{"id":1035268,"date":"2026-09-15T07:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1035268"},"modified":"2026-09-15T07:28:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:58:51","slug":"telcos-risk-opex-trap-as-ai-costs-rise-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/09\/15\/telcos-risk-opex-trap-as-ai-costs-rise-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Telcos risk &#8216;opex trap&#8217; as AI costs rise: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI: Telecom companies leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline operations and justify workforce reductions are at risk of falling into an &#8216;opex trap&#8217;, where overall costs could rise instead of decline. Research from Bain &amp; Company highlights that while human resources may diminish, AI-related expenditures on agents, tokens, and data could grow, potentially leading to higher total operating expenses. <\/p>\n<p>Bain outlined two potential financial scenarios for telcos. In the first, AI expenses might replace 20-30 per cent of traditional costs, resulting in unchanged total costs. However, a more concerning &#8216;cost creep&#8217; model suggests that if traditional costs are not sufficiently cut, AI expenditures could simply add 20-30 per cent to overall spending, increasing total operational expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI: Telecom companies leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline operations and justify workforce reductions are at risk of falling into an &#8216;opex trap&#8217;, where overall costs could rise instead of decline. Research from Bain &amp; Company highlights that while human resources may diminish, AI-related expenditures on agents, tokens, and data could grow, potentially leading to higher total operating expenses. Bain outlined two potential financial scenarios for telcos. In the first, AI expenses might replace 20-30 per cent of traditional costs, resulting in unchanged total costs. However, a more concerning &#8216;cost creep&#8217; model suggests that if traditional costs are not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,60,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1035268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-telecom-the-economic-times","category-the-economic-times"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035276,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035268\/revisions\/1035276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}