At Digital Transformation World 2025 in Copenhagen, telecom CEOs from Indosat Ooredoo, Vikram Sinha, and Nuuday’s Christian Thrane, urged the industry to act fast on telco AI adoption, warning success depends on inclusion, speed, and strategic collaboration.
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) CEO Vikram Sinha compared the telecom industry’s moment in time with Apple’s launch of iPhone in 2007 radical and irreversible.
“AI is a buzzword people will be bored of hearing again and again,” said Sinha, adding “but AI is not another Metaverse – it is real,”, calling on operators to exceed the hype and operate with purpose.
For IOH, telecom and AI solutions already has practical application as it uses it to protect the first-time internet consumers in Indonesia from fraud, an important problem for emerging markets.
“We need to give people products and services that truly touch their lives – AI has to be for everyone. It cannot just be for high-end customers,” said Sinha, emphasizing how AI solutions for telecom operations must be inclusive, and accessible for high end clients.
IOH is also developing SMS-based generative AItelecom solutions to reach rural consumers, working with the Indonesian government to help reach national digital goals by 2045.
A portion of this change, IOH is creating new roles like Chief Product Officer and recruiting AI engineers, as “AI is 70% about people,” Sinha stressed, highlighting the human side of digital transformation.
Can Smaller Operators Use AI to Lead, Not Just Compete?
While the big telco AI move is investing heavily in such intelligent technologies, smaller operators may be most likely to take the lead by being faster, more flexible, and responsive to what their users need. They can test and scale AI network management solutions without being hindered by legacy infrastructure or bureaucracy, unlike their bigger competitors.
“This was going to be different. This was going to be faster,” CEO at Denmark’s Nuuday, Christian Thrane, described how the advent of ChatGPT in 2022 brought up a change of attitude in the industry.
For Nuuday, operators are now piloting their own large language models (LLMs) and cloud telecom generative AI platforms.
These benefits of AI in telecom technologies are already improving customer service, automating call centers, and enhancing network security. Thrane believes that smaller operators, with fewer internal divisions and quicker decision cycles, may have a better opportunity to use these capabilities to establish trust.
Trust-based Collaboration and Telco AI Driven Future
Both chief officers called for deeper cooperation with partners and governments, with Sinha advocated for fair relationships with hyperscale’s that respect both telecom operators and their national interests. Thrane highlighted the industry’s unique opportunity to monetize not just infrastructure, but user trust if it can be preserved in an AI era.
“If we deliver that trust, we can monetize it – not just traffic and the network. But to do that, we need to truly get behind the network API,” said Thrane.
The message from Copenhagen whispered in a harmonized tone, among telecom CEOs, where AI’s role in network management under telecom is a now or never moment. Whether large or small, operators that adapt quickly and inclusively will be the ones to define the telecom future.
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