Deutsche Telekom is to Germany what Orange is to France: the incumbent operator, tens of millions of customers, and, through its subsidiary T-Mobile, a heavyweight in the United States too.
On Monday, in Bonn, the group gathered its investors to explain how artificial intelligence was going to transform it. With one figure at the heart of it.
The figure
Deutsche Telekom is targeting around €2.5 billion in savings on its indirect costs by 2030, compared with 2023, thanks to AI and automation. From 2027, the group expects around €1.1 billion in gross savings outside the United States.
AI is also expected to bring in revenue. The group is targeting around €250 million in AI-related revenue this year from businesses outside the United States, and around €800 million by 2030. It sees a particular opportunity in Europe's desire for sovereign AI that does not depend on the American giants. It is the same ambition carried by Mistral with its new model.
Part of the savings is to be reinvested, notably to speed up the roll-out of fibre in Germany. The group's chief executive, Tim Höttges, sums up the challenge: AI is transforming Deutsche Telekom in depth.
What changes in practice
According to the operator, AI spots traffic peaks on the mobile network earlier and helps fix faults faster. It assists customer service advisers in resolving problems on first contact. Assistants handle part of the hotline. And AI helps IT teams replace old systems.
More than 100,000 employees have already been trained on these tools, which range from the group's in-house assistant to ChatGPT and Copilot.
On the consumer side, the operator is highlighting its Magenta AI assistant. It can translate a phone call in real time, answer questions or summarise content, without an extra app or a new phone. Calling a hotel in Italy or a client in Japan while each speaks their own language: a science-fiction promise that is becoming a subscription option.
The two figures that are missing
How many jobs? Deutsche Telekom has given no figure on the positions affected. Yet when a hotline is partly handed over to assistants, the question inevitably arises.
How much does the AI itself cost? As the Reuters agency points out, the announced savings are gross. They do not take into account the cost of licences, computing power and training. The real savings will therefore be lower than the headline figure.
These are two classic silences in this kind of announcement. They do not make the plan false, but they are an invitation to read it with caution.
What we take away
Deutsche Telekom's announcement shows what AI looks like in a large European company: not a spectacular revolution, but thousands of small automated tasks that end up weighing billions.
It is the counterpart to what Accenture's story told us: among those who install it, AI creates work; among those who use it, it mainly seeks to save it. For customers, it will no doubt mean a network that works better, and more robots on the end of the line. For them, we are publishing a guide to reaching a human when you need one later today.