Do telcos need an AI strategy?

Of course telcos need an AI strategy! The tech is so new and advancing so fast that it’s tough to keep track of what’s what. This sh*t is hard, and the learning curve is steep. Most employees aren’t going to up and change the way they work—not without some pushing and prodding. Hell yeah, you need an AI strategy! Read my latest blog to get started on yours .

Telco in 20 Best of 2023: The cloud-first mindset

It’s been an incredible year for Telco in 20—we passed 100,000 listeners earlier this year, and had conversations with a long list of telco industry all-stars. There were so many popular episodes—each with over 3,000 listens or more—that it was a race to the finish line to name our Best of 2023. In the end, none topped my conversation with Mobi CEO Justen Burdette, who talked about the Hawaiian MVNO’s public-cloud-native mobile core, its cloud-first mindset, and more.

Listen NOW: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , TelcoDR website .

I’m getting ready for Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, of course!?Totogi will have a sweet stand in Hall 2 at the FIRA, so be sure to stop by for demos of all of our awesome products. Totogi is also a Platinum sponsor of the second annual MVNO Summit , where I’ll be giving one of my epic talks on Wednesday, February 28. Afterwards, we’ll be hosting an ICONIC party! Wanna come??DM me on LinkedIn or X @TelcoDR for an invite.

Totogi is using AI to revolutionize telco plan design , again! We’ve created a patent-pending generational AI (GenAI) copilot to help human marketers design mobile plans. Plan Sidekick is a new feature that uses AWS Bedrock foundational models, a little Totogi secret sauce, and GenAI to provide market intelligence and plan design options all while keeping your enterprise data safe. Yipee!

DUH, there are really just three clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Gartner re-confirmed what we already knew in its recently released Strategic Cloud Platform Services report, which shows just how much the hyperscalers keep putting distance between the Big 3 and all the rest. If you’re using another “cloud” that’s not one of the Big 3, it should make you wonder if the vendor can keep up with the intense CapEx requirement it takes to compete in this category (even Google Cloud is at risk of falling behind). Want to read all about it? Swap your contact info for?a free download of the report .

Google launched Gemini , its “largest and most capable” artificial intelligence (AI) model, which can understand and operate across text, code, audio, image, and video information. Gemini is being hailed as the?first real competition for OpenAI’s ChatGPT . With Anthropic’s Claude, and now Google’s Gemini, it’s good to see competition with OpenAI (especially after the internal chaos we saw in November). Give it a try and see what you think!

Kinetica just launched the first SQL-GPT for telecom , which is a GenAI solution that allows telco professionals to converse interactively with their data using natural language. How cool is that? The large language model (LLM) is private, and has been fine-tuned to our industry, making it easier for business folks to get the data they need to make informed decisions without having to be a SQL expert. Can’t wait to take this one out for a test-drive, too!

US chipmaker?NVIDIA is collaborating with YTL Power International on a data center that would bring cutting-edge AI infrastructure to Malaysia by mid next year. The cloud computing data center is planned to operate at the YTL Green Data Center Park in Johor. The partnership reinforces NVIDIA’s focus on Southeast Asia as an important growth area and shows how NVIDIA is trying to build a data center strategy without the hyperscalers. Telcos are an interesting group to partner with, given their historical investment in data center real estate. Hmm... ??

Spend nine minutes with Thomas Dücke , COO at BT Group, in this Google Cloud Innovators Live interview. Dücke talks about how BT is approaching digital transformation in his organization, from modernization to strengthening and expanding the core business with new revenue streams. I loved what he had to say about AI—finding more use cases, using it in the field, and re-skilling call center agents to code new support apps. Want to learn more about how BT is using AI and the public cloud? Tune into Telco in 20 in the new year when we have Josie Smith, chief architect for digital at BT, coming onto the podcast in January!

Here’s some incentive to use the public cloud for your GenAI workloads: the eye-watering average compensation for AI researchers at leading tech companies. Wowzers! Planning on hiring your own AI research team to build an LLM? If so, start saving your pennies now as it’s not going to be cheap. Want a better idea? Don’t build your own LLM. Instead,?leverage the tools, chips, and talent at the hyperscalers to do the heavy lifting for you.?

As part of the GSMA Open Gateway project, three Brazilian operators—Claro, TIM, and Vivo—just launched three network API services : Number Verify, SIM Swap, and Device Location. All three aim to improve security and combat fraud in mobile commerce and financial institutions. With the Brazilian telcos jumping into the fray, we now have nearly 40 operators on the Open Gateway train. I love the collaboration around the world with all the operators agreeing on an API standard. Next stop: building developer communities so we can monetize the network APIs.

And we have failure to launch … from Microsoft??LinkedIn scaled back its planned move to Microsoft Azure , and will instead build itself another on-prem data center. Oh, brother. This is after?LinkedIn announced in 2019 that it would move to its owner’s public cloud . I get it, migrations are tough. But it seems like the LinkedIn engineering team wants to go the #fakecloud route instead of refactoring the platform to run natively on Azure. I’m sure Satya has bigger fish to fry these days, but if I were him I’d pay them a visit and mandate they move the platform over to Azure ASAP.

…and how about some good news??I’m privileged and excited?to join all the great telco execs?on TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders Council , like Malik Rao (Telefónica), Yago Tenorio (Vodafone), Josie Smith (BT Digital), Scott Petty (Vodafone), and?so many others . An editorial initiative led by Ray Le Maistre, the council aims to represent all sectors in the industry where membership is invite-only. You know me: give me a microphone and I’m ready to share my thoughts. What a great way to espouse my point of view on all things public cloud and AI! I can’t wait to contribute, coming to a TelecomTV event near you in the new year! ??

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