SK Telecom used MWC 2026 in Barcelona to announce a wide-ranging structural overhaul, positioning AI not as a product feature but as the operating foundation of its entire business, from billing systems to retail stores to network management.
CEO Jung Jai-hun outlined the strategy at a press conference during the event. “SKT is currently at a golden time of transformation, where the two tasks of ‘customer value innovation’ and ‘AI innovation’ intersect in a borderless, converged environment that goes beyond telecommunications,” he said. The company calls the approach an “AI Native” strategy.
Rebuilding the Core
The most significant technical commitment involves redesigning SK Telecom’s integrated IT systems from the ground up. Sales, line management, and billing platforms will all be restructured to run on AI-optimised architecture. The goal is to let the company generate personalised plans and memberships based on individual customer usage and behaviour.
The company also plans to apply a Zero Trust security framework across these systems, covering authentication, access controls, network segmentation, and AI-based monitoring. For telecom operators broadly, these are not trivial changes. Legacy billing and network stacks have defined the industry for decades, and rebuilding them raises real questions about data governance and how customer data feeds into model training.
Network Automation and AI-RAN
SK Telecom is expanding what it calls “autonomous network operations,” using AI to handle wireless quality management, traffic control, and network equipment operations. The company said AI-RAN technology will be part of this effort, targeting improvements in speed and latency reduction. These capabilities move network management closer to a self-operating model rather than one reliant on manual intervention.
Customer Experience Layer
On the consumer side, SK Telecom is developing an integrated AI agent to connect its main customer portal, T World, with its online store, T Direct Shop. The agent will analyse daily usage patterns and push tailored suggestions across channels. Pricing, roaming, and membership services are also being simplified and automated.
The company plans to expand its AI Contact Center so service representatives have AI tools available during support calls. Physical retail stores are included as well, with AI helping staff identify needs and offer post-visit recommendations. The company is also building what it calls “AI Personas” to analyse digital behaviour across customer segments.
Infrastructure at Scale
The infrastructure ambitions are substantial. SK Telecom plans to build hyperscale AI data centres across Korea with a combined capacity exceeding 1 gigawatt, with the intent to attract global investment and establish Korea as a major AI data centre hub in Asia.
The company already operates a GPU cluster called Haein and deployed its virtualisation solution, Petasus AI Cloud, to support GPU-as-a-service workloads in the prior year. It now plans to offer that cloud solution to global customers.
SK Telecom also announced it will build an AI data centre in Korea’s southwestern region in collaboration with OpenAI.
Model Expansion
SK Telecom’s sovereign AI foundation model currently holds 519 billion parameters, which the company describes as the largest in Korea. The planned upgrade targets more than one trillion parameters, with multimodal capabilities added to process image, voice, and video inputs.
The scale of the plan reflects what SK Telecom sees as its strategic window. Jung framed the effort as a contribution beyond the company itself: “We will evolve into a company that makes meaningful contributions to our customers and to Korea.”
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