Telco AI: thinking beyond the B2B opportunity

As AI adoption accelerates, operators are transforming business operations, unlocking new revenue streams and efficiencies, and positioning themselves for future growth. While AI’s role in optimising networks and driving B2B innovation is well understood, the consumer side of AI remains an underexplored frontier.

The demand for personalised, AI-powered consumer experiences is rising, creating a major opportunity for operators – not just to boost revenue but to meet evolving consumer expectations. At the same time, B2C services represent an area telcos know very well. Are operators fully tapping into consumer AI potential?

Operators are no strangers to AI, as the technology has been optimising networks and streamlining operations for years. From predictive maintenance to energy efficiency, AI has already proven its worth by driving business transformation and unlocking new revenue streams.

Around 60% of operators report having a solid approach to identifying and prioritising AI use cases, focusing on maximising business impact while mitigating risks, according to our research.

Operators are taking a strategic approach and investing in foundational elements such as infrastructure readiness, AI-driven transformation and building a skilled workforce. At the same time, they are allocating up to 15% of their digital budgets to AI, to support integration of AI into long-term business goals. Of course many are going beyond this, investing more and recrafting their businesses with AI in mind.

AI-powered services for enterprises

Enterprise AI offerings are becoming a focus for operators as they look to monetise AI beyond internal efficiencies. The urgency around AI strategies, especially with the rise of generative AI (genAI), has driven efforts to deliver AI-powered services across industries, unlocking new revenue streams.

GPU as a service (GPUaaS), for instance, allows other businesses to leverage GPU resources (high- performance AI compute) without the need for high upfront investments. For example, SKT and Singtel launched GPUaaS in 2024 to support AI training and inference workloads.

Another growing area of interest is AI factories, where AI compute, network capabilities and AI platforms are offered together as comprehensive services to B2B customers.

AI factories support various verticals, offering tailored AI solutions that meet specific industry needs. In addition, operators are also utilising their AI expertise and infrastructure to create ‘sell-through’ products and solutions, including AI-powered customer service tools, recommendation engines and advertising platforms.

These B2B offerings are also attracting new users and positioning operators as AI enablers across industries.

The consumer AI opportunity

While enterprises are getting the AI focus from telcos, it is time to ask: are operators exploring AI for the consumer segment enough?

Operators know this audience well, with consumers accounting for 70–75% of their revenues. The good news is operators are starting to take note of the consumer AI opportunity.

Notable examples include:

SK Telecom’s A Dot, a digital assistant which brings a genAI-enabled experience to consumers
e& has integrated AI into its Smiles app (and other apps), to deliver unique experiences for its customers with intelligent, personalised recommendations
Telefonica, in partnership with Perplexity, is using genAI to enhance its Movistar Plus pay-TV service
SoftBank is bundling third-party genAI apps with mobile plans to attract and retain customers

These consumer AI initiatives are building on existing consumer interest in AI, as reflected in the latest GSMA Intelligence consumer survey findings. A notable three quarters of consumers are aware of genAI and of these, a majority (circa 60%) have already used it. And among those who have used genAI, just under 70% are satisfied with their experience.

One of the advantages for operators in the consumer AI space is that consumer products may lead to quicker monetisation, as they tend to adopt and purchase products quicker than enterprises, which may have longer digital transformation roadmaps, for example.

With positive consumer engagement and rapid innovation in AI technologies – such as multi-modal AI, agents and open source AI – operators are well positioned to capitalise on the growing demand for AI-powered consumer applications.

Balancing this opportunity with responsibility is also key. As AI integration deepens, operators must ensure they address risks such as concerns around reliability, data privacy, security, fairness and transparency.

Managing these risks in the consumer space is crucial, as millions of individuals can be impacted. The good news is that operators understand the importance of security, as reflected in our latest network transformation survey, which found that end-user security and network security are the top two business priorities for operators as part of their current network transformation strategy.

At MWC25 Barcelona, we expect to see multiple announcements and showcases highlighting operator use cases of AI and how some of these will drive B2C gains.

Hopefully we’ll see more focus on delivering connectivity to all of these use cases next year as 5G-Advanced networks get deployed and operators gain experience with their capabilities. If not, it will be a wasted opportunity following the demos, displays and promise on display in Barcelona this year.