From the newsletter (sign-up if you want it sooner): AI agents are moving from experimentation to execution in telecom, with operators chasing major cost savings while learning that technology must serve business outcomes. Plus, public-sector wins show connectivity is increasingly the invisible foundation.
Lots in here about AI telco agents – including a carpe-diem piece from Google Cloud urging telcos to grasp the nettle, and a (half) write-up of a good talk with Gabriele Di Piazza at Blue Planet about how they are. The word is telcos are growing bolder as the stakes are getting bigger, seeking out 30% cost-savings from their big AI gambles. Which include, it seems, bets on Blue Planet’s own OSS drift management platform, staffed by a stable of agents, which promises to help telcos keep their promises – about network uptime, critical comms, AI sovereignty.
There are a couple of interesting telco wins, too, in the critical public sector. BT has a “multi-million” pound deal with Scottish Water to take its IT and OT systems in hand, and manage 7,000-odd network connections across last-mile broadband, private WAN technology (MPLS), GEO/LEO satellite comms, sundry “internet services”, plus some private cellular / non-cellular / mesh IoT systems for workers. But the best comment today was from Dean (Bubley; again), our favorite analyst-agitator, about Telefónica Tech’s deal with health-tech firm Harrison.ai in Spain.
Dean wrote on LinkedIn how the press note makes zero mention of any of the same comms wizardry – such as BT is supplying to overhaul Scottish Water. Nor AI tokens or edge GPUs, or “any other current obsessions” (round of applause). Which is partly just because it is a channel deal – a tie-up with an AI firm, to go to market with. No question, Telefónica Tech would like to sell whatever-comms when it does get in front of doctors and such. But, like Dean says, it is a solution, as presented, that does not make a fuss of the network. Bravo.
And the best telco SIs – like all the best SIs – have not pitched tech-based “outcomes” to businesses from the outset for ages, they say. Certainly, the likes of Orange and Verizon, have said to RCR that private 5G and SD-WAN are just tools in the toolbox, to be brandished only in cases where business problems must be grafted to the business outcomes with them. Which is not every time, very clearly. The tech-co mantra must make this its central discipline – to discover and diagnose, and then to prescribe. Same for AI agencies – and for telcos buying from them.
What else? Some good British and Australian focus, here, too – and more about industry. See newsletter.
