Q&A: Intersection of AI + Blockchain

Hall 4 - Auditorium 4

Thursday 28 February 14:30-15:30

What will be the key themes you cover in the session?

I will talk about the advantages of the Cross-Carrier Blockchain Platform built by operators around the world which are part of the Carrier Blockchain Study Group (CBSG) Consortium – the first blockchain group focused solely on the telecoms industry.

The various blockchains will be collectively maintained by the operators, instead of unknown miners as with other public blockchains.

Who are your members?

The consortium was set up by TBCASoft and SoftBank in September 2017, with US-based Sprint and Far EasTone Telecommunications from Taiwan also founding members.

Asia Pacific Telecom (Taiwan), du (UAE) and MTN Group have also recently joined as members. TBCASoft completed a Series A round of financing with participation from investors including Far EasTone, Foxconn Ventures and SoftBank. The investment will help us accelerate product development and expand our global business development efforts.

What are the short-term goals of the consortium?

We aim to promote and facilitate inter-carrier dialogue for the cross-carrier blockchain infrastructure and help members launch inter-carrier working groups to develop new disruptive services.

The group recently conducted field trials of a cross-carrier, cross-border, mobile payment service enabled by TBCASoft’s Cross-Carrier Blockchain Platform called Cross-Carrier Payment System. In January, Far EasTone and SoftBank completed mobile wallet transactions on each other’s payment networks.

Our goal is to provide a secure, trustworthy and high-performance blockchain platform to support various distributed applications. The first commercial service is targeted to be launched this year.

How important are the platform's security and high-reliability features?

Extremely important. Data which needs high reliability, trust and security can benefit greatly from the global platform. That is why TBCASoft is working together with global telecoms carriers to build a highly-secure, high-reliable platform.

How can high-performance, connected AI solutions benefit from the platform?

AI solutions should rely on trusted sources of data so they can make trustworthy decisions based on reliable inputs. The Cross-Carrier Blockchain Platform facilitates global data integrity with an expected lower cost than traditional technologies.