• Industries around the world hit by IT outage
• SoftBank backs startup to enable ‘coexistence between humans and AI’
• New ABI Research forecast shatters the telco APIs revenue dream 

In today’s industry news roundup: A massive IT outage disrupts industries worldwide following a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike; SoftBank invests in a Japanese startup to foster the development of ‘industry-specific AI services that promote coexistence between humans and AI’; new ABI Research analysis counters bullish expectations for telco APIs revenue opportunities; and much more!

A global IT outage caused hours of disruption today across a number of industries, leading to flight and train disruptions, and a lack of access to services such as healthcare and banking, among others. Reuters reported that the outage appears to have been caused by a software update by global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which affected Microsoft applications. CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, said on social media platform X that the outage is not a security incident or cyberattack. “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” he noted. The executive confirmed that it was an isolated issue and that a fix has been deployed. Media reports suggest that companies and organisations were able to start restoring their services later on the same day. According to Reuters, CrowdStrike is a leading cybersecurity company with more than 20,000 subscribers around the world and a market value of some $83bn. At the time of publication, CrowdStrike’s share price had plummeted by 9.63% to $310.32 apiece.

Japanese telco SoftBank has participated in a Series B funding round launched by AI and robotics startup Avatarin. The Tokyo-based startup raised a total of ¥3.7bn (US$23.5m) in the round, which included five other investors, bringing its total tally of funding raised to ¥7.7bn ($48.8m). SoftBank explained it decided to invest in Avatarin as it identifies with the startup’s concept of developing “industry-specific AI services that promote coexistence between humans and AI.” Following the investment, SoftBank will look for ways to support Avatarin with its offerings, such as homegrown large language models (LLMs) that utilise Japanese datasets and computational infrastructure. The operator will also provide 5G network environments to meet the increasing demand for data communication. Find out more.

Despite some bullish predictions for the potential gains of hundreds of billions of dollars from telco application programming interfaces (APIs), the value generated by such APIs will likely be limited to US$13.4bn – and only if operators plan accordingly, ABI Research has found. Dimitris Mavrakis, senior research director at ABI Research, argued that despite the recent optimistic forecasts by trade associations regarding the potential value of telco APIs, “it is unlikely that telcos will be able to convert these initiatives to a commercial success”. Telcos will “need to change their mindset, culture, and commercial model radically,” he added. In fact, communication-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) providers and hyperscalers can “take a significant burden away from telcos” and help them commercialise their API initiatives. The team at ABI Research pinpointed security APIs as the leading type of APIs in terms of revenue, with them expected to bring in $5.3bn by 2028, followed by network slicing at $5bn and quality of service on demand at $3.14bn by the same period. “Even these targets will require significant effort by telcos to at least homogenise API exposure across their networks and offer a consistent interface to CPaaS providers and hyperscalers. Camara and Open Gateway APIs are a step in the right direction. Still, there is significant work to be done, especially in the technology enabling these APIs, such as charging, billing, and network orchestration,” Mavrakis explained. Find out if network operator executives from around the world, who were surveyed recently for TelecomTV’s new Network APIs Strategy Report, agree.

AT&T’s chief data officer, Andy Markus, has shared his vision for autonomous agents that use generative AI (GenAI) to assist human workers in operations such as network and software code optimisation, fraud detection and customer care. In a blog, he noted that the US operator already has autonomous assistants up and running that “can take the fraud alerts generated by our GenAI tools and stop a fraudulent transaction before it happens.” AT&T is also exploring ways to use multiple large language models (LLM)-enabled assistants simultaneously to solve more complex business problems. “To do so, we assign one assistant an overall orchestrator persona whose job is to coordinate and reason across other assistant personas with more specialised skills,” he explained. Over time, the company hopes to more widely deploy autonomous agents, so that they “become integral to helping our employees perform complex operational workflows faster to better serve our customers”. Markus added that customers are likely to start seeing autonomous agents in their personal lives as well. “Think of them as digital butlers that are there when you need them, able to carry out a wide range of tasks with minimal guidance,” he wrote.

The end of mid-contract price hikes is in sight for phone, broadband and pay-TV services in the UK! From 17 January 2025, phone, broadband and pay-TV providers “will be prohibited from including inflation-linked, or percentage-based, price rise terms in all new contracts,” the UK’s telecom watchdog, Ofcom, announced today. Companies will have to inform customers upfront about any price rises that they include in their contract. The new regulations state that any price rise written into a customer’s contract from next year will need to be set out “in pounds and pence, prominently and transparently, at the point of sale; and providers will need to be clear about when any changes to prices will occur.” This is being introduced to alleviate the lack of clarity and certainty for customers that has been seen in recent years, with many major companies having introduced price rises linked to future inflation rates. “With household budgets squeezed, people need to have certainty about their monthly outgoings. But that’s impossible if you’re tied into a contract where the price could change based on something as hard to predict as future inflation. We’re stepping in on behalf of phone, broadband and pay-TV customers to stamp out this practice, so people can be certain of the price they will pay, compare deals more easily and take advantage of the competitive market we have in the UK,” explained Cristina Luna-Esteban, Ofcom telecoms policy director.

- The staff, TelecomTV