From Telco to Techco and Beyond: Driving Innovation with Artificial Intelligence

Polish IT giant Comarch joined other tech leaders from around the world to take part in one of the most forward-looking events on the calendar – TM Forum’s Innovate America.

This year’s event was dominated by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) among telecommunications technology trends, as well as its potential implementations, use cases and impact on business models in both telco and the emerging techco field. The topics covered were varied, and included areas such as customer engagement, business and network operations, code generation, revenue leak prevention, anti-fraud, the role of edge computing and potential new revenue streams.

Discovering AI-driven telecom solutions

Visitors to the TM Forum Innovate 2024 conference gained insight – through expert presentations and the opportunity to meet key players in various IT domains – to a broad range of AI developments. These included innovations in AI-powered telecom customer experience strategies, where chatbots and automated hyper-personalization are becoming increasingly sophisticated. There was also a sharp focus on operational aspects, such as network optimization with AI and broader AI-powered telecom management. Yet that’s not all…

Meet the (digital) twins

One of the most anticipated developments of the techco era is the concept of digital twins, so it was no surprise that this topic generated a great deal of interest at TM Forum Innovate 2024. Digital twins in telecom allow operators to create virtual replicas of entire networks, bringing numerous cost, operational and customer experience benefits. Using a digital twin, a telco can test new products and services without impacting or interrupting service quality in the real world. Digital twins driven by AI can also model and test various scenarios based on real-time network data, identify potential issues and even correct them in the network itself before they impact customer experience – bringing a new edge to predictive and preventive maintenance.

Setting standards

Of course, the real potential of AI in the telco and techco domains can only be fully realized if all players are using the same standards and are willing to cooperate. Thus, AI API standards in telecom are becoming increasingly important – which is something to which TM Forum is firmly committed. One example of such cooperation is between Nokia, Ericsson and nVidia in areas such as using AI to optimize systems (especially the RAN and transport networks), and automating elements of network management such as power, temperature and network slice monitoring. In addition, there is growing interest in cooperation on the potential of APIs for large agent models (LAM) for autonomous systems management, and of AI-APIs in business support systems (BSS).

To the future…

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence will transform every aspect of business and personal life and shake up the IT industry across the board. One key takeaway from TM Forum’s Innovate America 2024 is that businesses and operators in every domain need to cooperate on standardization and even hardware, and embrace new business models and opportunities. In doing so, they can ensure ongoing success and growth in an AI-driven future.