Jeetu Patel, chief product officer of IT networking giant Cisco, said he sees telcos playing a vital role as AI drives up demand for network traffic and bandwidth.
"The reality is this: the network bandwidth appetite is going to increase exponentially with AI," Patel told CNBC. "Today, 100% of our workforce is human. Tomorrow, you will have that being augmented by AI agents, robots, humanoids, a lot of edge devices."
"These agents are going to be more chatty and they're going to require more network traffic and bandwidth," he added. "I think service providers have a significant role to play. In my mind, the opportunity is not gone for them."