As telecom operators begin to integrate more complex services, users can experience excellent connectivity and data speeds. Over the next 10 years, we expect networks to support more advanced industrial use cases and extended-reality environments. These developments will help enterprises achieve efficiency, automation, and sustainability in business operations. Telco transformations will emerge on multiple fronts as operators prepare to fulfil these new expectations.
As telecommunication networks evolve, technology and business become more mainstream, opening the avenue in which we can uncover key transformations from these two models.
To break down the topic and its relevance, we invited:
Dhiraj Sharma – Senior Vice President, network technology and automation, Reliance Jio
Telco networks are evolving along three key dimensions:
- Network architecture
- Operational economics
- Service experience
#1. Network architecture shifts to open and agile
- Multiple aspects of telecom networks continue to evolve. With purpose-built network elements becoming virtualised, the transition to virtualisation is cloud-based. In addition, all new deployments and upgrades are cloud-based. Virtualisation will reach every part of the network, barring a few elementary systems that would continue to stay in the proprietary setup. Overall, cloudification and virtualisation are reaching 100% of the telco core networks.
- Distributed networks are delivering a better customer experience. Today’s industry is shifting away from consolidating network resources and capabilities at a centralised location. Furthermore, large-scale automation enables telcos to manage and control network resources that are spread closer to customers.
- Dynamic provisioning of capacities is necessary to address the wide range of use cases emerging across consumer and enterprise segments. Since the behaviour and needs of a consumer are dynamic, telcos cannot manage customer expectations through static networks. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) provide networks with the required intelligence to implement the network’s dynamic aspects, including bandwidth provisioning, network slicing, and service slicing.
- Network hardware is built with general-purpose standard servers, eliminating the need for stacking multiple purpose-built appliances for specific network functionalities. The network hardware is complemented with standards that encourage open interfaces to achieve a multi-vendor ecosystem of software or applications sitting on top of the hardware.
- Security is not an afterthought; instead, it internalises itself into the network architecture and strategy.
Figure 1: Shift in telecom network architecture
#2. Operational economics shits to on-demand
- One size fits all is the behaviour of the past. In the new scheme of things, individuals tailor their services and plans according to their needs. Customers can decide from a bouquet of services to build specific bundles to match their needs and preferences. Delivering this demands not just a shift in telco network architecture but the operational model as well.
- Having a fixed-cost structure creates a bottleneck while serving customers with dynamic requirements. The network total cost of ownership (TCO) becomes unstainable with a linear model where an operator must add additional hardware for every new customer requirement or use case.
- Virtualisation and cloudification promote a non-linear TCO model combined with use-case-based deployment varying from physical to virtual. The pricing models are also evolving per box (or hardware-based) to per license and per application-based pricing.
- Lastly, the choice for more network hardware and software impacts the existing network TCO. Virtualisation permits the transition from purpose-built hardware to generic hardware, allowing the entry of a diverse set of vendors into the supply chain. Furthermore, since the network is designed to be open and agile, network hardware is designed to work with software from single or multiple suppliers.
Figure 2: Shift in telco operational models
#3. Service experience is assured and secured
- With real-time and proactive customer experience, telcos can pre-empt network issues and communicate them before they become service issues. The use of analytics and automation enables telcos as they shift. Following this, the telco is transparent in sharing these analytics to help consumers understand their specific issues and offer them recommendations on the best solutions or alternatives.
- There is only one Customer Vision Center for a seamless and quick turnaround to customer issues. This also means a single window for solving each customer enquiry related to network, service, billing, or anything else. Specific tickets are not passed between different operation centers such as a network operations center, business operations center, or a customer contact center.
- Customer experience must be as good as the service experience. Telcos can achieve this vision by shifting to closed-loop service assurance, which aims to provide end-to-end service management through constant monitoring, deep analytics, and performance automation with self-healing actions.
Figure 3: Shift in service experience
