India, Aug. 6 -- Bharti Airtel is taking its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy beyond customer-facing applications, deploying an on-device small language model across its field operations to improve network installation and fault repair while cutting cloud processing costs.

The telecom operator said around 30,000 field engineers are now using the AI model on their regular handsets. Unlike conventional AI workloads that rely on cloud infrastructure, the model performs inference directly on the endpoint device, allowing engineers to process images in real time at the site.

The deployment marks a shift in how Airtel is applying AI to its network operations, with the company using the technology to support field engineers in tasks where...