Superloop has AI handling most of its customer service

Superloop says that AI now handles most of its customer service, with the number of user interactions its agentic systems manage surpassing that handled by human employees.

The telco’s chief executive Paul Tyler revealed the milestone as a key achievement of its ongoing AI-led automation and app strategy at the company’s half-year results presentation early last week.

Like the sector’s largest provider, Telstra, Superloop has been leaning into the technologies enthusiastically to find cost savings as it competes in the margin-constrained and highly commoditised consumer broadband market.

Tyler told investors that the program of work was delivering both savings and improved customer experience scores.

“Customer satisfaction directly impacts our growth and profitability. Our investments in automation and AI have been paying dividends, with demonstrable improvements in both customer experience and cost-to-serve," Tyler said.

“We are increasingly embedding AI and workflow automation across support and operations and we're now seeing tangible benefits."

The telco has deployed two agentic AI assistants for customers, named Teddy and Mo.

It has also embedded two automated, self-service diagnostic tools into its app, Refreshify and X-Ray, which are designed to let customers troubleshoot and fix internet connection problems without needing to contact support.

Tyler said that that the automation apps had decreased inbound support calls to Superloop by 30 percent over the past 18 months.

He added that AI is “reducing” the telco’s reliance on voice-based channels, its most expensive form of support, but by how much remains unclear.

Nevertheless, with its customer base expanding rapidly due to solid organic growth in its consumer division and recent acquisition activity – including its plan to buy fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) rival, Lynham for $165 million – Tyler said that the company would continue to invest in AI to meet challenges taking on scale.

A broader trend in telco

Superloop’s AI strategy, while smaller in scale, mirrors that of the sector’s largest player Telstra, which last week reported that it had identified 380 use cases for AI during its half-year results presentation.

However, Telstra is taking a more cautious approach to the topic of AI, saying it would be taking steps to ensure its costs for investing in the technology did not outweigh their benefits.

Telstra has consistently positioned AI as a core part of its strategy to achieve cost and productivity benefits.

The carrier's chief financial officer Michael Ackland told investors at the carrier’s half-year results presentation that there was a danger that its AI’s operating costs might start to erode its expected benefits.

“The one point I would make, and I think it's really core to our technology strategy and how we're going about it … is there is a risk here that you end up in software licencing, cloud cost and in paying the AI providers so that you offset your benefits. That is very much our focus,” Ackland said.

Customer base growth

Superloop reported that its group customer base had reached at the end of the first half for FY26, with its consumer division adding 49,000 customers in the period to reach 435,000 subscribers.

Its wholesale and business divisions grew more slowly, adding 20,000 and 5000 new customers in the half respectively.

Lynham trades under the name Lightning Broadband and operates a competing wholesale FTTP network containing 24,000 lots (premises or parcels of land) with a further 30,000 contracted for delivery.

Lynham specialises in multi-dwelling units and currently has 14,000 active wholesale services. Superloop’s wholesale division generated revenue of $46.7 million in the six months to December 31 2025, which was a 28 percent increase over the previous corresponding half.

Superloop’s acquisition of the rival wholesaler is subject to conditions, but if it goes ahead as expected, it will see the company expand its built and contracted FTTP footprint to 170,000 lots during the fourth quarter of FY26 to become, it says, a credible “FTTP challenger” to NBN Co.