• Juniper Research tracks many aspects of the telecom sector
• It has published a whitepaper identifying what it believes will be the top-10 trends in the industry next year
• Artificial intelligence is at the heart of three of them

For all of those wondering just how important AI will be for the telco industry (which is practically everyone in the sector at this point), Juniper Research has put in its two cents’ worth: In its latest whitepaper, the research house has highlighted the technology as the centrepiece for three of the top-10 trends in the sector for 2024, as the chart above shows. 

According to its findings, the telco market “is poised for major disruption” as new technologies, such as generative AI (GenAI), are now forcing stakeholders to reassess long-standing business strategies. 

“AI is having positive impacts across many verticals, and the telecoms market is no exception. Many stakeholders, including operations, communications platforms and messaging vendors, will leverage advances in AI to create new network efficiencies,” noted Juniper Research.

Furthermore, the rise of GenAI, which is “a technology so emergent, it remains largely misunderstood amongst enterprises”, is expected to be key in differentiating communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) offerings throughout 2024. 

The research firm expects GenAI to play a key role in revolutionising conversational AI by automating personalised marketing campaigns. 

In another trend anticipated by the research house, large language models (LLMs) are set to lower the entry barrier for voicebot implementation. It expects that voice orchestration will increasingly be introduced to chatbot developmental frameworks to allow consumers to ask direct questions to the bot through speech. 

In addition, Juniper Research believes network-wide AI implementation will increase the efficiency of functions as 6G approaches. “Operators have readily implemented AI in various elements of their network architecture; however, we expect network-wide AI implementation to come to the fore in 2024. This will include AI services that can access data from the entirety of the network, from the core to edge nodes, rather than in isolation,” the firm noted in its whitepaper report. 

In 2024, the company forecasts, Tier 1 operators will “further integrate AI into all areas of their networks, including the core, RAN [radio access network], session management, security and location-based services.” The main benefit, the research firm argued, will be the ability for all network areas “to communicate in real time, and adjust network functions accordingly.”

Among the other trends highlighted by the Juniper Research team are the greater use of open APIs in the sector, the proliferation of iSIM-capable mobile devices and a greater focus on sustainable initiatives that will help to reduce the impact of supply chains on emissions.

- Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, Deputy Editor, TelecomTV