Network X
14 - 16 October 2025
Paris Expo Porte de VersaillesParis, France

Rickard Damm

Vice President - Consumer AI

Deutsche Telekom

Bringing Generative AI to Millions: How Gen AI Can Increase NPS and Inspire Our Customers

Insights from Network X 2024

The telecommunications industry is witnessing a transformative shift as generative AI moves from experimental technology to mainstream consumer applications. At Network X 2024, Rickard Damm, Vice President - Consumer AI at Deutsche Telekom shared their groundbreaking approach to democratizing AI through their Magenta AI initiative, demonstrating how telcos can leverage this technology to enhance customer satisfaction and drive engagement.

The Current State of Consumer AI

Despite the initial excitement surrounding generative AI, we're experiencing what some industry experts at Network X 2024 described as a "mini-AI winter" from a consumer perspective. The initial buzz has somewhat faded, and consumers are experiencing fatigue from the fragmented landscape of AI applications. This presents a unique opportunity for telecommunications providers to bring order to this fragmentation and deliver value through integrated AI experiences.

Magenta AI: Bringing AI to 25 Million Customers

Deutsche Telekom's Magenta AI represents a significant step toward making AI accessible to millions of customers across 11 countries through their My Magenta app. Rather than creating yet another standalone AI application, they've integrated AI capabilities directly into their existing customer touchpoint, partnering with Perplexity to create a seamless experience.

This approach addresses a critical challenge in the AI landscape: how to combine general knowledge capabilities with personalized, private information in a single interface. When a customer asks about general information like "iPhone 16 specifications," the query is handled by Perplexity. However, when they ask about their bill or service details, Deutsche Telekom's own LLM provides the answer, ensuring customer data remains protected.

The Three Pillars of Gen AI Value

For telecommunications companies looking to increase Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and inspire customers, understanding the core value propositions of generative AI is essential:

  • Summarization: AI excels at condensing large amounts of information into digestible formats, making complex telecommunications offerings easier to understand

  • Creativity: Generating personalized content and recommendations that enhance the customer experience

  • Hyper-personalization: Tailoring interactions to individual preferences and needs

By focusing on these three areas, telcos can deliver AI experiences that genuinely improve customer satisfaction rather than simply following technology trends.

Balancing Privacy with Innovation

A key discussion point at Network X 2024 centered on how telecommunications providers can leverage AI while maintaining customer trust. The approach outlined involves:

  • Maintaining control of critical customer touchpoints, particularly input fields where personal data might be shared

  • Building proprietary LLM capabilities for handling sensitive customer information

  • Partnering strategically with AI specialists for general knowledge capabilities

This hybrid model allows telcos to protect customer data while still delivering comprehensive AI experiences. As noted during the presentation, "Building our own LLM stack is non-negotiable if we want to focus on consumer AI," particularly since customers will inevitably ask questions about sensitive information.

The Future: Streaming AI and Network Implications

Perhaps the most significant insight from Network X 2024 for telecommunications providers concerns the future network demands of AI applications. We're entering an era of "streaming AI" with bidirectional requirements:

  • Always-on AI devices continuously streaming data

  • Significantly increased upstream data needs for real-time AI processing

  • Ultra-low latency requirements, with customer satisfaction directly correlating with response speed

This represents both a challenge and opportunity for network planning. The industry goal is moving from current 3-4 second response times toward sub-second and eventually 100ms responses, requiring significant network investments.

Multi-Modal and On-Device AI

The future of customer interaction will be increasingly multi-modal, with voice becoming a primary interface alongside text and visual inputs. Customers will expect to talk to their devices naturally and receive immediate assistance, whether they're navigating a website, using an app, or watching content.

Additionally, consumer hardware will increasingly run AI models locally, with projections suggesting devices will support models with 10 billion parameters by next year. This edge AI capability will work alongside cloud-based processing in a multi-tiered approach.

Conclusion: Transforming Customer Experience Through AI

The insights from Network X 2024 make it clear that generative AI represents a tremendous opportunity for telecommunications providers to increase NPS scores and inspire customers. By bringing order to the fragmented AI landscape, protecting customer privacy while enabling powerful capabilities, and preparing networks for the streaming AI future, telcos can position themselves not just as connectivity providers but as essential partners in the AI-powered future.

The telecommunications companies that successfully implement these strategies will find themselves well-positioned to deliver exceptional customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth in an increasingly AI-centric world.