Is AI voice a telco growth opportunity?

• The AI voice service sector is set for explosive growth
• Voice isn’t discussed much in telco circles any more, according to the Unthinkable analyst team
• But this is an area where digital service providers could develop AI-driven revenue streams, they suggest 

If telcos are increasingly considering how AI can help them generate new revenue streams, as we have previously reported, which services should they be offering? AI voice should be one, according to the Unthinkable analyst duo of Dean Bubley and Andrew Collinson, who touched on the topic at the recent AI-Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The idea of Unthinkable is to give industry folks trying to drive change or cope with disruption a safe and productive way to explore new challenges – to lead the change, in short. The Unthinkable team, in the first engagement of their new partnership with TelecomTV, shared some of the findings of a recent Unthinkable Lab examining if telcos “are fit for an AI world”, including the key topic of new business opportunities. 

Commenting on the AI-Native Telco Forum’s opening day agenda, Bubley noted that the sessions were mainly focused on how telcos can automate their processes. “Why are we thinking about that? What things can we do?  How do we get to level 4 or 5? That’s the conversation you hear from operators, particularly about AI. It’s [very] internalised. How do you use AI to make us do what we do differently, better?”

As an example of a different way of thinking about what operators could be doing, there is a new trend called ‘intelligent engagement’, noted Bubley. This is where businesses want to engage with their customers, partners and people, and they want to do it in real time, intelligently and immediately. AI voice is one of the means to achieve that engagement, which is a combination of AI, human interaction and other forms of communication.

Intelligent engagement started out in the world of CPaaS tactics but now new forms of intelligence, including AI and application programming interfaces (APIs), which provide specialised intelligence such as identity confirmation, have been added to the mix. The collective result allows enterprises to deal with their customers and ecosystems much more attentively – hence ‘intelligent engagement’. Operators could, and should, be a major part of this.

But customer-driven needs like this aren’t getting much airtime. Another example, somewhat ironically, is that there isn’t much talk about voice at industry events or across the industry. “What on earth is going on in voice?” asked Bubley. “And have you heard about it during the past day? No. Do we hear about it in the industry? No. Why is that?” he asked, rhetorically. 

According to the analyst, voice is a massive data source. There’s a huge amount of information in voice that goes through a business that can be transcribed, translated and interrogated. 

There’s also something called vCons, a new standard that enables integration and interrogation of all conversations in a business (in a compliant fashion, which is vital for enterprises wanting to do this at scale). This is very new and very interesting, according to Bubley. Imagine systematically monitoring all conversations with all customers, all the time, he posited. 

And AI voice can work in other ways too.

It may be used to deal with an emergency services call, working out the best way to deal with that call, perhaps using AI to detect, for example, a breathing problem. How would you deal with that call, interaction, or engagement differently from a customer calling a bank, for example? 

Or, imagine working in the retention team of a contact centre at a mobile operator and receiving a call that says: “Hi, this is ChatGPT calling on behalf of John Smith, and here’s my attestation certificate. I’m empowered to negotiate the renewal for his contract, and I’ve had 73 million of these conversations in the past week, and I know you’re going to offer me a 70% discount, so let’s cut to the chase.”

Those are simplistic examples, but the situation where a ‘customer’ may be an AI agent could soon become a reality.

So why should digital service providers care? Because there are new revenue opportunities to be had. According to one industry forecast, the global voice AI agents market value is expected to be worth around $47.5bn by 2034, up from $2.4bn in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34.8% during the forecast period from 2025 to 2034.

What role can telcos play in this market? That’s something that will be discussed during an Unthinkable Lab session, AI Voice: New Opportunities, New Risks & Regulatory Challenges, to be held in London on 6 November. “Huge opportunities in this space (such as in CPaaS, B2AI, Intelligent Engagement, vCons, enterprise and consumer applications) are being overlooked because voice has been ‘unfashionable’ for a few years,” notes Collinson in this LinkedIn post.  

He adds in another LinkedIn post: “Who owns voice in a telco? Serious question – I would like to hear answers. I suspect part of the challenge is that AI voice touches five functions: Network, IT, marketing, product and customer care. So that means no one owns it. The opportunity gets lost between silos – each waiting for someone else to make the first move. And as nobody thinks it’s very cool at the moment, nobody is bothered.

“The companies that win will treat AI or next-gen voice as a cross-functional product with a clear profit and loss (P&L), or perhaps a board-level scorecard. If no one owns it in your organisation, you’re probably behind,” adds Collinson.

Watch out for more coverage on this topic. 

– Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV and Tony Poulos, contributing editor, TelecomTV