Telecom announced the number of users who connect to the 5G network in Argentina: they are around 800,000 customers25% of traffic already runs on this technology. In addition, the company announced different uses of the services that the company provides for companies, within the framework of the Telecom Summit 2024a summit that brought together businessmen and clients who hire the services of cloudcybersecurity and other areas for different businesses.
The day started after 9:30 with the opening of the CEO of Telecom, Roberto Nobile who emphasized this transition of the company from a telecommunications company to a technology one, before a full auditorium at the entrance to the company’s headquarters, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas.
“Today we are going to see how technology helps us be more competitive and at the same time have a more sustainable business. We invest 6 billion dollars in seven years in technology, cloud, platforms and servers to be closer to customers. We invest to be close to people and continue betting on the country“, shot the director of Telecom.
The telecommunications giant currently brings together not only this area but also different services, ranging from streaming Flow even the virtual wallet Personal Paywhich competes in the fintech ecosystem, within what is the end-user segment. But it also provides infrastructure services, cybersecurity, cloud services and other businesses more oriented to the business world (in the jargon, “B2B”, business to business).
“Hybrid” cloud, AI and specific cases
One of the first conferences was given by Juan Pablo Estévez, general director of AWSAmazon’s cloud computing service and the most used in the world (followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud).
The manager gave a talk on digitalization in times of cloud and AI: “We are experiencing a technological revolution that began with the Internet, continued with cloud computing and now with AI: each one relies on the previous one. There is no cloud without internet and there is no AI without cloud”, he assured. It was a reference to where today’s generative artificial intelligence models run like ChatGPTwhich process the information on their servers and the end user accesses it after consulting that OpenIA cloud (company that owns ChatGPT).
“Each of those transitions happens faster, and each transition is deeper and more powerful. That is not the only effect that we are seeing in technology, but another issue that has changed a lot is accessibility: all companies and we as individuals can access technologies in a variety of ways. very easy waybecause entry threshold costs have dropped drastically,” he continued.
Gonzalo Hita, executive director of Telecom, joined this talk, who threw out some numbers about 5G, the fastest connectivity technology in mobile phones today: “There are 800,000 customers that connect to Telecom’s 5G networks and on the 25th % of the traffic already runs on this network,” said the COO.
This was followed by a panel on the development of the hybrid cloud and its link with so-called “edge” devices, that is, an end device such as a cell phone or modem.
Andrés Tahta, General Director of the Public Sector for Latin America at AWS, one of Telecom’s partners, recounted the cases of Cloud integration of the company of the Municipality of the City of Córdoba, which “migrated all its systems in just 8 weeks ”, and the lighting system of the City of Buenos Aires: “165,000 luminaires are controlled via the AWS cloud by AI.” Natalia Scaliter from Google Cloud and Agustín Bellido from IBM also participated in the panel, telling cases of implementations of their companies.
“As we go digital, the volume of data will grow exponentially. Each digital interaction with our clients generates a greater volume of data. That is when the cloud becomes an enabler, a necessity to be able to manage that data that, At the end of the road, they are at the center of our operating model. What is coming is artificial intelligence and a lot of focus on data driven models because they are the key to interaction with AI,” said Scaliter.
“Now we are working on ‘small’ AI models, called SLMs (Small Languages Models) so that they run on the devices and be more efficient,” Bellido explained.
Cybersecurity: a key measure to stop account theft
Julio Hutka, B2B business director, held a press conference with journalists who were able to ask questions about their areas of interest. consulted by Clarion Regarding security measures for end users, the manager highlighted that the restrictions currently generated by Telecom are key to issue and renew SIM cards.
This is because one of the most common types of fraud today has to do with account theft from SIM swapping, which consists of transferring a user’s telephone line to another device to take control of accounts such as WhatsApp or email.
“We greatly restrict the policies to make a chip change. If the person does not go in person with their ID, we do not change the chip,” said Hutka, in a change that was applied last year and that was key because before it was very simple to request a card without validating identity.
Regarding banking fraud, which is also among the most common today, he explained that Telecom began to open APIs, that is, the interfaces that applications use to connect with other services, because the network to which the bank connects user allows inferring data that provides value to combat these cyber scams.
“Home banking can know in real time whether a user’s operations are legitimate or not from data that can be inferred from the network: where they connect from or how frequently, there is a lot of information provided by the network. Now we are starting to open the APIs to be able to have a more secure ecosystem of a device for everything that is banking transactions,” he continued.
Regarding the theft of WhatsApp accounts, Hutka called to combat social engineering through training and ethical hacking work on companies, that is, attacking work teams in a controlled manner to learn about vulnerabilities and have more awareness tools.
Regarding the end, he confirmed that the company will begin to sell StarlinkElon Musk’s satellite internet service, next week.