Partner Content - HKT, Huawei Bring Digital Transformation Into The AI Era

The pace of technology innovation in the ICT space can indeed be dizzying. Just as 5G networks and services are maturing – and years of investments in digital transformation start paying dividends for operators and their customers – along comes generative AI and the application of large language models (LLMs).

For Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) and strategic partner Huawei, that’s welcome news – the companies expect AI to bring massive new opportunities in network management, service innovation and delivery, and other areas – all building off of earlier investments in 5G and digital transformation.

“HKT's 5G business success stems from its continuous investment in digital transformation over the past decade, which is something that we will continue to focus on in the era of AI,” said Sheldon Yau, CTO of HKT, during a recent interview with Light Reading’s Ken Wieland at Win-Win Live.

Yau shared three key areas where HKT is focusing its efforts as the AI age blooms:

Austin You, President of Huawei Carrier Delivery & Service, shared during the same interview how Huawei is readying its own technologies and services to help operators like HKT achieve their AI vision. You noted the company is currently focused on AI capabilities and impacts in the maintenance, user experience, customer service, and marketing support domains.

In the maintenance domain, for example, the embedded AI capabilities in Huawei’s AUTIN solution are helping to drive transformation from network-oriented O&M to service-oriented Q&M. That opens the door for greater automation: “the solution will link every fault to the impact to traffic and customer experience, demarcate the root cause automatically and propose the recovery actions accordingly,” You said. “In general, we believe that AI technologies will definitely bring a game-changing upgrade to the operations mode and will accelerate carriers' digital and intelligent transformation.”

Indeed, Yau from HKT sees intelligent network transformation as one of the most beneficial opportunities for deploying generative AI and LLMs. That’s particularly true as mobile network operations have grown far more complex in recent years and shifted from voice-centric services to a much more diverse array of video and other interactive services, such as AR/VR applications.

Yau sees three key success factors as HKT (and other operators) develop and implement their AI strategies.

The first is the deployment of a centralized and converged database that combines both publicly available data (such as weather forecasts and event calendars) with proprietary network data (such as customer location preferences and application requirements) to power the company’s AI-powered mobile network. Currently, applications like ChatGPT do not have access to that network data. “Therefore, our first priority is to prepare and implement this database as a fundamental component,” Yau said.

Second is the integration of network capabilities into AI models to enhance performance and customer satisfaction. “This includes analyzing the impact of numerous parameter settings on customer experiences and understanding the relationship between these settings and network functions under various external network loading scenarios,” Yau said.

Finally, Yau emphasized the importance of AI talent and experts who have a deep understanding of network capabilities and operations. Those AI experts will be key “co-pilots” who train future AI robots in network operations and optimization – a vital part of the larger evolution toward more dynamic, intelligent telecom networks.

“By transitioning from traditional non-real time planning methods based on past experiences to an AI real-time model driven by future-forward prediction capabilities, we aim to revolutionize the telecom industry with help from AI,” Yau said.