SKT Shares Telco LLM Technology with Germany's Deutsche Telekom... Interest in K-Artificial Intelligence

July German Telecom Deutsche Telekom Visits SKT Tower
Sharing SKT AI Trends and SKT LLM Technology
Eric Davis, SKT AI Tech Lead, Also Attended

SKT shared its self-developed 'Telco LLM (telecommunication-specialized large language model)' technology and other K-artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with Deutsche Telekom, a German mobile carrier, during their visit to SKT's headquarters in Seoul.

According to industry sources on the 5th, Deutsche Telekom held a technology exchange workshop with SK Telecom at the SKT Tower in Jung-gu, Seoul, in early last month. The workshop was attended by Deutsche Telekom executives and Eric Davis, SKT's Vice President in charge of AI technology. It was confirmed that the two companies shared insights on AI technology and AI data center (AIDC) trends.

In particular, SKT shared its self-developed Telco large language model (LLM) technology. SKT had previously held a press briefing in April announcing plans to launch its self-developed Korean Telco LLM by June. The company expects to use this technology to improve work efficiency in telecommunications tasks such as customer service, network infrastructure operation, marketing and distribution channels, legal affairs, and HR. At the briefing, Vice President Eric Davis explained, "SKT's unique multi-LLM strategy is to create various Telco LLMs through fine-tuning and benchmarking tailored to telecommunications data and domain expertise, allowing us to select and use the appropriate model according to the situation."

In October last year, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom signed a memorandum of understanding for the joint development of a 'telecom-oriented AI LLM.' The two companies have been continuously exchanging information since then.
Photo by SK Telecom

SKT and Deutsche Telekom have maintained ongoing exchanges. Since July last year, the two companies, along with Singapore's Singtel, Middle East's e&, and Japan's SoftBank, have formed the 'Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA),' a global telecommunications AI collaboration group, to promote the development of global Telco LLMs. In 2020, during the tenure of former CEO Park Jung-ho, they finalized a contract to establish a 5G technology joint venture. In 2022, former CEO Park, who moved to the position of Vice Chairman at SK Square, and CEO Yoo Young-sang visited Deutsche Telekom headquarters to hold a workshop related to the metaverse platform 'ifland.' This recent meeting with Deutsche Telekom appears to be an effort to further strengthen the AI collaboration network between the two companies.

SKT stated, "The workshop was conducted separately from GTAA and was intended for trend sharing rather than business purposes," adding, "Even before GTAA, we have held workshops together whenever new technologies such as 5G emerged."