AI to aid telecoms operators’ transformation, gains

Indications have emerged that increased deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) would help telecoms sector improve the efficiency of network operations and revenue optimisation.

According to the results of a recent survey of telco and IT engineers conducted on behalf of Ciena, about 60 per cent of respondents believe efficiency gains of more than 40 per cent are very possible.

Ciena is a networking system, systems and software company, headquartered in the USA. The survey garnered the opinions of more than 1,500 telecoms and IT engineers and managers at communications service providers (CSPs) in 17 countries across the world, and it seems clear that AI capabilities are regarded as some kind of silver bullet for network operations teams at a time when data traffic loads are already putting great strain on networks.

In addition, the increasing use of cloud-based AI workload processing will only add further pressure on telco capex and opex budgets as petabytes of data flow between enterprise IT systems and cloud platforms.

The report noted that the rosy outlook isn’t just limited to the potential for AI-enabled operational efficiencies, as 85 per cent of the survey respondents expressed confidence (either very confident or somewhat confident) in the ability of CSPs to “monetise AI traffic across networks.”

The industry verticals that are expected to generate the most AI traffic (and therefore offer up the best revenue opportunities) are financial services (identified by 46 per cent of respondents), media and entertainment (43 per cent), and manufacturing (38 per cent).

As for how those new revenues will be generated, Ciena noted that: “40 per cent believe it will be from opening their networks to third-party integrations; 37 per cent believe revenue will come from security and privacy services; the same number (37 per cent) believe it will come from new product offerings; 35 per cent believe it will be from the creation of tailored subscription packages; and 34 per cent believe revenue will be from differentiation on quality of service for connectivity.”

Interestingly, Ciena said there were some stark differences between respondents from different countries when it came to the question of AI traffic monetization. For example, the vast majority (more than 90 per cent) of CSP respondents in the likes of India, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Norway and Mexico are confident about AI traffic monetisation, whereas far fewer respondents in the US (55 per cent) and Japan are in any way confident of such an outcome.

The report hopes that 85 per cent is borne out because if the CSPs aren’t able to generate incremental revenue streams from the AI traffic running over their networks, they’re likely to struggle even more financially, as they’ll be getting an increasingly poor return on their network investments.

Ciena’s international CTO, Jürgen Hatheier, said: “That the overall view of the survey respondents was positive was not lost on Ciena. “The survey highlights the optimistic long-term outlook of CSPs regarding AI’s ability to enhance the network as well as the need for strategic planning and investments in infrastructure and expertise to fully realise the benefits.”