Telstra plans to form a joint venture with Quantum, a data science and artificial intelligence (AI) company. This is in an attempt to advance the use of innovative technologies such as AI across the organisation to benefit the company’s customers.

The objective of this new joint venture is to integrate the data science and AI capabilities of Quantum with the customer, product, and network data assets of Telstra. Several benefits can be attributed to the use of AI in the telecom industry. For instance, the machine learning algorithms can accurately anticipate possible hardware failures, sending prompt notifications accordingly. This empowers telcos to take immediate action and be proactive when it comes to maintaining their equipment.

Telstra and Quantum are set to design a tech stack intended to address the needs of enterprise customers in the mining and agribusiness sectors. In this case, the overall objective is to empower these customers to make data-informed strategic decisions. The technology behind this will then be powered by tech stack data science and AI capabilities.

The Data Hub off Telstra will also be used in the joint venture to enable enterprise and government customers to share and aggregate their data securely. In this case, these customers will also be able to take advantage of the big data capabilities of Quantum.

Telstra CEO Andy Penn said that its partnership with Quantum would be the key to helping Telstra achieve its T25 data and AI ambitions.

“This new JV will not only provide personalised and data-enabled products and offers for Telstra’s customers, but it will also embed proactive and predictive AI and machine learning across Telstra’s core business,” he said.

“This partnership... will look at how we can also use advanced analytics and machine learning to drive value for our core business, for example, to identify fraudulent activity more effectively, or to make enhanced credit decisions.”

Additionally, the CEO said that the company also plans to leverage the joint venture to foster improvements in the personalisation of offers under its Telstra Plus rewards program. It will also help the company refine how it can add value to enterprise services.

The joint venture will be composed of employees from both companies. Telstra and Quantum plan to finalise the details of the joint venture in the coming months. Nevertheless, they have already started jointly serving enterprise customers.