I recently had the honour of being asked to speak on a panel session at Nokia’s Digital Experience Day in Dubai.
I was joined on stage by senior executives from e&, MTN Group and Nokia, and the discussion was about the role of AI in telecoms. It’s a wide-ranging subject, and we could have talked for hours as AI is impacting every single aspect of telecoms.
During this panel discussion, I highlighted the impact that AI can have on customer care and raised the topic of using AI to assist in offer creation and in sales with new 5G SA offers in order to create new 5G revenues. I believe that this is particularly relevant just now, as CSPs are now rolling out 5G SA and are starting to trial and deploy network slices.
Network slicing is a key benefit of 5G SA. It enables CSPs to create different virtual networks (slices) on the same physical infrastructure. These slices are dedicated to a particular service, which ensures that the network performance of each slice is not impacted by other traffic on the wider 5G SA network. Offers containing slices can be complex and have many different and interdependent components – from devices, to SLAs, to bandwidth and latency rates. AI can be used to help create and sell offers around network slices and open new 5G SA revenues.
A great example of using AI to create and sell offers on network slices can be seen in our TM Forum Catalyst that we’re running with Nokia. Here we show how an offer for a B2B customer can be created with the assistance of AI. In the demo that we’ll run at DTW, we show a CSP selling a 5G network slice to support merchants’ EPOS (electronic point of sales) devices at a large outdoor event, like an F1 race or a music festival. The CSP’s sales rep can input information to the BSS on the geographical coverage of the slice and the number of devices to be supported. The sales rep can also use the AI copilot to customise the offer, adding values for latency, density and speed to guarantee the right levels of connectivity for the offer.
The sales rep can ask the AI copilot questions to check the offer, for example, is there enough bandwidth to support this offer? The copilot can suggest alterations, such as latency and density, to the service offer for optimal coverage. The AI copilot can also be used for the pricing of this 5G network slice. If, for example, the capex cost of the slice looks high, the sales rep can ask the AI copilot how to reduce the capex for this offer. An outcome could be that the copilot suggests reducing the bandwidth to enable a reduction in costs and offer pricing, while still being able to meet the customer’s requirements, ensuring an optimal balance of performance and cost.
In the Catalyst with Nokia we create an TMF probe, which has all the information (latency, speed, number of devices, etc) about the 5G slice which is sent to the Nokia Digital Operations Center and then the service is simulated on Nokia’s digital twin to ensure that the service will work as expected.
The sales rep can then sell the offer, secure in the knowledge that the service will work as expected and can also provide a service level agreement.
5G slicing is here, and it represents a new opportunity for CSPs to monetize 5G by providing guaranteed levels of connectivity that can be backed up by SLAs. If you’re heading to DTW, please call by our Catalyst stand to see how AI-driven BSS can help create new offers and test them using Nokia’s Digital Operations Center and digital twin.
Also, we’ve just published a paper with Nokia on this very subject. It’s well worth a read as it covers ten use cases where CSPs can implement AI in offer creation and sales, and sell guaranteed levels of connectivity that can be backed up with SLAs.
Varun Galande
VP MEA & APAC, Qvantel