Navigating uncharted waters in telecom

DeepSeek is shaking up AI, forcing industry giants to rethink strategies while opening new capacity streams for telcos—both as providers and consumers.

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

In his recent communication, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg looked excited to talk about something deep in the AI wheelhouse, far away from a telco’s playfield just a few months back. He said, “Our industry sits at the centre of the next wave of innovation as AI transforms how consumers and businesses operate. Our network assets and capabilities position us uniquely in this evolving landscape.”

The company announced AI Connect, a suite that allows it to offer its fibre, land and 5G assets to data centre companies and enterprises with a big appetite for AI connectivity. Interesting and intelligent—after all, the company gets to use its existing assets to generate new revenue streams. That is something that most telco players need badly as they struggle with thin margins in traditional markets, commoditisation in their usual strong Suits and the heavy onslaught of hyperscalers. Is it not better to shell out all the excess space, power and cooling capacity that has been gathering cob-webs in data centres? Especially when telco AI delivery can be a USD 40 billion total addressable market, as surmised by some experts. Is it not better that Telcos also start bathing in the AI tide like everyone else is doing?

Al's relentless demand for computing power s transforming telcos from mere connectivity providers into strategic players in the Aldriven digital economy.

The question is not about 'if' but about 'where'. In a strange twist of destiny, this time, telcos can drink this water on both sides—upstream and downstream. While, as Verizon exemplified, they can be pumping in all the capacity in the rear trunks of the AI supercars that BigTech and AI Front-runners are driving, they could also be benefitting from all the computing leaps that these cars make—and those can be plugged back into a telco's infra advantage. It is a novel scenario of a cart before the horse and also a horse behind the cart.