China’s largest telecom software infrastructure provider says that working with artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek is helping the company develop its own AI capabilities, which it will use to expand in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
AsiaInfo Technologies CTO Ouyang Ye said in an exclusive interview with Nikkei Asia that the company’s collaboration with DeepSeek began well before it rose to global prominence earlier this year with a low-cost approach to developing AI models.
Ouyang said that AsiaInfo also works closely with other top-tier Chinese large language models (LLMs) such as Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, but that the rise of the open-source DeepSeek model is what facilitates and accelerates the deployment of the company’s various AI solutions.
“Our telecom infrastructure software solutions for China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom fully support DeepSeek’s model,” said Ouyang, referring to the country’s three major telecom providers. He said that his company was the first in the industry to embed and fully support DeepSeek.
According to research by AsiaInfo and Tsinghua University, DeepSeek’s model performs well in specialized technical areas such as monitoring network failures and optimizing wireless communication performance.
The CTO said that, for example, China Unicom’s Guangdong subsidiary used AsiaInfo’s DeepSeek-enhanced solutions in February to optimize service efficiency. This initiative reduced training costs by 75%, enhanced AI assistant capabilities, accelerated response times by 200%, and increased the efficiency of human-machine collaboration by 40%.
Hong Kong-based AsiaInfo, a leading telecom software infrastructure solutions provider, competes with US-based Amdocs, India’s Infosys, and Poland’s Comarch. Some network equipment makers like Huawei, HPE, Cisco, and Nokia also provide some software services.
In addition to infrastructure software, AsiaInfo also provides business and operations support systems, such as network monitoring software and customer and billing management, including processing telecom billing information for China’s 1.4 billion population.
AsiaInfo is also the largest software provider for China’s 5G private networks, serving the country’s leading energy providers and steelmakers, such as China Nuclear Group and Shougang Group, as well as miners and wind farm operators. Private networks are set up by businesses or organizations to provide on-site connectivity to facilitate services like factory automation.
Ouyang is optimistic that AsiaInfo can leverage AI to boost its overseas expansion, and that 5G private networks are expected to be a significant growth driver in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The majority of AsiaInfo’s business is in China, and going overseas is one of the company’s core strategies for growth.
“This year, the growth potential in the overseas market is quite large, especially in the fields of mines, ports, and energy, where we have more specific domain expertise,” the senior executive said.
AsiaInfo Chairman and CEO Edward Tian previously stated that the traditional telecom market and spending have slowed in 2024, but the adoption of AI and LLMs has become a key growth driver for the company as customers begin to adopt these technologies in their services.
AsiaInfo says its software can run on servers and other hardware from different companies, including Nvidia, Huawei, and Hygon.
While leading Chinese tech companies and government agencies are adopting DeepSeek, some governments, such as Italy, Australia, Canada, and South Korea, are banning its use on official devices.