- Physical AI could be telecom’s best AI opportunity
- Roaming robots, drones and autonomous systems will need low-latency wireless connectivity cloud providers can’t easily guarantee
- But SpaceX and Starlink could disrupt the telco robotics play
Telcos are looking for their slice of the pie in the AI era, dabbling with token plans and AI services. But it seems the real big opportunity – and the one cloud providers actually can’t win – is in powering our future robot overlord…erm, helpers.
What we’re talking about here is physical AI, and more specifically, physical AI devices that roam the world rather than being confined to a factory floor. Yes, humanoids, but also delivery, security and construction robots as well as drones.
“Just with those you’ll get to 100 million robots or more, and that’s going to be enough to create serious value,” for whoever can capture that compute and connectivity opportunity,” Mobile Experts Founder and President Joe Madden told Fierce.
The big cloud providers have dominated the AI opportunity thus far. But unlike with generative AI or agentic AI, Madden argued physical AI is an area where telcos are actually poised to win.
While cloud providers could in theory serve physical AI demand in fixed locations, Madden said “for the wide world and robots that move around, it has to be a wireless connection with a latency guarantee. That’s where the cloud computing guys have no options.”
He continued: “A cloud provider such as Amazon or Google, they have the cloud computing resources, they’ve developed GenAI models, they have huge infrastructure for those things. But they’re unable to provide a latency or a jitter guarantee. So, the deterministic timing in high dexterity robots, that’s something that’s beyond them.”
Madden isn’t the only one making this argument. Ericsson Americas Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Joe Constantine told Fierce in a recent interview that “any system that moves – so drones, vehicles, humanoids, robots talking to robots – all of these will become an autonomous system that needs a network to think with it.”
Nokia and Nvidia have also been pushing physical AI as a winning bet for telcos, as part of their bid to get telcos to deploy more GPU compute power at the network edge. They’ve even got T-Mobile on board for an early pilot.
A big Musky wrench in this plan
The plan might seem a bit far-fetched today, but the physical AI explosion is expected to ramp over the coming years to become a serious opportunity by 2030 and beyond.
The several-year time gap that could allow telcos to get a jump on the market could also be enough time for SpaceX to throw a huge wrench in plans.
Much ado has been made about SpaceX and Starlink’s potential to disrupt the wireless market by building its own network or launching an MVNO. But what if humans aren’t the target market at all?
SpaceX execs recently talked up plans to deploy a network of femtocells, a model that left many scratching their heads as to how the physics and financials would work out. Madden said he too asked himself why SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk would go this route. The answer?
“He has an opportunity to give an overall layer of connectivity everywhere on the planet that you’re outdoors. That’s something the terrestrial guys cannot do,” Madden explained. “A satellite constellation can do that. So, that’s one advantage he has.”
The other advantage SpaceX might have is that being in space could allow the company to circumvent some of the politics around AI regulation.
“I think Elon Musk is not really trying for the smartphone market, which he couldn’t possibly succeed at with a network of femtocells,” Madden said. “I think his plan is to take this robotics market…It’s not a market that exists today. It’s a market that’s going to exist 10 years from now.”
Asked if that means operators could be gearing up for an opportunity that might be snatched out from under them, Madden concluded only time will tell.
Read more about Physical AI:
Ericsson: Telco edge was early, not wrong — AI may finally make it real
Nvidia GTC: T-Mobile and Nvidia push physical AI to the network edge
Here's why physical AI is a big deal
The Five Nine: Nvidia, Nokia think this is where AI is headed