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Ryu Young-Sang, CEO of the Telecommunications Giant of South Korea, SK Telecom, told CNBC that AI is helping telecommunications companies improve efficiency in their networks.
Manaure Quintero | AFP | Getty images
Barcelona – Global telecommunications companies are talking about advances in key technologies such as artificial intelligence while looking for the transition of being perceived as “silly pipes” behind the Internet.
At the Mobile World Congress Technology Conference in Barcelona, the CEO of multiple telecommunications companies described how they are accumulating money in new technological innovations, including AI, next 5G and 6g networks, next -generation, satellite Internet and even smart cities.
Makoto Takahashi, president and CEO of the Japanese telecommunications giant KDDIdetailed plans to build an intelligent city called Takanawa Gateway City in Tokyo, as well as launch direct satellite internet connectivity in association with Elon Musk’s Starlink Venture.
Ralph Mupita, the largest mobile network operator CEO in Africa, MTN, also took the stage to share how the company has made significant advances to become a company that offers wireless connectivity and Fintech services, such as payments, electronic commerce, insurance, loans and remittances.
“The telecommunications business has served us well. It has since then iteked. But the future is really about the future of platforms,” Mupita said in his master talk, and added that the company has invested aggressively in other areas, such as the transmission of media and financial services.
Of ‘silly pipes’ to ‘techcos’
Some jargon that has gathered in the telecommunications industry in recent years is The phrase “Techco”, a portmánteo of the words “Telco” and “Tech”.
The term refers to the idea of a telecommunications company that operates more as a technology company, one that invests in avant -garde technology and offers digital services to consumers to help them earn money with the important capital expenses that have assigned to update their wireless networks.
For two decades, technological giants such as Goal, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Netflix They have flourished in a world where content can be delivered directly to people’s devices, consumers can communicate without problems with each other, and data can be stored or transmitted online without having to have a cumbersome infrastructure, all thanks to innovations such as the Internet, smartphones and cloud.
However, these innovations have interrupted the business models of telecommunications companies, to the point that they are often perceived as inherited players that are only there to place the cables and other network infrastructure that allow Internet connectivity.
It is a dilemma that has won the telecommunications marks the term pejorative “silly pipes”.
“I remember at the beginning of the industry, even before mobile internet when SMS used to be the murderous application,” said Hatem Dowidar, CEO of the state telecommunications company EAU E &, in an Opening speech in MWC. “We used to generate income from messages. We used to generate voice income.”
“All this over the years was interrupted by exaggerated players, to the point that today, many telecommunications companies worldwide are reduced to being a package pipe that just obtained data on the networks,” Dowar added. “And the competition is not staying still. They have the scale, they have the investment to go and interrupt even more.”
AI telecommunications companies
Ryu Young-Sang, CEO of SK TelecomHe told Arjun Kharpal of CNBC that the Telecommunications giant of South Korea has sought AI technology to help him improve the efficiency of his wireless network, something that was constantly exhibited in numerous cabins of telecommunications operators in the MWC.
“For telecommunications companies, 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 telecommunications business, you can improve the efficiency of your network, marketing and customer service through the use of AI technology. You can improve your own operations.”
“The other aspect is that AI can be a growth engine, a new business opportunity for telecommunications companies,” he added. Data centers, facilities that offer necessary computer capacity to execute generative IA applications such as Chatgpt, are another key area where telecommunications companies such as SK Telecom can play a key role, said Young-Sang.
In the western world, the career to build data centers is one that has been dominated mainly by cloud computing giants, or “hyperscalers”, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. However, SK Telecom is aggressively expanding data centers ready for AI A globally, according to the CEO of the firm.
Can telecommunications catch up with technology?
For many analysts of the telecommunications industry, conversations about telecommunications companies that seek to transform into technological players are not entirely new: companies in the industry have been aware of their relevance in communications and the media have decreased.
Kester Mann, consumer director and connectivity of the CCS Insight market firm, told CNBC that, although he is not a big fan of the term “Techco”, it is something that the industry continues to focus and has accumulated rhythm in the context of the AI boom.
“The AI can influence so many areas … and obviously that plays with that trend around Telco A Techco and the operators that position themselves more than a connectivity provider,” said Mann.
The so -called “Autonomous Networks”, or networks that can be administered and solved with limited human supervision, is an area that is quickly gaining traction in the industry, according to Nik Willetts, CEO of the forum of the Telco TM Industry Association.
“Autonomous Networks is a movement that we see from the theory to the incredibly fast reality, thanks to the advances in the combined with a new level of ambition and action throughout the industry,” Willetts said.
This technology “can unlock a change of step in operational and capital efficiency, improving Ebitda and free cash flows, as well as unlocking new income and very necessary improvements in customer experience,” he added.
Jeetu Patel, product director of Networking Giant CiscoHe said that telecommunications play a vital role as AI increases the demand for network traffic and bandwidth.
“The reality is this: the bandwidth’s appetite of the network will increase exponentially with AI,” Patel told CNBC. “Today, 100% of our workforce is human. Tomorrow, you will have to be increased by AI agents, robots, humanoids, many edge devices.”
“These agents will be more talkative and will require more network and bandwidth traffic,” he added. “I think service providers have an important role to play. In my opinion, the opportunity has not gone for them.”
