- Telcos must balance cloud models and overcome security challenges to scale AI effectively
- Success depends on placing AI workloads strategically across cloud and edge
- Find out more about how telcos are leveraging hybrid cloud to deliver AI value in our free report
Telcos are racing to transform their operations with AI — but that transformation needs a hybrid cloud approach. According to a report by Fierce Network Research, nearly three-quarters of telecom decision-makers say hybrid cloud is essential or very important to their AI strategies.
Fierce Network surveyed 102 decision-makers and influencers for network architecture and deployment at telcos, wireless, broadband, satellite and other service providers to find out how telco leaders are thinking about the role of hybrid cloud in AI deployment. We then bolstered the survey with additional research, including interviews with two leading lights on AI and the telco cloud: Sinan Atan, business development manager at Lenovo, and Prashant Agarwal, Intel's telco business development manager.
Intel and Lenovo sponsored the report, but our research (which you can download here) is independent.
According to our findings, AI is already delivering value to telecoms in multiple areas, including customer service (77%), network optimization (70%), and IT (44%). But to fully realize AI’s potential, telcos must deploy the right workloads in the right places — training large models in centralized public clouds while moving inferencing to the network edge for lower latency and better privacy compliance.
Hybrid cloud enables that flexibility. In the survey, 39% of operators said they favor a balanced approach between on-premises and public cloud. Another 23% rely on primarily on-prem infrastructure, while 18% are mostly in the public cloud. Just 20% aren’t using hybrid cloud at all.
Security and complexity remain top concerns. Two-thirds of respondents cited security and privacy as their biggest challenges with hybrid cloud, followed by operational complexity (62%) and lack of skilled talent (48%).
Operators are feeling pressure to deliver business results from AI. Their top goals: increasing operational efficiency (82%), saving costs through automation (72%) and improving customer engagement (64%). But new revenue generation remains elusive. As one industry executive warned in the report, operators can’t justify big investments in AI unless they also show revenue upside.
Telcos that succeed will be the ones that strategically deploy AI where it adds the most value (whether on-prem or in the public cloud) and build security and metrics into every stage of implementation. The opportunity is real—but only for those that can move quickly and smartly.
Download the free report: Telco Transformation at Speed: Harnessing Hybrid Cloud to Drive AI-Powered Industry Progress