Bridge Alliance at our retreat in Johor Bahru, Malaysia last October.
Hi everyone!
We hope the year has gotten off to a great start for you! Fresh into 2025, we are gazing into our crystal ball highlighting the top telco trends that we see for the year:
- RCS Business Messaging should pick up momentum in 2025. Since Apple announced it would support RCS in 2024, and support began with the roll-out of iOS 18 later, RCS should finally live up to the hype that’s been associated with it for the past few years. Support for RCS comes at the right time given the rise in fraud across the SMS platform, with operators looking for safer alternatives.
- Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will remain a hot topic in the telecoms industry. As more and more telcos look to AI to generate revenue, there will be mounting pressure to prove the impact of the GenAI investments with clear metrics and frameworks for success.
- Satellite will become more mainstream due to the integration of satellite services into the telecoms ecosystems. Telcos have been making significant investments in the satcom industry, while satellite operators similarly have been investing heavily in new satellite launches and in building partnerships with operators. This means that, coupled with the growth in compatible smartphones, we can soon expect the latter to directly connect to satellites, thus adding a new revenue stream for operators.
- eSIMs will become a household technology among consumers. More travellers and roamers opt for travel eSIMs as an alternative to physical SIMs. Travel eSIMs are already competing with traditional roaming services and the perception is that compared with traditional roaming options, they provide users with more control over what people spend and monitor in real-time how they consume the data. eSIMs are also closely tracked by fintech companies and banks, as the example of Revolut’s eSIM service in Singapore shows it has the potential to unlock additional services by offering loans or enhanced customer profiling for credit scoring.
- 5G rollout will continue across the globe. Telecom operators can expect to see higher levels of adoption and monetization for their public 5G networks. The pace of 5G standalone (SA) roll-out, which has been slow so far, should pick up momentum in most geographical regions.
On this 5G note, in the past quarter, we saw Vietnam welcome commercial 5G in October 2024. Viettel was the first operator to launch, followed by VinaPhone in December and MobiFone set to do so anytime now. MobiFone and Vinaphone have agreed to optimize costs by sharing infrastructure.
The AI race among the world’s tech giants has led to a significant jump in costs, particularly for chips and data center infrastructure. AI spending has surged in recent years as all companies (not only telcos) scramble to capitalize on the potential of integrating AI into their core services. The stakes are high: pressure will be mounting for telcos to channel their investments in Gen AI more towards revenue-generating opportunities rather than back-office productivity.
Read on for more of the latest recent announcements from our Bridge member operators (BMOs). And in case you missed it earlier, here are our Bridge Alliance highlights from 2024!
Cheers
Bridge Alliance Research and Analysis Team
5G and Innovation/APIs
5G technology continues to enable telecom operators to develop new services and applications across various sectors by leveraging its speeds, low latency, and ability to connect a massive number of devices.
In Q4, the announcements by the BMOs are reflective of a broad range of services:
In India, Airtel awarded Ericsson a multi-year 4G and 5G extension deal, which will see Ericsson deploy centralized RAN and Open RAN-ready solutions for network transformation which will help customers with wider coverage and the enhanced capacity on the network. Ericsson will also undertake the software upgrade of Airtel’s current deployed 4G radios.
Airtel also awarded Nokia a multi-year, multi-billion extension to deploy 4G and 5G equipment across key Indian cities and states. Nokia will deploy equipment from its cutting-edge 5G AirScale portfolio including base stations, baseband units and the latest generation of Massive MIMO radios, all powered by its energy-efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip technology. Airtel will also be leveraging Nokia’s MantaRay Network Management solutions.
In Indonesia, Telkomsel continues to expand its 5G network (Hyper 5G) in the Greater Jakarta area (Jabodetabek), supported by Huawei. Telkomsel is also integrating an end-to-end Hyper AI approach that ensures faster responses to network disruptions and enables automated network management.
Taiwan Mobile similarly continues to enhance 5G coverage, inking a one -year 5G contract extension with Nokia to boost the performance and capacity of its 5G network as well as upgrade its 4G/LTE network in rural areas.
Over in Vietnam, MobiFone and Ericsson inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on establishing 5G Innovation Hub at MobiFone’s premises. The hub will feature innovative 5G use cases and will also be designed to serve as a 5G co-creation space and R7D hub, featuring a state-of-the-art 5G sandbox network.
Singtel and Ericsson are deploying 5G advanced connectivity solutions at Tuas Port in Singapore. This is in support of the Singapore port authority’s plans to build the world’s largest fully automated port.
In December, China Unicom and Huawei announced that they recently co-established China’s first 5G-A V2X innovation base in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. The initiative marks a significant milestone in the in-depth application of 5G-A technology for integrated vehicle-road-cloud systems and innovation in intelligent driving and smart parking applications/
Also in China, China Telecom and Huawei jointly built an F+T dual-layer premium network for the high-speed railway with innovative solutions that improve 5G performance, allowing users on trains to enjoy smooth entertainment services such as live streaming, HD videos, and New Calling, as well as convenient office services such as remote calls and remote office.
The Travel Alliance, comprising Singtel, AIS, Globe, HKT, Optus, Taiwan Mobile and Telkomsel announced strategic partnerships with leading ride-hailing, delivery, and travel brands Grab and Trip.com to enable savings on accommodations, flights, rides, and food deliveries for Alliance customers when they travel. Promotions will be progressively rolled out by the Alliance members from 1 January 2025. The Travel Alliance was formed in February 2024 with the aim of launching the first-of-its-kind cross-border rewards programme to enable its almost 300 million customers to enjoy a slew of incentives on transport, dining, merchandise, and lifestyle services when they travel to the markets where the operators are based.
Similarly in South Korea, SK Telecom has plans to further enrich customers’ travel experience by launching a new rewards programme, ‘Club T Roaming’. It provides useful benefits throughout the entire travel process, from travel preparation to overseas locations and even after returning home, and is available to anyone subscribing to SKT’s baro rate plan.
Maxis and the Malaysia Retail Chain Association (MRCA), a 562-member strong organisation representing Malaysian retailers have inked a MoU. to drive the adoption of 5G technology solutions in bolstering the domestic retail sector. The partnership seeks to improve retail customer experience and increase operational efficiency through advanced connectivity and digital solutions.
Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm and Skylo have successfully completed an end-to-end trial of SMS send and receipt over GEO satellite. It is the first time in Europe that an operator’s terrestrial mobile network has been integrated into a satellite network to enable texting based on the 3GPP Release 17 specifications for Direct-to-Handset (D2H) connectivity.
In API news, Singtel and Ericsson have signed a MoU to offer a self-service, API-enabled, zero-touch and real-time solution for enterprises’ ordering, provisioning and assuring communications services via Singtel’s Paragon orchestration platform.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Generative AI remains a hot topic in the telecoms industry and the hype around GenAI seems to have drawn operators’ attention away from other AI technologies; in fact, other AI-based tools such as computer vision, predictive systems and prescriptive systems are equally integral to the overall AI landscape.
In the last quarter, SKT, Softbank and Singtel were among the most active BMOs in the AI space.
At its SK AI Summit 2024 last November, SK Telecom published a 6G white paper on how the future telco infrastructure will evolve and converge with the AI era. SKT also unveiled its ‘AI Infrastructure Superhighway’ strategy comprising AI Data Center (AIDC), GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), and Edge AI, that will help it achieve its aims to become an AI hub in Asia Pacific region.
SKT then introduced Aster(A*), an AI-driven personal assistant designed for global users, targeted at the global market. Aster is designed as an ‘Agentic AI,’ which goes beyond answering simple queries by understanding user intentions to set goals and complete tasks.
SK Telecom announced it will introduce an AI-powered customer service that taps its proprietary Telco LLM and LMM (Large Multimodal Model). It will also invest $3 million in Twelve Labs, an AI video analysis startup that develops multimodal AI models that can understand and search images.
Meanwhile, at the user level, SKT released a PC Version of its AI personal assistant service ‘A.’ (A dot) that can be easily accessed via mobile and provides 8 LLM models for free.
In Singapore, Singtel launched RE:AI, its new Artificial Intelligence Cloud Service (AI Cloud) offering, aimed at democratising AI to make it widely available and affordable to enterprise customers. The AI infrastructure will be delivered through Singtel’s Paragon orchestration platform. The offering will enable customers to deploy, manage and scale their AI applications without having to worry about the overheads of complex infrastructure.
Over in Japan, SoftBank Corp. developed a traffic understanding multimodal AI designed for remote support of autonomous driving, that will operate on low-latency edge AI servers with the goal of achieving fully unmanned operations through enhanced vehicle safety and external remote support.
SoftBank has also launched full-fledged initiatives to develop “AITRAS”, a convergence solution based on the AI-RAN concept that can host both AI and RAN (Radio Access Network) workloads on the same NVIDIA-accelerated computing platform that will be offered to telecom operators globally from next year onwards.
SoftBank completed the installation of approximately 4,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs in its Japan top-level AI computing platform now under expansion. This AI computing platform will initially be utilized by SB Intuitions, SoftBank’s subsidiary dedicated to developing homegrown large language models (LLMs) specialized for the Japanese language.
In India, Nxtra by Airtel has deployed AI in its data centres to drive operational excellence. It is the first data centre in India to leverage AI to build new-age digitised facilities engineered to drive smart capabilities like predictive maintenance, enhanced operational and energy efficiency.
To enhance workplace safety with AI, Optus has collaborated with Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Speedshield Technologies to integrate 5G RedCap (also known as NR-Light or 5G-Light) technology with AI-powered camera systems. This will mitigate pedestrian collisions in industrial settings using artificially intelligent cameras, revolutionising safety protocols.
Over in the Middle East, stc Group and Bell Labs Consulting successfully trialled a pioneering GenAI solution that will streamline service provision, reduce time to market, lower costs and significantly increase overall efficiency.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Globe’s shared services and outsourcing arm Asticom has partnered with AI Rudder, a voice AI technology firm, to reshape customer experiences across multiple industries in the country.
In Europe, Deutsche Telekom has launched the first commercial AI model offering featuring OpenGPT-X’s Teuken-7B under an open source licence. This ‘Made in Germany’ offering strengthens digital sovereignty for businesses and public authorities.
IoT/M2M and mobility
We start to see several announcements where AI and IoT are deployed together. IoT devices can generate significant amounts of potentially valuable data and AI algorithms are increasingly being deployed at the edge, enabling IoT devices to analyze data in real-time and make autonomous decisions without relying on cloud connectivity.
The IoT market is expected to continue to growth; the number of connected IoT devices grew 13% by 2024 surpassing 18 billion while enterprise spending on IoT grew about 10% Y-on-Y.
In India, Airtel Business partnered Kia India for its Kia Connect 2.0 platform. Through Airtel’s nationwide communications network, the 2.0 platform will power all connected car variants of Kia with and secure real-time connectivity.
In the Philippines, ACMobility has acquired Evro, the Philippines’ first brand-agnostic roaming electric vehicle (EV) charging network, developed by Globe’s venture builder and tech innovation arm 917Ventures.
In South Korea, SK Telecom formed a consortium with Lotte Innovate to participate in the construction of an autonomous driving living lab and C-ITS (Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems) infrastructure in Hwaseong City, about 45 minutes from Seoul.
In China, Changan Automobile officially inaugurated its new digital intelligent manufacturing factory developed in collaboration with China Unicom and Huawei. The AVATR 07, a mid-size SUV, became the first vehicle to roll off the production line at the new facility. Fully connected by 5G and powered by AI, this factory boasts over 800 intelligent devices, 1,400 robots, 650 intelligent AGVs, and 200 fully-automated workstations.
SoftBank subsidiary Cubic Telecom and Skylo Technologies have unveiled a commercial partnership that will see Cubic’s connectivity solution extended to include access to Skylo’s global network. As part of this partnership, Skylo’s non-terrestrial network solutions will be offered as a network connectivity option on Cubic’s industry leading solutions, enabling seamless location tracking, remote diagnostics, vehicle unlock, and emergency communications.
Private Networks
The private mobile network market continued to grow as the market is being driven by verticals such as manufacturing, education, and mining, which use these networks for enhanced data, security and mobility needs. Based on the most recent stats from GSA, 52% of private network deployments are LTE only, 21% use a mixture of 4G and 5G, while pure 5G PN account for only 25% and a large proportion of these 5G deployments are testbeds for universities.
Airtel and Telkomsel have been the main BMOs active in this space recently. Airtel Business is experiencing strong demand for private network 5G services among its enterprise clients in areas like smart factories and autonomous vehicle operations.
In Indonesia, Telkomsel Enterprise and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indonesia (TMMIN) are collaborating: by adopting Telkomsel Enterprise’s 5G Private Network solution to support TMMIN’s Smart Manufacturing programmes and seeing tangible achievements, such as reduced logistics costs, and the application of leading technologies such as IoT and Artificial Intelligence.
Enterprise
There have been several new developments in the enterprise segment for BMOs.
Singtel announced that it has unlocked new features in its network slicing technology which enables enterprises to prioritise connectivity resources for apps and specific users, a global first. The technology, known as User Equipment Route Selection Policy (URSP), has been configured for enterprises to prioritise specific apps that support their business needs. URSP is deployed through the Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform and works with smartphones on the latest operating systems.
Singtel also unveiled its suite of quantum-safe offerings to help enterprises fortify their defenses against cyber threats and scale more securely in the quantum age. This involves integrating Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) technology, which is algorithms engineered to resist the computational power of attacks from quantum computers, from leading cybersecurity solutions providers, Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, into Singtel’s nationwide Quantum Safe Network (QSN). O
Optus is now an authorised reseller of Starlink internet. The new service, which will be called Satellite Internet for business, will offer enterprise and small business customers fast, uncapped, reliable high throughput Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband.
Separately, Optus commenced 3G switch off from 27 October 2024, following a prior national campaign about it, while in Germany, Deutsche Telekom plans to send the outdated 2G technology into well-deserved retirement in the summer of 2028 and use the freed-up frequencies for 4G/5G networks.
In India, Airtel Business has partnered Zscaler, a global cloud security leader, to launch ‘Airtel Secure Digital Internet ’– India’s first, fully-managed Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) based solution designed to protect enterprises from a wide range of cyber threats. Airtel Business has also leveraged new-age cybersecurity solutions from Fortinet, a global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, to launch ‘Airtel Secure Internet’ — a new-age internet security solution offering a robust and fully-managed defence against cyber threats. This particular solution is designed specifically to enhance security over Internet Lease Line (ILL) circuits, combining Airtel’s trusted internet connectivity with Fortinet’s next-generation firewall.
Also to boost security, Globe Business and Orca Security have joined forces to safeguard confidential business and customer data. Together, they aim to deliver comprehensive cloud security solutions and services for enterprises of all sizes in the Philippines.
Over in the Middle East, stc Group and Ooredoo have signed an MoU to collaborate on enhancing the ICT ecosystem and expanding digital services and connectivity across the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Stc Group and Ericsson have inked an MoU to provide a comprehensive six-month on-the-job training programme for stc’s employees across various telecommunications areas of expertise.
Cloud
As the move away from traditional hardware-based infrastructure towards the cloud gathers pace, telecom operators will continue to adopt networking solutions empowered by technology such as containerisation, virtualisation and microservices. This will give network operators new levels of flexibility and scalability, enabling more automation, moving towards the adoption of software-defined networking and 5G network slicing.
SK Telecom has launched ‘SKT Enterprise AI Cloud Manager’, an AI-based B2B solution that can optimize AI infrastructure resources and integrate management of AI development environments.
T-Systems has partnered rku.it GmbH, a German energy industry IT service provider, and RPA software provider UiPath, in a collaboration where rku.it GmbH will deliver its own Energy Automation Sphere platform for the automation of rule-based energy industry business processes, with Open Telekom Cloud contributing an intelligent automation platform.
T-Systems and Broadcom have expanded their nearly 20-year long collaboration. T-Systems is now a VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Pinnacle tier partner, the highest and most strategic level in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. Meanwhile, T-Systems also achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Sovereignty Competency status, which differentiates T-Systems as an AWS Partner that has demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success supporting the assured control and authority over data and infrastructure in the digital domain.
UC/CPaaS
In 2025, key CPaaS trends will likely focus on enhancing customer experience through omnichannel communication, leveraging AI and automation for increased efficiency, prioritizing security and compliance for trust building, simplifying platforms to adopt new communication instruments, and utilizing advanced personalization and analytics to gain deeper insights into customer interactions.
In 4Q2024, SK Telecom launched ‘SKT AI CCaaS’, a subscription-based AI contact center (AICC) solution that uses the latest AI technology. This service provides an all-in-one service required for operating an AI-based customer center, reduces waiting time during the consultation process, and improves work efficiency.
Optus is rolling out the contact centre of the future experience across further Great Southern Bank locations with the help of NICE, a provider AI-powered self-service and agent-assisted customer experience (CX) software for contact centres.
In India, Airtel Business and Vonage, have partnered to launch Airtel IQ Business Connect – a device-agnostic, unified business communications application that will help enterprises in India to simplify their customer engagement while also overcoming challenges of data loss that can arise during employee transitions or attrition.
In Hong Kong, HKT and LeapExpert are collaborating to offer secure and regulatory compliant digital communication solutions for businesses, especially financial institutions, with first deployment by The Bank of East Asia (BEA). The partnership will enable businesses to communicate with their customers using the preferred channels of the latter, including social media platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat and more, while upholding regulatory compliance requirements. It also eliminates the need for employees of businesses to switch between multiple messaging apps.
To accelerate its digital transformation initiatives, Telkomsel is partnering Circles, whose Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and product offerings will enhance Telkomsel’s customer experience by providing superior digital journeys for customers while also opening new avenues for disruptive growth and innovation.
Web3 / Metaverse / Gaming
Last but not least, there has been a major shake-up on the metaverse front from SK Telecom, previously a forerunner in this field. SKT announced that it would terminate its “ifland” metaverse platform by March 2025. SKT’s decision is part of a larger trend among South Korean telecom companies: KT already terminated its Meta Lounge and Genieverse services, while LG Uplus postponed the launch of its business metaverse MetaSlap. All have expressed a desire to double down on their AI strategies instead.
BMOs still remain somewhat active in areas like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, especially Deutsche Telekom. Its subsidiary Telekom MMS, joins the NEAR ecosystem’s Enterprise Node Operators (ENO) program to support the decentralization and security of the NEAR blockchain. DT is the first telecom company to operate a validator within the NEAR Protocol. Validators check and approve transactions and therefore play a key role in the operation and security of blockchains.
MMS in collaboration with Bankhaus Metzler, is launching a pilot project to operate a Bitcoin mining infrastructure using surplus energy. The mining is intended to be powered by electricity from renewable energy sources, which would otherwise remain unused due to insufficient grid input possibilities and/or lack of storage options.
On the gaming front, customers in Germany can use Deutsche Telekom’s new “5G+ Gaming” offer. Together with its partners ALSO and Ludium Lab, DT has exclusively developed the gaming package, which taps innovative 5G network functions based on 5G Standalone to enable a lag-free gaming experience even on the go.
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