NVIDIA Report: Telecom Operators Accelerate Adoption of Open AI Models for Strategy Building

Summary:NVIDIA's latest 'State of AI in Telecommunications' report reveals that 89% of telecom operators consider open source models and software crucial to their AI strategy. Open models not only reduce costs but also offer higher trust, control, and customization capabilities, making them suitable for critical workloads ranging from autonomous networks to customer service. The report highlights that open models support telecom-specific customization, trustworthy AI, flexible deployment, and the delive

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Why Telecom Operators Are Turning to Open AI Models

According to NVIDIA's latest 'State of AI in Telecommunications' report, open AI models are becoming the core driver of AI strategies in the telecom industry. Here are the main reasons why open models are attractive to telecom operators:

1. Lowering Barriers, Expanding AI Applications

   • Open models offer frontier-level intelligence at a lower cost, allowing telecom operators to reserve closed models for the most valuable applications.
   • Independent benchmarks, such as the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2, show that leading open models are increasingly competitive in reasoning, coding, scientific computing, and intelligent agent tasks.

2. Supporting Telecom-Specific Customization

   • Open models provide open weights and training recipes, enabling telecom operators to fine-tune them based on their operational data, including network, customer, and industry information.

3. Enabling Trustworthy AI

   • Open models offer telecom operators greater visibility and control over model behavior and internal mechanisms, allowing them to evaluate, adjust, and govern models in accordance with regulations and business policies.

4. Facilitating Flexible, Secure Deployment

   • Teams can adjust and optimize open models to run across public clouds, private infrastructure, and edge environments.

5. Driving Localized AI Services

   • Telecom operators can host and fine-tune open models to deliver AI services tailored to the needs of enterprises and government clients.

NVIDIA Nemotron: The Open Foundation for Telecom AI

The NVIDIA Nemotron series of open models provides cutting-edge reasoning performance optimized for agentic workflows and offers speech capabilities, making it an ideal choice for telecom AI. Its open weights, training data, and recipes further enhance its suitability for telecom applications.

For instance, SoftBank Corp. is leveraging NVIDIA Nemotron models and other open models to develop its proprietary SoftBank Large Telecom Model, enhancing its capabilities in network operations, design, and management.

Scaling Open Models into Production Workflows

Open models are a critical building block for building autonomous telecom operations, but more is needed to bring them safely into production.

• Data Preparation and Protection: Operators need pipelines that anonymize sensitive records and generate privacy-preserving synthetic datasets.
• Platform Support: A platform is required to turn open models into governed, autonomous agentic workflows.

NVIDIA provides an end-to-end platform powered by NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, spanning data pipelines, open models, agent orchestration, secure runtimes, and simulation. Additionally, NVIDIA collaborates with a strong partner ecosystem to help telecom operators translate the benefits of open models into production-ready AI workflows.

Creating a Platform for Local AI Innovation

As telecom operators build AI infrastructure aligned with national AI strategies, open models provide a foundation for delivering AI services tailored to local languages, industries, regulations, and data governance requirements.

For example, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, one of Indonesia's largest telecom operators, is using open models to build its Sahabat-AI family of models, reflecting the country's language and culture. This initiative not only makes AI more relevant to local needs but also creates new opportunities for AI innovation in Indonesia.

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Source: NVIDIA AI News (2026-10-06)

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