The telecommunications industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation.
Where value creation once depended primarily on connectivity and infrastructure, the next phase of growth is being shaped by how data is interpreted and turned into intelligence that organizations can act on or monetize.
On February 6, 2026, Rakuten Symphony took part in From Map to Action: How Generative AI Is Transforming Geospatial Intelligence, an event held at CIC Tokyo and co-hosted with xMap and CIC Japan.
The event brought together leaders from telecom, AI product, geospatial analysis, and enterprise strategy to explore how AI-powered location intelligence is redefining decision-making across industries in Japan.
In his keynote, Ahmad Farid, Vice President of Operations for AI Center of Excellence and Vice President of Strategy & Planning at Rakuten Symphony, explored the evolution of telecommunications monetization and how its principles extend across industries.
The industry first focused on asset-driven growth, monetizing physical network infrastructure through connectivity as a service. It then moved toward optimizing network utility, generating revenue by exposing network capabilities and offering specialized services.
Today, telecom is entering a third phase: beyond connectivity. In this phase, value is no longer created solely by delivering high-quality connectivity services, but by transforming network assets into new revenue streams through AI-powered capabilities.
In this context, networks become more than infrastructure. They become intelligence platforms; capable of supporting decisions across industries, not only within telecom.
A central message of the keynote was that location has fundamentally changed in meaning. As emphasized in the presentation, location is no longer just a point on a map; it is a source of insight.
Location data captures how people move, where demand concentrates, how services are accessed, and where opportunities or risks emerge. This makes location intelligence relevant across retail, mobility, real estate, infrastructure, and public services.
However, traditional location analysis often falls short. Data is not readily available for analysis and is frequently fragmented across multiple systems. As a result, analysis remains static and retrospective, and generating insights requires specialized expertise, manual effort, and time. The impact of these limitations is tangible: businesses that make incorrect location decisions frequently experience a decline in revenue within the first year.
This challenge led to the introduction of Rakuten Symphony AI Spatial Analyzer, presented during the product session and live product demonstration by Dewa Siswanto, AI Product Strategist OSS BU at Rakuten Symphony.
Rakuten Symphony AI Spatial Analyzer is a GenAI-powered geospatial intelligence platform built in Japan, designed to provide direct access to advanced location intelligence. Rather than replacing existing systems, the platform sits on top of them, bringing together multiple data layers; including base maps, points of interest, population, footfall, service coverage, landscape, company performance, and competitor data; and applying AI algorithms to extract actionable insight.
The key shift is how intelligence is accessed. Instead of requiring deep geospatial or data science expertise, professional users can ask direct business questions; such as “Where is the most profitable area to expand my services?”; and receive AI-generated recommendations supported by clear explanations.
With AI-powered capabilities, organizations should not face barriers caused by lack of specialist skills. With the right tools, professional users can perform extensive analysis, including advanced geospatial analysis, and focus on decisions rather than data interpretation.
The separate panel session which followed, “How AI will transform retail, mobility, and real estate decision-making in Japan,” reinforced this message from an enterprise and ecosystem perspective.
Moderated by Midori Mizote, Assistant Director of CIC Institute, the panel featured Mo Batran, CEO of xMap; Xinmei Cai, Engineering Director at Google Maps; and S Guruprasad, Vice President of the Chief of Staff Department at Rakuten Symphony.
From Rakuten Symphony’s perspective, the panel highlighted a clear shift in who can make data-driven decisions.
With AI-powered capabilities and the right tools in place, organizations should no longer be constrained by a lack of specialized expertise. Advanced analysis, including geospatial analysis, should not be limited to a small group of experts. Instead, professional users across the organization can perform extensive analysis themselves, explore scenarios, evaluate trade-offs, and act faster.
S Guruprasad emphasized that this shift is particularly important for enterprise environments, where decision speed, scalability, and consistency matter. When intelligence is directly accessible, organizations can reduce dependency on manual processes and specialist bottlenecks, while still maintaining governance, transparency, and privacy.
The panel also underscored that AI-driven platforms must be trusted. Clear data provenance, explainability, and privacy-safe design are essential for enterprise adoption, especially in data-rich markets such as Japan.
The presentation also demonstrated how AI-driven location intelligence moves beyond analysis toward action. In pilot use cases such as store and service expansion, AI-based approaches showed up to a 30% reduction in planning time, while improving the quality and speed of decisions through integrated, multi-layered insights.
Looking ahead, Rakuten Symphony shared a vision for how users will interact with intelligence in the future. The next evolution of AI is not limited to typing prompts. It is conversational. The concept of “talking to the map” reflects a shift toward natural, voice-based interaction, where users can ask questions and receive context-aware insights in real time, turning available data.
This initiative reflects Rakuten Symphony’s broader ambition, aligned with the Rakuten Group’s vision of continuous innovation and technology access for a better society.
AI-driven location intelligence goes beyond traditional telecom products and represents an important first step in Rakuten Symphony’s expansion into the enterprise market in Japan. The company is open to collaboration and trial projects across industries and plans to make these capabilities available as part of its product and solution portfolio in the near future.
As the industry moves from connectivity to intelligence, the focus is no longer on collecting more data, but on making existing data usable. From map to action, Rakuten Symphony is working to ensure that location intelligence becomes a practical and accessible foundation for better decision-making.
