• Customer Care: Deploying sophisticated virtual assistants to manage billing inquiries, service outages, plan modifications, roaming support, and device troubleshooting [1].
• Internal Operations: Utilizing AI copilots to increase internal efficiency.
• Network Management: Optimizing core network provisioning and operations.

• Sovereign Cloud (2021): DT’s T-Systems division partnered with Google Cloud to offer sovereign cloud services.
• T Cloud Suite (Early 2025): The launch of a comprehensive suite providing sovereign public, private, and AI cloud options leveraging hybrid infrastructure.
• Industrial AI Cloud (Early 2025): A collaboration with Nvidia to build a dedicated industrial AI data center in Munich, scheduled for Q1 2026 operations.

• Edge AI compute services for enterprises.
• Vertical AI solutions tailored for healthcare, retail, and manufacturing sectors.
• Integrated private 5G and AI bundles for industrial logistical hubs.

“Telcos – if they execute – will have a big play in the edge inferencing space as well as providing hosting and colo services that can host domain specific SLMs that need to be run closer to the user data,” he said. “Furthermore, telcos will play a role in connectivity services across Neocloud providers such as CoreWeave, Lambda Labs, Digital Ocean, Vast.AI etc. OpenAI does not want to lose the opportunity to partner with telcos so they are striking early,” Nag added.

Other Voices:

• Roger Entner notes the model is highly applicable to European incumbents (e.g., Orange, Telefonica) due to the relative scarcity of existing AI data centers in the region, allowing operators to fill a critical infrastructure gap.  Conversely, the model is less viable for U.S. operators, where hyperscalers already dominate the extensive data center market.
• AvidThink Founder and colleague Roy Chua cautions that while DT presents a robust “reference blueprint,” replicating this strategy requires significant scale, substantial financial investment, and regulatory alignment—factors not easily accessible to all network operators.
• Futurum Group VP and Practice Lead Nick Patience told Fierce Network, “This deal elevates DT from being a user of AI to being a co-developer, which is pretty significant. DT is one of the few operators building a full-stack AI story. This is an example of OpenAI treating telcos as high-scale distribution and data channels – customer care, billing, network telemetry, national reach and government relationships. This suggests OpenAI is deliberately building an operator channel in key regions (U.S., Korea, EU) but still in partnership with existing cloud and infra providers rather than displacing them.”