There is a palpable shift at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year. Now in its 20th year, conversations at MWC have evolved far beyond connectivity, reflecting an industry that is redefining itself around AI, cloud and silicon. Telecom now sits at the centre of a powerful convergence between telecom, media, technology and semiconductors.

During the opening session at HCLTech’s booth at the event, Anil Ganjoo, Global Chief Growth Officer, HCLTech, described the industry as one that has “been constantly evolving” and “constantly disrupting and being disrupted.”

“It is now a confluence of not just telecom, but media and technology, which includes silicon as well,” he said. As consumers, he added, “our own habits have changed. Our consumption models have changed. Our expectations have changed, and that’s what is really driving all the changes in this industry.”

For Ganjoo, that constant reinvention is precisely what makes this moment exciting.

AI as the industry’s nervous system

The shift from connectivity to cloud to AI-native enterprises marks a structural transformation.

“In the past, AI was something you would bolt on, almost something you felt you had to include in whatever you were building,” reflected Ganjoo. “From there, it has now become an integral part of everything in your organization. It’s like the nervous system of the body.”

That shift, he explained, changes everything: “Anything from your products that you’re selling, has to be AI-enabled. Your operations have to be highly AI-centric. Your customer experience has to be driven by AI.”

AI is no longer an overlay. “Whether it’s your networks, your data, your connectivity, as well as your complete operations and customer experience, the whole fabric is AI value, and that’s really what has completely changed.”

Convergence in the palm of your hand

For consumers, the clearest example of this convergence is the device itself.

“[Mobile] devices are a great example,” said Ganjoo. “It’s not just a phone. It’s your camera, it’s your search engine, it’s your AI tool engine. It’s platform based. It’s edge connectivity or edge processing. So essentially, it’s your media device as well.”

The convergence once discussed across technology, telecom, entertainment and media, and now deeply intertwined with semiconductors, is tangible. “All convergence which was discussed in the past, we are holding it today,” he noted, adding that expectations now revolve around “high performance, high speed, high quality and [a] one stop shop.”

The same applies to connected vehicles. Today, cars are “based on thousands of chipsets,” transforming them into intelligent, connected platforms that extend the digital experience beyond the home.

From networks to monetization

On the enterprise side, the challenge shifts from innovation to impact.

“If you look at telcos, which used to be typically a network centric organization, or connectivity organization,” explained Ganjoo, many have reached a point where “ARPU levels have kind of reached its peak.”

The imperative now is monetization. “They have consumers. They have data. That data needs to be monetized. They also have a network that needs to be highly monetized, which means it has to be programmable.”

The core question becomes: “How do we take all these investments made on networks, as well as all the information and data that we have, and translate it into good use cases which are driving business benefits for enterprise customers?”

Speed is a differentiator. “In the past, it used to take months to roll out a new product or a proposition or a service. We are now able to help them deliver it in days.”

Modernizing OSS/BSS systems and embedding AI makes “real-time billing” and “real-time marketing” possible, capabilities that were previously out of reach.

Silicon, platforms and the full stack

The transformation spans every layer of the stack.

“If you are a telco, you are looking at wanting to be a tech company. If you are a media company, you are also wanting to play in the tech sector. They also want to play with silicon, for example,” said Ganjoo.

He described the growth opportunity as lying across “the whole stack of AI, from silicon, data and AI infrastructure, all the way to the platforms, and finally, the apps.”

HCLTech’s long-standing silicon engineering capabilities now extend to “custom silicon engineering” and AI inferencing use cases. At the same time, AI data centres must be “deployed, designed, built and operated,” requiring new skills and platform-centric approaches.

The strategy, he explained, is increasingly IP-led. Through acquisitions in communications solutions, HCLTech now brings IP-led capabilities across OSS, BSS and subscriber data management platforms serving billions of devices globally. With additional data-focused acquisitions and others in analytics and governance, HCLTech has strengthened its ability to deliver across silicon, data, AI and networks.

“Ultimately, customers are looking for outcomes and not just an input-based model,” he said. Those outcomes include “customer experience improvement, churn reduction…and monetization.”

Sovereignty and resilience

Geopolitics and supply chain shocks have elevated sovereignty to a board-level issue.

“It’s absolutely the need of the hour,” said Ganjoo. Reflecting on lessons from COVID, he pointed to the example of “a $75,000 car…not getting shipped out because of one chip of a $10 chip.”

As a result, “you are now seeing a lot of fabs which are being built in different geographies,” alongside sovereign data requirements and AI data centres “getting built in those geographies.”

“Yes, data, sovereign, fabs, all of these are real,” he emphasized. From custom chip design through to governance-layer solutions for sovereign AI data centres, these capabilities are increasingly central to long-term competitiveness.

Partnerships as differentiation

In a landscape evolving this quickly, collaboration is essential.

“More so than ever before, there is no one firm that can do it all,” said Ganjoo.

HCLTech’s approach centres on deep ecosystem relationships: “Partnerships doesn’t mean it is reselling their products. We are actually co-creating products as well as solutions along with them, highly customized for every industry and highly customized for a business use case.”

This use-case-driven, industry-specific and geography-specific approach is what, in his view, drives differentiation “in this marketplace with strong partners.”

Change as opportunity

Asked what excites him most, Ganjoo’s answer was simple: “Change.”

“It is exciting because whilst most people may see it as disruptive and go into defense mode, to me it is growth, great and endless opportunities.

For him, the defining factor is mindset and seeing disruption not as threat, but as a catalyst to “align to customers’ business outcomes” and bring “all parts together to address this opportunity.”