How telcos are making the most of the AI opportunities in Southeast Asia

Vinod Joseph, Vice President, AI, Data and Enterprise Architecture at Singtel believes that telcos can empower societies at large and AI not just because of their connectivity and large subscriber base but also of the innovation they can develop with AI for customers.

Telco companies are now shifting their focus towards enabling businesses embark on their AI journey by providing a variety of products and services that cater to the use and deployment of AI. Most major telco companies in Southeast Asia have already partnered with major hyperscalers and other tech companies to offer AI services, be it helping businesses through AI-as-a-service (AIaaS) or even building out AI factories that combine network slicing, private 5G and multi-access edge computing.

For example, in Singapore, Singtel launched RE:AI last year, a, AI Cloud Service offering, aimed at democratizing AI to make it widely available to organizations. Specifically, it enables enterprises and public sector customers to get affordable access to AI technologies that can seamlessly transform their operations without needing to invest or maintain in-house infrastructure and supporting resources.

Over in Malaysia, CelcomDigi Berhad, through its Innovation Centre, has unveiled a suite of homegrown AI-powered solutions designed to boost operational efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and redefine smarter ways of working. Developed entirely by CelcomDigi’s digital talent, AIaaS solution will enable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to adopt AI quickly and cost-effectively.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison’s business launched an AI-based surveillance solution in July this year for Indonesian enterprises to improve operational efficiency and optimize data-driven decision making in maintaining security. Dubbed Vision AI, the solution analyzes real-time events, detects specific patterns, and sends early warnings about potential risks or opportunities.

These are just some of the many use cases and services that are being offered by telco companies to businesses in the region. Not only does this provide more options for businesses in their AI journey, but it also enables them to leverage the proven strength and capabilities of these telco companies.

Understanding the value of AI

In an interview with CRN Asia during Singapore Tech Week, Vinod Joseph, Vice President, AI, Data and Enterprise Architecture at Singtel believes that telcos have the ability to empower societies at large and AI not just because of their connectivity and large subscriber base but also of the innovation they are capable of developing with AI for customers.

“AI is not just about building these huge, massive data centers and building large language models. It's about the impact that it brings to the lives of citizens, society at large, governments, and every part of the industries. It’s been very eye-opening and it's been great to see the amount of innovation that we can drive especially when it comes to democratizing AI and making it really relevant to people rather than just looking at it as a big technology pet,” Joseph said.

For Joseph, AI is going to create an environment to actually innovate and also bring up more people, especially since there's always a discussion about what happens to people when AI comes in.

“AI is not really there to replace people. It's really to help people move up the value chain to do things which are much better, much more productive and actually take up the routine and mundane tasks that actually are repeatable,” he added.

At the same time, Joseph feels that AI can be a double-edged sword for telcos if the right steps are not taken when using the technology. This is because as telcos have the data, they've got to be very careful in how that data is used because is is very confidential data.

“So, they can't leak out any information that is personal or sensitive to the person. And it also comes to what is the right amount of data that you need to train a model to be very prescriptive and to be very accurate and non-biased and so on. So definitely telcos have an advantage there, but it also means how do you process data? How do you actually make sure the pipelines you create to funnel the data into a model and train it is not reused by the model provider of some other use cases? So, the sensitivity is not just the telco, but the model provider. So, it's kind of not chicken and egg, but it's a circle. If you don't handle it properly, it can be very vicious. Because the last thing you want is for the data to be taken and used in another country,” he explained.

Joseph also believes that AI may not fulfil the promises it had committed to and the hype.

“I think the way I look at it is that it's going to be a journey. It's not going to be a magic wand where GenAI will start replacing a whole bunch of broken things and fix everything automatically. So, it's important to take the leap. For us, it's important that we help the ecosystem expand. We shouldn't get stuck into one or two or three vendors. It should be an industry aligned initiative as far as AI goes. And that's where the whole partner ecosystem comes in. You need to have an AI ecosystem,” he added.

The role of partners

As telco companies work with a lot of tech vendors, Joseph highlighted that the partner ecosystem actually goes beyond just the vendors, chip makers or software providers.

“It’s also about building a very strong developer community and what I mean by that is universities, college grads, how do you actually bring them to mainstream AI, and make them much more integral or be an integral part of the AI ecosystem. That's extremely important because AI gives you the foundation layer, there is a large vendor ecosystem, software ecosystem, but the relevance to a particular country or to a particular language or to a particular geography, that has to be homegrown,” he said.

Explaining further, Joseph said that looking at the language specific nuances and how to build models that needs to come with a rich history of cultural background and with a rich history of the society that it intends to serve.

“Having native, local population in the form of university grads and other forms of contribution from society can really make it much more relevant. So, I look at that as not the weak link, but the link that really has to kind of double up in terms of what it can offer,” he added.

This is also where the value and ROI from AI will be crucial. For Joseph, how companies execute AI is really important and something where the partner ecosystem will play an important role in ensuring that.