“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man, and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” – Warren Bennis.

More than 50% of the inventions in the history of mankind have happened in the first two decades of this century. We clearly live in a pretty intense period of time. The age of inventions is upon us. And it promises to solve some very important societal challenges. Hopefully, this includes the current pandemic. 

Artificial Intelligence - A catalyst for innovation in Smart Cities

We are at an inflection point in terms of AI-led progress. Autonomous technology is changing life as we know it. For instance, look at the Singapore smart city concept. With over 54 % of the world’s population living in urban areas, sustainable living has become a challenge. As urbanization intensifies, smart cities will become critical for survival. Experts predict that digital services will power some of the most critical city infrastructures in the future.

Robots, IoT, and automated assembly lines have the potential to revolutionize commercial farming necessary to feed our growing population of 7 Billion + people. Autonomous cars will help us travel safely, be aware of the surroundings, know the speed limit, and even have sensors onboard to monitor road surface conditions. From self-driving vehicles to autonomous aircraft, AI is gradually changing the world around us for the better.

The fabric which stitches all these technologies together will be 5G or the 5th generation mobile network. 

Augmented analytics for making 5G network better

Unlike the evolution from 2G to 3G or 3G to 4G, the 5G wireless technology promises to be revolutionary with its ultra-high speeds of low latency and capacity to handle over 100x connections in the same area. And with 5G comes the enormous expectations of phenomenal customer experience from service providers. AI-driven analytics will be imperative to driving application performance and service quality as Telcos upgrade their services to 5G. 

To prevent undetected glitches from impacting the service quality for subscribers, telcos must monitor application performance metrics and network operations KPIs in real-time for any anomalies or unusual patterns. AI-driven anomaly detection capabilities enable telecom operators to monitor streaming data from multiple sources in real-time, leading to better network efficiency, security, service quality, and CX. 

How telecom operators can leverage AI-driven anomaly detection 

Quality of Experience (QoE) and Time-to-Market (TTM) will be the key metrics for telecom operators, worldwide. During the pre-adoption and post-adoption of 5G, these KPIs will become more prominent. Additionally, Network Quality of Service (QoS) brings an end-to-end perspective of overall network quality. AI-driven analytical capabilities will empower Telcos to monitor these KPIs and improve the network quality and customer experience aspect. 

AI-driven anomaly detection will allow operators to: 

• Collect data from diversified sources to monitor QoS and QoE related KPIs/metrics.
• Establish a strong data-driven relationship between QoS and QoE.
• Use the established relationship and leverage a large amount of QoS data to predict the QoE.
• Autonomously monitor individual QoE and QoS related KPIs and detect, report and prioritize abnormal patterns. 

AI will also aid in the prioritization of anomalies. Prioritization will play a key role in determining the order in which the identified abnormalities will be worked upon and resolved. Due to a large amount of data and the associated monitoring, the operators need to have a clear strategy on how they prioritize and resolve issues. 

Here are a few of the most important use cases of AI-enabled anomaly detection in Telcom.

Benefits of leveraging AI-driven anomaly detection: 

• Real-time detection of anomalies that impact network operations and service quality
• Actionable insights on customer behavior to enhance CX and reduce customer churn
• Discovery of new avenues to boost revenues
• Faster incident management and issue resolution 
• Operational efficiency and reduction in operating costs

Key takeaways 

Customer experience will continue to be the key differentiator for driving growth in telecom. As enterprises generate and deal with more user data, there will be greater emphasis on building digital trust. The only way to ensure success is to invest in AI capabilities and future-proof your CX efforts. When you improve the CX, everybody wins.

“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression” - Will Rogers

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Rohit Maheshwari

Rohit Maheshwari is the Head of Strategy and Products at CrunchMetrics. He is responsible for delivering business growth using innovation and product strategy. He leverages his expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and digital services to contribute to Subex’s solutions and enables its clients to build new offerings, drive business growth and deliver great customer experience.