Prianca Ravichander, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of Tecnotree, stresses why intelligent networks are crucial to Europe’s digital future.
Europe has spent the last decade laying the physical foundations of its digital future at historic scale. Across fibre, mobile spectrum, edge infrastructure, and cloud interconnects, more than €500bn has been invested in digital connectivity. Today, over 80% of Europe’s population has access to 5G coverage, and fibre networks pass most urban households. By traditional measures, Europe is well connected.
Yet, a paradox has emerged. Despite rising infrastructure investment, telecom revenues across Europe remain largely flat, average revenue per user continues to decline, and the majority of economic value created on top of connectivity is captured outside the telecom sector – by hyperscalers, digital platforms, and application ecosystems. The problem Europe now faces is not a shortage of connectivity, but a shortage of value creation.
As Europe accelerates 5G deployment and begins laying the conceptual groundwork for 6G, the defining question is no longer how fast networks are, but how intelligent they are. Connectivity alone will not deliver Europe’s ambitions for digital sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, or sustainability. The next phase of digital infrastructure depends on intelligence that is native to the network itself.
For decades, telecom networks were designed as neutral conduits – highly reliable, highly regulated, and largely passive. Their role was to move data efficiently from point A to point B. Intelligence lived above the network, in applications and cloud platforms. This architecture made sense in an era of static services and predictable demand. It does not work in an economy defined by real-time interaction.
Adapting to a structural shift
Today’s digital society is shaped by autonomous systems, immersive media, industrial automation, and machine-to-machine interaction. Smart factories, connected mobility, telemedicine platforms, energy grids, and digital public services all operate on millisecond-level feedback loops. In this environment, a network that simply carries traffic – no matter how fast – cannot support the complexity of modern digital systems.
This is where the industry is undergoing a structural shift: from scripts to systems that think.
The first wave of intelligence in telecom took the form of rules and scripts. Early chatbots followed decision trees. Network automation relied on static thresholds and predefined responses. These tools reduced operational cost, but they rarely improved customer experience or system resilience in a meaningful way. They worked when reality matched the script – and failed when it did not.
What is emerging now is categorically different. Modern networks generate enormous volumes of real-time telemetry: performance metrics, location data, device behaviour, service events, quality indicators, and usage patterns. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) allow this data to be analysed as it is produced, not weeks later in reports. Patterns can be recognised, predictions made, and actions triggered autonomously.
This marks the transition from automation to cognition. Networks are evolving from reactive systems into adaptive ones – capable of sensing their environment, learning from behaviour, and acting in real time. A useful analogy is the human nervous system. Nerves do not simply transmit signals; they interpret stimuli, prioritise responses, and coordinate action across the body. A network that can mirror intelligence behaves in the same way.
Technological intelligence with human capability
The most profound impact of this shift is not limited to customer-facing automation. AI is increasingly becoming a force multiplier for human empathy. By summarising customer history instantly, transcribing conversations in real time, and surfacing context-specific recommendations, AI reduces cognitive load on human agents and allows them to focus on what machines cannot replicate: judgment, nuance, and emotional intelligence.
Sentiment analysis adds another layer of intelligence. By analysing tone, language, and behavioural cues across calls, chats, emails, and social media, operators gain a real-time understanding of customer frustration, intent, and churn risk – often before these issues escalate. This enables earlier intervention, more personalised engagement, and, ultimately, stronger trust.
This is not about replacing humans with machines. It is about augmenting human capability with intelligence.
Despite the hype surrounding AI, European operators are approaching adoption with discipline rather than recklessness. Around 25% have reached scaled AI automation across key customer-care or operational channels, while approximately 75% are actively piloting or expanding AI-assisted capabilities. This measured approach reflects an acute awareness of regulatory, ethical, and customer experience risks.
At the same time, expectations are ambitious. Within the next three years, one-third of operators expect AI to handle between 25-50% of all customer interactions, while nearly one in five anticipate that more than half of interactions will be AI-managed. This is not a peripheral experiment. It is a fundamental shift in the operating model of telecom businesses.
When operators are asked about the barriers to AI adoption, no single obstacle dominates. Challenges are distributed across technical integration, compliance and privacy, cost, customer resistance, staff training, and organisational change. The message is clear: success in AI-driven networks depends as much on governance, trust, and change management as it does on technology.
Where AI is delivering the most immediate value is also telling. Operators are prioritising self-care automation, technical troubleshooting, billing, payments, and onboarding – areas associated with high interaction volumes and clear operational impact. More experimental use cases, such as AI-driven promotions or advanced recommendation engines, rank lower. Experience stability and trust come before monetisation experimentation.
This evolution has important implications for Europe’s long-term competitiveness. Intelligent networks can dynamically optimise energy consumption – a critical capability as energy costs rise and sustainability targets tighten. They can support latency-sensitive industries such as robotics, logistics, and advanced manufacturing. They can enable digital public services that are more responsive, resilient, and inclusive.
They also create new monetisation opportunities. When networks understand context – who is using them, where, how, and for what purpose – intelligence itself becomes a service. Experience-based pricing, on-demand network slicing, real-time service guarantees, and industry-specific digital platforms become possible. Connectivity shifts from a commodity to a value-generating platform.
Intelligent networks for a better digital future
As attention turns toward 6G, it is important to recognise that intelligence, not spectrum alone, will define readiness. A 6G network without intelligence would simply amplify today’s challenges at greater speed and scale. Intelligent 5G networks, by contrast, can already deliver many of the outcomes associated with next-generation infrastructure.
Europe now faces a strategic choice. It can continue investing in connectivity while value accrues elsewhere, or it can embed intelligence into the fabric of its networks – transforming infrastructure into a foundation for innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth.
The winners of the next decade will not be those who build the fastest networks, but those who build the smartest ones. Networks that can sense, learn, and act in real time will define Europe’s digital future. In a milestone-driven economy, intelligence is no longer optional. It has become the infrastructure behind everything.
Sources
European Commission – Digital Decade Policy Programme
ETNO – State of Digital Communications Europe
GSMA – Mobile Economy Europe
OECD – AI, Data and Digital Infrastructure
McKinsey – The AI-enabled Telco
Gartner – AI in Customer Service and Network Operations
ITU – Towards 6G
Please note, this article will also appear in the 25th edition of our quarterly publication.
