How generative AI could reshape the telco world

For the telecommunications industry, two main changes are expected to hit the sector as generative AI continues transforming operations across all businesses.

Paolo Sidoti, communications, media, technology (CMT) client group lead at Accenture ANZ

Communications, media, technology (CMT) client group lead at Accenture ANZ, Paolo Sidoti said the telco sector isn’t impervious to the impacts of generative AI as the emerging technology could enhance customisation and efficiency.

Sidoti said one impact involves the network “becoming software-centric and software dependent”.

Speaking with Digital Nation, Sidoti discussed his insights following his experience at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona earlier this year.

According to Sidoti, some companies are already using generative AI to simplify operations and using the technology to analyse road data when planning on where to fibre, making the process 75 percent more efficient.

“There are many other cases around the adoption of digital twins so you can manage the maintenance differently.

“Then when you talk about the customer-facing functions, we showed Accenture as an example of how the marketing engine within any operation, analyses your profile and decides what kind of offering could be relevant for you.”

He explained that based on the profile, customers can be sent different messages or mail.

“What we showed was how using generative AI you can highly customise these machines and the content and the message to adopt it, not only in the word but also in the image you select to the specific profile of the person,

“Which is a level of personalisation that to the manager as a human would just be too expensive to make sense.”

From here, generative AI becomes “very cheap” and can automate a customised message with more ease.

He added many companies “have large contact centres that receive calls which don’t necessarily offer the best experience to all of us.”

“That is a big part that will change because there will be less and less human interaction.

“So far, our experience whenever you use a chatbot is not necessarily the best experience in the world, because a chatbot there's a lot of limitations.”

However, new customer service avatars or text-based conversations are becoming “incredibly smart”.

“We've seen performances are better than the average call centre operator, so because they understand your context.

“Then if you add on top, the avatar personalisation so some that we show we saw in that the Mobile Congress, a number of examples in which the avatar is interfacing with the client was emotionally connecting with the person - which makes a lot of difference.

“The expression on your face was aligned with the kind of conversation you're having at the moment. All these things will change not only the cost structure but also the effectiveness and experience of the customer,” Sidoti said.

Upskilling telco in a post-generative AI world

Sidoti added as the telecommunication industry finds its footing with generative AI, skills in areas such as cloud and security “will become even more important because generative AI can work only on the cloud”.

“On top of this, there is a completely new set of skills which need most of the internal workforce to understand how a large language model [LLM] works, the training of the LLM, the implication of using a language model from a technology perspective,

“But also, that it’s a completely new domain that is associated with the responsible AI components.”

“Whenever you adopt scale AI, you need to implement a framework to be sure that you are implementing it responsibly, avoiding bias creating a safe environment for the employee and the customer.”

He added there will be a major need to “refine the roles and the task of most of the workforce”.