Gartner defines the market of AI in communications service provider (CSP) network operations as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products with offerings in the form of capabilities embedded in CSP-specific operational technology (OT) applications or industry-agnostic horizontal applications. These products enable AI/ML-based network operations in CSPs. AI in CSP network operations helps CSPs to increase their network efficiency and performance, while reducing costs. CSPs are also evaluating use of AI in network operations to manage their energy consumption.
Gartner defines the market of AI in communications service provider (CSP) customer and business operations as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products. They are either capabilities embedded in CSP-specific operational technology (OT) applications (such as channels, CRM and other business support system [BSS] applications) or industry-agnostic horizontal applications delivering AI/machine learning (ML)-based customer and business operations in CSPs. CSP customer and business operations refer to marketing, sales, customer acquisition, customer journey, billing and revenue management, revenue assurance, and related risk management. The scope of AI products covers data readiness, life cycle management of algorithms and their application to CSP customer and business operations. AI in CSP customer and business operations helps CSPs utilize AI/ML to generate insights and automate business processes across a wide range of customer and business operations areas. These areas include marketing, sales, configure-price-quote (CPQ), order management, product management, billing and revenue management, customer journey and care, revenue assurance, and fraud/risk management. An example can be intelligent chatbots utilizing natural language processing for customer interaction use cases to automate call center operations. These products assist with insights and automation and help CSPs manage the life cycle of AI/ML algorithms, gradually enabling ModelOps/AIOps.
Gartner defines customer management and experience solutions as part of business support systems (BSS) solutions for CSPs, and as commercial off-the-shelf software solutions that address CSPs’ all customer-facing operational requirements. This includes managing customer channels, customer information, incidents, products, pricing, quotes and offers, order and partner management. CM&X solutions often work together with revenue management and monetization solutions as part of a complete BSS stack.
Gartner defines IT Services for Communication Service Providers (ITS-CSP) as multivendor IT services CSPs buy to: ■ Enable solutions to their customers, particularly enterprises ■ Transform their customer, partner, workforce, service or infrastructure management IT must deliver a cloud-first, agile, automation- and intelligence-based “digital factory” that can support broader corporate goals of product diversification, innovation, revenue growth and improved digital customer journeys. Geopolitical issues, ecosystems, transparency, trust and security are mission-critical in the uncertain world and add to the factors affecting CSPs’ competitiveness. Communications service providers want to buy and understand business outcomes over technology. They want their IT service partners to have a personal investment. CIOs in large CSPs would like to work with a smaller number of more strategic IT service partners. At the same time, business unit leaders also want to speed up their initiatives, creating possibilities for IT service providers. CSPs want help with revenue growth from enterprises, including joint go-to-market and new digital technology capabilities from IT service providers. Communications service providers expect cost-efficiency from automation, from IT enabling their networks and from using more cloud-delivered software capability. All this is underpinned by the CSP’s desire to run data-focused businesses, including digital key performance indicators (KPIs).
An operational support system (OSS) is a set of programs that help a company in monitoring, controlling, analyzing and managing a computer network. OSS software is specifically dedicated to communications service providers and mainly used for supporting network planning, network provisioning, service fulfillment, and service assurance from a common core of service and resource management. Other functionality includes embedded analytics, correlation and aggregation, reporting, product life cycle management, multichannel support, resource and asset planning. OSS data is of strategic importance to measure the impact of operational technical processes on customer and business goals.
A self-organizing network (SON) is a framework that automates some planning functions as well as maintenance functions for mobile networks. Its main goals are to enable self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing of radio network elements. It also minimizes interference between adjacent cells and between macro and small cells. SON is an automation technology for the operations and maintenance (O&M) of LTE networks, defined in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8 and onwards (as such, W-Fi support is not natively included in 3GPP's definition of SON).