(Yicai) March 6 -- Artificial intelligence technologies are developing at a speed beyond imagination, with new applications and innovations emerging in an explosive manner, which is expected to bring new opportunities to telecoms operators, according to executives at Huawei Technologies.

The mobile traffic growth brought by generative AI and the changes in demand for network pipelines due to upgraded interaction modes have presented new revenue opportunities for telecoms operators, Zhao Dong, vice president and chief marketing officer of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line, told Yicai at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

In the past eight months, the average daily usage of AI model tokens in China surged 33-fold, with paid token usage up 15-fold, Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei’s Information and Communication Technology Products and Solutions, said in a speech at the MWC. By 2030, the mobile internet traffic driven by AI model token consumption is expected to exceed 3.5 times the current traffic, he added.

"This will enable telecoms operators to benefit from investing in AI infrastructure,” Zhao noted. "On the one hand, operators can use AI technologies to improve the operation efficiency of their network and reduce operating costs, and on the other hand, they can increase their revenue by providing AI services."

However, to gain from AI traffic, not only telecoms operators but also the entire industrial and supply chains need to upgrade to make the whole chain more complete and efficient, Zhao explained.

Hans Hammar, head of Networks Business Strategy at Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson, also told Yicai that AI traffic has brought opportunities for operators to increase revenue, but only if they can transform their business model.

If telecoms operators only earn revenue by providing mobile broadband services, then they have not maximized the commercial value brought by AI traffic, Hammar pointed out.

During his MWC speech, Yang also mentioned that after the release of DeepSeek's AI models, the comprehensive token cost in China decreased by 97 percent compared with the industry benchmark. This was the first time a Huawei senior executive commented on the traffic value brought by DeepSeek.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione