AI and Telecom: Why Industry Needs To Embrace It In the Telecom industry, AI is creating business value in terms of improved performance, higher efficiency, enhanced customer experience as well as creating new business models and use cases for 5G, IoT and enterprise.

With the emergence of generative AI, the telecom industry is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer experiences, automate processes, productivity, and network operations. The growing complexity of network infrastructure, densification of networks, and billions of connected devices make it near impossible for humans to manage and operate networks using only traditional management methods alone. AI and automation are joining hands to overcome network challenges. Telecom AI refers to those artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and solutions developed to support the evolving needs of communication service providers and other stakeholders in the telecommunications industry.

"The cost of running an AI model is very expensive. Gen AI is developing in the Cloud and edge in parallel. By creating use cases, India is leading in the introduction of a new techade. We are launching new devices and chips which have AI capability while offering premium performance. We have best-in-class engineers that are working on autonomous and IoT devices that are customizing the solutions for the Indian market. To give back to the community we have semiconductor workshops that enable students and startups to gain hands-on experience of our technology and its capabilities," said Savi Soin, president, Qualcomm India.

According to a State of AI in Telecommunications: 2024 Trends report by Nvidia, there's sustained interest in adopting AI and growing expectations of success from AI, especially among industry executives. In the 2023 survey, 90 percent of respondents reported they were currently engaged with AI, either at the assessment/pilot stage or at the implementation/using stage. This level of sustained engagement shows that AI is successfully permeating into many parts of the telecom value chain.

"There is a huge change occurring in the device ecosystem, especially in the smartphone vertical. India has made commendable progress in 5G and going ahead, we need to create future-ready networks which can support even more advanced devices and new age technologies like AI. We are also working on boosting the sensing capacity of networks, which can facilitate enhanced and autonomous use cases. The future will be driven by robust collaboration between the customer and partner ecosystem, opening up of networks for innovation and interoperability. The next techade will witness the fusion of digital and physical worlds, augmenting human capabilities with AI-enhanced networks that sense, think and act being vital for this evolution," said Tarun Chhabra, senior vice president & country head, Nokia India.

The evolution of mobile networks, emphasizes the role of quantum computing in accelerating the digital revolution and the integration of technologies like AI, machine learning, and Cloud computing in transforming industries. "India has a content generation economy and 5G FWA is allowing 5G connectivity in remote areas. Further, AI chipsets are optimizing bandwidth, increasing reliability and advancing the edge computing, speeding up response times, enabling providers to offer efficient, real-time data services and monitoring solutions. MediaTek is extensively focusing on Edge AI to locally facilitate the large computations required by the Large Language Model (LLM), thereby enhancing efficiency and user privacy," said Anku Jain, MD, MediaTek India.

Telecom networks have become increasingly more complex with the introduction of 5G, and AI plays a significant role in managing this complexity. The sheer amount of data that can be processed in a modern 5G network has been proven vital to businesses built with Cloud applications. AI-powered algorithms have proven capable of analyzing data from networks to identify inefficiencies, predict potential errors, and suggest solutions. From reduced latency to intelligent traffic management, enterprises can, and quite often DO, utilize AI to streamline operations from implementation to optimization.

Telcos are also investing in AI use cases beyond customer experiences, including, security, network predictive maintenance, network planning and operations and field operations. To stay ahead, operators will need to make critical investment decisions around customer and employee experience. At the same time, they need to offer efficient and effective processes to keep costs down while increasing retention of both customers and employees.

(The speakers were speaking on the sidelines of The India Mobile Congress 2024.)