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"We don’t need every telco to become a rocket scientist—we just need them to move with rocket speed." Vivek Chadha, SVP and Global Head, Rakuten Cloud.
AI may be everywhere in telecom but not every AI project is delivering results. In this week’s episode of Zero-Touch Live, Vivek Chadha, SVP and Global Head of the Rakuten Cloud telco business, joined Geoff Hollingworth to unpack lessons from real-world deployments and share what’s actually working. The replay is available now below.
One misstep we see is telco AI infrastructure deployments that happen before business goals are defined. Vivek emphasized that successful deployments start with clear business outcomes in mind with the follow-on goal of removing technical and organizational friction that blocks progress. For example, AI has helped Rakuten Mobile achieve double-digit energy savings without impacting service quality. This is a real, measurable result tied directly to operational priorities.
Another major success barrier is the burden that comes with setting up cloud infrastructure, stitching together tooling and governing fragmented data.
As Vivek puts it, “Data scientists want to focus on data, not plumbing.” He shared the importance of simplifying the full pipeline, from data ingestion and governance to transformation and inferencing, to help telcos move faster without compromising on control.
During the discussion, three key AI platform capabilities surfaced as must-haves for any telco eager to approach deployments with agility and flexibility:
It is still early days for AI in telecom but advancements are being made every day. Now is the time to prep the right foundation for limitless possibilities later.
