5G and AI: from futuristic to foundational

AI has been around the telco space for a long time. From theoretical use cases being touted at industry events since the mid-2000’s to the rise in chatbots and their impact on customer satisfaction. Operators have long been aware of the potential benefits of AI for customer experience. But what about the benefits to operators?

As 5G becomes the standard across the world, many operators now have multiple generations of technology sitting on their networks. In addition, 5G network slicing means NOC teams are no longer looking at a single network, but something which appears to be much more. Implementing AI across customer network and service channels can allow operators to scale effectively.

Network monitoring

One of the most important ways operators can give customers what they want is to prevent outages on the network. Effective AI on the network needs to provide operators with the ability to detect issues in real time or perhaps before it even happens. Getting ahead of an outage before the subscriber becomes aware of it allows operators to fix the issue before the subscriber is impacted, saving time and resources, as well as maintaining optimal customer experience.

Automation

Having AI on the network to detect and alert on outages and issues is great. But when issues reoccur again and again, operations teams are still left with a case load that seems never-ending. As analytics and AI increase in capability, machines now have the ability to take on human cognitive functions. Operators can utilise the deep learning AI systems offer to reduce MTTR. As the AI learns more about your network, it can implement closed loop actions. While the AI takes the steps necessary to resolve issues, the operations team are freed up to verify the next best action and address subscribers needs.

Turning the dial

There’s good and bad in everything new, particularly when it comes to technology. One of the benefits of analytics-driven automation is that it can take in input data, and quickly process and analyse it in order to come to a decision. The downside is that it takes in huge troves of data and can flag far more issues than an operator is aware of. This can lead to what, at first, looks like an overwhelming number of problems to solve. AI needs to work for the team, not create more work for the team. With the right functionality, AI can provide teams with the ability to analyse and tune the sensitivity of the AI based on the severity of issues. Turning hundreds or thousands of cases into a much more manageable workload.

With 5G in action in the real world now, operators are only going to see an increase in demands on the network as well as an increase in the expectations of customers. The use of AI for the network has moved on from a luxury to operations teams to a core foundational element that operators need to implement in order to scale for the future.