JP Morgan says market structure, not pricing gaps, will determine which operators feel the squeeze from AI bill-negotiating tools.
BT Group has been identified as one of the telecoms operators best equipped to withstand a new threat from artificial intelligence agents that can automatically negotiate lower bills on behalf of consumers.
JPM named BT alongside French operators Bouygues and Orange, and Dutch carrier KPN as the strongest-positioned European telcos in a new note examining the potential fallout from agentic AI, a class of AI tools capable of taking autonomous actions on users' behalf.
The bank highlighted the rapid rise of two such tools, Muse and Instinct, which launched in early September and were upgraded weeks later to allow them to contact utility, insurance and telecoms providers directly and negotiate bill reductions for users.
The viral adoption of the tools has already rattled US telecoms stocks, with exposed names falling between 13% and 25%, though JP Morgan noted European operators had so far fared considerably better.
The bank cautioned that the agentic AI landscape was "nascent but rapidly evolving", making it "difficult and unwise" to dismiss the risk to the sector.
However, it argued that analysts focusing on the gap between front-book and back-book pricing, the difference between headline offers and what existing customers pay, were missing the point.
Market structure, JP Morgan said, was a far better predictor of vulnerability than pricing differentials alone, as it determines how operators are able to respond.
The bank placed Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Swiss operator Sunrise and Swedish carriers in a weaker position, and warned that distressed high-yield players in the sector were ill-equipped to absorb any AI-driven pricing pressure.
JPM urged telcos to accelerate in-market consolidation to crowd out the competitive threat and called on regulators to embrace "progressive sector deregulation" to level the playing field with technology companies.
