ZTE’s Italy Congress Highlights AI’s Transformative Power for Telcos
Rome, Italy – ZTE’s inaugural Intelligent Computing Congress, held recently in Italy, concluded with a strong emphasis on the accelerating integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across the telecommunications landscape. The event brought together industry leaders to discuss the evolution towards autonomous networks and the opportunities presented by a thriving, intelligent computing ecosystem.
Turkcell, a leading telecom operator in Türkiye, showcased its Unified Telco Cloud platform – built in collaboration with ZTE/Netas – already powering over 4,000 servers and supporting more than 40 applications, as a prime example of future-ready virtualization infrastructure. The platform is central to Turkcell’s conversion into a full-fledged digital service provider,focused on scalability and agile service delivery.
Keynote speakers underscored the collaborative nature of this shift. Federico Nebiolo, EMEA Lead Architect of telco Center of Excellence at Red Hat, presented on “Red Hat with ZTE: Telco Ecosystem and AI Opportunities,” detailing how the partnership accelerates 5G core innovation and leverages AI. Nebiolo discussed the progression from cloud-native to AI-native mobile networks, outlining a path towards autonomous infrastructure and distributed intelligence.
Mario Volonterio, Head of Digital Networks and AI at Fastweb/Vodafone, highlighted the benefits of autonomous fabrics powered by telco cloud in his speech, “Autonomous Telco Fabric: AI for Resilience, Security and Performance.” “Autonomous fabrics powered by telco cloud deliver resilience,security,and performance across industries… AI enables mission-critical reliability and efficiency,” Volonterio stated,emphasizing the importance of partnerships between operators,vendors,and vertical industries.
Chen Yishi, Global Managing Director of ant Digital technologies, presented “How AI & Technologies drive the Future of Digital Transformation,” showcasing AI-based IT infrastructure and prosperous case studies.
The congress concluded with a keynote from Sami Muhammad Salman, Director of Transformation & Strategy at Whale Cloud, titled ”AI – Powering the Next Wave of Buisness Transformation.” Salman addressed practical challenges like data privacy and integration complexity, mapping them to concepts like GenAI, intelligent agents, and enterprise-grade AI platforms. He detailed how AI can integrate with BSS/OSS, enhance customer engagement, and streamline operations, ultimately embedding AI into the core of telco products and processes.
ZTE affirmed its commitment to open innovation and will continue to deepen collaborations with industry partners to accelerate AI deployment globally and drive sustainable growth within the digital economy.
