As APAC networks expand to meet the demands of 5G and beyond, one consensus emerged among industry leaders: operational efficiency is now the baseline. A session moderated by Abe Nejad of The Network Media Group (NMG) centered on how AI-powered automation can cut OPEX, simplify complexity, and enhance customer experience – highlighting self-healing, predictive maintenance, and intelligent resource allocation as critical enablers.
Speakers:
Watch the full interview.
The conversation underscored a shift from reactive, ticket-driven ops to closed-loop, AI-assisted operations. Leaders emphasized outcome-back design – start with reliability and experience KPIs, then wire telemetry, analytics, and orchestration to act in real time. Practical deployments included self-healing analytics that detect hardware faults, reroute traffic, and rebalance capacity before customers feel impact, cutting MTTR and churn while improving service quality.
Energy optimization emerged as a standout win. With AI forecasting traffic and aligning radio resources, operators are already reporting reductions in RAN energy use, a direct OPEX lever that can be replicated at scale. On the planning side, the session pointed to emerging CAPEX optimization opportunities by applying AI to investment prioritization and demand prediction. Together, these moves build a more agile, cost-efficient, and resilient network fabric.
APAC’s regulatory landscape is uneven; progress requires responsible AI – privacy-aware data pipelines, transparent controls, and policy-safe automation – so zero-touch does not outpace trust. Looking ahead, agentic AI was framed as the next rung on the ladder: targeted agents for capacity forecasting, QoS assurance, and care workflows, with telcos and partners co-developing pinpointed use cases and expanding beyond connectivity into adjacent enterprise domains.
“AI agents are picking up very rapidly, but we have to define central, pinpointed use cases that allow those agents to solve real customer problems and monetize telco assets.”
