When Infrastructure Becomes Narrative

AI in the RAN and the cultural design of Europe’s digital public space

Europe has always expressed its values through infrastructure. Roman roads were not merely paths of stone; they were instruments of order and reach. Railways shaped the industrial nation-state. Broadcasting networks created mass culture and democratic publics. Infrastructure, in other words, has never been neutral. It is where political intent quietly hardens into daily reality.

Today, Europe is building a new kind of infrastructure — one that no longer merely connects, but decides. Artificial intelligence is moving into the Radio Access Network (RAN): the layer of telecom infrastructure that governs how devices connect, how signals are prioritised and how digital presence unfolds in physical space. This shift is often framed as a technical upgrade — lower latency, higher efficiency, smarter traffic management. Yet this framing misses the deeper transformation underway.

AI in the RAN marks the moment when infrastructure itself becomes narrative.

From connectivity to interpretation

For decades, telecom networks were designed to be predictable and largely passive. Signals were transmitted, connections maintained, congestion managed through static rules. Intelligence sat at the edges: in applications, platforms, devices.

With AI entering the RAN, that logic reverses. Networks now interpret context in real time. They decide which signals deserve priority, which applications require ultra-low latency, which data should be processed locally and which can travel onward. These decisions are not neutral. They encode assumptions about value, urgency and legitimacy.

“When algorithms in the cell towers decide which data gets priority, the street itself is being programmed. We need to move from ‘Smart Cities’ to ‘Sovereign Infrastructures’ where citizens control the code.”
— Francesca Bria, former CTO of Barcelona & digital sovereignty advocate

A network that prioritises autonomous mobility tells a different story than one optimised for public broadcasting. A network that enables persistent biometric sensing narrates society differently than one designed for anonymity and decentralised access. Once networks learn to prioritise, they begin to speak.

When infrastructurte becomes narrative

Narratives are not only told through language, images or media. They are embedded in systems that structure possibility.

AI-driven RANs silently define:

• who experiences delay and who does not,
• which services feel instantaneous and which feel marginal,
• whose presence in digital space is amplified and whose is filtered out.

Latency becomes cultural. Access becomes contextual. Speed becomes power.

“Infrastructure is the expression of a cultural philosophy. A European RAN should be able to differentiate in an ‘artisanal’ and local way, rather than imposing a universal efficiency logic that flattens all cultural nuance.”
— Yuk Hui, philosopher of technology, author of Cosmotechnics

This is where infrastructure stops being background and starts becoming authorship. The network no longer merely supports culture — it shapes it.

Europe’s missing question

Europe has invested heavily in governing artificial intelligence. The AI Act categorises risks and regulates use cases. Telecom policy focuses on competition, efficiency and resilience. Creative Europe funds content, creators and cross-border cultural exchange.

Yet a critical question remains largely unasked: What cultural logic is being embedded at the level of the network itself?

“We have spent years working on ‘media pluralism’ on paper. But if AI in the infrastructure creates a commercial ‘fast lane’ for big-tech content at the expense of local media, legislation becomes irrelevant. The RAN layer is the new enforcement layer of cultural diversity.”
— Giuseppe Abbamonte, Director at DG CNECT

AI debates tend to happen at the application layer. Culture policy tends to focus on output: films, media, heritage, digital art. But the conditions under which culture circulates — the invisible architecture of access, speed and visibility — are now being redesigned by machine intelligence. This redesign is happening quietly, through standards, procurement choices and optimisation models. And it is happening now.

The network as public space

The digital public space is no longer a platform. It is a network. As AI enters the RAN, the public sphere migrates from visible interfaces to infrastructural decision-making. This has profound cultural implications.

If networks dynamically differentiate access based on device type, economic value or behavioural prediction, public space fragments. If intelligence remains centralised and opaque, cultural agency erodes. If optimisation is driven purely by commercial demand, diversity becomes inefficient.

Conversely, a network designed as shared cultural infrastructure could:

• enable equal experiential access,
• support local cultural production at the edge,
• preserve pluralism under conditions of scarcity.

These are not technical outcomes. They are design choices.

Sovereignty is where decisions are made

Europe often frames digital sovereignty in terms of data location or cloud capacity. But sovereignty does not reside in storage. It resides in decision-making. AI in the RAN operates where decisions happen fastest and least visibly. It determines how digital reality unfolds at street level, in real time, across borders.

A sovereign Europe is not one that merely hosts its data, but one that understands and governs the intelligence embedded in its connective tissue. This is why AI in the RAN matters far beyond telecom engineering. It is geopolitical, social — and cultural.

A Creative Europe perspective

Creative Europe has traditionally focused on supporting cultural expression within existing infrastructures. But infrastructures are no longer neutral stages. They are becoming active participants. If culture is shaped by the conditions of circulation, then infrastructure design becomes a cultural act.

AI-powered networks can be conceived as:

• market-driven optimisation engines,
• security-oriented control systems,
• or shared cultural infrastructures that preserve openness, diversity and access.

Creative Europe belongs in this third space. Not as a funder of content layered on top of networks, but as a voice in how those networks are imagined, designed and governed.

The choice embedded in code

Europe is at a quiet but decisive moment. AI in the RAN will not announce itself with dramatic interfaces or consumer breakthroughs. Its impact will be felt gradually — in what loads instantly, what lags, what becomes viable and what quietly disappears.

Infrastructure always tells a story. The only question is whether Europe chooses to write it consciously. When infrastructure becomes narrative, culture can no longer afford to look away.