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MTN aims to unlock R30bn in value from AI over the next three to five years as it accelerates deployment of the technology.Companies worldwide have felt the pressure to capitalise on the trend by employing AI-backed services or software platforms to either improve their own operations or create products.As a tech and telecoms player, MTN sees an opportunity to refine how it operates while creating new products. Chief technology and information officer Charles Molapisi explains that MTN’s AI framework is divided into three distinct operational domains: AI insight, which has to do with internal operations; business-to-consumer, focused on personalisation and compliance backed by AI; and business-to-business, primarily an enterprise play focused on selling compute capacity. “We believe that we have an opportunity to play very solidly around AI inside the organisation,” Molapisi said. “We’re going after opex [operational expenditure] optimisation using AI as a margin lever, and we are pushing aggressively.”(Dorothy Kgosi) On the consumer front, the company is using the technology to offer personalised bundles and pricing to its customers, a concept it refers to as “hyper-personalisation”. With compliance, AI agents are being employed around SIM card registrations, replacing human biometric verification. “Today, we’ve put down 13 agents that are able to do this at scale, faster and more accurate. Thirteen automated agents that work together to distribute load,” Molapisi said. AI agents have taken off in popularity worldwide. This is part of a growing trend regarding AI-powered agents, known as agentic AI, taking on more tasks from human beings. An agent can work like a personal assistant, making bookings, creating meetings, summarising notes and other important information.MTN is taking advantage of the pressure on companies and their executives and boards to understand and create value from the technology.“The big metric here … is going to be the token per watt when it comes to the economics,” said Molapisi. “The mathematics is very clear. The ones who are able to produce tokens at the most economical rate win the game. It’s not about who’s got the best compute and the best models; it’s about energy implications in terms of token generation.”“Tokens per watt” is a calculation of the amount of AI-generated text or data chunks a system produces for each watt of power consumed. Given the huge energy demands of data centres, the metric is the primary measure of AI profitability and operational success.The big metric here … is going to be the token per watt when it comes to the economics. The mathematics is very clear. The ones who are able to produce tokens at the most economical rate win the game. — Charles Molapisi, chief technology and information officerWhile many organisations are starting to use AI in their operations, it comes at a cost. The rising IT costs are now raising questions about the wisdom of replacing humans with AI, with the one type of cost simply being replaced by another. MTN has committed as much as $2bn to build data centres through joint ventures. It also has plans to turn its cellphone tower sites into “mini data centres” for AI workloads, a concept referred to as “AI-RAN” [radio access network]. The group is also turning existing fibre infrastructure into a sensor network that detects micro-vibrations and alerts management to illegal excavations or the need for maintenance before lines are cut.Fibre cuts, particularly those undersea, cause major disruptions for telecom operators and their customers. AI investment has grown exponentially in recent years, driven by the rapid adoption and popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT since it was launched in November 2022.
