Global telco AI alliance founders sign JV to develop language models

Singtel, Deutsche Telekom, e&, and SK Telecom, SoftBank Corp., the founding parties of the Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA), today signed a Joint Venture (JV) agreement at TM Forum’s DTW24-Ignite. This follows the announcement by the GTAA at MWC Barcelona 2024 to establish a JV and marks the founding parties’ commitment to co-developing and launching multilingual Large Language Models (Telco LLM) specifically tailored to the needs of telecommunications companies through the JV.

As initially announced, the JV will see equal investments from the founding parties to support its initial working capital requirements to develop the Telco LLM that to help telcos improve their customer interactions via digital assists and other innovative AI solutions. The JV will look at deploying innovative AI applications tailored to the needs of the founding parties in their respective markets, enabling them to reach a global customer base of approximately 1.3 billion across 50 countries. The Telco LLM will be multilingual comprising Korean, English, German, Arabic, and Bahasa, among other languages. The launch of the JV is subject to customary regulatory approvals.

The second Global Telco AI Roundtable (GTAR) was also held at DTW24, reaffirming the GTAA’s dedication to driving innovation and collaboration in the telecoms industry. The GTAR highlighted the key progress achieved by the GTAA, as well as the AI governance systems and AI use cases reshaping the telecom landscape.

GTAR’s opening speech was delivered by SKT’s CEO Ryu Young-sang, who emphasised the transformative potential of AI in the telecom industry. CEO Ryu highlighted that the GTAA is well-positioned to be an active player in the global AI ecosystem as businesses worldwide are keen to reshape their business strategies through AI. He added that, through the Telco LLM JV, new business opportunities will be created and enhanced levels of customer experiences will be achieved. Ryu stressed that while heading towards this goal, the GTAA needs to proactively address the social and environmental responsibilities associated with AI by establishing an effective AI governance framework.

The opening address was followed by a panel discussion featuring Suk-geun Chung, Chief AI Global Officer, SKT; Harrison Lung, Group Chief Strategy Officer, e&; William Woo, Group Chief Information Officer and Group Chief Digital Officer, Singtel; and Jan Hofmann, Top Program Lead for Artificial Intelligence, Deutsche Telekom. The panellists shared updates on GTAA’s progress and outlined plans for using AI to address industry challenges and unlock new opportunities. The panellists also shared their perspectives on AI governance and the founding parties’ individual efforts to ensure Responsible AI practices.

The founding parties also showcased their potential applications of an LLM for telco, focusing on contact centre and infrastructure use cases. They demonstrated how an AI-enabled LLM can enhance contact centre operations by generating real-time references for agents during calls and automatically handle post-call tasks. They also illustrated the model’s ability to provide answers to infrastructure operators’ questions, streamlining their workflows.

CT Bureau