AI inference in practice: choosing the right edge

As AI adoption grows, inferencing will accelerate, raising the question of where workloads will be processed and how they translate into business benefits. This analysis examines AI on the near edge in distributed telco data centres, with Kinetica highlighted as an example.

For several years, edge compute has been a key part of the 5G value proposition for telecoms operators selling into industries – even before AI. However, AI adds a new dimension to the value of edge through distributed inference.

Growth in AI consumption is creating commercial opportunities across the AI value chain. Over the past year, investment in AI has increasingly extended towards revenue-generating services and enterprise propositions, with operators assuming a broader range of roles across the AI value chain. Telcos in Asia Pacific are particularly active across multiple layers of the AI value chain. They account for 43% of those participating in the infrastructure layer and 38% in the model layer. This position reflects the combination of large and linguistically diverse markets, government-backed national and sovereign AI agendas, expanding AI infrastructure investment, and the scale of leading regional operators and technology ecosystems.