During this webinar, an industry expert discussed how an automation project comes to life from the initial business problem through implementation and even post-implementation maintenance. We’ve included a short transcription of the webinar, beginning at 30:57 of the webinar.

Michael Weiss, Ai4: The next question is extremely Telecom related. How is 5G going to impact AI in automation within the industry?

Shipra Mitra, Sprint: Yes, I would say again, I'm going to almost say I am not a telecom expert as you heard. I joined telecom at the beginning of the year. What I can bring to the table is how telecom can morph and my understanding of 5G is very limited, but I do see a future where 5G is going to bring more automation, bring more of machine learning, bring more API into the forefront and make sure that it gets used. And the people who are going to exploit it the most would try to move at the front level. So, I think it's a change of how the architecture of telecom is going to be and what the players are going to be.

Michael Weiss, Ai4: It's interesting. I feel skeptical about the timelines involved with 5G. I use AT&T and I think they show 5G on my phone, but I'm like no it's not why would you show me that? And I guess maybe this is even more just an industry gossip question that a hardcore business ops question, but is 5G pending? What's your gut or expectation as to when there'll be widespread roll out across the industry?

Shipra Mitra, Sprint: So I think 5G is used and doubted right now like you said, but the full capability of 5G will come in only when these services get enabled. It's almost like if you think of Netscape versus if you think of the internet today, you can see the difference. I don't know if you know about Netscape, it’s way old. Right so it was just communication between people but now you can see how the internet has given rise to all these services and I believe 5G has the potential to do that. But are we there yet? Of course not. People need to understand and people need to build on it and only then will we start leveraging it. 

Michael Weiss, Ai4: Yeah. Yeah, with 5G, there's just these massive infrastructure hurdles around building so many shorter-range towers. I feel like it is going to take forever.

 

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