Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping the Telecom Industry

Telecom Is Rapidly Getting Smarter

The past few years can confidently be described as a period of rapid artificial intelligence development. AI is being introduced across virtually every sphere of life, and the telecom industry is no exception. Here, artificial intelligence has long since moved beyond the experimental stage and become a full-fledged tool for industry growth.

Telecom operators are actively launching new chatbots, deploying AI to combat fraud, forecast peak network loads, detect potential failures in advance and address a wide range of other operational challenges. Experts estimate that AI adoption could increase telecom operators’ EBITDA by 3–4% over the next two years and by 8–10% within five years. Importantly, this does not imply a large-scale replacement of employees with algorithms. Instead, AI acts as an assistant, relieving people of a substantial share of routine tasks.

“While operating within an operator’s network, AI is capable of monitoring the network in real time, identifying anomalies and correcting them autonomously. This allows for a multiple-fold reduction in the time required to resolve customer issues and enables ultra-fast network management,” said Inessa Galaktionova, CEO of MTS.

Reliable Protection Against Fraud

As noted earlier, ensuring user security without artificial intelligence is virtually impossible. This year, IVA Technologies, MTS Link and Vinteo reported significant progress in deploying deepfake detection systems across their platforms. These software detectors are based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The algorithms continuously analyse video streams, tracking indicators such as lip-sync inconsistencies, characteristics of synthetic voices and other markers. As a result, the system can determine within seconds whether the person speaking to you via video link is real or a digital impersonation.

In the future, we will see even deeper integration of AI into network management. For example, the development of autonomous networks where AI independently makes decisions on traffic redistribution and configuration updates in real time

Andrey Zhuk

expert in machine learning and AI applications in telecommunications and high-tech industries

In mid-year, MTS also released a major update to its Defender service. Subscriber security is now handled simultaneously by three intelligent models. They analyse each conversation across 1,000 parameters every second and can identify fraud attempts with accuracy exceeding 95%. Detection speed has also increased dramatically. Previously, identifying a potential threat took around three minutes; now the entire process takes no more than 30 seconds.

The Rise of Video Analytics

Another promising area is video analytics. IVA Technologies has announced plans to establish a dedicated AI laboratory focused on this field, with planned investments of at least 500 million rubles (approximately $6 million). Video analytics is not limited to video communications alone. It can be applied to a wide range of projects that require recognition of images, objects and actions. Where necessary, the software core can also be integrated with IP cameras, the Unified Biometric System and corporate IT systems.

Another noteworthy product from Russian developers is MWS Data Scout, created by MTS Web Services. Essentially, this is a next-generation AI-powered digital agent designed to analyse large volumes of data and generate concise descriptions of tables.

Saving Time and Money

“This solution makes it possible to accelerate the data description process by a factor of ten and save tens of millions of rubles on analyst costs. As a result, MWS became the first company to enter the market for automated data description, which exceeds 3.5 billion rubles (around $42 million),” representatives of the development team explained.

All this represents only a small fraction of the areas in which artificial intelligence found application in the telecom sector during 2025. Its potential is vast and, in many respects, still not fully realised. What is already clear, however, is that moving the industry to a new technological level without AI is no longer possible. Russian developers are making decisive progress in this direction, offering strong competition to their international peers. There is little doubt that, over time, Russia has every chance of becoming one of the world’s leading suppliers of AI solutions for the global telecom industry.