Videos
Microsoft on Frontier Telco, Trusted AI, and Measurable ROI
Insights
- Telecom AI adoption is moving rapidly from experimentation to production, with operators focused on measurable business outcomes and ROI.
- Agentic AI, combined with strong data foundations and intelligence layers, enables new approaches to customer experience, network operations, and revenue growth.
- Trust, governance, and responsible AI practices are becoming essential components of successful AI transformation.
At MWC 2026, Monte Hong of Microsoft and Amit Sharma of Infosys discuss how telecom operators are moving beyond AI pilots toward enterprise-scale transformation. They explain how the Frontier Telco vision combines data, intelligence, and agentic AI to reimagine customer experiences, modernize network operations, and create new revenue opportunities beyond traditional connectivity services. The conversation highlights Microsoft's approach to intelligence through Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ, which together help organizations understand how work gets done, make data more accessible, and enable AI-driven decision-making. They also emphasize that successful AI adoption requires balancing intelligence with trust, governance, and responsible practices. Looking ahead, they argue that the organizations that build strong data foundations and intelligent orchestration layers will be best positioned to achieve measurable ROI and unlock the full potential of AI-native telecom operations.
Amit Sharma:
Last year at MWC, it was, I would say, a curious year because a lot of new things were happening, people were experimenting with things. This is a year where it is not an experiment anymore. But it's like POC to production stage.
Monte Hong:
When you look at the Frontier Telco model, I think what we're talking about is this data-driven AI enabled telco that really is trying to undertake fundamental transformational change, but leveraging the AI technologies, the agentic architectures — whether that's how they're doing customer experience in a new way, whether that's how they're launching new products in a certain way, whether that's looking at how AI can be applied to the network. And then finally, I think it's around how they're leveraging AI and agentic for growing their top line revenue. How do they really grow beyond connectivity? How can they monetize their data? How can they leverage agent monetization? How do they provide a secure environment? How do they have governance associated with that to really drive measurable benefit? I think that's the other big key — as a Frontier Telco, it's about how do you have a really good return on intelligence? And what I mean by that is really measurable ROI.
Monte Hong:
So we introduced our Microsoft IQ, which is really about Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ. Work IQ understands the patterns in which you work, how you work, the behaviors you're doing. And Fabric IQ is all about the data — it's all about the way in which you look at the ontology. It's really to understand that you can have the data in a way that it's accessible to everyone, everyone that kind of needs it. And then Foundry IQ is really about how you're reasoning across that data. And so that's where the agents come into play — the way in which you work, the way in which you detect issues and problems and see the data, and the way in which you act on that data.
Monte Hong:
I think it also starts with what we're trying to draw on with the Frontier Telco, which is intelligence plus trust. You have to have the ability to have the intelligence across your data, the way in which you work, the way in which your applications look for actions to be taken. But you also have to have the trust, which means you have the principles in place, you have the governance in place, and you have all of that. And then that leads you to what every telco executive is asking for — measurable ROI. What they're really looking for are use cases that have measurable, quantifiable returns on the intelligence that is now built into it.
Amit Sharma:
The magic key, the missing link for that ROI is building more complex agentic systems, which needs that intelligent layer so that we can switch the context right across the whole agentic layer. And I think that the solution like our telco intelligence layer, process ontology layer, is going to be the key to actually achieve those KPIs much faster in a true sense.
