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By Bernard Marr
The telecommunications or telecom industry is going through a period of dramatic transformation. As it looks to expand beyond its basic role as a provider of connectivity, telcos often find themselves facing competition from both the global tech giants and agile, disruptive startups.
Many industry leaders I speak to believe that the key to overcoming these challenges can be found in the wealth of data they have at their fingertips. Firstly, they must find ways to leverage this data to create new, innovative products and services. At the same time, it can also be used to drive efficiency and improve resilience across their core business operations, ultimately creating improved customer experiences.
Of course, this may be easier said than done. Challenges in their path include the sheer amount of data itself – and specifically the technical hurdles that need to be overcome in order to handle these unprecedented data volumes. Just as crucially will be facing up to the skills shortage, and the lure of competing tech giants and startups when it comes to attracting the people with necessary talents. On top of that there is the huge burden of privacy, security and regulatory requirements that come hand-in-hand with working with data – particularly the type of sensitive, personal data that holds real value.
The Opportunities
To discuss these issues, I was joined for a webinar recently by Douglas Mortensen, Oracle’s senior director for cloud infrastructure.
Starting with the value that can exists in data for telcos, he explained that largely it can be divided into three types. These are subscriber data, network data and device data.
Subscriber data is critical when it comes to generating the type of enhanced customer experiences that today’s consumers demand.
He tells me “The quantities of data are only increasing, especially as we step into 5G and into new services and capabilities … [but] it’s a greenfield opportunity, what can we do with all of that data?
“It used to be telcos differentiated based on bandwidth or device selection, that’s simply not true anymore, you have to be able to differentiate on service and customer experience.”
Here, the smart move that telcos can make is shifting their focus from reactive use of data – for example spotting where subscriber churn is happening, and putting remedial measures in place – to proactive- such as understanding subscriber behavior and recognizing where churn is likely to occur before it happens.
Of course, the only way this can be done is through data and analytics; the good news is that most telcos will already have the customer data they need – although they may not necessarily know it. This is where the importance of a solid data strategy comes into play. Understanding what data is available, where it is kept and how it can be used is critical. Often, efforts will need to be made to break down the “siloed” approach to data that many organizations have fallen into.
Other uses of data for improving customer experience might be error detection and correction – ensuring that billing errors are not made, and where they are, correcting them in an efficient and speedy manner. Fraud detection would also fall into this category – ensuring fraudulent activity on the network is identified and neutralized before it impacts customers.
This is where network, IoT and device data can come into play – information can be collected to monitor and analyse the performance and utility of the network, telecommunication equipment, cell towers, etc.
Mortensen says “What we can do … imagine, in today’s Software-Driven Networks, all of these network functions processing data, and giving us information about the status of the network … what we can do is automate and analyze that data, predict network anomalies, create self-healing networks – this is really exciting stuff.”
This will have the effect of reducing cost and creating efficiencies within the telco businesses themselves, partly by reducing the amount of manual labor that’s necessary to manage and maintain their operations. It will also contribute to the improved customer experience that’s all important in today’s telco ecosystem.
“When you have a healthy network you have a more resilient network … and you have a better customer experience,” Mortensen says.
Challenges and Barriers
When it comes to building smart networks and services, the biggest challenge initially could well come from the sheer amount of data that’s available. With the onset of the 5G era, the importance of solid strategy and a fundamentally secure and comprehensive infrastructure is only going to grow. Here, a key challenge will be mitigating the administrative costs, particularly when the overheads around compliance and regulation are taken into account.
Here, Mortensen tells me, CSPs are likely to benefit from adopting a “data lake house” approach to managing their information. This is a storage and retrieval model that combines elements of the data lake and data warehouse approaches, in order to accommodate the fast-moving, varied and novel forms of structured and unstructured data which are likely to hold genuinely valuable insights.
A comprehensive data lake house strategy means that data – in its raw or processed state – can be made available to every part of the business where it might be useful, while allowing the business to track exactly what is stored, and how it is used, for compliance and regulatory purposes.
“As soon as you are in the space of data you have to be cognizant of protecting that data and securing that data,” Mortensen says, “Really where this is going today is around data sovereignty, data residency, and those data regulations we’re seeing around the world … we need to protect this data and ensure it’s being hosted in appropriate environments and locations.” Telcos such as Vodafone, Telefonica and others are already partnering with Oracle Cloud on their distributed cloud solutions to meet data residency requirements.
The Future of Telecoms Industry
As with many other industries, we are entering a stage where every company in the telecommunications space must to some extent repurpose itself as a data-driven technology enterprise. This means going beyond their historic roles as providers of communications services to homes and businesses and becoming digital, customer experience-driven platforms capable of offering innovative services. These services will leverage new-age trends such as artificial intelligence and the internet of things to help their customers – enterprises and individuals to solve their problems and make better decisions. Telcos that get this right will be well-placed to leverage the natural wealth of data available to them and thrive in the turbulent but exciting times ahead.
You can watch my interview with Douglas Mortensen, Senior Director, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67eRoGpiqBk