The role of Artificial Intelligence is transforming the telecom industry

The omnipresent prevalence of Artificial Intelligence in today’s technology landscape is far ahead from what it was 7 decades ago. Despite the arrival of the latest technology buzzwords like Cryptocurrencies and Augmented Reality, the sheen and significance of AI prevail very strongly with every aspect of how the world runs today.

The telecom industry is no exception to the infusion of AI with its limitless capabilities and boundless measures of disruption that it can offer. Telecom operators adopting the capabilities of AI in its operations can gain a competitive edge in the industry and can achieve higher levels of process efficiency to enable ease of operations.

Let us take a look 5 of the many ways through which the telecom industry is benefitted with AI infusion

Network Operations Management

It is an undeniable truth that telecom companies host ground for numerous complexities and challenges in network operations management. There are a zillion things that can go wrong in execution, planning, operations, maintenance and monitoring of telecom infrastructure. Incorporating AI-based technologies enable the telecom operators to cut down on the rising number of incidents and improve process efficiency.

Following are some areas where AI can help to achieve effective network management and optimization

• Predicting network congestion and planning network capacity

• Solution recommendation in incident management based on legacy data

• Automated resolution of tickets

• Network Performance monitoring and optimization

• Detection of malfunctions in Operations, Administration, Maintenance, and Provisioning (OAM&P)

• SLA breaches, root cause diagnosis, noise filtering and rule-based operations of systems

Robotic Process Automation

Telecommunications networks deal with millions of customers and terabytes of data on a daily basis. Incorporating RPA based solutions in handling this data is bound to reduce the human error factor to zero. Replacing repetitive human efforts and non-skilled activities with RPA solutions will considerably increase employee productivity and process accuracy. Apart from them, infusing RPA in telecom operations would result in

• Enhanced data quality

• Superior customer service

• Reduction in operating costs

• Elevated operational efficiencies

• Minimized service breakdowns

Predictive Maintenance using predictive analytics

AI-enabled predictive analytics and associated algorithms would be an effective tool in handling large amounts of data in the telecom sector. Gathering this data and building a layer of analytics algorithms on the data would provide fruitful insights about all aspects of telecom operations that aids in the following

• Hassle-free equipment monitoring

• Foresee equipment failures

• Learn from legacy data to analyze future patters

• Effective incident management by building a resolution repository

• Continuous network reconfiguration of SONs (Self Organizing Networks) based on real-time demands

Apart from effective data handling, AI-based predictive analytics helps the telecom operators to foresee the troubles and build proactive solutions to ensure uninterrupted operations.

Fraud Mitigation

The volume of fraudulent telecom incidents cost the telecom industry a whopping $38 billion on average annually. This highlights the need for strict and efficient fraud mitigation strategies in the telecom industry. The introduction of AI in fraud mitigation strategies will amplify the scope of fraud detection based on usage patterns and analytics. AI can be used in efficiently identifying

• Revenue leakage

• CSP frauds

• SIM box frauds

• Roaming frauds

• Billing discrepancies

• Illegal access

Effective Customer Service and CRM

One of the first things that every customer associates with the telecom industry is the efficiency of its customer service. The customer service of telecom companies is the most contacted service compared to the customer service of other industries. And hence, hosting superior customer service capabilities is key to sustainable growth generation for a telecom company.

On clearer understanding of this fact, telecom companies have adopted AI and ML technologies in customer service to deal with their ever complex support queries. Incorporation of AI in telecom customer service enables the companies to

• Chatbots to resolve customer issues with minimal human effort and the maximum accuracy

• Improved relevance of customer issue resolution

• Easier training of Customer Support Executives

• Hassle-free installation, troubleshooting, and maintenance of services

• Building a resolution repository for an easier resolution

• Intelligent CRMs for personalized marketing and upsell

Telco’s that have incorporated AI and ML in their customer service report that they are able to achieve significantly higher levels of subscriber satisfaction and retention.

Considering all the above pointers, it is safe to assert that AI in the telecom industry is no more a futuristic trend but is now a happening reality that redefines fundamentals of how the telecom industry operates today. The telecom industry is something that thrives over time and the need for new-age technologies is essential for its continued survival. Hence, the scale of infusion of AI technologies in its operations is going to be the real game-changer in determining the winning player in the respective telecom geography.