THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE TELECOM INDUSTRY

Marketing Manager

Anastasia Shevchuk

Telecommunications companies have traditionally faced many challenges stemming from a variety of issues, including network operation and infrastructure problems, complex networking systems, improper resource utilization, customer support issues, network failures, and ever-increasing bandwidth requirements.

Automation and artificial intelligence in telecom increase the possibility of generating good revenue, strengthens customer relationships by identifying personalized needs, and improves network capabilities.

Let's take a look at the impact of AI in the telecom industry, and what the future of the AI driven telecom industry holds.

AI is essential for helping Communication Service Providers build self-optimizing networks, which provide operators with the ability to automatically optimize network quality based on traffic information categorized by region and time zone.

Artificial Intelligence applications in the telecommunications industry use advanced algorithms to look for patterns within the data, enabling telecom companies to both detect and predict network anomalies, which allows them to proactively fix problems before customers are negatively impacted. This is how AI is reshaping the telecom industry.

The regular maintenance of mobile towers is another obstacle impeding the telecom sector. They require on-site inspections to make sure everything is functioning properly. In a scenario such as this, AI-powered video cameras may be deployed at mobile towers, which notify the Communication Security Providers in real-time during hazardous incidents or raise the alarm in cases of fire, smoke, or natural disaster.

AI-driven predictive analytics is one of the latest AI trends in the telecom industry, and is used to help telcos provide better services. They do this by utilizing data, sophisticated algorithms, and the latest techniques for forecasting future results based on historical data. Telecoms can use data-driven insights to monitor the state of equipment, predict failure, and proactively fix problems with communications hardware, such as cell towers, power lines, and data center servers.

In the short-term, network automation and intelligence will enable better root cause analysis and fault prediction. Long term, these technologies will underpin more strategic goals, such as creating new automating customer service experiences and dealing with business demands more efficiently.

American telecom giant AT&T is using machine learning to enhance its end-to-end incident management process by detecting network issues in real-time. This predictive maintenance AI technology can address 15 million alarms per day, restoring service before customers notice any break. The company is also relying on AI to support its maintenance procedures, using drones to expand its LTE network coverage and utilizing the analysis of video data captured by drones for tech support and infrastructure maintenance of its cell towers.

Virtual assistants are an emerging AI trend in the telecom industry sector, designed to cope with the massive number of support requests for installation, set up, troubleshooting, and maintenance, which often overwhelm customer support centers. Using AI, telecoms can implement self-service capabilities that instruct customers how to install and operate their own devices.

For instance, Vodafone's website-located AI assistant, Julia, can assist customers with a range of tasks, ranging from technical support to invoicing queries, and then transmit critical, insightful data back to Vodafone to help in future decision-making. Using artificial intelligence in telecom to automate customer service in this way revolutionized the telecom industry.

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Telecom is one of the most vulnerable industries when it comes to fraud, and suffers the highest financial losses due to breaches in cybersecurity systems. Conventional telecom security systems only identify commonly occurring issues but fail in detecting or forecasting potential future threats.

Telecom fraud comes in many forms, including subscription, voicemail fraud, identity theft, international revenue-sharing fraud, and voice phishing calls.

Telecommunications data includes highly sensitive information, such as source number, destination number, call duration, call type, geography, region, and account billing information.

Artificial intelligence in telecom has made it much easier to implement algorithms that can detect and respond to fraudulent activities on the network with network optimization AI. Additionally, this network optimization AI considerably reduces response time, allowing telecom businesses to eliminate the threat before it can exploit internal information systems.

This is a great example of how predictive maintenance AI can keep both companies and customers safe from fraud.

It's a well known fact that customers don't like to be kept waiting, which is why a large part of providing good customer service is getting them the answers to their questions as quickly and efficiently as possible. A telecom could double or triple the efficiency of their customer service departments response & answer rates with the help of a chatbot. A bot can communicate with thousands of people at once.

AI models learn the most common reasons customers reach out to their service providers, and can predict when a customer will make contact, allowing the telecom to take proactive action and provide an answer as quickly as possible if the customer makes contact first.

AI chatbots can automate customer inquiries, while intelligently forwarding up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Machine learning is a big part of how AI is reshaping the telecom industry.

Chatbots can help to:

Optimize customer service

▪️ Chatbot telecoms – Chatbots enable telecommunications companies to solve customer problems quickly by integrating with their website and receiving several relevant data inputs about the customer.

▪️ EmailBot – An EmailBot makes email support easier. Having a bot which replies with answers or follow-up questions and routes other emails to the right people the first time is one of the most popular AI trends in the telecom industry.

▪️ CallBot – An AI bot which asks customers about their problems, transcribes calls in real-time, and then routes the call appropriately.

▪️ Call Analyzer – A Call Analyzer helps to evaluate agent performance and assists with coaching, while also measuring customer sentiment.

Network technologies

▪️ Customer experience index – This network optimization AI helps you to understand how customers experience your wireless network. Whether they tell you how they felt or not.

▪️ Fault Grouping – This helps to reduce alert noise. AI models will begin to understand vast alert & alarm systems so they only report more meaningful alerts.

The world's largest mobile provider, China Mobile, is leveraging AI-embedded and big data technologies for fraud detection. The company has introduced a new product – a big data-based anti-fraud system, called Tiandun - which can detect fraudulent activity by distinguishing it from normal calls, allowing it to intercept spam texts or calls.

Vodafone Group is a British multinational telecommunications conglomerate, which has improved its customer service with the implementation of its virtual assistant app, TOBi.

TOBi can enhance customer engagement and personalize their sales journey. As a text bot, TOBi can directly answer most customer questions, solve common problems, and even suggest and offer more suitable products. This sort of service is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing AI trends in the telecom industry.

Deutsche Telekom has been making considerable investments in AI at several levels of their company. From an AI-powered chatbot called Tinka, capable of providing over 1500 answers to customer questions, to intelligent business planning tools, this CSP is actively embedding AI elements into its infrastructure and service portfolio.

Artificial Intelligence in telecom is an incredibly useful tool. The impact of AI in the telecom industry has resulted in the development of highly personalized products, improved fulfillment processes, and enhanced network management. It also allows telecommunications operators to provide their customers with more attractive services and greatly improve their customer retention.

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