The agile telco needs frameworks, standards and a lively ecosystem to succeed. Antony Savvas looks at some of the latest developments that can help drive this success.
Circles says it is “reimagining” the telco industry with its SaaS platform, empowering operators to “effortlessly launch” digital brands or to refresh existing ones, “accelerating” their transformation into techcos, it says. Circles currently partners with telcos across 14 countries and six continents, including KDDI, Etisalat, AT&T and Telkomsel. Now, it is working with generative AI leader OpenAI to build a fully AI-native telco platform to make the industry’s migration to AI services easier.
“This platform will set a new benchmark for telcos globally, and will empower them to play a deeper technological role in their consumers’ lives in the AI-first era,” said the partners.
Telcos worldwide are struggling with declining customer net promoter scores (NPS), retention and profitability. In collaboration with OpenAI, Circles is building a fully AI-native SaaS platform that it says will drive “unprecedented levels” of consumer intelligence, productivity and profitability across research, operations, customer support and customer relationship management (CRM).
The multi-year collaboration will also give Circles access to OpenAI’s early-stage models and research programmes, positioning it at the forefront of inventing new AI benchmarks for the telco industry, showcasing the potential for AI in text, voice, image and vision.
“This collaboration will deliver a paradigm shift in not just user experience, but also operator efficiency which will further enhance value to users,” said Awais Mailk, the global chief growth officer at Circles.
The platform will power a “pathbreaking” agentic AI app that understands context, adapts to users’ digital lifestyles and delivers personalised experiences across connectivity, shopping, travel, gaming, wellness and other areas, we are told.
“With OpenAI’s technology, Circles will be setting new standards for how AI can enhance consumers’ interactions with critical telco services,” added Oliver Jay, the managing director for international at OpenAI.
The return of voice in CX
Recent years have seen the customer experience (CX) landscape undergo a significant transformation. From chatbots to web-based self-service portals, organisations have embraced automation as a means to enhance efficiency, reduce operational costs and scale service delivery.
However, despite this digital shift, one channel many had written off – the humble voice call – is making a comeback.
According to Lewis Gallagher, a transformation consultant at Netcall, when customers are facing complex, urgent or emotionally charged issues, nothing replaces the immediacy and empathy of a conversation. He says the driver behind voice’s revival in CX is artificial intelligence.
While AI has long been associated with digital-only solutions, it’s now powering a new era of intelligent voice experiences within the contact centre, says Gallagher.
Today, modern speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) technologies enable businesses to build voice interfaces that feel natural, not robotic. The days of rigid, frustrating interactive voice response (IVR) systems are being replaced with context-aware, AI-enabled voice interactions that understand nuance and respond fluidly.
“But this evolution isn’t about removing the human from the loop, it’s about elevating them,” says Gallagher.
Yes, AI can automate routine tasks. But more importantly, it can sit alongside contact centre agents, listening in real time, pulling relevant data, suggesting next-best actions and summarising calls as they happen. This augments human agents, helping them deliver faster, more accurate and more empathetic responses, without risking burnout.
One of the most meaningful advancements AI brings to voice communication is its ability to overcome the rigidity of early automation. Legacy voice systems often required customers to repeat themselves or conform to narrow, unnatural scripts. Today’s AI systems, powered by advanced NLP, can understand intent and maintain continuity across conversations.
“By handling routine queries like appointment confirmations, or FAQ responses, AI lightens the load for human agents. That frees them to focus on high-value, emotionally nuanced conversations, exactly where voice shines,” Gallagher says.
And with AI now capable of analysing thousands of conversations in real time, organisations can spot emerging trends and common customer frustrations. That enables proactive communication, solving issues before they become calls, and reducing demand on contact centres in the first place.
Out of this world
Belgian space tech start-up EDGX has closed a €2.3 million seed funding round to accelerate the commercialisation of its EDGX Sterna, a next generation edge AI computer for satellites to support mobile networks. The start-up has also closed a multi-unit deal with an unnamed satellite operator worth €1.1 million, and has already announced plans for an in-orbit demonstration on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission in February 2026.
The EDGX Sterna computer is a high-performance data processing unit powered by NVIDIA technology. It provides the computational performance and AI acceleration needed to run complex algorithms directly in orbit. This capability eliminates the traditional bottleneck of sending massive raw datasets to Earth for processing, enabling satellite operators to deliver “faster, more efficient” data-driven services.
Sterna powers 5G and 6G from orbit. By moving base station processing capabilities to space, like onboard gNodeB, it enables satellites to participate directly in next-generation mobile networks.
This paves the way for “seamless” direct-to-device connectivity, delivering high-speed internet to remote, underserved, or disaster-affected areas where traditional infrastructure falls short.
For spectrum monitoring, Sterna enables in-orbit processing to locate and classify radio signals and generate dynamic spectrum maps, a key capability that helps satellite operators understand how frequencies are used in real-time, avoid interference and allocate bandwidth more efficiently to deliver optimal services.
And for Earth observation, Sterna supports intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) by analysing high-resolution imagery directly onboard, responding to time-sensitive events such as floods, wildfires, or earthquakes, and turning passive observation into real-time situational awareness.
“With a full launch manifest, secured commercial contracts and our first mission set for Falcon 9, this funding enables us to scale to meet demand for real-time intelligence from space,” says Nick Destrycker, the founder and CEO of EDGX.
Antony Savvas