## 5 Opportunities and Challenges
### Opportunities  
(1) Creating a new revenue model: The integration of AICT empowers operators to explore new commercial opportunities through its AI capabilities. In the 6G era, AI as a Service (AlaaS) refers to the delivery of AI capabilities as a network-integrated service,  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l l l} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Models**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Type**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Capabilities (Tokens)**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Pricing (Dollars/Ktokens)**} \\ \cline{3-8}  & & **Max Input** & **Max Output** & **Rules** & **Input** & **Output** \\ \hline GPT-do [35] & Text & 128,000 & 16,384 & charge by tokens & 0.0025 & 0.01 \\ \hline Claude3.5 & Text & 200,000 & 8192 & charge by tokens & 0.003 & 0.015 \\ Sonnet [36] & Text & 6500 & 1500 & charge by tokens & 0.0065 & 0.00275 \\ \hline llama-3 [37] & Text & 32,768 & 8192 & charge by tokens & 0.0027 & 0.0082 \\ \hline hunyuan-large [39] & Text & 28,000 & 4000 & charge by tokens & 0.00055 & 0.0016 \\ \hline Doubao-pro [40] & Text & 256,000 & 4000 & charge by tokens & 0.00068 & 0.0012 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Gemini 1.5} & Image & - & - & charge by image & 0.000329 & - \\ \cline{2-8} Pro [41] & Video & - & - & charge by minute & 0.019725 & - \\ \cline{2-8} Audio & - & - & charge by minute & 0.001875 & - \\ \hline DALLE 3 [42] & Image & - & - & charge by image & - & 0.04 \\ \hline Imagen 3 [43] & Image & - & - & charge by image & - & 0.04 \\ \hline Whisper [44,45] & Speech to Text & - & - & charge by minute & 0.006 & - \\ \hline TTS [45] & Text to Speech & - & - & charge by tokens & 0.06 & - \\ \hline DeepSeek-R1 [46] & Text & 64,000 & 8000 & charge by tokens & 0.0006 & 0.0022 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Analysis of revenue models for different LLMs and multimodal models.  
which enables users and enterprises to access AI models, computing resources, and AI-driven functionalities without the need for dedicated local AI infrastructure. Operators will be able to expand beyond traditional communication services by offering intelligent services such as real-time health monitoring, AI-driven virtual assistants, autonomous vehicles, and immersive AR/VR experiences. Furthermore, operators can generate new revenue streams by selling tokens or leasing underutilized network computing resources. Finally, based on the dynamic demands of communication and intelligent services, operators will be able to adjust the allocation of network computing resources in real time, optimizing resource utilization and reducing both operational and infrastructure costs.  
(2) Foster the growth of the AICT ecosystem: The integration of AICT could transform networks from traditional communication service pipelines into intelligent service platforms, fostering collaboration and growth within the telecom ecosystem. Operators, vendors, service providers, software developers, and cloud providers can all benefit from this transformation. Once the network possesses AI capabilities, computational tasks at the terminal level can be offloaded to the network edge, reducing terminal costs and extending battery life. The network itself will become the foundational platform for AI services, offering models and computing resources to third parties. Additionally, this integration will strengthen the computational capability at the network edge, potentially leading to a boom in the application market, much like the emergence of smartphones did for mobile apps.  
In order to foster the AICT ecosystems, operators are likely to play a key role. As the actual network operators, they serve as the bridge between vendors, service providers, and users. Operators need to integrate resources and explore new collaboration models to jointly develop technology routes, standards, and interface protocols to ensure the construction of an independent technology system. Moreover, it is critical to establish a standard tracking mechanism to promote multi-party cooperation and the standardization of key technologies such as compatibility interfaces and open APIs.