Executives with Vodafone Group and Orange Business recently addressed the realities of AI deployments in their businesses at a FutureNet World panel.
The panellists went on to explain that the technology is not necessarily an additional cost and could ultimately end up paying for itself by opening fresh business opportunities.
Vodafone CTO Scott Petty used his spot on a panel to explain it did not hike capex to cover what he admitted is an aggressive level of AI investment, instead reallocating funds previously expended elsewhere.
“In our case that’s by decommissioning legacy platforms, turning off process tools, getting rid of legacy waste”.
Petty said measures Vodafone initiated could be made by “any telco anywhere” as he explained the benefits of AI are not necessarily limited to tier-one operators in mature markets.
He highlighted there is something of a sliding scale in the cost and requirement equation: while Vodafone is looking at larger numbers due to the greater complexity of its business, a smaller operator might have fewer requirements, thus lessening the cost of AI deployments.
But, as Orange CTO Laurent Leboucher noted, the capabilities larger operators are developing can create an opportunity to sell their expertise to smaller players.
He explained developing full stacks quickly and with the required level of agent orchestration is “not easy, if you want to do it in a safe way”.
Operators of Orange or Vodafone’s scale have the means to develop “a set of capabilities which can be provided to smaller telcos”, Leboucher said.
The opportunity even extends to other large players, the executive noted, with a potential market emerging to share the stack it develops among all players, in turn becoming something of a supplier as well as a network operator.
Source: Mobile World Live
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Source: Tahawul Tech