UAE operator e partners with Nokia Bell Labs to explore industrial AI applications

UAE-based telecom service provider e&T and Nokia Bell Labs have signed a 12-month, non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing AI use cases for industrial and enterprise customers.

Under the agreement, e& and Bell Labs will explore opportunities to collaborate with industry players, universities and research institutions to develop AI and ICT solutions that can play a role in industrial automation and digitalization. They believe that network connectivity and AI are the basis for solving challenges such as productivity, efficiency, health and safety, and sustainability.

Bell Labs and e&Work Together to Create a New Chapter in AI

Thierry Klein, president of Solutions Research at Nokia Bell Labs, said: “By leveraging our combined expertise in AI, software and data systems to jointly develop applications and use cases, we will accelerate digital transformation and deliver new technologies for a safer, more efficient and more sustainable future. We look forward to jointly creating breakthrough solutions that will unlock new business opportunities for industrial operations in the Middle East and beyond.”

Dena Almansoori, Chief AI and Data Officer at e&, further elaborated: "While fully recognizing the huge potential of AI, it is critical to establish strong safeguards to ensure its responsible development and deployment. This will be the foundation of our collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs, as we work together to tap into the huge potential of AI in driving sustainable industrial automation. By combining Nokia Bell Labs' cutting-edge achievements in AI research with our deep understanding of industrial application scenarios, we will continue to explore and develop innovative solutions to effectively address the various pressing challenges facing the current industrial community."

The industry's concern about the agreement is whether it will have a profound impact on the Global Telecom Artificial Intelligence Alliance (GTAA) and e& ...

Telecom giants' AI collaboration progresses slowly, facing challenges from AI vendors

It’s been seven months since e&O, Deutsche Telekom, SingTel, SoftBank and SK Telecom announced plans to form a joint venture in the summer of 2023, but unfortunately, there has been no follow-up news since then.

Their goal at the time was to jointly develop a multilingual Large Language Model (LLM) that would be particularly useful for communications. The plan was to use it as the basis for a variety of telecom-related GenAI applications, including digital assistants.

While the idea is valuable, the window of opportunity is closing as giants in the field of general AI such as Anthropic, Cohere, Google and OpenAI further enter the telecommunications industry. These AI vendors, with their deep technical accumulation and continuous innovation, are gradually shaping and changing the landscape of the telecommunications industry, making the challenges faced by e& and its partners increasingly severe.

Telecom giants are accelerating their AI deployment

Earlier this week, BT announced a partnership with AWS to develop the GenAI Gateway platform, giving it access to a range of LLMs that can be used to enhance its internal processes.

Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile revealed last week that it had partnered with OpenAI to develop an AI customer relationship management platform called IntentCX.

In early September, Telenor discussed plans to jointly develop a cloud-native data and analytics orchestration platform called Nova. Nova will integrate Google’s Vertex AI, enabling Telenor to develop GenAI applications compatible with any of 150 base models.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of market dynamics closely related to GTAA in September. With the widespread application of existing LLMs in the telecommunications industry, a question worth pondering has emerged: Is it still necessary for telecommunications companies to invest resources in developing their own exclusive LLMs? This issue is gradually becoming the focus of attention within and outside the industry.