Telcos race to transition from ‘dumb pipes’ to AI-enabled tech players

Barcelona – Global telecommunications firms are talking about advances in major technologies such as Artificial Intelligence as they see infection away from being considered as “dumb pipes” behind the Internet.

At the Mobile World Congress Technology Conference in Barcelona, ​​the CEO of several telecom companies explained how they are depositing money in new technological innovations, including AI, next generation 5G and 6G networks, satellite internet and even smart cities.

Makoto Takahashi, President and CEO of Japanese Telecom Giant KddiThere is a detailed plan for the construction of a smart city in Tokyo, which rolls out the direct-to-cell satellite internet connectivity in the partnership with the Starlink Venture of Taknawa Gateway City in Tokyo.

Ralph Mupita, CEO of Africa’s largest mobile network operator MTN, also took on stage to share how the company has made significant progress towards becoming a company that provides wireless connectivity and fintech services such as payment, e-commerce, insurance, loans and remittances.

“The Telco business has served us well. It has been repeated since then. But the future is actually about the future of platforms,” ​​Mupita said in her main thing, the company has invested aggressively in other fields such as media streaming and financial services.

Some lingas that have collected steam in the Telco industry for the last few years Is The phrase “TECHCO,” a portment of the word “Telco” and “Tech”.

The term refers to the idea of ​​a telco firm that operates more like a technical company-one that invests in state-of-the-art technology and provides digital services to consumers to help them to make money from significant capital expenditure allocated to upgrade their wireless networks.

For two decades, tech veteran Meta, Google, Heroic, Apple, Microsoft And Netflix In a world there is flourish -Fula where materials can be transported directly to people’s equipment, consumers can originally communicate with each other, and data can be stored or streamted online without cumbersome infrastructure – thanks to innovations such as all internet, smartphones and clouds.

However, these innovations have disrupted the trade model of telecom firms, at the point where they are now often considered as inherited players who are only to laying cables and other networks infrastructure that enable internet connectivity.

It is a dilemma that earn the Telco brands as the term “dumb pipes”.

“I remember the industry quickly, even before the mobile internet, the UAE state -owned telecommunications company E&K CEO Hetum Dowder said,” I used to be the SMS Killer app even before the mobile internet, “the UAE state -owned telecom company E&K CEO Hetum Dovidar said in a main speech in MWC. “We used to make messages revenue. We used to make voice revenue.”

“All this has been interrupted by over-the-top players over the years, for the fact that today, a lot of telcos packets worldwide have decreased to be a pipe of packets that are receiving data in the network,” said Dower. “And the competition is still not living. They have a scale, they have an investment to go and interrupt further.”

Riyu Young-Sang, CEO SK TelecomArjun Kharpal of CNBC said that South Korean telecommunications giants have seen the AI ​​technology to help improve the efficiency of their wireless network – something that was on continuous performance at the booths of several telco operators in MWC.

“For Telcos, there are two aspects of AI. One is as a user, the other is as a supplier,” said Young-Sang. “As a user, you are a telco business, you can improve your network efficiency, marketing and customer service using AI technology. You can improve your own operations.”

“The second aspect, AI can be a growth engine, a new business opportunity for Telcos,” he said. Data centers, which provide computing ability to run generative AI applications such as Cutgpt, are another major field, where Telcoses like SK Telecom can play an important role, said Young-Sang.

In the western world, the race to create a data center is one that dominates most cloud computing giants – or “hypersscalers” – such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. However, according to the CEO of the SK Telecom firm, globally, its own A-Taiyar data centers are aggressively expanding.

For many telecommunications industry analysts, it is not completely new to demand to convert itself into technical players about fucking about tailcose – companies in the industry have long known their relevance in communication and media is declining.

Consumer and Director of Connectivity in Market Research firm CCS Insight told CNBC that when he is not a very big fan of the word “Tekko”, it is something that the industry continues to focus on and has gathered momentum in terms of AI Boom.

“AI can influence so many areas … and obviously plays that trend around Telco to bring the operators to a position of more than only one connectivity provider,” said Mann.

According to Nick Wilts, CEO of Telco Industry Association TM Forum, the so -called “autonomous network,” or network that can be managed and fixed with limited human inspection, is an area that is quickly receiving traction in the industry.

“Autonomous network is a movement that we see incredibly from the principle to reality from reality, thanks to the progress in AI, combined with a new level of ambition and industry-wide action,” said the Wilts.

This technique “can unlock a step-change in operating and capital efficiency, improves EBITDA and free cashflow, as well as unlocking a lot of improvements in new revenue opportunities and customer experiences,” he said.

Jeetu Patel, Chief Excise Officer of IT networking giant CiscoHe said that he sees Telcos playing an important role as AI network increases the demand for traffic and bandwidth.

“The reality is: Network bandwidth hunger is going to grow rapidly with AI,” Patel told CNBC. “Today, our workforce is 100% human. Tomorrow, you will have AI agents, robots, humanoids, a lot of edge equipment.”

He said, “These agents are going to gossip more and they will need more network traffic and bandwidth,” he said. “I think service providers have an important role. In my mind, the opportunity has not gone for them.”