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Vodafone Group Plc FY26 Q&A Transcript
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Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
We are very happy with our current shape in Africa in terms of geographies.
Emmet Kelly Morgan Stanley
Yes. Good morning, Margherita. Good morning, Pilar. Thank you for taking my question. My question please is just to get your updated thoughts on AI and what it means for Vodafone going forward, please. Just wondering, are you seeing any signs of increased data volume growth from AI or any kind of AI-centric consumer applications emerge that might move the dial for you? Or is AI mainly, potentially largely, about the potential for cost efficiencies, or is it really maybe about the network? I know two weeks ago, T-Mobile U.S. talked at length about the relationship with NVIDIA, putting compute and inference at the edge of their network and combining standalone 5G with physical AI. Is it really consumer? Is it cost? Is it about the network? Thank you. It's a little bit of everything, Emmet, so maybe I will take the network angle, and I can leave the productivity angle to Pilar. On the networks front, I mean, there is a fascinating two-way relationship between networks and AI because on one end, AI can make our networks more efficient. There is a slide in the presentation in which we talk about our Zero Touch Operations and how we see not just productivity but also speed in preventing faults and the like. On the other end, you touched on a very important point, which is AI demand for networks. AI needs good networks, and today you have an ecosystem around AI where you have, I don't know, NVIDIA building the chips, the hyperscaler building the data centers, you have the tech company producing the software and the hardware, but none of that works without a strong network infrastructure. I completely agree with what you hinted to, which is the more AI moves into the physical world with things like vehicles and robotics, the more it will need data everywhere. Which means for us, ultra-low latency network, fast speeds, and we are preparing for that. When we look at the future in our outlook, we are thinking about the demand for uplink, for example. The usage of the network will over time change. As of now, if I think about this is all the things we need to be ready for, and I think it's a key driver for connectivity. The biggest impacts we see today are actually the impacts on the productivity front on how we run the company. Definitely. For us, AI is an enabler of cost efficiencies and driving productivity. In fact, is one of the key drivers of the opex, gross and net, savings targets that we have communicated and we have as a target. AI is also an enabler of capital discipline across the group. Our focus is, as we've discussed previously, is how we embed AI in our core operations, how we drive measurable savings, and, you know, as a result enhance our service and also support growth. Margherita mentioned networks. The other two key areas where AI is making a difference today is customer care, where we are delivering higher standards of customer experience. My favourite examples there, the TOBi and SuperTOBi. The AI voice agent, for a relatively simple high-volume calls. Also on top of that, we overlay the SuperTOBi with GenAI and are able to deal with the most complex customer journeys and also achieve a higher customer experience as we deal with the most complex language and most complex journeys.
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
Pilar López Vodafone
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