AI GRIDS: THE 'LISTERINE' MOMENT FOR TELCOS

Can telcos repurpose their legacy networks and fibre muscle to power AI infrastructure and reclaim relevance in the compute-driven digital economy?

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

Can telcos repurpose their legacy networks and fibre muscle to power AI infrastructure and reclaim relevance in the compute-driven digital economy?

Listerine was conceived as a surgical antiseptic before it became the answer for bad breath. Bubble wrap was designed as a new home decor wallpaper before it became a material for the packaging and transport industry. Vaseline was an annoying 'rod wax' before it got into almost every household as the magic healing jar. Similarly, INS Vikrant lives on after its glorious days as India's first aircraft carrier in the curves of Bajaj's V15 bike, while Bombay's then-cotton mills left the space for Mumbai's lofty and swanky shopping malls to rise and shine.

Several iconic movies continue to reap all the effort and scale invested in their shooting sets by repackaging them as amusement parks. Dr Joseph Lawrence, Alfred W Fielding, Marc Chavannes, and Robert Chesebrough did something ingenious: their products solved problems different from the original ones they were after. Products that live on even today.

Telcos can provide managed services around Al, particularly distributed and edge AI services, to meet specific industry and user needs.

Get the drift? Yes, you guessed it. No better time than now for telcos to use all their legacy grip, infrastructure-muscle, and capacity-tanks in powering up the gigantic compute-farmlands that are super-busy growing Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is not only because the AI industry needs all this to grow and glow, but also because it is a good business opportunity for telcos who are disoriented and deflated with knocks from all sides; dwindling margins, falling revenues, new transition pressures, and hard-to-fight new species of competition. All the unused dark fibre aside, their experience and Capex of many years can come in very handy for pumping all the infrastructure oil into these new Al tanks.