Huawei has released the Intelligent WAN White Paper in AI Era, co-authored with research firm GlobalData, at its annual HUAWEI CONNECT 2026 conference held in Shanghai on September 17, 2026. The paper outlines how wide-area networks (WANs — the long-distance data infrastructure connecting organisations across cities and countries) must be fundamentally redesigned to handle the demands of AI workloads, including unpredictable traffic spikes, low-latency edge processing, and end-to-end security. Huawei executives and industry analysts at the event argued that conventional networks are ill-equipped for the agentic AI era and called for a shift toward intelligent, self-healing, and quantum-resistant connectivity as a foundation for national digital transformation strategies.