Eurobites: Deutsche Telekom, SKT combine on 'large language model' for telco AI

Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom have agreed to jointly develop a telecom-specific "large language model" (LLM) that, they say, will allow digital assistants to be more helpful to harassed humans when it comes to customer service. The two companies plan to collaborate with a number of AI companies – Anthropic and Meta among them – on the project, with the first version of the LLM scheduled to be ready to unleash on the public in the first quarter of 2024. One of the telco-customer interfaces expected to be among the first to benefit from this development is Telekom Deutschland's Ask Magenta service bot, which has been dealing with customer service requests since 2016.

Nokia has launched what it claims is the industry's first carrier-grade Wi-Fi 7 product range, including a dual-band 5G FWA gateway, a tri-band fiber ONT gateway and the Beacon 24, a quad-band device that can provide a total Wi-Fi capacity of up to 24 Gbit/s. The devices are powered by the vendor's own Corteca software, which is based on open industry standards TR-369 and EasyMesh. The range is expected to be commercially available in the first half of next year, following the usual certification processes.

Airport operator Avinor has chosen Telia Norway to explore how 5G technologies can be used to digitize Avinor's operations. One of the planned projects will trial the use of a 5G-controlled robot to streamline the operation of taxiways and runways. The robot's main task will be to check the condition of landing lights along the airstrip but it will also be used to chase away birds, remove foreign objects that could damage planes, detect cracks in the asphalt and inspect fences.

Telecom Italia's board of directors will meet over the weekend of November 3-5 to scrutinize the binding offer on NetCo and the non-binding offer on Sparkle received from US investment fund KKR. NetCo is TIM's domestic fixed-line network while Sparkle is its international arm. (See TIM starts exclusive talks with KKR over fixed assets.)

Cellnex, the Spain-based towerco, has appointed Raimon Trias as its new chief financial officer. Trias' background is at industrial groups such as Natra, Grupo Nueva Pescanova and Celsa. He replaces José Manuel Aisa, who is leaving the company at the end of this month.

Qatar-based Ooredoo has teamed up with its fellow Gulf telcos for a two-year regional sustainability initiative that they hope will reduce carbon footprints across operations and all the related activities involved in the production and supply of telco services.

Analyst firm Ookla has been examining the progress made by the EU on its "Digital Decade 2030" ambitions, the key tenets of which are to ensure broadband speeds of at least 100 Mbit/s across the whole of the EU by 2025 and gigabit connectivity available to every household by 2030. The study highlights, among other issues, the apparent reluctance of consumers to sign up for full-fiber broadband, even though it is available to them, and the need for more advanced Wi-Fi technologies to optimize the home network environment.

This aversion to fiber is no better displayed than at Morriston Close in the southern English town of Watford. This street has been designated as officially the UK's slowest when it comes to broadband speeds, languishing at the bottom of the list of shame with an average download speed of just 0.6 Mbit/s, even though its residents could upgrade to much speedier connections such as Virgin Media's 1.1Gbit/s "Gig1 Fibre" product if they wanted to. Presumably the fact that their less-than-blazin' connection means it would take them two days to download Disney and Marvel's Avengers Endgame isn't currently what's keeping Morriston Close residents awake at night. The speed tests were carried out by Broadband Genie, a price-comparison website.