At MWC 2026 in Barcelona, SK Telecom outlined the way it is rebuilding itself round AI, from its community core to its customer support desks. The shift goes past including new AI instruments. It entails rewriting inside methods, increasing knowledge centre capability to the gigawatt scale, and upgrading its personal giant language mannequin to a couple of trillion parameters.
At a press convention throughout MWC 2026, SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun outlined what the firm calls an “AI Native” technique. The plan centres on reorganising infrastructure and making giant investments so the firm might help place Korea amongst the world’s prime three AI powers.
“SKT is at present at a golden time of transformation, the place the two duties of ‘buyer worth innovation’ and ‘AI innovation’ intersect in a borderless, converged setting that goes past telecommunications,” Jung stated. “SKT defines ‘the buyer as 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 methods round AI at MWC 2026
At the core of the plan is a rebuild of SK Telecom’s built-in IT methods. The corporate stated it should redesign gross sales, line administration, and billing methods 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 apply a Zero Belief safety framework throughout its methods. This will embody stronger authentication, entry controls, community segmentation, and AI-based monitoring, in accordance to the firm’s briefing at MWC 2026.
For enterprises watching the telecom sector, this indicators a broader shift. Telecom operators have lengthy relied on legacy billing stacks and community administration instruments. Rebuilding these methods round AI may change how pricing, service design, and fault detection work in observe. It additionally raises questions on knowledge governance and the way buyer knowledge is used to prepare or tune AI fashions.
SK Telecom is additionally increasing its “autonomous community operations” technique. The corporate stated 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 scale back latency. These efforts have been described in firm supplies shared throughout the press occasion.
A single AI agent throughout touchpoints
One other a part of the technique focuses on buyer interplay. SK Telecom plans to redesign pricing, roaming, and membership companies to make them easier and extra automated. It is creating what it calls an built-in AI agent to join experiences throughout its predominant buyer portal, T world, and its on-line retailer, T Direct Store.
The corporate stated the agent will analyse day by day utilization patterns and supply tailor-made solutions throughout channels. It additionally plans to increase its AI Contact Middle so customer support representatives can use AI instruments throughout assist calls.
Offline retail shops are a part of the shift. SK Telecom stated AI will assist workers establish buyer wants and supply suggestions after a retailer go to. It is additionally 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 are attempting to transfer from reactive service fashions to predictive ones. The distinction now is 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 knowledge centres
The infrastructure build-out is equally bold. SK Telecom stated it should assemble hyperscale AI knowledge centres throughout Korea, concentrating on capability that exceeds 1 gigawatt. It goals to entice world funding and place the nation as a serious AI knowledge 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 knowledge centre in Korea’s southwestern area in collaboration with OpenAI, in accordance to the firm’s announcement at MWC 2026.
On the mannequin aspect, SK Telecom stated its sovereign AI basis mannequin at present has 519 billion parameters, making it the largest in Korea. The corporate plans to improve it to a couple of trillion parameters and add multimodal capabilities so it will possibly course of picture, voice, and video knowledge beginning in the second half of the yr.
CEO Jung framed the knowledge centre and mannequin build-out in nationwide phrases. “AIDC may be seen as the coronary heart of Korea, and hyperscale LLMs as the mind,” he stated. “By combining SKT’s AI capabilities with collaboration from home and world companions, we’ll lead true AI-native transformation for Korean clients and enterprises.”
For enterprise readers, the key concern is not parameter rely alone. It is how such fashions might be utilized in sectors like manufacturing. SK Telecom stated it is working with SK hynix on a manufacturing-focused AI bundle that analyses course of knowledge in actual time to scale back defect charges and enhance tools effectivity. The bundle might 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 observe AI use throughout departments and people. It operates an “AI Board” to oversee 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 to the firm’s figures shared at the occasion.
“To drive future development, we should reinvent our method of working from the floor up. SKT will basically rework its company tradition to be centred round AI,” Jung stated.
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 will possibly execute at the scale it describes stays to be seen. What is clear is that AI is not positioned as a aspect venture. It is turning into the working mannequin.
(Picture by PR Newswire)
See additionally: Nokia and AWS pilot AI automation for real-time 5G network slicing
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