In its “State of AI in Telecommunications: 2024 Trends,” respondents tell NVIDIA telco AI solutions are already “improving both revenues and cost savings”
The subhead of this article pretty well tells the story: NVIDIA research based on a survey of operators shows there’s widespread interest in generative and more classic artificial intelligence (AI), and some respondents say AI solutions tuned to telco use cases “is improving both revenues and cost savings.” That’s good news given that we’re approximately five years into the 5G cycle and there hasn’t been a boom in service revenues, but stagnant ARPU has re-emphasized automation as a way to cut costs.
NVIDIA surveyed 400-plus “telecom professionals” in an effort to quantify where the industry really is with regard to AI planning and adoption. Some figures:
- 53% of those surveyed “agreed or strongly agreed that adopting AI will be a source of competitive advantage,” a figure that has increased in the 2023 survey
- 31% of respondents invested in “at least six AI use cases in 2023” with more scale coming this year
- Improved CX is the “main goal” of 48% of survey respondents
- Specific to generative AI, more than half of those surveyed are using it “to improve employee productivity,” “48% for network operations and management, 40% for network planning and design, and 32% for marketing content generation”
According to the report authors, “The emerging picture of revenue and cost benefits bodes well for an industry with a multibillion-dollar spend on both capex and open that simultaneously struggles to sufficiently grow its revenues.” One of the main challenges to further and faster adoption of telco AI centers on a skills shortage, and developing “a robust business case with a clear ROI.”
Other highlights are that we’re still in early days, and successfully putting AI to work for telecoms will involve solution co-development with AI specialists.
NVIDIA, ahead of Mobile World Congress and its own GTC event, pitched AI as “a key agent for driving technological innovation, creating new products and services, modernizing the infrastructure, improving operational excellence, and delivering profitability to industry stakeholders.” So, to summarize, most all big picture problems operators are facing can be solved by AI.
For more on this subject, watch this video interview with NVIDIA’s SVP of Telecom, and for even more, check out our ongoing Telco AI Deep Dive series.
