ZTE unveils localized roadmap for Eurasia's digital future at GSMA M360 Eurasia 2026

Partner Content ZTE participated in the GSMA M360 Eurasia 2026 conference held in Samarkand, where James Zhang, Senior Vice President of ZTE and President of the Asia-Pacific and CIS regions, delivered a compelling keynote speech. Titled "Bridging the Divide and Empowering All - Shaping Eurasia's Next-Gen Intelligent Infrastructure," the address outlined ZTE's strategic blueprint: aligning optimal TCO models with local market requirements to build anti-fragile AI infrastructure. As GSMA Eurasia report highlights, although the mobile industry accounts for only around 0.5% of GDP directly, it enables as much as 7.7% of wider economic value. "Behind this huge opportunity, however, ZTE also faces a new challenge. Multi-generation networks are increasing operational complexity, while AI is driving explosive demand for traffic and computing power. Networks and computing can no longer operate in isolation. They must converge into an integrated system of connectivity, computing, and intelligent services. In simple terms, we are moving from transmitting bits to carrying tokens," James Zhang pointed out. Trend of AI Development Looking globally, there is a very clear trend: more and more countries are elevating localized AI capabilities to a matter of national strategy. Across Eurasia, governments, operators and industry partners are joining forces to deeply cultivate local LLMs and tailored AI services. When AI enters critical areas such as finance, e-government, education, healthcare and smart cities, it must understand local languages, respect local cultures and meet local regulatory and security requirements. James Zhang outlined that for mass AI deployment, security and anti-fragility are necessary. With rising complexity, local failures are bound to happen. To solve this, ZTE provides advanced cross-domain Autonomous Networks. It allows ZTE's network and computing foundation to self-heal during fluctuations and automatically optimize under pressure, transforming uncertainty into reliable business assurance. The Energy Efficiency Challenge He posed two fundamental questions to industry leaders about the AI era: Can people and businesses afford to use AI from an energy efficiency and cost standpoint? And can AI be sustained over the long term from a supply-side certainty standpoint? James Zhang argued that if computing and energy costs remain too high, AI will not empower every industry. It will become a luxury available only to a few giants and a handful of high-value scenarios. This led to his first major proposal: the core metric of AI competition is changing. "AI competition is not only about who has more computing power, but who delivers intelligence more efficiently," James Zhang said. This is critical as AI Agents and large-scale inference go mainstream, making workloads highly dynamic and unpredictable. This is where ZTE's system-level design creates value. He explained: "ZTE is building an E2E intelligent foundation. On one hand, ZTE improves system-level efficiency through advanced liquid cooling and modular data centers. On the other hand, ZTE combines green energy, energy storage, intelligent energy management and computing scheduling to create a safer and more resilient energy system." As a real-world example, he cited ZTE's data center cooperation with Tencent, where integrated energy-saving technologies reduced energy consumption by 30% with a PUE below 1.25. "True efficiency cannot come from a single component. It requires deep synergy across facilities, networks, and computing," he added. Three Key Capabilities for Sustainable AI Addressing the second question - how to build AI infrastructure that can be kept running continuously - James Zhang outlined three essential capabilities. First, Supply Assurance. Sovereign AI must be built on certainty. Only when the underlying infrastructure is stable, deliverable, and continuously evolvable can AI truly enter core business processes. This is where ZTE's long-term experience matters. Today, ZTE serves over 500 operators and 2 billion users across 160 countries and regions. This gives ZTE a deep understanding of local regulatory requirements and real operational challenges in different markets. In Kazakhstan, for example, ZTE is working with Beeline on the Giga City 2.0 project, driving large-scale joint innovation in green sites and AI-driven solutions. Second, Ecosystem Openness. Sovereign AI must not be locked into one chip, one model, or one technology path. ZTE's open platform already supports over 100 types of GPUs and is compatible with more than 200 SOTA models. For vertical industries, this broad compatibility lowers the threshold for localized deployment and reduces the complexity of future evolution. Third, Cost-Effectiveness. If AI always depends on the most advanced data centers and the most expensive computing clusters, it will never become truly inclusive. ZTE's open platform can accurately match computing resources according to model size, latency requirements, and business value. It can support high-value scenarios while also opening the last mile for inclusive intelligence to reach local ecosystems. "Affordable AI does not mean 'low-spec AI'. It is about optimizing TCO to set AI free, making it easier to deploy, sustainable, and ready for scale," James Zhang emphasized. Localizing the Blueprint for Eurasia James Zhang acknowledged that China's massive digital economy offers a valuable reference blueprint for Eurasia, but ZTE's approach is never about blindly copying a single model. "The answer lies in integrating proven engineering capabilities, ecosystem experience and commercial frameworks with the distinct local needs of Eurasian markets," he explained. Over the past few years, ZTE has already collaborated with China's leading tech pioneers in cloud computing, LLMs, and smart logistics, and has forged a highly resilient ecosystem. In Eurasia, this localized approach is already in action through projects such as the Beeline Bukhara Data Center in Uzbekistan and the AI supercomputing infrastructure at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. "ZTE brings a proven open ecosystem and a commercially verified TCO methodology. ZTE believes AI must not remain a privilege for a few. They must become inclusive infrastructure that every industry and every user can afford. This is the ultimate meaning of Affordable AI: bridging the divide and empowering all," he concluded. From Simple Traffic Carriers into Full-domain Orchestrators In the future, when drones, robots, autonomous vehicles, AI glasses and smartphones interact with each other, they will not simply need traditional data packages. They will need ms-level network assurance, edge computing and AI capability. This means operators will evolve from simple traffic carriers into full-domain orchestrators of connectivity, computing, models, and security. The future business model may include tokens, inference times, model calls, latency guarantees and agent tasks, turning AI capabilities into a new form of "traffic" that is on demand and pay-as-you-go. Therefore, the future value of operators is not only to sell more traffic. It is about becoming the capability orchestration platform and value settlement platform behind the intelligence of everything. ZTE's Growing Footprint in Central Asia Beyond the keynote, ZTE has established a substantial presence across Central Asia, contributing to digital transformation in several key areas. In Uzbekistan, ZTE constructed the Beeline Bukhara container data center, the country's first Tier IIIcertified modular facility. Using standardized container architecture, it reduces deployment time by 60 percent compared to traditional construction and guarantees 99.982 percent availability for finance, government, and cloud services. The facility fills a critical gap in highavailability modular data centers and provides a core computing foundation for the country's digital transformation. In parallel, ZTE has invested in local talent development through a deep partnership with Tashkent University of Information Technologies (TUIT) and other universities, bridging the gap between academic learning and realworld ICT operations. In Kazakhstan, ZTE has delivered a series of transformative projects. In household digitalisation, ZTE partnered with the largest local telecom operator to bring gigabit level speed to hundreds of thousands of families, enabling online education, remote work and 4K video at scale. In mobile networks, ZTE worked with Beeline to modernise the wireless infrastructure, boosting coverage, speed and peak bandwidth by over 35 percent. In the research domain, ZTE built a supercomputing data centre at AlFarabi Kazakh National University, one of the most powerful in Central Asia, supporting AI research, climate modelling, and the development of Kazakh-language large language models. Through these initiatives, ZTE continues to demonstrate its commitment to building secure, trusted, and inclusive digital ecosystems across Central Asia, helping the region become a benchmark for digital transformation among emerging economies. Contributed by ZTE.