AI defined Telco networks

Alex Fitzgerald

Director, Skyral Enterprise

Skyral is a radical and pioneering company, combining AI, leading edge simulation technology and world class expertise to transform the decision making experience. And as one telco exec recently said to me “telco is behind other areas in adopting AI”.

Beneath your feet, the ground is rumbling.

Billions of pounds from pension and sovereign wealth funds are being deposited in glass holes in the ground. And through those glass holes flow ChatGPT, YouTube and the functioning of the internet. The UK’s fibre rollout has been progressing steadily, with a significant focus on expanding fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connectivity.

Taken from this FT deep dive into UK altnets

More than 50 altnets have secured £15bn investors over the past 5 years, including KKR, Macquarie, Warburg Pincus, Goldman Sachs and Antin Infrastructure Partners. Openreach is spending about £12bn to reach 25mn homes by the end of 2026, and thinks it could realistically reach 97 per cent of UK premises by 2030. Virgin Media O2 has also committed £2bn to upgrading its copper network to a fibre-copper hybrid offering for about 15.5mn premises by 2028, and is trying to secure a joint venture to build full-fibre lines for an additional 7mn homes.

Like it or not, a lot of money is flowing into the ground.

Choosing where to lay £29bn of fibre is hard.

With billions flowing into the ground, you would hope that decision making on when and where to lay this fibre is not a finger in the air assessment. But often it is. I know first hand, choosing where to lay fibre is hard. The multitude of factors that must be assessed is mind boggling.

Here is just a taste of what should go into the decision making process:

The above is just my assessment of the key factors, a year after leaving my previous fibre business Cuckoo. And it is also incomplete, since the artificial distinction between where to lay fibre and how to acquire customers is a false dichotomy. They are one and the same.

I think there is a better way. Imagine being able to fuse all the data and heuristics we have developed to constantly re-asses where and when to deploy funds to achieve the best result.

(1) ChatGPTs attempt to model a single pane of glass “Minority Report’ style view of a decision making framework, prompt available on demand. (2) Ten Downing Street’s network coverage from BetterInternet’s dashboard is a great start. (3) Starlink’s 10Gb/s symmetrical download speed could be another key consideration despite its $1.25 million upfront fee and $75,000 per Gbps per month charge with land, power, and lifting equipment sold separately…

At Skyral, we’re here to help.

Going beyond standard, black box AI, Skyral’s products integrate vast amounts of siloed data to build incredibly detailed virtual representations of your organisation. Using cutting-edge, simulation technology users can interact with their problems like never before, empowering them to make better, more informed decisions. If you fancy building the future of AI-defined, simulation-enabled, networks, let me know. We have already done it for the UK Ministry of Defence’s networks, with transformative results.

Maybe it’s time AI helps with the heavy lifting of the very network that sustains it…