Uttam Kumar, CTO, CNT Global

Senior IT leader with 20+ years of Experience in leading IT/Software, Telecom, Information Security, BFSI & Internet companies.

With Artificial Intel­ligence gearing up, there are use cases which support come­back of VAS and on­line shopping of services. This may be a good opportunity for telco and VAS companies but yet needs to be thor­ough, as AI is still in pilots and in the initial stage.

With AI and big data implementa­tion, telecom companies will know customer much more than anyone else and the more you know, the big­ger pie you can take in the business. It’s not surprising to see chatbots and voice interfaces as among the most popular use cases of artificial intelligence in this sector. Compa­nies with huge B2C operations (mil­lions or tens of millions of custom­ers) are most suited to benefit from both text and voice applications, for a number of reasons:

"Customer service is a massive expense for any company with over a million customers, and chatbots hold a promise of significantly improving efficiencies"

Companies with massive vol­umes of incoming customer support requests have the most data avail­able to train chatbot of speech rec­ognition systems, allowing them to ‘drink in’ the huge wave of support and use it as fuel for better interfaces with customers.

DISH Network‘s ArtificialIntelligence Applications
Over the past year, DISH Network has become the first TV provider to collaborate with Amazon. Looking to improve customer service through the integration of AI technology, DISH has designed a DVR system that is compat­ible with Amazon’s Alexa products.

To enable functioning, users con­nect their DISH Hopper DVR system to Amazon’s Echo or Echo Dot Alexa devices and adjust settings through on-screen navigation tools. The joint venture allows DISH to provide users with voice-enabled television naviga­tion at no additional charge. Alexa is designed to perceive and process spo­ken commands with natural phrasing. Examples of typical commands in­clude: ‘Go to ESPN,’ or ‘Find The Voice’.

ITU Building a Focused Group Around AI/ML
The International Telecommunica­tion Union (ITU) recently announced the formation of a new focus group to bring more standardization while implementing machine learning and to bring more automation and intel­ligence to ICT network design and management. The objective of this program was to help operators make smarter network with the use of ma­chine learning algorithms and to use network-generated data effectively. These algorithms enable ICT networks and their components to adapt their behavior autonomously and bring more efficiency, security and optimal user experience.

API will be the Key for Future Transaction
With the voice based services becom­ing more prevalent and the day is not far when the phones will be designed to interact with the local application which will control the phone and do everything as per your instruction. For example, book a ticket, send an email, remind you for various services and you will have similar expectations from your phone or the service pro­vider.

This will enable a number of changes in the applications and ser­vices domain and more API based ser­vices will be offered by Internet com­panies instead of web browser based experience.

Operator Network Optimization Prospective
AI will help operators in moving from old model of operation to a Predic­tive maintenance and a self-optimized network. AI can also be designed to help reducing the security risks and prevent attackers from attacking the network. It may also offer intelligence and optimal network quality by way of automation.