Nokia’s Take on AI, Telecom & the Road to 6G

Kal De:

Clearly what stands out is a continuation of a very strong interest in how AI, particularly generative AI technologies, will be leveraged to solve the thorniest problems that I think we have in the area of telecommunications, particularly around operational complexity.

AI is moving into the control loop of telecom networks

Kal De:

Of course, it's an open secret that everybody wishes to know, how agentic AI, in particular, is going to, impact both in positive ways and unknown ways. Let me put it that way. The manner in which we perform operations today and the way in which we operate, observe, monitor, respond, to the tasks that are involved in basically running a global scale network.

Agentic AI is redefining how networks are operated

Samad Masood:

Randip, what's your view on that? What have you seen at MWC that stuck out to you?

Randip Sinha:

So I think, this year, I think MWC, the focus has been on the AI native nature of the future of telecom. And there are three things that stand out. First is, in the field of telecom operations, as Kal was mentioning, the conversation is moving from AI assisting telecom operations to AI actually being embedded in the control loop, not engineers being replaced by AI agents. So the second aspect is about radio networks and radio networks not only being, spectrum capable, but also being compute capable. And the third point which stood out is, the way the telecom, supply chain is shifting… with the silicon, silicon partners playing an increasingly more important role, along with the other ecosystem players and everybody trying to define the roles of the AI native.

6G is a future promise but 5G still has more to deliver

Kal De:

One interesting question in everybody's mind on this on the spectrum side and, you know, the efficiencies that can be realized there is, the speed of adoption of 6G.

What is, you know, like, both a nascent promise, but let’s call it known unknown is the way I think of it, right? I think we still have work to do in 5G, 5G standalone, and the adoption of 5G and 5G hasn't quite yet delivered on the promises that, I think we had all of this wired for. So I think we have work to do there. But yeah, I mean, with the advent of, you know, like, AI the way we're seeing it develop and the opportunities that exist where there's a lot of interest, and we as a company at Nokia, are also pulling the thread on AI ran, and, you know, the alternate leverages of compute, particularly GPUs and how that plays out on the Edge.

Ecosystem value is becoming the benchmark for telecom innovation

Kal De:

It's a really interesting time to be in the industry right now.

The thing that I think there's a lot of focus on in addition to all of these things is, how do they actually deliver value for the ecosystem at large? Because I think that's a place where, we as an industry have had challenges in the past, and I think we need to be cognizant of the technologies that we leverage, take advantage of, actually have closed loop delivery of value back to operators, vendors and of course, partners, you know, like yourselves. And I think that opportunity is writ large. It's there.

Autonomy is not the goal, eliminating complexity is

Samad Masood:

A lot of that value generation that they expected going forward is built on the promise of autonomous networks and autonomous operations.

What would your recommendations be or insights be around how telcos should focus on trying to build these in this agentic future or agentic world?

Kal De:

I think we should, you know, start, our thought process here by taking a step back and asking, why is it that autonomy is there's so much of interest and excitement around it because at the end of the day, agentic mechanisms are a means to an end, right?

And if we say, okay, for the purposes of this conversation, autonomy is the end, right? The network truly is autonomous. Why? Why is that important?

Well, it's because in our industry, one of the greatest detriments to realizing value from the network is it's operational complexity.

Every telecom network is unique, and AI must adapt to it

Kal De:

Closing that last mile is incredibly hard when so much of what we do on a day-to-day basis is manually, operationally intensive. So that's the goal of autonomy, which is reduce human toil, human error. This has been done very successfully on enterprise networks. Telco grid networks take that to a different level altogether. And it's not just, you know, the complexity. It's things like performance, security, throughput, availability, all those things become extremely critical. In an agentic world, to the last part of your question, I think a part of it is understanding where we are now because, you know, like I would say, our learning at Nokia is that while this is a very standards-driven industry, each large operator is unique in some ways. Where they operate, the subscriber population that they serve, the local jurisdictions involved, the local standards, the local laws, all of these things come together, and it doesn't mean that every network is entirely bespoke, but there are unique characteristics in each. And a part of what when we are deploying machines, agents in this, you know, to be specific about it, it is important we understand what are those technologies solving for, which gives us the ability to yes, we wish to remove where possible, human toil, but entirely removing the human from the loop is a dangerous proposition unless we are certain, what are we delegating? And how is that working? And then it's being done at machine speed in a much, much more efficient way. But without us feeling like now we're working with black boxes, that would be a dangerous world.

Partnerships are driving the next wave of telecom transformation

Randip Sinha:

At Infosys, our role is that, you know, we solve business problems for our customers, leveraging people, processes and technology. In the world of networks that are three problem that we're trying to solve. First is that of network optimization. How do we help, you know, the operators and the enterprises run the network more efficiently? The next is about network modernization. You know, networks are moving to a world which is more software defined, getting virtualized, cloudified, more open. And, we play a role there. And finally, it’s that of network monetization, the operators are putting in a lot of money to build these next generation networks. But it's very important to, you know, monetize these assets.

So how can we help the operators in that journey and in this entire, you know, kind of end-to-end blueprint. We are actually partnering with Nokia in developing these solutions. And, you know, So it's a multi-dimensional partnership. We engage with them to help them build their products and then deliver the services to their customers, more efficiently, bringing innovation.

And then we also, you know, trying to do revenue generation jointly. So we also bring customers who would like to deploy their solutions and solve problems. And also we are working with industry bodies in developing the next generation solutions like the TM forum, where we are working on some catalysts, with Nokia.

Nokia and Infosys are co-creating next generation network solution

Kal De:

One of the ways in which the Nokia and Infosys partnership is valuable and has a multiplier effect on the value is, that we complement each other well. To unpack that a little bit, obviously, we are a telecommunications technology vendor. And like most technology vendors of any kind, I'm going to say intentionally, our focus is, very vertical to the domain in which we operate. And I daresay we understand that world really well and where it's going, at least we try to.

The perspective Infosys brings to the table, that makes it super valuable for us to do better in partnership with Infosys at Nokia is the horizontal perspective and understanding of a broader domain. Because no customer is, you know, like an island really, right? There's a 360 degree set of concerns that I think Infosys has lots of rich exposure to the enterprise, cybersecurity, communications and the value that it serves in the customer's domain, not just as a technology outcome.

And I think the opportunity we have is to deepen our conversation, to understand the customer better. Again, it goes back to having an obsession around do we understand our customer well enough to know what are they solving for? And how do Infosys and Nokia work together to make that as smooth, easy and as leading edge as possible.