AI reshapes race for digital sovereignty

Tech covergence

Now, the emphasis on compute infrastructure highlights another crucial dimension of AI: next-generation network infrastructure, which underpins all digital transformation.

5G networks — and with 6G already in development — not only provide the necessary connectivity and bandwidth, but network operations and management functions are increasingly becoming AI-centric.

Without upgrades, telecommunications operators will have difficulty in managing exponentially growing traffic volumes and entire economies will be constrained in their ability to utilize AI's transformative potential.

This upgrading or 5G-AI convergence is being driven by: the personalization of user experiences and high data consumption, autonomous collaboration in organizations and network optimization, and the integration and operation of intelligent cyber-physical systems across all economic sectors, including energy, industry, cities and infrastructure, mobility, and agriculture.

Regarding the latter, for example, AI-driven cyberphysical systems, like smart grids or intelligent traffic management, are being implemented to efficiently integrate and manage large electrified systems, which are also the prerequisite for decarbonization.

Current networks won't be able to keep up with this development. Some conventional 5G networks are already stretched by network traffic waste. It is not caused by those new use cases but by algorithmic features, such as autoplay, infinite scroll, and pre-fetching of content, which are incentivized by the business model of social media platforms, as pointed out in British multinational telecommunications company Vodafone's recent policy statement.

While "responsible use of networks" is vital for addressing energy efficiency, the reality is that data traffic will continue to grow exponentially. This makes a shift towards AI-centric network operations and management not just sensible but indispensable to manage rapidly growing data efficiently and enable highly flexible, real-time, high-bandwidth use cases.

5G-AI convergence offers telecom operators a unique opportunity to accelerate 5G adoption by unlocking new use cases across various sectors. However, this shift requires substantial investments in network infrastructure, which add to the already high investments in computing infrastructure and cloud services.

As a result, while the AI-driven digital transformation offers tremendous productivity potential, it is also far more capital expenditure-intensive than the initial internet revolution.