LIVE FROM UNWRAPPED: THE 5G EVOLUTION: Globe Telecom formulated an AI strategy after realising the technology isn’t a one-off or something it just has to develop, but a technology that must be embedded across the organisation, chief AI officer Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio stated.

The executive told Mobile World Live Globe made a big bet on AI because it saw the technology as an opportunity for the industry to stay ahead of the curve, or at least not get blindsided as it has in the past.

Bonifacio noted previous CEO Ernest Cu thought AI was something that will probably transform things, and the new leadership understands it’s going to alter the landscape of telcos within the next three to five years. “We want to make sure we’re working on long-term adoption, rather than just experimenting.”

The Philippines-based operator in June 2024 set up an AI group led by Bonifacio, who is also chief information security officer.

He explained its strategy has a strong bottom-up approach, aimed at empowering employees by giving different groups the right technologies and foundations, with some teams already building their own agents.

He doesn’t believe bundling different use cases into a “single funnel” and then trying to find the ones generating ROI is going to drive scale.

One welcome surprise, he highlighted, is non-tech employees are building agents. “I think a lot of the production-grade, low-code, no-code developed agents are coming out of our marketing teams.” Its enterprise team also built an agent that can handle some of the quality assurance for incoming voice calls of customers voicing concerns.