Telecoms can teach other sectors about AI adoption: expert

Telecoms are in the vanguard on adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and have much to teach other industries, a top strategist maintains. Shalima Bhalla sat down recently with The Wire Report to discuss her findings on AI and telecoms. The New York-based expert on enterprise customer experience (CX) and agentic AI believes connectivity has become a commodity. Since telcos in the United States have a 30 to 35 per cent churn rate, costs of new acquisitions becomes a concern — but Bhalla believes AI can help that. “The CX is one of the biggest outlays for AI-based transactions and therefore telcos are the first ones to implement that,” she notes. Agentic AI is the use of intelligent agents that can take action and use tools with varying degrees of autonomy. They usually run within objectives, constraints and tools defined by human operators. Telecoms reach out to their customers proactively, not waiting for them to call back. This makes the companies different from firms in other sectors. “There are not many industries who have implemented this kind of proactive service to their end customers,” Bhalla states. Others may tinker with the idea but telecoms are forced into the adoption of the new technologies. “Other industries are still catching up but the telcos are the ones who have actually done it because they don’t have any option,” she asserts. Telecoms can stand as an example for other regulated sectors, like banking and healthcare, the Yale-educated expert offers. Retail companies are also keeping an eye on what the telcos do. Telecommunications companies should not be worried about their rival corporations, Bhalla continues, but rather they must take a broad look at the landscape. “They need to think about not their direct competitors but distant competitors,” Bhalla says. “As the technology is advancing, think about Starlink and other technologies that are emerging that are actually a direct threat to the telcos.” Telecoms should be cooperating to shore up their defences against these emerging technologies. It could take years for firms in other sectors to learn what telcos are discovering today. One constant component of the debate over AI is its effect on employment. The American specialist concedes there may be problems in the early days but is optimistic about the situation in the longer term. “The kind of jobs that we do are going to be transformed. They’re going to be evolved into something else,” she predicts. “Of course, the mundane, repetitive tasks are going to be eliminated and best suited to be done by AI. “But that doesn’t mean that the net effect is going to be a lower number of jobs. Maybe that is for a small amount of time but it’s eventually going to lead to new kinds of jobs that don’t exist today.” Bhalla states that AI is not just technology transformation, it is also organizational transformation. Companies in all industries must begin to think about AI as an operating system that can enhance their future performance. ppark@thewirereport.ca

Telecoms can teach other sectors about AI adoption: expert

Telecom |
By Paul Park
|August 4, 2026

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Telecoms can teach other sectors about AI adoption: expert

Telecom | By Paul Park |August 4, 2026

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|August 4, 2026