Where the Digital World Meets the Real World: Telcos and Operational AI
- Telecom Infra Project
- May 6
- 1 min read
A Signal Boost Conversation with Jagadish Garimella, Centific
The most interesting AI conversations right now center on where data gets processed, how fast, and who owns the infrastructure underneath.
That's the thread Vishal Mathur, TIP's Chief Commercial Officer, pulled on with Jagadish Garimella, who leads Centific's public sector and smart cities business unit, in our latest Signal Boost episode.
A few of the highlights:
Cities are already drowning in data. Thousands of cameras, traffic systems, environmental sensors — most of it reviewed long after the moment it could have mattered. Jagadish walked through a recent city-wide deployment with a large telco where Centific flipped that timeline, turning post-event analytics into millisecond-level response.
Edge processing is now structural. Latency, FinOps, and data sovereignty are pushing AI workloads closer to where the data lives — and telcos own that territory. Private 5G, fiber, distributed compute, NeoCloud: AI is what finally puts that infrastructure to work.
ROI clarity is what changed in 2026. Infrastructure, tooling, and the business case have all matured at the same time. Engagements are moving from experiment into production at scale.
Vishal and Jagadish also dig into the partner ecosystem — NVIDIA, OEMs, cloud providers, systems integrators — and what telcos need to do next to capture the AI revenue surface in front of them.
