LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS AMERICAS 2017: Chip technology vendor Nvidia believes the much-hyped artificial intelligence (AI) space has the potential to “fundamentally redesign” the way mobile operators work.

Speaking to Mobile World Live ahead of his conference session at Mobile World Congress Americas this week, Soma Velayutham, Global Head of AI & Deep Learning for Telecom at Nvidia, said: “Mobile operators can use AI to change the way networks are planned, deployed and operated to increase capital efficiency and reduce operational expenses. We are seeing organisations use AI-based network planning and optimisation and AI-based network performance and network quality management. Many are also seeing great success with AI for subscriber analytics and campaign management.”

Velayutham believes AI can address the major challenges faced by operators, including declining cash flows and flat capex/revenue ratios. “In many G20 countries, the average age of employees are close to retirement age so replacing the human resources at mobile operators will be a difficult task.”

Nvidia is putting a lot of focus on the AI space as it looks to broaden its market reach. At CES 2016 it opened the event by announcing Drive PX2, described as “the world’s first in-car super computer”.

Velayutham describes AI as “the ultimate computing challenge” and claims its fastest growing segment – deep learning – has been fueled by the “unprecedented power of GPUs which deliver superhuman speed and accuracy”.

“By training massive data sets with Nvidia GPUs and deep learning software, and then putting those insights into actions, enterprises can quickly tackle business challenges that were previously unsolvable,” added Velayutham. “Critical business functions such as logistics, advertising, security, forecasting, site planning and product development will be improved and streamlined in the AI era by those enterprises who get on board quickly.”