-ready enterprise devices with secure, always-on connectivity.
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Concerns over privacy safeguards have resurfaced as the European Data Protection Supervisor urges legislators to limit indiscriminate chat-scanning in the upcoming extension of temporary EU rules.
The supervisor warns that the current framework risks enabling broad surveillance instead of focusing on targeted action against criminal content.
The EU institutions are considering a short-term renewal of the interim regime governing the detection of online material linked to child protection.
Privacy officials argue that such measures need clearer boundaries and stronger oversight to ensure that automated scanning tools do not intrude on the communications of ordinary users.
EDPS is also pressing lawmakers to introduce explicit safeguards before any renewal is approved. These include tighter definitions of scanning methods, independent verification, and mechanisms that prevent the processing of unrelated personal data.
According to the supervisor, temporary legislation must not create long-term precedents that weaken confidentiality across messaging services.
The debate comes as the EU continues discussions on a wider regulatory package covering child-protection technologies, encryption and platform responsibilities.
Privacy authorities maintain that targeted tools can be more practical than blanket scanning, which they consider a disproportionate response.
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Mistral AI has strengthened its position in Europe’s AI sector through the acquisition of Koyeb. The deal forms part of its strategy to build end-to-end capacity for deploying advanced AI systems across European infrastructure.
The company has been expanding beyond model development into large-scale computing. It is currently building new data centre facilities, including a primary site in France and a €1.2 billion facility in Sweden, both aimed at supporting high-performance AI workloads.
The acquisition follows a period of rapid growth for Mistral AI, which reached a valuation of €11.7 billion after investment from ASML. French public support has also played a role in accelerating its commercial and research progress.
Mistral AI now positions itself as a potential European technology champion, seeking to combine model development, compute infrastructure and deployment tools into a fully integrated AI ecosystem.
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The cost of running AI systems is shifting towards memory rather than compute, as the price of DRAM has risen sharply over the past year. Efficient memory orchestration is now becoming a critical factor in keeping inference costs under control, particularly for large-scale deployments.
Analysts such as Doug O’Laughlin and Val Bercovici of Weka note that prompt caching is turning into a complex field.
Anthropic has expanded its caching guidance for Claude, with detailed tiers that determine how long data remains hot and how much can be saved through careful planning. The structure enables significant efficiency gains, though each additional token can displace previously cached content.
The growing complexity reflects a broader shift in AI architecture. Memory is being treated as a valuable and scarce resource, with optimisation required at multiple layers of the stack.
Startups such as Tensormesh are already working on cache optimisation tools, while hyperscalers are examining how best to balance DRAM and high-bandwidth memory across their data centres.
Better orchestration should reduce the number of tokens required for queries, and models are becoming more efficient at processing those tokens. As costs fall, applications that are currently uneconomical may become commercially viable.
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Leading Chinese AI developers have unveiled a series of advanced models ahead of the Lunar New Year, strengthening the country’s position in the global AI sector.
Major firms such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu AI introduced new systems designed to support more sophisticated agents, faster workflows and broader multimedia understanding.
Industry observers also expect an imminent release from DeepSeek, whose previous model disrupted global markets last year.
Alibaba’s Qwen 3.5 model provides improved multilingual support across text, images and video while enabling rapid AI agent deployment instead of slower generation pipelines.
ByteDance followed up with updates to its Doubao chatbot and the second version of its image-to-video tool, SeeDance, which has drawn copyright concerns from the Motion Picture Association due to the ease with which users can recreate protected material.
Zhipu AI expanded the landscape further with GLM-5, an open-source model built for long-context reasoning, coding tasks, and multi-step planning. The company highlighted the model’s reliance on Huawei hardware as part of China’s efforts to strengthen domestic semiconductor resilience.
Meanwhile, excitement continues to build for DeepSeek’s fourth-generation system, expected to follow the widespread adoption and market turbulence associated with its V3 model.
Authorities across parts of Europe have restricted the use of DeepSeek models in public institutions because of data security and cybersecurity concerns.
Even so, the rapid pace of development in China suggests intensifying competition in the design of agent-focused systems capable of managing complex digital tasks without constant human oversight.
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A new study by network analytics firm Ookla finds that while global 5G coverage gaps are narrowing, a deeper divide is emerging in network capabilities, with Europe falling behind. The report argues that the real competition is no longer about basic rollout, but about how effectively countries deploy advanced standalone (SA) 5G networks to support innovation, industry, and high-performance services.
According to the findings, North America and leading Asian markets have moved more decisively toward full standalone 5G architectures, achieving faster speeds and improved responsiveness. Gulf Cooperation Council countries have also advanced rapidly, with the region described as a 5G SA performance leader in 2025, delivering median download speeds reportedly more than five times higher than those in Europe.
Europe, by contrast, is characterised as lagging due to slow commercialisation, fragmented device ecosystems, and uneven tariff structures. While some countries, such as Spain, are cited as positive examples, the broader region risks losing ground as others accelerate deployment of 5G Advanced technologies, including enhanced spectrum use and more sophisticated network optimisation tools.
The report highlights national policy frameworks as a decisive factor in 5G competitiveness. Spectrum allocation strategies, infrastructure investment rules, and regulatory innovation are seen as equally important as technical upgrades. The findings come as the European Union advances its proposed Digital Networks Act, which has drawn mixed reactions from industry stakeholders concerned about investment conditions.
Beyond deployment, Ookla stresses that simply launching standalone 5G does not guarantee strong performance. Advanced optimisation strategies, such as cloud-native network design, deeper virtualisation, and improved spectrum efficiency, are key to unlocking the technology’s full potential. Enterprise adoption, initially slow under earlier non-standalone models, is now showing signs of growth, particularly in markets offering network slicing services.
The study concludes that decisions made in the next two years will be critical for long-term digital competitiveness. As 5G increasingly intersects with national AI strategies, industrial policy, and digital sovereignty agendas, countries that treat standalone networks as a strategic priority may gain a structural advantage, while others risk seeing the gap widen further as the transition toward 6G approaches.
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Officials in Russia have confirmed that no plans are underway to restrict access to Google, despite recent public debate about the possibility of a technical block. Anton Gorelkin, a senior lawmaker, said regulators clarified that such a step is not being considered.
Concerns centre on the impact a ban would have on devices running Android, which are used by a significant share of smartphone owners in the country.
A block on Google would disrupt essential digital services instead of encouraging the company to resolve ongoing legal disputes involving unpaid fines.
Gorelkin noted that court proceedings abroad are still in progress, meaning enforcement options remain open. He added that any future move to reduce reliance on Google services should follow a gradual pathway supported by domestic technological development rather than abrupt restrictions.
The comments follow earlier statements from another lawmaker, Andrey Svintsov, who acknowledged that blocking Google in Russia is technically feasible but unnecessary.
Officials now appear focused on creating conditions that would allow local digital platforms to grow without destabilising existing infrastructure.
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