SK Telecom participated in DTW24 Ignite (Digital Transformation World), a show organized by TM Forum in Copenhagen from June 18-20, local time. TM Forum is an association of over 800 global telecommunications and big technology companies from about 100 countries. CEO Ryu Young-san and Chief AI Global Officer (CAGO) Suk-geun Chung among others are participants from SK Telecom that hosted Global Telco AI Roundtable (GTAR) at the venue.

CAGO Suk-geun Chung delivered a keynote address with the theme “Transforming the Telco Landscape” on June 19, the second date of DTW24 Ignite. SK Newsroom presents a sum-up of his speech.

CAGO Suk-geun Chung’s keynote address: SK Telecom is realizing our AI vision, becoming a global AI company

Building on our history as a telecom company, SKT is moving toward a new vision. While staying true to our essence of building networks and infrastructure, we are leveraging this foundation to become an AI company, setting milestones and achieving them one by one.

First, we will establish a robust AI technology infrastructure by leveraging AI Chipsets, AI Data Centers, Edge AI Networks, and the Telco LLM. This infrastructure will form the backbone of our AI initiatives. Next, we will integrate AI across all our core businesses, including mobile, broadband, and enterprise services. By doing so, we aim to revolutionize productivity and enhance the customer experience. Our goal is to extend SKT’s AI capabilities into adjacent areas, thereby increasing overall value. Finally, we will bring all these capabilities together to create a Personal AI Assistant service. This service will harness the full potential of our AI infrastructure to provide a seamless and personalized experience for every customer.

As a telecom company, we have a large customer base and the data derived from it. The first result created based on SKT’s customer reach and telco data is Telco LLM. SKT’s proprietary Telco LLM will automate operations, enabling workers to focus on critical tasks.
Global collaboration on developing multilingual Telco LLM will accelerate and expand innovation in the global telecommunications industry.

To develop and spread multilingual Telco LLM we plan to establish a joint venture. However, our journey does not stop here. As the next step, we aim to advance to creating AI products and infrastructure, including the Personal AI Assistant and AI Data Centers. These efforts represent tangible collaboration. Global Telco AI Alliance will serve as a platform to collectively and practically reimagine and redefine our directions.

Personal AI Assistant and AI DC are interconnected in a demand-supply relationship. The Personal AI Assistant creates a constant demand for computing power and data storage, making the AI Data Center essential. The business benefits arising from this interrelationship are the reasons we pursue this endeavor.

AI assistants have faced significant challenges like security issues, high costs, and questions about necessity. To address these, we plan to create a personal and affordable agent portal. This portal will provide tailored experiences while ensuring user data privacy and security, making advanced AI technology more accessible and affordable for everyone. Through these efforts, we aim to overcome the current barriers and make AI assistants an indispensable part of daily life. Many big tech companies and startups are grappling with similar challenges, but we have a unique advantage. We can directly integrate AI functionalities into everyday services that users already rely on, such as phone calls and text messages. This means that when telecom companies come together, we can connect AI to a much broader and deeper range of customer interactions than OS and device manufacturers alone can achieve. This insight is the foundation upon which we are building this service.

Given the complexity of our endeavors, we might face several challenges. These challenges include the need for high computing power, cost issues, and data security concerns. We intend to address these issues by leveraging AI DC. At the SK Group level, we have secured the resources to create AI DC. And we aim to serve AI DC to global customers and business partners. Based on this, we also aim to extend the current collaboration to AI DC.

We believe that growing AI needs will not exclude global telcos. As the use of Telco LLM expands, we anticipate an increased demand for AI DC. In this case, global telco collaboration can achieve broader scale and coverage, enabling access to a wider range of customers, cost savings from the application of software, hardware, and solutions at large scale with bargaining power, and better customer experience by offering seamless services regardless of regions.

We aspire to create a new AI ecosystem centered around telecom companies with the Global Telco AI Alliance, AI Data Center, and Personal AI Assistant. While the telco alliance creates traffic for the Personal AI Assistant using its scale, it will generate constant demand for the AI Data Center. Since we can optimize the cost of running AI systems with AI Data Center, it will provide cost efficiency to us, the Global Telco AI Alliance. Ultimately, we believe these efforts will transform the landscape of the global telco domain.