Telecom companies banking on AI for future growth

The telecom industry hopes enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and the emergence of promising Al applications can steer the sector out of its revenue growth trap.

- KOMSAN TORTERMVASANA

Without new breakthroughs driven by wider AI adoption by enterprises and the vertical industries sector, telecom operators might find it difficult to escape this trap and post double-digit revenue growth, said Somchai Lertsutiwong, chief executive of Advanced Info Service (AIS).

Mr Somchai earlier said that the sector’s steady annual growth rate of 1-2 percentage points above the country’s GDP expansion has become a “growth trap” that forces operators to seek new revenue streams.

“We want to see a turning point, like in the past when the mobile broadband service market transitioned from the 3G era to 4G with wider bandwidth capacity and provision of better video streaming service to the market,” he said.

Mr Somchai said video streaming via 4G networks was a game-changer for customer service and resulted in soaring data usage.

“Surging data usage through video streaming has pushed telecom operators’ revenue growth much more than that made by voice service in the past,” he said.

Mr Somchai said the mobile broadband service needs to add more value by leveraging 5G and AI applications to serve the vertical industry sector. These will become operators’ new sources of revenue in the Al era.