Evolving with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Telecom

The telecom market in India is growing hungrier. 2018 began with 4G but by the end of the last month of the last year, the market saw a glimpse of what holds ahead with 5G technologies in all the sectors. As far as Artificial Intelligence (AI)  and Machine Learning (ML) is concerned, Telecom already is already utilizing them for its customer services. Now as the new year unfolds, one begins to wonder what will be the future of AI and ML in the Indian telecom Market?

Manish Vyas, Tech Mahindra and Kundan Das, Parallel Wireless give their views on what lies ahead for AI and ML in the Indian Telecom Market for the year 2019.

Manish Vyas, President, Communications, Media & Entertainment Business, and the CEO, Network Services, Tech Mahindra believes that next-gen technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)will play a key role in enhancing all aspects of life in the future, and Telcos are no different. There is a massive amount of data sitting today in telco’s data lakes. This data needs to be turned into opportunity and AI/ML is poised to do exactly that. Broadly speaking there are two major areas where we believe AI/ML will have a significant impact on the Telcos.

Firstly, AI/ML will enable telcos to drive Hyper-Automation in their network operations. From automating day-to-day mundane tasks to employing advanced predictive analytics will enable Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to efficiently manage faults, capacity and service assurance of their networks. At Tech Mahindra, we strongly believe in this opportunity and that is why we have invested in co-creating Acumos with AT&T.

Secondly, AI/ML will play a key role in driving growth for the Telcos. 5G, IoT and AI/ML hold the potential to drive automation in every industry vertical. Edge Computing is going to play a key role in enabling AI/ML at the network edge for these use cases. From smart homes to smart factories, to smart cities - 5G along with IoT (Internet of Things) and AI/ML will forever change the way we live, work and play.

Kundan Das, Head – Business Development and Sales APJC, Parallel Wireless says that as we know AI and Ml are related to automation. So when one learns things automatically from the machines, from intelligence, one is going to serve better. Now, looking at today’s infrastructure, if one looks at the clear training the operator has with certain partners. For example, let’s say there is a call centre partner who has evolved it to form a physical call centre agent to now bots meaning: they are bringing in more AI or ML-based practices or evolution. And, the network has not gone. So it doesn’t mean that the network cannot go there, or there isn’t any scope. But if one looks at most of the suppliers in India, having their base, they get a larger chunk of revenue from Manual services as well. Now how can one justify, one gets their services from manual services only. This might be because; the operators are also developing AI which doesn’t go together with other services.

So AI and ML need to be looked differently by the operator. Now if you look at a 3G /4G of an operator, he does manual services of the operator. There is no WIFI operator giving manual services. Because, it is plug unplug, automated and intelligent. So as the operator will start taking the direction from a hardware network-centric investment to more of a software investment-centric network, these things are going to play its role.