Videos
Infosys Consulting on Frontier Telco, AI Monetization, and the Shift to Digital Orchestration
Insights
- Telecom operators are shifting from AI pilots to enterprise-scale adoption, with a growing focus on monetization, cost transformation, and measurable business outcomes.
- Frontier Telco requires a mindset shift from connectivity provider to digital orchestrator, delivering integrated business solutions rather than standalone services.
- AI must become part of the organization's core operating model, enabling new products, intelligent operations, and entirely new revenue streams.
At MWC 2026, Olu Adegoke of Infosys Consulting discusses how the telecom industry is entering a new phase of AI adoption, moving beyond proof-of-concept projects toward enterprise-wide transformation. He explains that operators face increasing pressure to improve profitability by simultaneously reducing costs through agentic AI and creating new sources of growth. The conversation explores the Frontier Telco framework, which encourages telecom providers to rethink their business models, operating models, and intelligent operations around AI-native capabilities. Adegoke also highlights the growing expectation that telcos will evolve from connectivity providers into digital orchestrators, delivering cloud, security, identity, and industry-specific solutions for enterprise customers. Looking ahead, he argues that the organizations that succeed will be those that embed AI into the core of the business, making it the foundation for innovation, operational excellence, and long-term value creation.
Olu Adegoke:
So if you recollect MWC last year, there was a lot of discussion obviously on AI. But at that point it was mostly at the proof of concept stage. Everybody is now looking at how do we scale this AI? How do we monetize it? And how do we get the entire organization behind it? So it has definitely moved away from POCs to enterprise level adoption now. So and that is a huge difference honestly with a lot of issues that needs to be addressed on the way.
If you look at the current trajectory in terms of the level of CapEx investment that is required in terms of the cost structure of the business today is actually not viable in the future unless we figure out a way to bend the cost cut leveraging agentic AI, number one. And then number two, there is a need to identify new revenue stream as well, in order to be able to improve the EBITDA as well, which obviously will then drive the cash flow in the business.
The concept of Frontier Telco means there needs to be a growth mindset. What does that mean? There’s going to be a series of experimentations, a series of new products, new offerings that needs to be launched. And frankly, there is no defined playbook at this point, to be able to execute and deliver those, which we know that for the most part many of our telecom clients they have a culture that is very conservative. A true entrepreneurial, true innovation-led, whereby some of these new offerings they require new capabilities that needs to be built from the grounds up.
Number two is also about building an ecosystem as well. Ecosystem of partners that will allow you to be able to develop these new offering and this new capability. So which means where we think about the economic model of those new products, like the example I was giving around HAI, for example, which will require to be able to develop solutions specific for each industry verticals, whether it’s manufacturing, whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s banking. So which means for each one of those solutions, there is a need for that ecosystem of partners. And that’s why we believe that it requires a new mindset shift.
Because the most critical piece of this is how do you deliver business outcomes for your customers? Especially in the B2B space, in the enterprise space, whereby the enterprises are now looking at telcos to play a major part in their own digital transformation. So which means telcos need to make a shift from being a utility provider in terms of connectivity to becoming a digital orchestrator that helps their enterprise customers to orchestrate digital services across the start to be able to deliver services.
So for example, there’s no longer just enough to provide connectivity. They want telcos to provide cloud, they want services, they want telcos to provide security, they want telcos to provide identity-as-a-service for agents and for machines as well. So all of this multitude of services needs to be orchestrated by telco to their own enterprise customer. So which means part of the mindset shift goes beyond just selling features to packaging the capabilities and sell business outcomes.
These new services, they require new pricing, they require new business model around it. So which means telcos now are looking at AI from both of those perspective, how do we use it to enable today's business model as well as enabling the future business model as well, which is why from Infosys standpoint, we’re talking about Frontier Telco. Because Frontier Telco means we have to truly reimagine the business model, reimagine the operating model so that there you can get the full maximum benefit from AI.
So the Frontier Telco framework is primarily how we believe that telcos should reimagine the business from three different perspectives. So the first perspective is we call that first layer, the strategic layer, which is where essentially you reimagine the business model in terms of the new products that you want to be able to launch, obviously in terms of the risk that you also need to be able to mitigate. And then also in terms of the value realization, in terms of the ROI, all of the critical strategic, transformative decisions that need to take place.
Then the second layer of thinking is what we refer to as operational. And the operational layer is where the execution comes together in terms of the simplification of the operational processes, the type of experience that you want to be able to deliver, all of the design of those experiences and of those processes at that layer.
Then the last, but not the least, is where we refer to as intelligent operations. These are for the new AI or agentic AI-specific capabilities that you need to be able to implement, like AIOps, for example. And this is where you need new skill sets, for example, in terms of the agent monitoring, which will require an entirely new role within the organization. So these three layer is the construct that we believe that telcos can use to reimagine how they will do the business to be able to monetize the AI-native capabilities.
This is beyond just using AI. This is actually now making AI the nervous system of the organization so that you can truly create the transformative capabilities that will not only allow you to be able to serve the customer, but to radically transform the business world and the economics of the business as well.
