The Challenges Telecom Needs to Tackle – Before AI

While the telecom industry is rightly devoting energy and resources to AI innovations, there are telecom fundamentals that need to be dealt with first, before turning to emerging technologies. That means improving OSS and BSS, optimizing cloud operations, accelerating transformations and integrating smart roaming strategies. Along with helping operators reduce costs, monetize new services, enhance customer service and strengthen security, addressing these core issues will help lay the groundwork for AI transformations.

Boosting OSS and BSS

The increasing complexity of telecom networks means that service providers need to successfully manage and generate value from OSS and BSS. Increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs can be achieved through targeted automation, but that’s only part of it.

Nowadays, operators need to manage multiple virtual networks on a shared infrastructure, so network slicing should be a priority. Targeted AI implementations into OSS can drive predictive maintenance efforts, which reduce downtimes and maintenance costs.

Optimizing cloud operations

Tinkering with cloud infrastructure can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there are the goals of increased scalability, flexibility and savings. On the other, if not properly planned and executed, the risks of disruption to daily operations.

That’s why, instead of moving all your company’s data and operations to the cloud at once, it is more manageable to begin with a small, non-critical project. This will enable you to gain experience with the process and technologies involved in the migration and to identify and address any issues that arise before they become major problems. Additionally, it’s good to migrate with a small group or department first and expand it to the rest of the organization after you understand this process better.

Experience shows the value of following a phased approach, which involves breaking the migration process down into multiple phases, each with its specific goals, timelines and deliverables. This will make it easier to track the progress of the migration. Also, it will ensure your company maintains standard operations while the migration is taking place, since the changes will be implemented gradually.

Accelerating platform transformations

There’s a lot of pressure on operators to modernize their platforms (fierce competition, evolving market demands and the emergence of disruptive technologies). That said, improving a platform’s performance and adding new functionalities should be carried out with care and caution.

The first phase should focus on updating the core architecture. Depending where an operator is on their legacy transformation journey, this could mean transitioning to containerized microservices, moving data from the cloud to the Edge and implementing an active-active architecture.

The next phase should concentrate on optimizing network connectivity. Along with integrating a preprocessing layer to optimize resource capacity and choosing an intermediate stack to help achieve less bandwidth and consumption, this is when operators should deploy monitoring and metrics on inbound flows to introduce auto-scaling that prioritizes critical traffic during peak loads.

The final phase deals with boosting the platform and increasing functionality. In practical terms this involves a strategy of micro-segmentation (to limit damage from a security breach), developing self-care portals for B2B customers and implementing proactive service monitoring services and reports to increase monitoring capabilities and demonstrate SLA compliance.

Integrating smart roaming strategies

In an increasingly borderless digital economy, operators need to ensure traffic is routed through preferred partners. Automated platforms that direct outbound roamers to networks where a home operator has advantageous agreements lead to reduced wholesale costs.

Additionally, it empowers operators with greater capabilities to balance traffic, deliver a smooth experience and prevent bill shock. In an ever-competitive telecommunications market, these are the factors that encourage customer loyalty and boost retention rates. 

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