LIVE FROM ZTE GLOBAL SUMMIT, MILAN, ITALY: The CEOs of ZTE and GSMA Ltd opened the vendor’s annual summit to outline the growing importance of AI technology across the telecoms ecosystem, while pressing on the need for the right policies, partnerships and business models to ensure the industry fully taps into the opportunity.

Marking ZTE’s 40th anniversary since being founded and the 12th year of its congress, CEO Xu Ziyang (pictured) urged delegates to use the show to provide the vendor with their suggestions about what the industry needs for the AI era and how it can deliver.

“We need to find the opportunity to win together.”

The executive discussed the company’s networks for AI and AI for networks vision, while explaining the importance of focusing on connectivity and computing as “decoupled systems”, which must integrate.

Staying on the AI theme, he added the industry is beginning to evolve from one centred on “bytes to tokens”, which will ultimately bring new business models for the fore.

“More and more AI applications improve core productivity to make the whole world better,” he concluded.

Necessary
GSMA Ltd CEO John Hoffman hailed ZTE’s work to evolve the industry, including a shift from 5G to 5G-Advanced in more developed markets.

He pointed to the vendor’s deployment of 5G-A at the Asian Games as an example, when the technology connected 600,000 customers and spectators.

Hoffman was keen to emphasise the importance of telecoms connectivity in ensuring the success of AI.

He said ZTE is at the “forefront”, pointing to AI-related use cases including a green telecoms cloud and a fraud detection service, developed with China Telecom and China Unicom, respectively.

Hoffman also touched on the telecoms usage gap, calling for well-designed policy which addresses the fact that 3.4 billion people globally are not using the mobile internet.

He pointed to positive moves in Argentina and South Africa as examples, where governments have cut taxes on smartphones.

“We call on more governments to follow their lead. Stop taxing smartphones as if they are luxury items. They are not. They are a necessity for life today.”