Videos
NVIDIA on Autonomous Networks, AI Growth, and the Future Telco Workforce
Insights
- Autonomous networks have become a top AI investment priority for telecom operators, overtaking customer experience initiatives for the first time.
- Telcos are looking beyond efficiency gains to monetize data, launch new digital services, and create new AI-enabled revenue streams.
- The future workforce will combine human expertise with digital agents, requiring new skills, governance models, and operating approaches.
At MWC 2026, Lilac Ilan of NVIDIA and Jinu Koshy of Infosys discuss how AI is reshaping the telecom industry from network operations to business growth. They explain why autonomous networks have emerged as one of the industry's most important AI priorities and how agentic AI is helping streamline complex operational processes. The conversation explores Infosys' Frontier Telco approach, which focuses on transforming not only technology but also organizational mindset, workforce capabilities, and enterprise operating models. They also highlight the growing role of digital agents working alongside employees, enabling teams to focus on higher-value work while accelerating productivity and innovation. Looking ahead, they argue that the greatest opportunity for telcos lies not only in reducing costs but in creating new digital services, monetizing data assets, and building the infrastructure that will support the emerging AI economy.
Lilac Ilan:
I don't think there was one booth that you wouldn't go to where autonomous network won't come to life with a demo and a plethora of use cases. Another good use case that we've been seeing is the B2C, or how AI can help drive a differentiated offer, a differentiated data plan, a differentiated service that telco can offer to their consumers. How could you do voice, AI-enabled voice? How can you offer perhaps a home agent? How can you perhaps bundle Perplexity or any kind of AI offer to your customers? Another one is robotics. I will say every hall has different robotics walking here.
Lilac Ilan:
Nvidia published our State of AI report just before Mobile World Congress. One of the things we saw was that autonomous network was a key theme of focus for the telco in investing in AI. And actually, it's for the first time superseded the investment in AI in customer experience.
Jinu Koshy:
Infosys has launched the Frontier Telco approach to this AI opportunity. And it is about, as you said, not just the network or the infrastructure or the software, but the whole operating model change.
Jinu Koshy:
It's the change of mindset, how do you coexist in this world of agents? And what's the role of the human? What's the role of the engineer then? How do you get AI-enabled and how do you set up for this AI future? So not just perhaps using the idea of small improvements, but rather an ROI at an enterprise scale, which is end-to-end. So that mindset change is really what we are addressing in the Frontier Telco, coupled with, of course, enabling technologies and then using that technology to achieve those business outcomes.
Jinu Koshy:
The biggest conversations that we are having are customers, especially CXOs, asking us, how do you build for this future that is still unravelling before us? For example, the choices of technologies that you make today, how does that sit perhaps 18 months out or 24 months out, with new innovation that comes up? Nvidia releases something new, or Anthropic releases something new, or some other technology provider gives something new? And how do you build that into this thinking of choices that you're making today, meaning, who controls that orchestration of decision making in that enterprise architecture?
Samad Masood:
How do you see where we're at now turning into opportunities for growth for businesses, for telcos?
Jinu Koshy:
The idea of growth comes from monetizing the asset that telcos have got, which is the data. Get the foundation data right and make sure that foundation layer then propels the ability to always launch new services. So those operators which are clocking good digital revenue growth, which is digital services, not just connectivity services, but a bouquet of services that are beyond connectivity, those are the ones that are setting the gold standard for this growth that you're talking about. And then there is also the play of AI in this whole AI economy that emerges. How do you set up the infrastructure that allows you to play in this ecosystem of opportunity, which is not just the cost play within the enterprise itself, the telco itself, but rather the growth opportunity that it provides by setting up for the B2B world in the telco example. Setting up the sovereign infrastructure, and making sure the opportunity exists in this networked economy of the future.
Lilac Ilan:
AI can help really in three major things. It doesn't matter if it's telco or manufacturing or finance. It helps you serve your customer differently, much more easily. It allows you to do your operations much more streamlined and automated. And in telco it is going into automation, and it allows you to think about your product differently.
Lilac Ilan:
So now let's break it down and take it to our industry. Thinking about a product differently, that's the core of the network. This is where you're seeing things like 6G. And sensing is another big topic here. It's like the next generation product. But autonomous network is another way of thinking about your product. When you're talking about adding services, it's another way of thinking of your product. We talked about doing your operations differently. Again, isn't it autonomous network or customer service, doing your operations seamlessly more? This is where it's streamlining processes, and agentic AI will do a beautiful job, or is doing a beautiful job, streamlining processes that were very convoluted. The processes can be streamlined and fast, and thus serve your customer faster, better.
Lilac Ilan:
When you hire a new employee, they have to go through onboarding. We're giving them access control to a building. We're showing them their desk. We're introducing them to the team. We invest in new employees with training. Now take that to a digital agent. We onboard new agents digitally. We give them access to documents, to environments where they're allowed to pull information from. We're introducing them to a team of agents that they will work together with. By the way, sometimes we need to expire a digital agent, they might not perform well, so we need to monitor their performance. So those digital agents will be an integrated part of every team that will work there. They will augment, they will assist in doing your work, the day-to-day work.
Jinu Koshy:
The role of the human then becomes, yes, co-existing with those agents, but also leveraging AI to do their jobs so that higher order jobs could be done by humans. And that change in mindset is what we are doing across the organization. So as far as my team is concerned, which is a bunch of subject matter experts, process experts, this is about making sure those gold standard processes are documented, codified, embraced by organizations that are migrating to this Frontier mindset, and then to be augmented by these AI tools and technologies that are available, so that the throughput and the outcome that you accomplish is much more in this process.
Jinu Koshy:
Every role in Infosys is getting enabled by AI. In the sense that you're adding AI skills or extensions, capabilities to every role at Infosys, every engineer, every function is getting enabled with AI so that we could do our work better and do higher order work to address all the opportunities that are coming by. That's going to be the future, which is that it's augmented by capabilities of AI, so that we are freed up to address issues of growth, issues of opportunities that we're capitalizing on in the business.
Samad Masood:
It's not about removing software developers, is it?
Lilac Ilan:
Oh, not at all. I want to be very, very clear. There is not going to be any replacement. It's all about growth and bringing more. The work of everyone is going to change with adding more to their plate, and more in the form of growth opportunities.
Samad Masood:
It's not about software developers doing less. It's about them doing more.
Lilac Ilan:
Nvidia and Infosys have been working together for the longest time and the idea behind it is that there are the subject matter experts in the telco day in, day out. You guys manage applications. You guys are helping with the network. You guys are helping with customer experience. Our role at Nvidia is to empower Infosys to be that change management inside of telco. If we enable them to use AI for themselves, for the service that Infosys delivers to the telco, then it's another great way for the telco to adopt AI. Remember how I said earlier skills, Intel Core, is still a bottleneck. There's not enough data scientists who know AI today. Empowering Infosys to know AI, be the champion of AI in every organization, especially in the telco, it allows for faster adoption, faster change, faster time to ROI. And from that matter, this is why we're working very well together.
Samad Masood:
The one thing you can't control is the pace, the speed of change of those technologies. But you can have a vision for where your business is going. And while there's that autonomous layer, there's also the business growth that we're trying to enable, because telcos truly need growth at this moment.
