“Our ultimate goal is to discover new business models by redefining relationships with customers,” said
Young-sang.
“The Global Telco AI Alliance brings synergy to its members by allowing them to achieve more by working as a team.”
Held during MWC Barcelona 2024, the meeting was attended by Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK; Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom; Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom; Claudia Nemat, Board Member for Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom; Hatem Dowidar, CEO of e& Group; Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Singtel Group; and Tadashi Iida, CISO at SoftBank. The joint venture company will be established later this year.
"By integrating telco-specific large language models, our Frag Magenta chatbot becomes even more human-centric: AI personalises conversations between customers and chatbots. And our joint venture brings Europe and Asia closer together,” said Claudia Nemat, board member at Deutsche Telekom for technology and innovation.
Through the joint venture company, the five companies plan to develop Large Language Models (LLMs) designed to meet the needs of telcos. Specifically, LLMs will be designed to help telcos improve their customer interactions via digital assistants and chatbots.
The LLMs will be a multilingual optimised for languages including Korean, English, German, Arabic and Japanese, with plans to for other languages like Bahasa Indonesia so that it can be deployed in Southeast Asia.
“This is a monumental step for e& and for the telco industry at large. From streamlining customer support interactions to enabling personalised recommendations, this multi-lingual LLM will revolutionise how businesses engage with customers,” said Dena Almansoori, group chief AI and data officer, e& group.
The joint venture will focus on deploying innovative AI applications tailored to the needs of the Global AI Telco Alliance members in their respective markets, enabling them to reach a total global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries.
“This promises to be a game changer not just for us at Singtel but for any telecom company out there looking to lift their customer experience beyond limited automated responses and generic chatbot interactions,” said Yuen Kuan Moon, group chief executive officer, Singtel.
“With leading telcos from three different continents working on this innovative model, this unprecedented effort to scale AI development for the telecom industry would not have been possible had we all decided to go it alone.”
Unlike general LLMs, telco specific LLMs are better attuned to the telecoms domain and better at understanding user intent. As a result, they accelerate AI transformation of various telco business and services, including customer service.
“Through a powerful alliance with industry leaders, we embark on a mission to revolutionise global communication, elevate service quality, and ignite a new era of technological innovation powered by AI, added Hideyuki Tsukuda, executive vice president and CTO at SoftBank Corp.
