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 techniques, 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 help place Korea among the many world’s prime 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 atmosphere that goes past telecommunications,” Jung mentioned. “SKT defines ‘the client because the very essence of our enterprise,’ and thru innovation pushed by AI, we’ll evolve into an organization that makes significant contributions to our clients and to Korea.”
Rewriting telecom techniques round AI at MWC 2026
On the core of the plan is a rebuild of SK Telecom’s built-in IT techniques. The corporate mentioned it is going to redesign gross sales, line administration, and billing techniques to be optimised for AI. The goal is to let the operator design and supply personalised plans and memberships primarily based on every buyer’s utilization and behavior patterns.
The corporate additionally plans to use a Zero Belief safety framework throughout its techniques. This may embody stronger authentication, entry controls, community segmentation, and AI-based monitoring, based on 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 techniques round AI may 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 be increasing its “autonomous community operations” technique. The corporate mentioned it is going to use AI to automate wi-fi high quality administration, visitors management, and community gear operations. With AI-RAN expertise, it goals to enhance pace 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 providers to make them less complicated and extra automated. It’s growing what it calls an built-in AI agent to attach experiences throughout its essential buyer portal, T world, and its on-line retailer, T Direct Store.
The corporate mentioned the agent will analyse each day utilization patterns and supply tailor-made options throughout channels. It additionally plans to develop its AI Contact Heart so customer support representatives can use AI instruments throughout help calls.
Offline retail shops are a part of the shift. SK Telecom mentioned AI will assist employees 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 help conversational Q&A.
For enterprise leaders, this mirrors a wider sample. Telecom operators are attempting 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 reasonably than a separate characteristic.
Constructing 1GW-class AI information centres
The infrastructure build-out is equally bold. SK Telecom mentioned it is going to assemble hyperscale AI information centres throughout Korea, concentrating 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 known as Haein and utilized its virtualisation answer, Petasus AI Cloud, to help GPU-as-a-service workloads final yr. It now plans to supply that cloud answer globally.
SK Telecom additionally plans to construct an AI information centre in Korea’s southwestern area in collaboration with OpenAI, based on 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 may possibly course of picture, voice, and video information beginning within the second half of the yr.
CEO Jung framed the info centre and mannequin build-out in nationwide phrases. “AIDC may be seen as the guts of Korea, and hyperscale LLMs because the mind,” he mentioned. “By combining SKT’s AI capabilities with collaboration from home and international companions, we’ll lead true AI-native transformation for Korean clients and enterprises.”
For enterprise readers, the important thing problem is just not parameter rely alone. It’s how such fashions might be utilized in sectors like manufacturing. SK Telecom mentioned it’s working with SK hynix on a manufacturing-focused AI package deal that analyses course of information in actual time to scale back defect charges and enhance gear effectivity. The package deal might be provided as infrastructure, mannequin, and answer.
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 workers 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, based on the corporate’s figures shared on the occasion.
“To drive future progress, we should reinvent our manner 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, purposes, and inside governance right into a single program. Whether or not it may possibly execute on the scale it describes stays to be seen. What is obvious is that AI is now not positioned as a aspect challenge. It’s turning into the working mannequin.
(Photograph by PR Newswire)
See additionally: Nokia and AWS pilot AI automation for real-time 5G community slicing
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