Top Verizon execs suggested recently that they might monetize their computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to leverage assets like fiber, power, space, and cooling that are in high demand from hyperscalers. My advice? Watch out, guys. And if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz. He points out that Nvidia chip prices have already dropped in half this year. If you're financed with Nvidia profits, you'll probably be okay. But if you're planning to finance a data center with debt, you could get upside down fast. And since telcos don’t exactly have a great track record in competing in infrastructure businesses (cough, cough, Verizon and Terremark), I’d think twice before entering this game.
A different approach is being taken by UAE-based e& with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The two have formed a $1 billion strategic alliance to deliver on the demand for cloud and AI in the Middle East. By reselling AWS’s cloud services and infrastructure with the extensive network of e&, the two aim to support enterprise business and public sector organizations while also expanding access to cloud and AI for smaller concerns. This is an approach I can get behind: leveraging the hyperscaler’s capability and innovation for your own gain, versus building it yourself. Smart move, e&!
Infosys recently reported that telcos are only using 48% of their cloud commitment. Industry folks are piling on with criticism, but you know what? This problem is easy to fix if you start to optimize your cloud spend. My advice: if you find yourself overcommitted, use that extra capacity for generative AI (GenAI) workloads, or use products like Totogi that are in the AWS Marketplace—you can use the spend on Totogi against your commitment!
Hold the phone, we have the second telco declaring it will be AI-first: KT Corporation! The move creates two new subsidiaries, transfers 3,780 employees to the subsidiaries, and offers voluntary retirement for up to 6,000—nearly a third of its workforce. This news follows the recently announced five-year, multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft to drive AI and cloud innovation in Korea—including a Korea-customized AI model built with Azure OpenAI Service and based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o. With SKTelecom and now KT Corporation, things are heating up in South Korea…
McKinsey & Company’s article, Responsible AI: A business imperative for telcos, outlines how operators can use AI to unlock new revenue streams and foster growth, but they have to prioritize responsible implementations. GenAI and analytical AI in particular offer telcos a path to reinvent themselves by implementing AI throughout their operations to cut costs and improve customer experience. At the same time, our heavily regulated industry must also model ethical, safe, transparent, and compliant usage to gain consumer trust and avoid security risks. My $0.02: it will become easier and easier to do AI responsibly and safely. The hard part is getting it into your orgs in a way that has real business impact in the first place. Don’t let trust and safety concerns slow you down at the onset of your journey (use first principles thinking, people!).
For those keen on keeping up with the (fascinating!) story of AI as it unfolds, don’t miss the episode of the Decoder podcast, “The AI arms race to build digital god.” The CEOs of OpenAI (Sam Altman) and Anthropic (Dario Amodei) each published a kind of manifesto recently about where we’re at with AI, how we got here, where we’re going, and how fast (keyword: FAST). Read Altman’s here and Amodei’s here. The visions are big, optimistic, and similar. But the companies have a history of taking very different approaches, with OpenAI being more ambitious and speculative, and Anthropic (founded by OpenAI defectors) being more measured and focused on safety and ethical implications. Each CEO paints a picture of a prosperous, Sci-Fi future just a few years from now, but Amodei spends a lot more time on how, as AI gets more powerful, the risks for misuse become greater. What do you think is more important—speed or safety?
Is it real, or is it Memorex? Remember those crazy commercials that dared you to tell the difference between real audio and a tape recording on a Memorex cassette? I’m challenging you to tell the difference between me and my digital twin! Thanks to AI, I now speak 40 different languages. I used four of them—Arabic, French, Spanish, and English—to roll out my latest Telco in 20 episode, and Hindi to wish everyone a happy Diwali. Pretty cool, right? Now, if I could only get my digital twin to deliver a flawless on-stage presentation at MWC and save me from my stage fright, then that’ll really be something! 😱
