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Communications Service Providers (CSPs) worldwide are transitioning to become a Digital Service Provider (DSP) to address their subscribers’ evolving needs and enhance their revenue streams. However, this transition is not without pain points. It calls for fundamental changes in the way the carriers
The 5G and intelligent technologies demand the digital transformation of the networks and the processes. There is a growing need to provide innovative use cases of new technologies like 5G, Industry 4.0, cloud, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The present-day processes and networks are not capable of delivering these pathbreaking services.
While speaking at Mobile World Congress Shanghai (MWCS) recently, Bill Tang, President of Huawei Global Technical Service (GTS), proposed a new digital strategy to accelerate carriers’ digital transformation through evolvement in four areas of services, platform, technology, and ecosystem. This new and pathbreaking approach is designed to enhance operational efficiencies and stimulate innovation in service offerings. The strategy is focused on helping the carriers ensure transformation and promote a culture of innovation across the organization and not just in one area.
"Carriers can gain new synergies from the development and coordination of each of the four domains of digital transformation: services, platform, technology and ecosystem. This will increase efficiency, inspire new innovative services and deepen transformation. When it comes to digital transformation, the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts –we could achieve great result with interaction and inspiration of each of those domains." Bill Tang said while speaking at a session on `Accelerate Digital Transformation of Carrier Operation through multi-domain digital Synergy’.
The new wave of intelligent technologies opens up a vast potential of innovative use cases that can help service providers grow their revenue even as they delight their subscribers by providing new services. Besides, the carriers also have requirements to meet through their services and data provision.
Bill Tang believes that the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) systems must have a three-layer architecture that traverses operations across resources, services, and end-user services. Each layer demands self-governing and closed-loop control. This architecture ensures that the service provider is able to deliver an enhanced user experience while maintaining operational agility. This approach also helps in maximizing resource efficiency and helps in building new service growth. Huawei has been working with CSPs, tower companies, and standardization organizations to develop the digital transformation ecosystem. It supports several global service providers in their digital transformation journey to help them realize the full potential of new-age technologies.
Tang emphasized the need to develop synergy in each domain of services, platform, technology, and ecosystem. The existing way of working is not conducive to helping the telcos provide new and innovative personalized services to the end-users. Agile and dynamic operations with integrated maintenance and marketing processes need to be streamlined based on the user activity.
During his address at the MWCS 2021, Bill Tang highlighted the importance of a flexible and automated process to accelerate digital transformation.
"A unified platform architecture generates actionable insights leading to better-informed decision making. Iterative optimization on the platform will accelerate the transformation from people-based collaboration to the platform-based collaboration of data, assets, and intelligence, thus bringing down the resistance to transformation," says Bill Tang.
However, digital transformation is not just about technology, it is also crucial to ensure a "humanistic" approach to ensure the success of the digital transformation initiatives.
Highlighting the need for cooperation of all segments for complete digital transformation, Bill Tang revealed how Huawei GTS’s digitalization helped them identify the most effective approach. The first and possibly the most crucial step is to zero-in on the pain points, which might or might not require technical solutions. The second step in the process is to streamline the existing system as much as possible before deploying a network intelligence platform to automate and connect several service scenarios. This platform is the key to achieving synergy between services, data, and the overall ecosystem, acting as a catalyst for digital transformation.
Improvement of SmartCare Solution and T-BIM whitepaper
During the session, Huawei announced the upgradation of the Huawei SmartCare Solution to provide more open, intelligent and efficient digital capabilities. The new improvements are designed to advance the digital transformation of service providers’ O&M operations to enhance the network experience. As part of the upgradation, the improved platform now comes with more than 30 built-in "out-of-the-box" intelligent models that ensure the automatic address of regular issues and effective handling of complex problems. Further, it now uses core algorithm technologies such as smart tidal scheduling and intelligent hot and cold data cache identification to better utilize data computing resources.
Huawei also released the Telecom-Building Information Modeling (T-BIM) whitepaper, which defines the telecom site IT model. The definition of standard interfaces enables the integrity and effectiveness of information use in cross-system and cross-domain collaboration, driving adoption of engineering standards, improving asset operation control efficiency, and laying a foundation for future developments.
The goal of digital transformation is vital to help service providers sustain future growth potential. Instead of focusing on one particular area, the carriers must ensure that the digital transformation initiative is holistic and addresses all four areas of services, ecosystem, platform, or technology. Only then will the CSPs benefit from the unprecedented potential of digital transformation.
