Mavenir's MeeC project cut 5G core energy use by 65% for Deutsche Telekom. The win pressures Nokia and Ericsson as carriers prioritize real-world power savings.
Mavenir won Deutsche Telekom's Partner of the Year Award for Best Network Innovation, the companies said Thursday. The award recognized the Most Energy Efficient Core (MeeC) project, which cut 5G Core network energy consumption by up to 65% during low-traffic periods.
The MeeC project, launched in 2025, uses AI-driven traffic analysis and predictive workload optimization to reduce energy waste across 5G Core functions. Deutsche Telekom runs the software on its Horizontal TelCo Cloud architecture, which the carrier positions as a blueprint for the telecom industry. The energy savings were achieved in a live commercial network, not a lab test.
Pardeep Kohli, Mavenir's CEO, said the award reflects what cloud-native architecture and AI automation can deliver at scale. "Sustainable networks are not a future ambition – they are an operational reality," he said.
Deutsche Telekom also jointly presented the award to AMD, which supplied processors for the MeeC initiative. AMD is competing with Intel and NVIDIA for telco infrastructure workloads, a market that grows as carriers virtualize core network functions. Mavenir's win signals that carriers are moving past proof-of-concept energy trials into procurement decisions based on real-world power savings.
For investors tracking the telco cloud theme, the read-through is straightforward. Mavenir is private. Its technology stack competes with public-company offerings from Nokia and Ericsson in the 5G Core software layer. A Deutsche Telekom endorsement at this scale pressures rivals to match the energy-efficiency claims. AMD's inclusion also reinforces the argument that x86 processors can handle telco-grade AI inference workloads, a narrative that matters for its data-center positioning.
The award comes as European carriers face mounting regulatory and cost pressure to cut network power bills. Deutsche Telekom's own sustainability targets call for a 25% reduction in energy intensity by 2030. MeeC's 65% savings figure, if replicable across the carrier's broader footprint, would materially change the timeline for those goals.
Mavenir has deployed with more than 300 operators globally. The company's pitch – telco-first, cloud-native software – positions it as an alternative to the hardware-integrated stacks of traditional vendors. The Deutsche Telekom award is its highest-profile carrier validation to date.
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