Building telco clouds with open source

At MWC Barcelona 2026, Canonical is demonstrating how telecommunications operators and enterprises can design and operate a cloud on their own terms: sovereign, cost-effective, and built on open platforms that span from core data centers to the intelligent edge.

One of the demos is the result of Canonical’s collaboration with Ecrio, a leader in AI-powered critical communication software optimized for private mobile and edge deployments. Ecrio Edge AI Communication Platform is an end-to-end platform that combines edge AI and communications to enable rapid human oversight where automation alone falls short. The platform delivers actionable and distributed inferencing, intelligent human-to-machine communications, and full support for generative and agentic AI, with a companion app for rugged phones, tablets, and smart glasses for human escalation.

Our demo with Ecrio showcases a compact and ruggedized edge cloud deployment which combines networking and AI resources to serve real-world use cases such as worker safety and crowd management. Together, Canonical and Ecrio are showcasing how cloud-native, open-source infrastructure enables modern telco services while preserving operator control, flexibility, and long-term sustainability.

Visit Canonical’s booth (Hall 2, stand 2D20) to see a real-world telco cloud stack in action, integrating open infrastructure, edge AI, and mission-critical communications and running on a Dell PowerEdge XR8000 powered by Intel Xeon Scalable Processors.

A cloud on your own terms

Telecommunications operators face increasing pressure to modernize infrastructure while avoiding vendor lock-in, controlling costs, and meeting sovereignty requirements. This demo demonstrates how Canonical addresses these challenges with a hardened, long-term supported open source foundation consisting of Ubuntu, the securely designed, enterprise-grade operating system for telco workloads, and Canonical Kubernetes, the production-grade platform for cloud-native network functions and AI applications.

Together, Ubuntu and Canonical Kubernetes form the backbone of an open telco cloud architecture that gives operators the freedom to deploy, scale, and evolve their networks on their own terms, across public cloud, private cloud, and edge environments.

Cloud-native edge AI communications with Ecrio

Running on Ubuntu and Canonical Kubernetes, Ecrio’s Edge AI Communication platform demonstrates how critical communication services can be delivered using modern, cloud-native architectures. Ecrio’s solution provides 3GPP standards-compliant voice and video calling, messaging, mission-critical push-to-talk capabilities, and AI-driven orchestration and analytics designed for edge and private mobile networks.

Built on a modular architecture, the platform includes an MCP-based AI Workload Orchestrator to enable sophisticated automation workflows which use connected cameras, industrial IoT sensors, and Enterprise data. The platform serves a wide range of industries – including oil and gas, mining, chemicals, manufacturing, retail, utilities, healthcare, and more – driving efficiency, safety, and innovation at scale.

Enabled by Canonical’s open infrastructure software, Ecrio shows how communication platforms can be deployed consistently from the core to the edge, fully integrated with modern cloud-native workflows.

Edge AI and ecosystem demos at MWC

The joint demo emphasizes practical, production-ready edge AI use cases, highlighting how open-source infrastructure accelerates innovation across the telco ecosystem. Live demonstrations at Canonical’s booth include real-time video analytics at the edge, workplace safety monitoring and situational awareness, and AI-driven operational intelligence across distributed environments.

Ecrio’s communication and orchestration layers complement these scenarios, illustrating how AI-powered human-machine communication fits naturally into a broader telco cloud and edge AI architecture.

This integrated approach enables operators to deploy intelligent services closer to users while maintaining a consistent, open platform across the entire network.

Build your cloud with Canonical

As demonstrated at MWC Barcelona this year, the combination of Canonical’s open source cloud infrastructure with Ecrio’s edge-optimized communication services represents a new generation of telco cloud stacks:

• Sovereign by design
• Extensible through open ecosystems
• Cost-efficient without sacrificing performance or security

With Canonical’s trusted open source, operators and enterprises can modernize network operations, enable private 5G and edge cloud deployments, and unlock new AI-driven services without surrendering control of their technology stack.

To learn more about this project or how you could benefit, visit Canonical’s booth at MWC Barcelona 2026 in Hall 2, 2D20 or contact us for more information.