Artificial intelligence is nigh impossible to avoid.

While most companies espouse that they have been dealing with AI for some time now, it is only in the past two years that the technology has proved truly pervasive. So much so that every industry is concerning itself with the impact of AI, and in the case of the telecommunications space, the ability to support it.

It is with this in mind that that Huawei hosted its Operations and Transformation Forum Africa 2024 at Africa Tech Festival last week in Cape Town. The forum’s agenda focused on exploring ways for telecommunications industry stakeholders to use intelligent operations to unlock new business growth.

David Li (pictured above), president of Huawei’s Southern Africa Delivery and Service Business, shared his insights on how carriers must prepare for the intelligent era.

In particular he emphasised the need to upgrade technologies, strategies, services, and operations and maintenance (O&M) modes.

“The AI era will reshape how operators monetise, deliver smooth user experiences, and O&M thus reshaping the telecoms industry. In this new era AI-enabled O&M and AI-oriented O&M will promote each other. This will help companies achieve the ultimate multi-modal interaction experiences, facilitate the rapid development of digital intelligence services, enable closed-loop business, and unlock comprehensive intelligent O&M,” he explained.

To highlight the significance of operations and maintenance modes, some operators shared successful examples of how they are using novel O&M methods to boost infrastructure innovation, develop new business models using mobile money, and increase the quality of user experiences, along with overall O&M efficiency.

“A few key digital tactics had to be prioritised to enable Safaricom to achieve its status as a purpose-led technology company. We first sought to deliver superior customer experience to set ourselves apart. Then our people focused on leveraging the company’s growth for new tech solutions. This is a pivotal shift as we focus on becoming a TechCo with operations powered by AI,” shared Safaricom’s CTO, Anthony Gacanja, of the impact the company’s full-stack digital transformation.

“By planning its evolution objectives of automation, digitisation, and intelligence, Telkom streamlines information from sources such as its market, network, and social networking, to build a converged foundation for carrying diversified data. It realises precise user segmentation on the market side, flexible marketing design, and data support from marketing personnel, helping customer value management and marketing teams shift towards data-driven market strategies,” added Simo Mkhize, CCO of Telkom Consumer, regarding lessons learned from its Telkom One strategy.

With AI proving increasingly pervasive, its impact and the desire to evolve in order to meet its requirements is clear to see in the telecommunications sector. How many carriers will heed Huawei’s words on upgrading to handle the intelligent era, remains to be seen.