- Telcos need to improve their AI and data analytics skills to get an edge in enterprise, said Airtel Business CEO Sharat Sinha
- A “vertical mindset” is key when it comes to serving enterprises
- Sinha also touched upon the state of India’s wireless and wireline landscape
Operators have gone beyond traditional connectivity services to better compete in the enterprise market, but they must still develop some new muscle if they want to thrive amid the rise of AI and other technologies, Airtel Business CEO Sharat Sinha told Fierce in an exclusive interview.
A key challenge for telcos is that they’re accustomed to operating in a “highly-regulated environment,” he said. But enterprise is a wide realm with various players and competitors, such as hyperscalers, systems integrators and others.
“Telcos need to develop new skills to compete in this new environment,” Sinha said.
For starters, he thinks they should hone their AI and data analytics capabilities. Telcos have a boatload of data at their fingertips, but they may not necessarily have the skillset to fully monetize it.
Given that AI agents use a lot of data, telecom infrastructure “is the facilitator for providing the best agent experience to industries,” said Sinha. AI over the next 10 years is poised to become further integrated into various applications, but the “fundamental needs” for customers won’t change, like improving productivity and revenue streams. As long as telcos "move along with the changes that are happening," they'll be able to get the job done.
Why one-size-fits-all no longer works for telcos
It's also important for telcos to develop “a vertical mindset” when it comes to servicing enterprises, Sinha went on to say. That involves tailoring their products to specific industries instead of employing a one-size-fits-all approach. The connectivity a hyperscaler needs is very different from connectivity in banking or healthcare institutions, he noted.
We’re well aware of the ways operators like Lumen and Zayo are bolstering cloud and AI connectivity via dark fiber, data center interconnect, cloud on-ramps and more.
In the healthcare sector, telcos have the potential to better facilitate communication between first responders and people in need of medical assistance. Those people may have wearable devices that are “constantly communicating” with the network, said Sinha.
“Telecom will still be at the core. It has to just evolve to support these services,” he said.
Sinha also thinks telcos have more room to grow in the education industry, particularly as AI advances. Let’s say a university wants to run a small language model for its research. It needs to house the model in a data center and naturally requires a reliable communication network to support that.
India’s connectivity evolution
Airtel — along with its competitor Reliance Jio — continue to move along with 5G rollouts in India, a country that’s traditionally favored more wireless than wireline deployment.
Although fiber infrastructure is now available throughout most of India, “the challenge was that broadband started slow,” Sinha said. Many people first experience the internet on a mobile device. And notably half of India’s population is younger than 28, so operators focused more on marketing mobile to that demographic.
That strategy has changed in recent years, as the Covid-19 pandemic caused demand for high quality broadband to skyrocket. India now has a “good balance” of wireless and wireline networks, according to Sinha.
“Is there more scope to deploy? Absolutely yes,” he said. “Especially with more people getting connected, more bandwidth requirements coming.”
Where does 5G have room to grow?
On the topic of 5G, Sinha noted the technology has significantly more room to grow in enterprise compared to the consumer segment. “I think for consumers, 4G is good enough.”
5G is “very critical” for manufacturing environments, he said, including the mining space. Because Wi-Fi cannot provide the low latency needed to enable industrial robots and sophisticated automation, vendors like Ericsson and Nokia are eyeing mining to advance their private 5G ambitions.
Sinha added 5G also has applications in banking where people engage in high-frequency trading. Of course, traders who interact with stock markets and investment banks require a “very quick response time.”