Can generative AI save the telecom industry?

At the MWC 2024 conference being held recently, NVIDIA released a series of announcements, including cooperation with ARM, ServiceNow and SoftBank, the establishment of the AI-RAN Alliance, and A major agreement has been struck with Telenor that will give Telenor access to Nvidia's latest hardware and enterprise AI software to support the many artificial intelligence use cases employed in its operations.

Discuss the broader relationship between the telecommunications industry and generative AI

Chris Penrose, head of global telecommunications business development at NVIDIA, discussed the relationship between the telecommunications industry and generative AI in an interview with industry media Deeper connections between AI have been studied in depth.

When asked about the biggest issue facing the telecom industry, he said: "I would say that telecom companies are investing heavily in 5G right now, but that doesn't necessarily translate into significant revenue growth. Improvement. They need to find ways to ensure that they're getting a return on their investment. In the early days, a lot of people were excited about killer apps that would take that value, and I think we're actually at an interesting moment now because I believe that generative AI has The potential to be a killer app is emerging.

Because existing applications are using generative AI as part of their user interface. There is really an opportunity now, whether it is providing infrastructure as a service , or providing training as a service, inference as a service, or even AI applications, are all new opportunities driven by generative AI. Telecom companies hope to use generative AI to gain some additional revenue so that the investment can be returned and they can They all hope to use 5G infrastructure in a way that attracts more attention.” The fields of generative AI play an important role, but they are not necessarily central to driving action. Currently, generative AI is a key business focus of large technology companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Penrose said: "We are seeing a lot of telecommunications companies starting to take action because this is the next wave of technology. Many countries and regions are asking this question, 'We What kind of infrastructure is needed to drive AI progress?' That's why we're talking about setting up AI factories or setting up sovereign AI clouds in these countries.

So, are people starting to see more and more How are telcos thinking about playing in this space? Telcos typically own and operate their own data centers with enough space and power, which is something users really need, and telcos also know how to run large infrastructure projects.

This is a very specific type of build that needs to be done to truly unlock generative AI. In order to improve performance, hundreds or thousands of GPUs need to be employed to be able to train on the AI ​​model, which looks like It doesn't necessarily look like a standard deployment. So we need to encourage them to take a step forward and that's a decision that the telcos have to make and they have to embark on this journey. The telcos have a lot of advantages, such as being close to the government, being close to the business Customers have good cooperation and they are trustworthy partners in their own countries. So, can they really be at the forefront of this wave of technology?"