SKT has joined a global AI alliance with global telecommunications companies to lead AI technology innovation and industry. SKT President Yoo Young-sang said, “Now is the time when specialized LLMs in a single industry are leading the change in that industry,” and “global telecommunications companies are trying to become game changers that lead market changes through cooperation in AI fields such as Telco LLM.”

On the 26th (local time), SKT met with top executives of major telecommunications companies from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia at MWC24 held in Barcelona, Spain, held the GTAA inaugural general meeting, and signed a contract to establish a joint corporation to jointly develop and conduct business cooperation on an AI giant language model (Telco LLM) specialized in the telecommunications industry.

The inaugural general meeting brought together top executives including SK Chairman Chey Tae-won, SKT CEO Yoo Young-sang, Deutsche Telekom Chairman Tim Höttges, e& Group CEO Hatem Dowidar, Singtel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, and SoftBank Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Tadashi Iida.

The five companies invited around 20 telecommunications companies from around the world to the 'Global Telco AI Roundtable (GTAR)' event, a global telecommunications AI conference, and proposed participation in GTAA.

At the meeting, CEO Yoo revealed GTAA’s business vision, future goals, and expansion plans, and predicted, “We expect that the GTAA joint venture’s LLM will develop to a level where it can be used by not only SKT but also GTAA member companies within the year.”

SKT also presented Telco LLM to global telecommunications companies attending the event. SKT demonstrated the LLM prepared as a demo version and explained the technical features and application cases of the telecommunications company-specific LLM.
SKT President Yoo Young-sang said, “Based on the joint venture, we will expand GTAA and secure leadership in the global AI ecosystem,” adding, “1.3 billion telecommunication subscribers around the world will enjoy new AI experiences through telecommunications-specific LLMs.”

■ 5 companies establish a cooperative system for Telco AI technology innovation

The five companies will develop a 'Telco LLM' (a telecommunications company-specific large language model) in earnest through this joint venture. The core goal is to develop a multilingual LLM that supports various languages around the world, starting with five languages: Korean, English, Japanese, German, and Arabic. The joint venture is scheduled to be established within the year.

SKT explains that the 'Telco LLM' provides a higher level of understanding of the communications field than the general LLM and can also better understand user intentions. It is expected to be utilized when converting various communications business and service areas, such as AI call centers (AICC), to AI.

In particular, SKT emphasized, “Once Telco LLM is developed, telecommunications companies around the world will be able to flexibly create generative AI services, such as AI agents, tailored to each country’s environment.”

For example, SKT took a quick step toward developing a Korean LLM by releasing KoBERT, a Korean language model, in 2019. Since then, SKT has been branding its LLM as 'AX LLM' and improving the model's performance.

SKT will be able to secure a customer base of approximately 1.3 billion worldwide through the establishment of this joint venture with global telecommunications companies. Deutsche Telekom has approximately 250 million subscribers in Europe, the United States, and other regions. E& Group also has 170 million subscribers in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, Singtel Group has 770 million subscribers in Australia, India, and Indonesia, and SoftBank has about 40 million subscribers in Japan.

Meanwhile, after announcing the 'AI Pyramid' strategy in September of last year, SKT has been achieving remarkable results in the fields of AI semiconductors Sapion, Adot, and AIDC, focusing on the three major areas of AI infrastructure, AIX, and AI services.

“AI is personalizing the conversations between customers and chatbots to the point that more than 100,000 customer service conversations in Germany are processed by generative AI every month,” said Claudia Nemat, Board Member for Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom. “This joint venture will bring Europe and Asia closer together.”

“The Telco LLM will transform the way enterprises engage with their customers, from making customer support easier to use to enabling personalized recommendations,” said Dena Almansoori, Group Chief AI and Data Officer at e&. “With GTAA, we look forward to creating a new standard that will revolutionise telecommunications and better serve our customers.”

“Telco LLM will significantly expand the capabilities of our chatbots, enabling them to easily handle complex customer issues, such as providing timely answers to customers’ technical inquiries,” said Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Singtel Group. “It is very meaningful that the global telecoms industry has come together to collaborate on AI development.”

“Through powerful alliances like GTAA, we will transform global communications, elevate the quality of service, and open a new era of technological innovation driven by AI,” said Hideyuki Tsukuda, Executive Vice President & CTO of SoftBank. “We now have the power to shape the future of communications by providing seamless connectivity and limitless opportunities to communities around the world.”