TMT Daily "LatAm Telcos to move from 'bits' to 'tokens' economy?; VTEX/L..."

Research evidence excerpt

TMT Daily "LatAm Telcos to move from 'bits' to 'tokens' economy?; VTEX/L..."

Global Research

17 June 2026ab

TMT Daily Equities

Emerging MarketsLatAm Telcos to move from 'bits' to 'tokens'

economy?; VTEX/LWSA: Soft retail in May, but Telecommunications

eCommerce resilience supports BZ GMV Leonardo Olmos,AnalystCFA

leonardo.olmos@ubs.com

+55-11-9658 7533

AMX/TEF-BZ/TIM/TEO/TIGO: Telcos to move from 'bits' to 'tokens' economy? Gustavo Farias

Associate Analyst

What happened: According to Tele.Síntese, Nokia Brazil's GM Hugo Baeta shared his gustavo.farias@ubs.com

view on AI as a new revenue frontier for telcos. Key takeaways: +55-11-2767 6154

From the economy of bits to the economy of tokens. Baeta argues telcos can

move beyond transporting data to taking part in the AI value chain by

providing distributed compute and inference close to users. He frames AI as a

new technology cycle for the sector and sees operators, with their edge data

centers, POPs and thousands of towers, as well placed to capture edge

inference and monetize it.

GPUs in the radio network. Nokia's global partnership with NVIDIA aims to

embed GPUs in radio equipment, first with 5G Advanced and later 6G. Baeta

says these GPUs serve a dual purpose: improving network efficiency and

offering compute capacity for enterprise AI workloads. He describes a model

where a company gets a dedicated network slice that can deliver responses to

its tokens within a defined time.

AI changes the network traffic profile. Baeta says AI profoundly alters

network traffic. Traditional applications like video and mobile internet have

relatively predictable usage patterns, while AI applications generate traffic in

sudden spikes, with different query types and much stricter latency

requirements.