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What's New in Telco: NVIDIA's Transformative AI Innovations
In a world where communication is increasingly entwined with technological advancements, the telco industry is experiencing a paradigm shift. At the heart of this transformation lies NVIDIA’s latest AI developments, as unveiled at their GTC conference. These announcements are set to redefine not only how we communicate but also how businesses operate and innovate within the telco landscape.
Redefining Customer Service with AI
Generative AI is making waves by optimizing customer service operations. Telco companies are now able to enhance customer interactions, especially within call centers, by deploying AI-driven solutions. These solutions empower agents, allowing them to resolve customer queries more swiftly and efficiently. Moreover, digital humans are set to revolutionize e-commerce experiences, offering dynamic and interactive services that adapt to customer needs.
Streamlined Operations and Network Efficiency
AI’s capacity to enhance telco operations is another game-changer. By utilizing AI, telcos can optimize the dispatch of field technicians, ensuring the right personnel, equipped with the appropriate tools, arrive at a service site. Furthermore, AI is pivotal in managing core network products, like the Radio Access Network (RAN), driving spectrum efficiency and promoting autonomous network operations. This not only streamlines processes but reduces operational costs significantly.
Pioneering New Revenue Streams with AI Factories
Telco companies are uniquely positioned to leverage AI factories, creating fresh revenue opportunities. Across the globe, various governments are investing in sovereign AI clouds, and telcos are becoming key partners in this domain. These telecom giants have the necessary infrastructure and enterprise relationships to spearhead the development of these AI hubs. They are already partnering with industries such as banking, healthcare, and education, to extend AI capabilities.
Bridging Communication Barriers with Real-Time Translation
One of the most exciting prospects is the capability of telcos to enable real-time translations in communications. This technology promises to break down language barriers, allowing individuals to converse in their native languages while still understanding each other perfectly. This advancement not only enriches personal interactions but also opens up global business opportunities by enhancing cross-cultural communication.
Future Prospects: Autonomous Networks and AI-Enhanced Devices
The vision for the future includes autonomous networks that require minimal human intervention. These networks will self-adjust to demand spikes—imagine a concert with hundreds of thousands of attendees where your network performance remains impeccable. Additionally, AI-enabled, app-less phones will redefine user experiences, offering personal assistants that seamlessly integrate various services through conversational interfaces.
Conclusion
The telco industry is on the brink of a significant transformation with NVIDIA’s AI advancements leading the charge. From enhanced customer service and streamlined operations to new revenue streams and bridging communication barriers, the future of telecommunications promises to be more integrated and intelligent. Businesses that align themselves with these advancements stand to benefit greatly, marking a new era of connectivity and technological evolution.
Episode Topics
- Generative AI transforming telco industry
- Lilac Ilan's role at NVIDIA
- AI's impact on telco operations
- Examples of AI in telco customer service
- AI's role in network operation optimization
- NVIDIA GTC announcements and AI factories
- Telco involvement in AI factories
- AI for language and communication
- Anticipated consumer experiences with AI
- Cost savings and new revenue for telcos with AI
- Future of telco industry with AI advancements
Podcast Transcript
Jordan Wilson [00:00:14]:
How we all communicate with each other. Right? I think when we think, about telco and the telco industry, you might think of just your cell phone or, you know, old fashioned, you know, telephone wires, but it's so much more than that. And generative AI is completely transforming not just how we all communicate, but how businesses can communicate with each other. You know? Maybe we're gonna have personal agents talking to each other all driven by advancements that we're actually seeing here at NVIDIA GTC. So the telco industry is, something I'm learning about, and I'm excited for you all to learn about it as well. So welcome to Everyday AI. What's going on y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson. I'm the host, and this thing is for you.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:01]:
This is your daily livestream, podcast, and free daily newsletter helping us not just keep up with AI, but how we can all get ahead and use this information to grow our companies and our careers. So if that's what you're doing, you're in the right place. So make sure you go to our website, youreverydayai.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. We'll be recapping, today's conversation and everything else that you need to keep up. So, you know, if you can see if you're watching on the live stream, you'd see that we're at the NVIDIA GTC conference. Very excited to be working with NVIDIA and, you know, being able to talk to some of the, literal smartest people in the world in their domains. So let's, welcome to the show.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:39]:
I'm excited, Lilac, Alon, the global head of business development and telco operations for NVIDIA, and also who's very cool, by the way, in case she has an 18 or 22 year old daughter out there listening. But Lilac, thank you for coming to the show. Yes.
Lilac Ilan [00:01:54]:
For the shout out.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:54]:
Had to. Had to. Tell us a little bit about what you do in your role at NVIDIA.
Lilac Ilan [00:01:59]:
Thank you, first of all, for having me. Appreciate you, calling my me, cool. So what I do at NVIDIA, I lead, AI and generative AI for the, telco globally, which means that I go around the world talking to the different telcos and advocate and educate about how can they benefit from generative AI and from AI. How AI can help them transform their business, their network, and generate new revenue for them.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:29]:
Mhmm. So, you you know, walk us through kinda what that means. So, you know, I I know that you worked, you know, for seventeen years at AT and T. So, you know, it it they're one of
Lilac Ilan [00:02:37]:
the bigger telco companies in the world. Right? So you're going out there and you're helping them use generative AI out. So they're you know, in every enterprise, doesn't matter which industry, including the telcos, AI can really help do three you know what? And for the telcos specifically, four things. One, it can help them service their customers better. The second thing is it can help them run their operation more smoothly, more effectively. The third thing is really help them think about an accelerated development of their core product. And a core product for telcos is network, and we're gonna talk about that. How can it become so much more efficient? How we can, be multi tenant? And then the last thing for telco, and this is where they're uniquely positioned, there is a bonus for the telco industry.
Lilac Ilan [00:03:32]:
And that bonus is called new revenue opportunity, new AI factories that they can play in that industry. So those are the three main things we're talking about. And let's take examples. Mhmm.
Jordan Wilson [00:03:44]:
You
Lilac Ilan [00:03:44]:
know, because because we need the example to make it more tangible, Jordan. So when talking about how AI can help service customer better, This is where we're talking helping agents in the call center, resolve an issue for their customer much more faster and easily. This is where, digital human can now be a friend center of, ecommerce and help provide a totally dynamic experience. When we talk about running operation more smoothly, I wanted you to think about how AI can help dispatch, technician to the field much more optimized and much more effectively, for example. How network can be run much more efficiently. And when we talk about how to think about the core product differently, and this is one of the major areas of impact, of telco, this is where AI can help the RAN, the radio access network. It's called AI for RAN. How can it help drive, spectrum efficiency, for example? How can the network becomes more autonomous? So those are the things that we're talking about.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:06]:
So, you know, there's a lot of of new announcements that have come out of GTC. Can we talk about those a little bit and and really just, you know, say how this is gonna impact, you know, kind of our day to day lives? So, you know, one big thing that, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong talked about, was the AI factory. So how does that play out, you you know, in the telco space?
Lilac Ilan [00:05:27]:
So remember I told you there is a fourth bonus.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:30]:
In fact
Lilac Ilan [00:05:30]:
There it is. Telco, this is it. So, telcos are now playing a big role in in building sovereign AI, sovereign cloud AI and AI factories around the world. Governments around the world are funding some AI acts. Canada had won, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore. And and as those AI act AI acts come in, and governments are interested in building sovereign AI cloud, they're knocking on the enterprise and big companies around those countries and say, who can help me build data centers and AI factory for the future? And what's interested enough enough is that telcos have those data centers. And not only that, telcos also have the relationship with the enterprise, with the bigger banks, with the hospital, with the education, with the governments. And, hence, telcos are positioned as a very good partner to build those AI factories, those sovereign AI factories in around the world.
Lilac Ilan [00:06:47]:
There's 14 telcos that already publicly announced it. Telenor, Wiscom, Eliade, in France, Indonesia, and you name it. So they are taking part in building those AI factories. And if you remembered, Jensen said, it's a factory that creates tokens. And they're playing that amazing role bringing, AI to the country, to the enterprise, to, to the people. Let me give you a good example. Indonesia has different dialect of of language. If you look at the LLMs that we use today in ChatGPT, doesn't talk Indonesian.
Lilac Ilan [00:07:35]:
Right? It's you have to mainly prompt in English. So in Indonesia, they create a chatbot model. Right? It's the native language LLM. And now what does it do? It democratize AI and Gen AI to the education, to the health care, the public service. It's AI for good. Yeah. That make sense?
Jordan Wilson [00:07:57]:
Yeah. It does. And, you know, I'm, like, I'm I'm glad we're going down this road. Right? Because even as an example, I have, you know, family in South America, and my Spanish isn't good at all. Right? So, you know, is is this finally because it seems like the pieces are all there. Right? You can talk to a, you know, a chat GBT or something like that and get it back in different languages. You you know, from some of these announcement that we have seen today, is this gonna kind of lay some of that foundation to where in the future, we'll just be able to communicate with people in native tongues.
Lilac Ilan [00:08:28]:
Absolutely. So, it it's interesting. Today, all of our data plans, you know, when when you buy your phone, it usually comes with a voice. Right? You can text. You can have a voice message as well. Can browse in the Internet. Tomorrow, generative AI and AI, the agentic AI, will enable totally new services that will come on your phone and enable a new totally different experience. So let's talk about those new experiences.
Lilac Ilan [00:09:03]:
One of them, as you mentioned, it's we are going to converse in our native language. Totally two languages. Two people will converse totally different languages, but there is going to be real time translations and transcriptions, such that you'll speak French as your native language. I'll speak English as my native language, but we'll hear the same language as we speak because the network on the network, there will be good translations and transcriptions. There will be new services like at home. I can now talk to my camera head at home and stop yelling at my husband to tell me where the glasses are. Right? I can actually promise, like, where did I leave my glasses? And it will come up. Right? There's going to be a new era phone.
Lilac Ilan [00:09:53]:
There will be an app less phone. So at Mobile or Congress, I don't know if you guys had, chance to visit there, but, DT showed a phone, totally app less, where there's an agent. I'm talking to that Aginta KI. And in that conversation of Aginta KI, that agent, I just said, hey. Plan for me a trip of a family of four to Hawaii. And it start conversing conversing with me. What are the dates that you wanna go? Is there, an air company, an airline that you prefer? Do you want a suite, or do you wanna, you know, a a room for four people? Is there a specific area you wanted to go you wanted to go? And through that conversation, behind the scene, the Agenstic AI go fetch the information for me and has my you know, as a personal shopper and bring that information. So new experiences as a consumer is gonna come as a consumer of a telco will be different in the next couple years.
Jordan Wilson [00:10:58]:
Yeah. That's that's extremely exciting to think about, you know, almost an agentic layer, right, on top of your, you know, phone or maybe instead of apps. You know, it sounds exciting, and I'll really enjoy getting eleven minutes of my day back, not looking for my wife's glasses. But, you you know, so that's a great benefit to consumers. But, you know, I I wanna get back a little bit to, you know, benefit to telco in in some of these things that were just announced, you know, here at GTC. So one of the things was, you know, this whole concept of both, you know, saving money. Right? And this is for everyone, not just for telcos, but also, you know, new lines of of revenue. Can you explain specifically how this new technology that we're seeing out of NVIDIA is is helping both sides of those
Lilac Ilan [00:11:43]:
coins for telcos? Absolutely. So let's talk about how it can save money. Like, that's the key one. Telco is a is a good industry where the mode of operation needs to change. It it requires changes, and you see telco every year trying to change by optimizing their cost more and more and more. AI and generative AI is a beautiful tool for the telcos to optimize cost. And that's the reason, Jordan, where, if you look at different, reports like we ran, NVIDIA just ran, and, state of the AI report, we're we're showing 95% of the telcos are adopting AI, 50% of them, 49 almost 50% are actually implementing and doing it. And the reason is is because it has this power to change the cost.
Lilac Ilan [00:12:34]:
So for example, when you are helping with AI to dispatch, fill technician to the right place instead of going, hey. Let me let me send them, send a technician to a field, because there is a there is a problem. And that technician not necessarily has the right tool in the backs in the in the back of the truck, or maybe he's not an expert in solving that existing problem, that dynamic is gonna totally change. That technician tomorrow will be the right expert knowing exactly what to change because he's gonna have an assistant, an agentic AI that will explain to him how to change, how to and how to do it. More than that, more importantly, the core network is gonna be much more optimized and efficient. And if you think about it, the network is the biggest expenditure of a telco. And if I can use AI to run it more efficiently, I'm saving money. At Mobile World Congress, a company called DeepSeek ran, they they just they used AI for the run, and they showed that they can create benefit of of almost 19 to 50% efficiency in spectrum.
Lilac Ilan [00:14:03]:
That's big. Telcos are spending billions of dollars in spectrum. K? Let's take another example. When we're doing, assistant in in billing, Amdocs created, a billing and sales agents for the telcos. They showed a 50 almost 60%, efficiency in, first handling time. So you could you could get a resolution faster. If you get a resolution faster 64% of the time, that means you get your agent to work more efficiently. Right? So those are cost efficiencies.
Lilac Ilan [00:14:44]:
And then we've talked about how to create new lines of revenue. Right? That's the bonus part that telco has. And in creating new revenues, we talked about telcos building those AI factories. That's the first one. And there are three layers in that revenue generation. The first part is Telco can go in and say, Hey, I'm offering you GPU as a service. You are a company who builds model. You're an education company.
Lilac Ilan [00:15:17]:
You just need GPU as a service. There you go. The second there is Telkochen in that AI factory say, hey. Here's a platform of AI as a service. Those the customers will be enterprise that have data scientists that knows how to use AI. And the third layer is offering to the market AI services. For example, if I build a billing agents for myself and I prove the value of it, right, 64% efficiency, I can take that billing agent that I've built for myself and I can offer it to the enterprise. Right? So it can go to an AI as a service.
Lilac Ilan [00:16:01]:
So we talked about that as revenue services. And remember how we earlier talked about new experiences? I can talk to my phone. I have a new assistant agent. Those are services for consumers that telco can now monetize as well. You know, you can charge instead of a dollar, a dollar 50 for those services. So those are different way that Telco can benefit and create both cost savings and revenue.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:29]:
So I I I wanna double down on one of those because it's it's very interesting, and I wanna make sure that both myself and the audience understands this. So, you you know, I I understand the concept of, you know, kind of, like, you know, renting out or, you know, GPUs as a service. But explain a little bit more about, you know, how telcos can offer maybe AI services and what that means. So is that to to businesses? Like like, how does that actually play out, right, in in the reality? Because it seems to make sense. Right? Telcos, if if they have all this information from, you know, in encrypted data from just about everyone, they should be able to build, you know, some type of service. Right?
Lilac Ilan [00:17:04]:
So so not necessarily that. So or or say it differently. As we start offering telco has the opportunity to offer AI services to their enterprise customer, which which means if they're building AI factory, it's basically the home of different developers who needs AI. For example, it could be, a company, like, that that offers services for, trying to think a good example, connected cars. Right? So it could be a connected car company or services for that. It could be, an agent's a small business agent that's there. It could be ServiceNow and IT services that's offer SAP. So think about enterprise services that are going to be hosted on this big GPU cloud or sovereign AI cloud that built by the telco.
Lilac Ilan [00:18:06]:
Right? So when ServiceNow is hosted, or, again, take SAP. Right? They're ho they're hosting their AI on this sovereign cloud. The telcos can help take that, sell it to the banks. Right? And the good thing is NVIDIA has this ecosystem of partners. We have millions of developers that works on GPUs. And when a telco build this AI factory, we bring to that market those developer ecosystem that the market now can consume and that telco can offer to their enterprise b to b customers. That's one way of looking at it. In other ways, like, we looked at it from Shahabad, right, from from the Indonesia example where telcos can build the foundation of AI for good, maybe a language model and unlock education opportunities.
Lilac Ilan [00:19:08]:
Right? AI for health care, AI for services of of the day to day. Like, hey. I can talk now to the DMV in my native language. Right? So those are kind of the examples.
Jordan Wilson [00:19:21]:
Alright. Those those are some great examples, and, you know, I think that this, conversation has been extremely helpful. But, Lilac, as as we wrap up, you know, maybe just one last question. So, you know, with everything, you know, all the new announcements, there's a lot of, you know, buzz, you know, not just here at at GTC, but just with generative AI in general. How should we be looking, you know, at the future of the telco industry? Right? I think some people are just like, oh, well, you know, hey. We're just gonna have six g and, you know, everything's just gonna be better. Right? But what is this actually gonna look like, you know, in the coming, you know, months, specifically, you know, everything that was just announced? How is this gonna play out?
Lilac Ilan [00:20:01]:
So there was a big section in GTC about robotics. Mhmm. And if you guys had tuned into GTC, you saw a concept that was introduced that was the computer system. Right? There's gonna be one computer that's going to train the model. There's gonna be one computer that would do the simulation, and there's gonna be one computer that's going to do the inferencing. If you think about network as a robot, those three computer system work exactly for that. And that ability to take, train this robot that's called network with simulation. It's what we think of the path to autonomous net.
Lilac Ilan [00:20:45]:
Autonomous network is self healing, self resolving network with very little to no human in the loop. So if you think about Agen to KI today, right, to think about the world where if you have a Taylor Swift concert that comes to Chicago, when there's 400,000 people out there, the network will know that it's coming. It will automatically configure it. It will simulate it ahead of time in such that when there is actually 400,000 people in that concert, it will provision itself. And Jordan, when you're gonna be in that concert, you're not gonna lose any reception. You'll be able to upload pictures. You will be out streaming video in real time. You have the good quality of service, and it will be done automatically automatically as my 22 year old saying.
Lilac Ilan [00:21:39]:
Love it.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:41]:
Well, thank you, so much for for your time to help us better understand not just telco and all of the innovations that are happening, but also even what has just been announced at GTC is gonna impact the industry. So, Lilac, thank you so much for taking your time to join the Everyday AI Show.
Lilac Ilan [00:21:56]:
I thank you for having me. That was great.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:58]:
Alright. And, hey, a lot of great information in there. I hope you all, like myself, got a little bit smarter. But if there's a couple things you missed or if you just wanted more information, we're gonna be recapping today's conversation in our newsletter. So please make sure you go to youreverydayAI.com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back tomorrow and everyday for more everyday AI.
Jordan Wilson [00:22:19]:
Thanks, y'all.