Telcos are drowning in debt. No, not financial debt, though they do have some of that. We're talking about crippling amounts of technical and data debt, which could keep telcos on the sidelines of the AI revolution.
AI in theory could thrust telcos back into the services game in a big way. But they have to move fast to get their foot in the door – and right now technical and data debt are stopping them from doing that.
Technical debt refers to the cost required to fix all the old issues and duplication in IT and network infrastructure. And data debt refers to all the problems that have accumulated from poor data management practices like siloed storage, poor data governance and inconsistent data.
The reason these are such a big deal is that AI runs on data. Or put another way, AI outputs are only as good as the data inputs a given model receives. And that means telcos need to clean up their act if they want to get the most out of AI.
So today, we’re looking at just how bad the situation is, what telcos need to do to make it right, whether they can move fast enough to ride the AI wave and what they stand to gain if they do.
New this season: We're doing video! If you'd rather watch our conversation, you view this and future episodes on YouTube right here.
To learn more about the topics in this episode:
- Telcos need to clean up technical debt like hoarders need to clean their houses
- Telcos won’t have a chance with AI unless they deal with legacy infrastructure ASAP
- The data deluge is still a big problem for telcos
- Op-Ed: I’ve noticed that telecom operators are cleaning up their data disasters
- Startup attacks architectural debt to speed cloud migrations
- Exclusive: Lumen taps OneVizion for internal streamlining
This podcast is written and hosted by Diana Goovaerts. It is edited by Diana Goovaerts and Matt Rickman. Liz Coyne is our executive producer. Special thanks to our guests, Sue Marek and Joe Madden.