By Sachin Aora, Head of Connectivity and IoT, Giesecke + Devrient, India
The telecommunications industry is a booming market, expected to reach a staggering $1.5 trillion by 2023. This growth is fueled by our ever-increasing reliance on mobile devices and internet connectivity. But with this growth comes a challenge: ensuring a positive customer experience for a vast and diverse user base. Traditional methods are struggling to keep pace, creating a need for innovative solutions.
Picture a future where your smartphone intuitively understands your needs, eliminating the need to contact customer support, and automated assistants resolve issues through engaging conversations. What may seem like a fantastical concept is now becoming a reality, all thanks to Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), a revolutionary technological advancement poised to overhaul the telecommunications industry. This new technology has the potential to completely change how customers use telecom services, which will lead to big gains.
The global AI market in the telecommunications sector is expected to proliferate, hitting a value of $14.99 billion by 2027. It is projected to grow at an impressive 42.6 percent annually from 2021 to 2027. The most important question arises here: what is GenAI, and how is it causing this huge change in the business world?
Understanding the power of GenAI
GenAI, a captivating branch of artificial intelligence, harnesses the power of deep learning algorithms to generate never-before-seen digital content, encompassing everything from videos and images to captivating audio experiences.
These algorithms meticulously analyse vast datasets, enabling them to produce content that rivals human creativity in complexity and quality. This groundbreaking approach empowers machines to autonomously generate unique content, eliminating the need for pre-existing templates and human intervention.
The inner workings of GenAI
At the heart of GenAI lie intricate neural networks – complex webs of interconnected nodes. These networks undergo rigorous training, meticulously absorbing and identifying patterns within massive datasets.
During this process, the neural networks thoroughly adjust the weights assigned to each node, ensuring the final output aligns seamlessly with the desired outcome. Once fully trained, these networks possess the remarkable ability to generate original content. They begin with a random input (known as a seed value) and progressively refine the output to enhance its realism and overall coherence.
GenAI: A boon for the Telecom industry
The potential applications of GenAI in the Telecom industry are nothing short of transformative. Here’s a glimpse into the compelling possibilities:
Data-driven strategies and Planning: Telecom operators grapple with mountains of data daily. GenAI empowers them to effectively manage, analyse, and understand customer behaviour. This translates to superior customer insights and the ability to predict future trends with remarkable accuracy.
Fraud Detection: Traditional methods of fraud detection often fall short. AI models, however, boast the potential to predict fraudulent activities based on defined patterns and behaviours. This proactive approach safeguards telecom companies from financial losses.
Minimised downtime and enhanced uptime: GenAI models can act as proactive sentinels, pinpointing potential network defects and predicting service failures before they disrupt operations. They can also strategically analyse network data to schedule maintenance activities, minimise downtime and optimise resource utilisation.
Personalised customer service: Through in-depth analysis of customer information, Gen AI models can uncover hidden trends and patterns, enabling telecom companies to craft bespoke experiences. By gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ likes, habits, and characteristics, these companies can fine-tune their products, promotional strategies, and pricing models to meet the unique requirements and tastes of each individual.
Efficient network design: GenAI makes network design and topology optimisation easy. These models consider factors like geographic coverage, user demand, and cost constraints to optimise network design, leading to more efficient resource utilisation and improved service quality.
Minimised security threats: GenAI models can learn the typical patterns of network activity and utilisation, enabling them to identify abnormal network behaviour or lurking security threats. This real-time detection and mitigation of cyber-attacks, network intrusions, and other anomalies safeguard the entire network ecosystem.
VAS (Value Added Services) optimisation: Picture the power of using customer browsing patterns and app usage information to create personalised marketing campaigns and services! With the help of GenAI, you can quickly provide tailored VAS offerings that perfectly match the needs of each customer.
Challenges on the road to adoption
Despite the immense potential of GenAI, several roadblocks currently hinder its widespread adoption. A 2023 Gartner ‘AI in the Enterprise’ Survey identified the biggest challenges telecom companies face in estimating and demonstrating the value of AI (49 percent) and the scarcity of talent and expertise required to implement these technologies (46 percent).
Pioneering companies, in the industry, are taking the lead as valuable partners. They are closing the gap by enabling telecom operators to tap into the vast capabilities of AI and providing the necessary know-how for a smooth transition to next-generation AI technology.
Meanwhile, other obstacles hindering progress include inadequate access to quality data, concerns about the technical complexities of AI, and a mismatch between business objectives and practical applications.
To surmount these barriers, telecom providers must make data acquisition and refinement a top priority and invest in staff training to foster trust in AI capabilities. Additionally, they must guarantee that their AI roadmaps are explicitly aligned with specific business objectives and clearly defined use cases.
The Future Beckons: Gen AI and the Rise of 5G
The growing demand for 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) is propelling telecom companies to explore industry-specific solutions as part of their Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) enterprise offerings.
AI will play a pivotal role in shaping new IoT deployments and continuously improving existing IoT use cases. According to a Senior Director Analyst from Gartner, “By 2027, more than 50 percent of the GenAI models that enterprises use will be domain-specific,” indicating a significant shift towards industry-tailored solutions.
Currently, a Gartner IT Executive Webinar Poll suggests that most telcos (70 percent) are still in the exploratory stage with GenAI, with 15 percent piloting and only four percent in total production. This indicates the developing stage of GenAI adoption within the industry.
In brief, the telecommunications sector is poised for a radical overhaul with the emergence of GenAI. This cutting-edge technology is expected to yield substantial advantages, including informed decision-making driven by data, proactive network fine-tuning, personalised customer engagement, and strengthened security protocols.
Despite existing hurdles, the industry is making headway in its endeavours to adopt Gen AI on a broader scale. As 5G and AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) technologies continue to evolve, GenAI is likely to take centre stage in shaping the future of telecommunications. By leveraging the potential of this revolutionary technology, telecom operators can tap into new avenues of growth, boost efficiency, and deliver an enriched customer experience.
