AI native telco: From lab dreams to market reality

Moderator: Roz Roseboro, Senior Principle Analyst, Omdia 

15:45 - 16:00
Psychological and sociological perspectives for successful introduction of AI 

• The social sciences have been engaged productively with both natural sciences and technology from their beginnings. 
• The benefits of this co-development have flowed in both directions 
• This talk will indicate how the introduction of artificial intelligence at scale in both technical and social applications can benefit from the accumulated experience from these earlier engagements. 
• Examples will range from the micro level of individual and group psychology via the social shaping of technology in organisations to the macro levels of policy and governance. 

Jerome Carson, Professor of Psychology, Hume Institute Lausanne 
Stephen Little, Professor Extraordinaire, Hume Institute Lausanne 

16:00 - 16:15

AI-Native Telco: Operationalising an AI-centric reference architecture 

• Why telco AI stalls at scale: Architecture is the missing link 
• Moving from reference to reality: Scaling AI across a federated telco 
• AI-native telcos will be defined not by the models they use but by the architectures that allow 

Shekhar Kulkarni, Global Chief Architect, Deutsche Telekom 

16:15 - 16:30
Agentic AI in practice: Scaling safely and credibly across telco networks 

• Deploying agentic AI to automate decisions while preserving human oversight and trust
• Defining guardrails for autonomy, escalation and rollback in live network environments
• Ensuring performance, security and resilience as agentic systems scale across domain

Jinu Sharma, Vice President and Senior Industry Principal, Infosys

16:45 - 17:15 Rewiring the telco enterprise for AI-native growth: Leadership, trust and ecosystem execution 

• As AI shifts from experimentation to embedded capability, the challenge for telecoms is no longer building the technology, but scaling its use across the enterprise
• Evolution of architecture and engineering practices to support AI-driven services 
• Aligning strategy, architecture and culture for AI at scale 

Moderator: Ranjan Band, CTO Europe Telco & CX Business Lead, Tech Mahindra   
Jen Hawes-Hewitt, Global Head of Growth & Strategy, Google 
Eva Ulicevic, Director Architecture, Strategy and Technology Enablement, Telefónica Germany 

Timings are provisional only and may be subject to change.