Summary Bullets:

• Telcos can use AI both internally and in customer facing-roles to achieve differentiation.

• There is an opportunity for telcos to help enterprises adopt AI and become AI enablers – both for large enterprises and the SMB market.

“Nobody knows how AI will impact networks!” so said the CEO of one of the world’s largest telecoms technology vendors at a recent industry event. In this statement lies the potential opportunity and the potential challenge for telcos in becoming major players in the AI boom.

AI will clearly drive data volumes at massive scale. Some predict that AI will have a bigger impact on networks than even cloud. The benefit for telcos therefore seems clear – more data and more complex networks means more spending with network and connectivity providers.

We have been here before, however. The cloud and SaaS booms have benefitted many and created some of the world’s largest businesses. Meanwhile, telcos are left paying for expensive network infrastructure while data prices are increasingly commoditized and overlay technology means that network owning providers can be sidelined.

Since telcos cannot compete as providers of AI platforms, are telcos again doomed to miss out? The answer will be “yes” if they are not proactive. But all is not lost, and there are opportunities out there.

At the large enterprise/multination corporation (MNC) end of the market, telcos will not be able to compete with the big consulting houses for wide ranging visions of implementing AI across entire businesses. However, there will be significant need for tactical help on how to deliver the hybrid cloud infrastructure and networks required to support the data lakes necessary to enable AI and machine learning to happen.

Telcos can also play a role in deploying AI in an increasingly security and data compliance-focused world. It is not enough merely to create a data lake – it needs to happen in a way that is compliant with local data sovereignty laws. These laws impact where data is stored, but also who is accessing the data and from where. The right network solutions with access controls and deterministic routing can be invaluable in ensuring that data is stored, utilized, and accessed in the right way. Zero trust security policy wraps utilizing SASE technology will also be vital in protecting these data lakes.

Telcos are also some of the keenest users of AI in their internal- and customer-facing systems. AI-enhanced networks deliver enhanced value to enterprises through greater reliability and improved performance. But it may be in the work that telcos are doing to understand how AI platforms such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and the AI tools embedded in mobile devices can deliver benefits that are of most interest to enterprises. Telco can work with their internal teams, including HR, to understand the advantages and pitfalls and take this learning to enterprises as part of AI-enhanced future-of-work practices.

Making AI more accessible is also an aspect that telcos should seek to exploit. On the infrastructure side there is the potential for AI ready infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) bundles that include connectivity and telco edge, public cloud, or co-location storage and compute resources. Telcos can also consider creating their own AI-centers with use cases and guidance on the different types of AI and machine learning and guidance for smaller businesses on how they can utilize the technology.

In the AI frontier, telcos have the opportunity to be valuable guides and partners, but they need to proactively stake-out their claims and prove that they are offering more than just fool’s gold.