[MWC On-site] SKT Forms AI Development Joint Venture with Overseas Carrier Holding 1.3 Billion USD

Joint Venture Agreement with Global Telecom Operators
Chairman Chey Tae-won Attends... Meets Overseas Executives
"New AI Experience with Telecom-Specialized LLM"

SK Telecom is establishing a joint venture with four overseas telecommunications companies to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Together, they have a total of 1.3 billion subscribers across various countries, planning to launch multilingual AI services based on abundant data.

On the 26th (local time), SKT announced at MWC 2024 held in Barcelona, Spain, that it will establish a joint venture to jointly develop AI technology and collaborate on business with top executives from leading telecommunications companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also attended MWC and met with CEOs from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s e& Group, Singapore’s Singtel Group, and SoftBank to discuss AI technology innovation and leading the industrial ecosystem.

SKT, Deutsche Telekom, e& Group, and Singtel Group officially launched the 'Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA)' in July last year, pledging cooperation in AI technology and related business.

Establishing Joint Venture... Building a Cooperative System for AI Technology Innovation

The five companies, including SKT, held the GTAA inaugural general meeting at MWC and signed a contract to establish a joint venture to jointly develop AI large language models (LLM) and collaborate on business.

The founding general meeting held on the morning of the 26th brought together top executives including Chairman Chey Tae-won, SKT President Yoo Young-sang, Tim H?ttges, Chairman of Deutsche Telekom, Hatem Dowidar, CEO of e& Group, Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Singtel Group, and Tadashi Iida, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of SoftBank, to sign the agreement.

Through the joint venture, they plan to actively develop a 'telco-specialized large language model (Telco LLM)'. Starting with five languages?Korean, English, Japanese, German, and Arabic?the goal is to develop a multilingual LLM supporting various languages worldwide. The joint venture is expected to be established within this year.

The Telco LLM has a higher understanding of the telecommunications domain and better grasps user intent compared to general-purpose LLMs. Therefore, it is highly useful for transforming various telecommunications businesses and service areas, such as AI call centers (AICC), into AI-driven operations. It can also flexibly create generative AI services like AI agents tailored to each country’s environment.

SKT began developing Korean language LLMs by releasing KoBERT, a Korean language model, in 2019. Since then, SKT has branded its LLM as 'A.X LLM' and has been enhancing the model’s performance.

Through collaboration with these global telecommunications companies, SKT has secured a customer base of approximately 1.3 billion worldwide. Deutsche Telekom has 250 million subscribers in Europe, the United States, and other regions. e& Group 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 40 million subscribers in Japan.

Yu Young-sang SKT President Photo by Yonhap News

"Join GTAA"... Inviting Over 20 Telecommunications Companies

The five companies, including SKT, invited more than 20 telecommunications companies worldwide on the 26th to hold the 'Global Telco AI Roundtable,' a global telecommunications AI consortium, proposing participation in GTAA.

Attending the event were President Yoo Young-sang and key executives from Deutsche Telekom, e& Group, Singtel Group, and SoftBank. They emphasized the need to transform core businesses such as wired and wireless communications and media through AI to secure future growth engines and proposed participation in GTAA to secure AI technology and innovate business structures.

At the event, SKT demonstrated a demo version of the LLM, explaining the technical features and application cases of the telco-specialized LLM.

Going forward, the five companies plan to regularly operate roundtable events to share AI innovation cases among telecommunications companies and lead the AI ecosystem, inviting global telecommunications companies worldwide.

President Yoo said, "We will expand GTAA based on the joint venture to secure leadership in the global AI ecosystem," adding, "1.3 billion telecommunications subscribers worldwide will enjoy new AI experiences through the telco-specialized LLM."

Claudia Nemat, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Deutsche Telekom, said, "In Germany, more than 100,000 customer service conversations per month are handled through generative AI, personalizing dialogues between customers and chatbots," and predicted, "This joint venture establishment will bring Europe and Asia closer."

Dena Almansoori, Chief AI & Data Officer of e& Group, stated, "We look forward to creating new standards to innovate telecommunications and provide better services to customers through GTAA."

Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Singtel Group, said, "The Telco LLM will greatly expand chatbot functions, enabling easy handling of complex customer issues such as providing appropriate answers to technical inquiries."

Hideyuki Tsukuda, Vice President and CTO of SoftBank, said, "Through the GTAA alliance, we will innovate global communication, improve service quality, and open a new era of technology innovation based on AI."