At a well-attended event in London, Rakuten and friends offered a perspective on the reinvention of telecom. Rakuten Symphony Managing Director Nastasi Karaiskos started proceedings with a roll-call of the innovations that could all be part of telecom’s reinvention, from 5G to Quantum Computing – but right now, AI trumps them all. While most telcos are getting their arms around what it means to be cloud-native, Rakuten has already created an AI-native telco. Not only that, but Rakuten’s use of AI is pervasive, passing way beyond the confines of Rakuten Mobile and deeply interwoven with its wider Rakuten Group activities, in media, finance, travel, insurance and more. Rakuten is already using AI-powered chatbots to free up human agents to deal with more complex customer service issues. AI is used in ensuring the security of its network, detecting patterns of anomalous or suspicious network activity. And AI in increasingly part of its real time optimization of its network, including the RAN. Per Rakuten, Reinvented Telecom is AI, Cloud and open and disaggregated networks. Not so fast… Former Three UK COO, Graham Baxter, has not seen much evidence – yet – that telco is embracing the fundamental change that this represents. Part […]