At MWC 2026 in Barcelona, SK Telecom outlined how it’s rebuilding itself round AI, from its community core to its customer support desks. The shift goes past including new AI instruments. It includes rewriting inside programs, increasing information centre capability to the gigawatt scale, and upgrading its personal giant language mannequin to multiple trillion parameters.
At a press convention throughout MWC 2026, SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun outlined what the corporate calls an “AI Native” technique. The plan centres on reorganising infrastructure and making giant investments so the corporate may also help place Korea among the many world’s high three AI powers.
“SKT is at the moment at a golden time of transformation, the place the 2 duties of ‘buyer worth innovation’ and ‘AI innovation’ intersect in a borderless, converged surroundings that goes past telecommunications,” Jung mentioned. “SKT defines ‘the client because the very essence of our enterprise,’ and thru innovation pushed by AI, we are going to evolve into an organization that makes significant contributions to our clients and to Korea.”
Rewriting telecom programs round AI at MWC 2026
On the core of the plan is a rebuild of SK Telecom’s built-in IT programs. The corporate mentioned it should redesign gross sales, line administration, and billing programs to be optimised for AI. The purpose is to let the operator design and supply personalised plans and memberships based mostly on every buyer’s utilization and behavior patterns.
The corporate additionally plans to use a Zero Belief safety framework throughout its programs. It will embody stronger authentication, entry controls, community segmentation, and AI-based monitoring, in accordance with the corporate’s briefing at MWC 2026.
For enterprises watching the telecom sector, this alerts a broader shift. Telecom operators have lengthy relied on legacy billing stacks and community administration instruments. Rebuilding these programs round AI might change how pricing, service design, and fault detection work in observe. It additionally raises questions on information governance and the way buyer information is used to coach or tune AI fashions.
SK Telecom can also be increasing its “autonomous community operations” technique. The corporate mentioned it should use AI to automate wi-fi high quality administration, visitors management, and community tools operations. With AI-RAN know-how, it goals to enhance velocity and cut back latency. These efforts have been described in firm supplies shared in the course of the press occasion.
A single AI agent throughout touchpoints
One other a part of the technique focuses on buyer interplay. SK Telecom plans to revamp pricing, roaming, and membership companies to make them easier and extra automated. It’s creating what it calls an built-in AI agent to attach experiences throughout its primary buyer portal, T world, and its on-line retailer, T Direct Store.
The corporate mentioned the agent will analyse every day utilization patterns and supply tailor-made options throughout channels. It additionally plans to increase its AI Contact Heart so customer support representatives can use AI instruments throughout assist calls.
Offline retail shops are a part of the shift. SK Telecom mentioned AI will assist workers determine buyer wants and supply suggestions after a retailer go to. It is usually constructing “AI Personas” to analyse digital behaviour throughout buyer segments and assist conversational Q&A.
For enterprise leaders, this mirrors a wider sample. Telecom operators try to maneuver from reactive service fashions to predictive ones. The distinction now’s scale. By embedding AI into billing, customer support, and retail, SK Telecom is treating AI as an working layer fairly than a separate function.
Constructing 1GW-class AI information centres
The infrastructure build-out is equally formidable. SK Telecom mentioned it should assemble hyperscale AI information centres throughout Korea, focusing on capability that exceeds 1 gigawatt. It goals to draw international funding and place the nation as a serious AI information centre hub in Asia.
The corporate already operates a GPU cluster referred to as Haein and utilized its virtualisation resolution, Petasus AI Cloud, to assist GPU-as-a-service workloads final yr. It now plans to supply that cloud resolution globally.
SK Telecom additionally plans to construct an AI information centre in Korea’s southwestern area in collaboration with OpenAI, in accordance with the corporate’s announcement at MWC 2026.
On the mannequin aspect, SK Telecom mentioned its sovereign AI basis mannequin at the moment has 519 billion parameters, making it the biggest in Korea. The corporate plans to improve it to multiple trillion parameters and add multimodal capabilities so it will possibly course of picture, voice, and video information beginning within the second half of the yr.
CEO Jung framed the information centre and mannequin build-out in nationwide phrases. “AIDC might be seen as the center of Korea, and hyperscale LLMs because the mind,” he mentioned. “By combining SKT’s AI capabilities with collaboration from home and international companions, we are going to lead true AI-native transformation for Korean clients and enterprises.”
For enterprise readers, the important thing problem is just not parameter depend alone. It’s how such fashions can be utilized in sectors like manufacturing. SK Telecom mentioned it’s working with SK hynix on a manufacturing-focused AI bundle that analyses course of information in actual time to cut back defect charges and enhance tools effectivity. The bundle can be supplied as infrastructure, mannequin, and resolution.
Altering inside tradition
The transformation additionally extends to inside operations. SK Telecom has constructed an “AX Dashboard” to trace AI use throughout departments and people. It operates an “AI Board” to supervise AI transformation efforts and has created an “AI playground” the place staff can construct AI brokers with out coding. Greater than 2,000 AI brokers are already in use throughout advertising and marketing, authorized, and public relations, in accordance with the corporate’s figures shared on the occasion.
“To drive future development, we should reinvent our approach of working from the bottom up. SKT will basically rework its company tradition to be centred round AI,” Jung mentioned.
For different enterprises, the takeaway is much less about branding and extra about construction. SK Telecom is tying infrastructure, fashions, functions, and inside governance right into a single program. Whether or not it will possibly execute on the scale it describes stays to be seen. What is obvious is that AI is now not positioned as a aspect undertaking. It’s turning into the working mannequin.
(Picture by PR Newswire)
See additionally: Nokia and AWS pilot AI automation for real-time 5G community slicing
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