Telecommunication providers are consistently under pressure to reduce operating costs. In a highly capital-intensive industry, large infrastructure investments are made to create long term revenue streams. New technologies, innovations and competitive pressure is ever shortening the period of return for the investments made.
The cycle from 2G to 3G was relatively long enabling a full deployment of 2G before 3G was initiated. The current cycle of initiating 5G is coming before any of the 4G roll-out programs have been completed. Networks are converging across, fixed, data and mobile backhaul to create massive fixed multi-service networks at the Core, with Access networks at the edge for mobile, data, etc.
Intelligent Automation enables you to bring to market and revenue new, competitive services whilst maximising legacy infrastructure investments.
Revenues are being squeezed by Over-the-Top service providers as they gain revenue for media streaming, or VOIP services, that Communication infrastructure providers are obliged to carry for lower incomes. At the same time, the data volumes that these services require increase pressure on the network providers either to increase their network capacity, or to put in place more adaptive, near real-time, management of their existing capacity, or – more frequently – both. These are more costs that network operators can ill-afford.
Likewise, CSPs are attempting to mitigate threats from over-the-top providers and seek new revenue streams through IoT, Media streaming, and converged product offerings such as “Quad Play”. This increases the complexity of customer order management, tariff management, support and billing. It also increases the cost of loss, to all services, in response to poor customer service. So many CSPs are keenly focused on their Customer Care metrics such as NPS, or CSAT.
Maximising end-to-end efficiencies at machine speed provides a way to combat this threat.
Technology evolution is also driving actions in the network providers, as they roll out 5G (initially as 5G‑NR only, but then into the complete 5G core as well) and possibly SDN/NFV based networks as well (using proprietary, vendor-supplied, or even open-source implementations). These are more complex networks that will require more complexity in their management and operations, which can easily lead to escalating costs and poor customer experiences unless robust automation is also deployed. Customer acquisition and service provisioning processes need to be accurate, fast and reliable for all and any combinations of services that the operator offers. Intelligent Automation simplifies and standardises configuration and activation and accurately and efficiently delivers the required outcomes.
