• Much of the focus for AI in telecom in about achieving efficiencies
• But service providers want to develop new revenue streams too
• Our latest report shows there is growing confidence that AI can help deliver incremental telco sales

While a great deal of focus on the use of AI in telecom is related to automated operations, whether that be in the back office, in customer care or in network operations, one of the big questions facing the telco community right now is whether AI can help to boost the top line by driving meaningful, incremental revenues. 

According to the findings of a new TelecomTV DSP Leaders Report, Telcos & AI, not only is the answer ‘Yes’ but the telecom industry is increasingly confident that AI can be the source of meaningful new sales for service providers. 

In late February and early March, TelecomTV conducted a survey of the telecom sector and received qualified responses from some 258 individuals, ranging from CEOs and board representatives to the troops in the engineering and customer care teams and pretty much everyone in between.

The majority of our respondents came from the vendor/systems integrator community (52%), while 26% came from the network operator/service provider sector and 22% from others (government bodies, regulators, enterprises, research firms, consultancies etc). 

We asked a broad range of questions related to the use and impact of AI on the telecom sector, including – Does AI offer telcos a sizeable new potential revenue stream?

Our respondents are feeling confident, as the chart above shows. A majority, 57.5%, believe that AI absolutely offers telcos major new revenue-generating opportunities – that’s up from the 52% that said ‘Yes’ last year. 

Meanwhile, just 17.5% just don’t see it happening much, if at all, down slightly from 20% last year, while a quarter are not sure (compared with 28% last year). 

So while there is a fair degree of confidence that AI can help deliver incremental revenues, there’s still a fair degree of uncertainty and doubt that this might happen at all. 

We also asked our respondents about the impact of AI on telco operations, new service development, efficiencies and energy consumption, distributed AI infrastructure, telco AI partnerships and much more.

All of our DSP Leaders reports can be found here and are free for anyone to download.

You can keep up to speed with ongoing industry developments related to artificial intelligence in the telecom sector in TelecomTV’s dedicated channel, The AI-Native Telco, and engage with key players in this particular sector at TelecomTV’s in-person event, The AI-Native Telco Forum (8-9 September, Düsseldorf).  

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV