Phone calls are going smart: how AI is transforming the way businesses and public authorities work

The old switchboard is being phased out. Or rather: it is undergoing a transformation, becoming a platform, connecting to the cloud, learning to interact with artificial intelligence, and evolving into one of the invisible infrastructures on which businesses, hospitals, public administrations, factories and public services now operate. So it’s no longer just about phone calls. It’s about voice, video, chat, documents, meetings, contact centres, data and processes, all brought together within a single digital environment.

This is the leap described in the new white paper by the Comtel Research Centre, “Unified Communications 2026 & AI – Prospects, Innovation, Opportunities”. According to the study, the global unified communications market will exceed $220 billion by 2026 and could rise, in the early 2030s, to between $700 billion and $900 billion. This growth points to one simple fact: we are no longer dealing with a mere office accessory, but with an integral part of companies’ operational infrastructure.

AI is driving this change. Not as a mere add-on, but as a new operational engine. Platforms transcribe meetings, prepare summaries, identify actions to be taken, assist contact centre agents, analyse conversations and transform scattered exchanges into actionable insights. Automatic transcription is already used by over 55 per cent of organisations; tools such as Zoom AI Companion have reduced post-meeting workload by 30 per cent; and Customer Journey Analytics solutions have cut average call handling times in the financial services sector by 18 per cent.

Italia is lagging behind, with many traditional telephone switchboards still in widespread use in small and medium-sized enterprises. But the study emphasises that this very delay could actually act as a shortcut: skipping a technological generation and moving straight to more advanced solutions, partly thanks to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). The most obvious example is the healthcare sector, where telemedicine and clinical coordination are driving the sector towards expected annual growth of over 28 per cent.

All this is taking place within a Europe which, with the GDPR, NIS II, the Data Act and the AI Act, is raising the bar on security, data residency and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. This creates an opportunity for specialist integrators capable of adapting major global platforms to the needs of regulated sectors.