Insight  

At MWC this year, we caught up with Ari Banerjee, Senior Vice President at Netcracker Technology, to discuss the importance of data security as telcos increasingly adopt Generative AI (GenAI) solutions 

Undoubtedly, the biggest topic at this year’s MWC was GenAI and the many ways telcos are looking to incorporate it into their businesses, both to increase efficiency as well as generating new revenues. But in order for telcos to fully embrace AI effectively, a successful digital transformation of the telcos themselves is paramount. 

“What we’re seeing with our customers is that first you need to really digitally transform yourself. You need to have the right data,” says Banerjee.  

“So, data transformation becomes a precursor to any AI ML (machine learning) strategy, because at the end of the day, if you have garbage data – duplicate data and old legacy data – it just doesn’t match up with services. You are not going to be able to use AI in the right way.” 

Even when a digital transformation has successfully been undertaken, the issue of data security still looms. As more and more companies adopt the use of GenAI, data security will become more of a problem. EY’s Global head of telecoms declared the issue the biggest risk in the entire telco sector for 2024, because the rise of GenAI is putting a strain on data governance. For example, much of the data fed into GenAI models is highly sensitive and cannot be shared to the public cloud. 

Netcracker are tackling this complexity through their GenAI Telco Solution, which was launched last September. Functioning alongside the telco GenAI models (such as large language models [LLMs]), GenAI users, and the telco BSS/OSS databases, this solution supplements the GenAI model with real-time instructions to elicit the most relevant responses, and protects sensitive customer data from public models. 

Thus, Netcracker are playing the key role of an integrator, allowing telcos to make use multiple LLMs and SLMs (small language models), each specialised for a specific purpose. 

“Somebody in the middle needs to be able to take the best parts of it and then interface that and use that with the information from the network information databases […] and provide the right contextual information, whether to the internal team who’s dealing with let’s say, BSS/OSS operations, or the external teams, which is your customer,” Banerjee explained. 

“This is one of the most exciting areas for this new technology,” said Banerjee. “Providing the right contextual offer to the customer through an automated channel.”   

You can check out our full interview with Ari Banerjee, Senior Vice President at Netcracker from the link below: [embedded content]

News

The UK’s antitrust watchdog said the operators had declined to offer remedies to the Authority’s competition concerns

Today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that it will launch a Phase 2 investigation into the £15 billion merger between Vodafone UK and Three UK, a move that would shrink the number of mobile players in the market from four to three.

The regulator said last month that it was considering launching this full-blown investigation into the merger, saying that the companies had “made a number of claims about how their deal is good for competition and investment” without providing “sufficient evidence to date to back these claims”.

At the time, the CMA offered the operators five days to suggest remedies to assuage these concerns. Now, a little more than a week later, the regulator has announced the investigation will proceed, noting that both Vodafone and Three declined to propose concessions to ease the CMA’s competition fears.

In a joint statement, Vodafone and Three said that this decision by the CMA was expected and that they remained confident the merger was in the interest of UK customers.

“This was an expected next step in the process and is in line with the timeframe for completion that we set out from the outset,” said the statement. “Vodafone UK and Three UK remain confident that the transaction will drive stronger competition in the mobile sector and give customers and businesses a step-change in network quality, speed, and coverage from day one.”

Results from this new investigation are expected in September.

How would the Vodafone–Three merger impact the UK mobile market? Join the telecoms ecosystem in discussion on market dynamics at Connected North live in Manchester

Also in the news:
FCC rejects SpaceX’s request for spectrum
Amazon invests $2.75 billion in AI startup Anthropic
T-Mobile gets green light to appeal class action lawsuit

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VIEWPOINT

[Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2024] stc Group, the leading operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, partnered with Huawei to complete the MENA region’s first-ever long-haul 800G/channel trial in its live optical network. This successful live network trial with connection over 1,000 kilometers, from Riyadh to Makkah, of state-of-the-art processing and transporting capacity proves the 800G solution is ready for scale deployment across Saudi Arabia, driving the Kingdom and the MENA region’s digital transformation.

stc Group and Huawei completed long-haul 800G/channel live trial in dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network

As a result of this successful trial, stc Group networks can now transport more data throughput for every wavelength deployed and extend across longer distances without generation, reducing power and transport costs, and supporting efficiency standards across stc Group’s infrastructure.

The high-performance 800G/channel optical module, empowered by a built-in high baud bandwidth modulator and super 16QAM modulation with a Channel-Matched Shaping (CMS) 2.0 algorithm, established connection over 1,000 kilometers in a live Colorless-Directionless-Contentionless (CDC) network, proving the stc systems can monitor and sustain complex link environments in real-time, optimizing network transmission performance.

stc has been committed to offering excellent experience to all customers with state-of-the-art technologies and solutions. The 800G channel trial project is the result of stc’s focus on maximizing fiber capacity and optical network efficiency, making it possible to deliver up to 64Tbps single fiber capacity to meet ever-increasing bandwidth demand from all users, and reduce the per bit power consumption by more than 50% compared with 100G channel. The trial shows that stc is strengthening its partnership with Huawei in the ultra-high-speed optical transmission field.

On the importance of the trial’s milestone, Huawei’s President of Optical Transmission Domain, Victor Zhou, commented: “This long-haul 800G live trial in the stc network is a significant milestone in the ultra-high-speed optical industry. Huawei will continue to innovate and cooperate with stc in optical networks, providing leading and sustainable optical solutions for optimal user experiences.”

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Telkom Indonesia announced on Monday it is collaborating with IT firm Scala Japan to develop digital innovations and utilise Telkom’s digital agriculture platform to strengthen Indonesia’s agricultural ecosystem and food sustainability.

The partnership between Telkom Indonesia and Scala aims to tackle various challenges in the agricultural sector, to include food security. According to Telkom, Indonesia’s potential in the agricultural sector is massive, but sector players have been held back by obstacles such as limited market access, lack of price and demand information, and supply chain and distribution inefficiencies.

One of the digital solutions Telkom Indonesia and Scala will explore to address these problems is farm management services, which focuses on organizing existing agricultural assets to increase production capacity and streamline the business processes of agribusiness companies.

Meanwhile, the two companies will leverage Telkom’s “Agree” digital agriculture platform to explore new ventures in the agricultural sector, with an initial focus on virtual wholesale markets.

Telkom Indonesia describes Agree as a comprehensive ecosystem with integrated capabilities designed to serve as a catalyst for sustainable agriculture. The telco says Agree has collaborated with more than 280 agribusiness company partners, and that the platform has been used by more than 29,000 farmers, breeders and cultivators.

Agree Farm Management and Agree Marketplace have successfully empowered farmers, agribusiness companies and every stakeholder in the value chain to thrive in the digital era, said Telkom Digital business director Muhamad Fajrin Rasyid.

“Utilization of leading technology such as AI, IoT, and big data analytics will increase productivity, increase Indonesia’s food security, and most importantly will open up new opportunities in agriculture which will have an impact on the welfare of Indonesian farmers, » he said.