China Mobile 2026 Mobile Network Conference Renamed: From Global Developer Conference to MobileLink 2026

When AI completes its deep leap from a tool to a productive force, the integration of network, computing, and intelligence has already moved from a cutting-edge industry concept to the practical foundation supporting the intelligent economy as it takes root. The 2026 Mobile Network Conference MobileLink 2026, about to open in Guangzhou, is another new renaming of China Mobile's annual industry event: from the Global Developer Conference and the Global Partner Conference to today's Mobile Network Conference. This renaming is by no means superficial packaging, but rather a reexamination by the operator, in the face of the arrival of the intelligent economy, of network value, its own role, and the model of industry cooperation.

The theme of the conference has also been set as "Co-creating a New Form of the Intelligent Economy," with the renaming and the theme echoing each other: "Mobile Network Conference" answers "what supports the intelligent economy," bringing the integrated foundation of network, computing, and intelligence to the fore; "Co-creating a New Form of the Intelligent Economy" answers "where the intelligent economy is heading," setting a new value coordinate for the event. The renaming anchors the technology narrative, while the theme points out the industry direction, jointly declaring: this is no longer just an annual communications industry conference, but a site for co-building the foundation for the intelligent economy.

The digital economy has already passed through the development stages of network popularization and platform expansion, and has entered a new stage of the intelligent economy centered on solving real-world tasks and the large-scale operation of AI agents; operators have accordingly upgraded from basic connectivity service providers to builders of new collaborative infrastructure in the era of intelligent connectivity.

I. Industry Iteration: The Digital Economy Enters a New Stage of the Intelligent Economy, and the Value Connotation of Networks Is Completely Reconstructed

In the development of the digital economy, the early Global Developer Conference corresponded to the stage of network popularization, with the core being to open basic network capabilities and solve the question of "what content is carried on top of the network"; the subsequent Global Partner Conference matched the wave of platform economy development, focusing on aggregating resources across the entire industry chain and exploring paths for traffic commercialization.

Today's Mobile Network Conference, by contrast, faces a brand-new stage of intelligent economy development. The intelligent economy is essentially a "task economy"—if the core proposition of the digital economy era was "connection" and "traffic," the core proposition of the intelligent economy era is "solving" and "execution." AI is no longer merely a tool for generating content, but an agent capable of autonomous planning, resource scheduling, and completing real-world tasks; data, computing power, and intelligence are beginning to integrate into production and life like water and electricity, becoming basic services available on demand, and the constant emergence of a large number of fragmented real-world tasks cannot be separated from the coordination of all three.

The "network" discussed here has long since moved beyond the narrow definition of traditional communications. In the past, the core function of the network was to transmit bit data, serving as an information channel; entering the stage of the Internet of Agents, the network simultaneously shoulders the key functions of scheduling computing power resources, distributing intelligent tasks, and ensuring efficient collaboration among multiple AI units. Take embodied intelligence as an example: if all computing power were deployed on terminal devices, it would always be difficult to balance cost and power consumption, and commercialization would encounter numerous obstacles. Only by relying on the mobile communications foundation to build a cloud-edge-device collaborative system, and on high-bandwidth, low-latency networks to push computing power down to edge nodes and spread the cost of computing power investment, can the bottlenecks be cleared.

Placing "network" at the core of the conference name is essentially pointing out an objective industry bottleneck: the ceiling for the large-scale application of large models, agents, and various AI hardware is to a large extent limited by the scheduling capability of integrated networks. Without the support of a new-generation computing-network integration foundation, even if artificial intelligence can complete single-point effect verification, it will be difficult to move toward large-scale commercial deployment with distributed, multi-agent collaboration. This is precisely the inner meaning of the evolution direction "from mobile communications, to mobile computing, toward mobile intelligence."

II. Role Reconstruction: Operators Move from "Enablers" to "Empowerers," Completing a Reconfirmation of Their Own Positioning

Behind the renaming of the conference is a clear identity calibration by China Mobile: upgrading from a supplier of communications services to the main builder of public collaborative infrastructure in the era of intelligent connectivity. So-called "enabling" is more about directly outputting mature products and services to promote business deployment and cooperation; while "empowering" is about building an open underlying architecture so that various innovation entities in the market can rely on this infrastructure to independently carry out innovation and solve real social production problems.

In the landscape of the intelligent economy, operators need to simultaneously assume the triple identity of infrastructure cornerstone, industry-driving leader, and open ecosystem organizer. On the one hand, the enterprise's own exploration of digital business is the best testing ground for new technologies, honing and accumulating full-stack capabilities in computing, network, and data through practice; on the other hand, it opens up foundation resources such as communications networks, edge computing power, and intelligent Token services to large model companies, agent innovation teams, and vertical industries. At present, AI has entered the stage of multi-agent collaboration, which further requires operators to coordinate the layout of computing power networks, communications networks, and IoT sensing networks, connect underlying resources, and balance cost and effectiveness.

This positioning also aligns with the national "six networks" modern infrastructure construction layout. It is necessary both to solidify the two core foundations of next-generation communications networks and computing power networks, and to export digital and intelligent capabilities outward to help traditional infrastructure such as water networks, new-type power grids, and logistics networks upgrade digitally. But this is not merely a policy response; it is the result of the natural evolution of business logic—only by building collaborative infrastructure open to the whole society can operators have the opportunity to deeply integrate into the new value creation space spawned by the intelligent economy and break out of the limitations of traditional traffic operations. The reserve of over a thousand 6G patents and continuous technical verification are all consolidating the technical foundation for this new type of collaborative facility.

III. Shift in the Center of Value: From Mining Applications to Building the Foundation, Opening Up New Value Space for the Industry

In the era of the platform economy, most of the industry's dividends came from various applications and platform services. The underlying communications networks required continuous investment in heavy-asset construction, but the industry's returns flowed more to upper-layer application vendors. In the era of the intelligent economy, the industry situation is already different: foundation-level conditions such as computing power scheduling, network latency, large-scale connectivity, and intelligent Token supply are directly tied to whether various AI applications can be implemented and run, and whether they can truly be put into commercial use. Infrastructure itself is beginning to become a highly critical source of value for industry development.

This is also the fundamental reason why operators are focusing on honing full-stack capabilities across computing, network, and data. Platforms such as the "Mobile Tiangong" industrial internet platform, large-model practices in the steel industry, and the Token Operations Ecosystem Alliance cannot be viewed merely as independent government-enterprise projects one by one; their core idea is to turn the foundation-level capabilities formed by the integration of network, computing power, and intelligence into standardized services that can be provided externally, supplying all industries and tapping new development space.

The value of the foundation is not only oriented toward industry; it also extends to inclusive terminal scenarios: the MoMA mobile model service platform gathers more than 300 mainstream AI models, sharply reducing the unit Token cost and making AI readily available; intelligent communications inject AI into the entire call process, enabling functions such as subtitles, translation, and AI call answering, upgrading a phone call from "hearing clearly" to "understanding and getting things done"; and AI creation applications such as Cloud Storage Beauty bring the threshold for content production down so that anyone can get started. Foundation-level capabilities are sinking from serving thousands of industries to benefiting thousands of households—this is the most intuitive footnote to the implementation of "co-creating a new form of the intelligent economy."

This development approach is also reflected in the layout of overseas business. The going-global of integrated network-computing-intelligence digital and intelligent capabilities is no longer limited to exporting equipment and basic communications; rather, it exports a complete set of digital foundation capabilities, replicating the foundation experience proven in the domestic market to overseas markets.

IV. Ecosystem Model Upgrade: From Resource Matching to Task Orientation, Building a Multi-Party Co-Created Industry Community

The ecosystem built at earlier partner conferences leaned toward a stock resource matching model: industry partners gathered together, exchanged existing resources, and facilitated project signings, with the starting point of cooperation built on each party's existing products. The theme of this conference proposes "co-creating a new form of the intelligent economy," and the "co-creation" here has a completely different meaning.

In the intelligent economy environment, a large number of real, specific, and diverse problems to be solved have emerged, and such complex issues are difficult for a single entity to complete independently. The mature development of the agent internet requires the collaborative participation of multiple forces: operators are responsible for solidifying the underlying network architecture; developers innovate and develop agents based on scenarios; and policy-level guidance and regulation are also indispensable for addressing the new legal and ethical issues brought by AI.

The new ecosystem no longer takes product transactions as its primary goal, but instead takes real business tasks as its starting point: operators output the network, computing power, and Token foundation; developers and AI companies build scenario-based agents on top of the foundation; all industries put forward real business demands; and regulators improve the corresponding rule boundaries, with multiple parties collaborating to solve problems.

This is a two-way symbiotic model: the foundation provides development soil for industry partners, and the practical feedback from partners in frontline scenarios in turn drives the continuous iteration of network and computing power capabilities. Precisely for this reason, after the conference was renamed, the weight of ecosystem cooperation has not been weakened at all; instead, it has been elevated to an even more critical position.

Conclusion

This adjustment of the 2026 Mobile Network Conference is not merely an iteration of the conference's positioning, but also a proactive layout made by the operator in response to the broader trends of digital industry development.

The core of this change is not to re-elevate the network's voice, but to break out of the inherent mindset of pipeline-style services and build a multi-party collaborative industry collaboration framework oriented toward real tasks, implementing the direction of "co-creating a new form of the intelligent economy." The strength of foundation capabilities determines whether various AI innovations can continue to move toward the industry frontline.

The upcoming Guangzhou conference is precisely an excellent window for observing this new industrial change.

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