Ericsson Delivers Proactive Network Troubleshooting with AI/ML

Today's rapidly expanding telecommunications market assigns a high premium on delivering excellent service experiences. ?As Communications Service Providers (CSP) expand 5G network services, data volume and operational complexity are growing exponentially. These trends drive a crucial need to automate infrastructure operations and support tasks.? 5G's transformative potential brings new capabilities, driving the need for automation and data-driven networks. Ericsson proactively evolves their network with advanced troubleshooting processes to address this industry-wide challenge with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) augmentation. ?This approach is how Ericsson Expert Analytics helps CSP executives effectively manage this key challenge today.

Ensuring customer satisfaction requires capturing and analyzing data in a cost, and time-efficient way. ?Ericsson Expert Analytics' ability to address this crucial need is what makes this recent product expansion such a transformative industry event. ?The advanced troubleshooting capabilities now included in Ericsson Expert Analytics leverage machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze telecom network data in real time to determine the root cause of any occurring issues. ?This extension, which joins Ericsson Expert Analytics' existing applications for Subscriber, Expert, and Automated Insights, uses network data to deliver real-time subscriber-level customer experience. ?This approach improves customer experience and radically reduces costs through intelligent and efficient data handling.

Specifically designed to deliver network and subscriber-centric analytics, CSPs use Ericsson Expert Analytics to monitor and manage the new capabilities, expectations, use cases, and complexity of 5G networks. ?Smart data collection techniques reduce the amount and frequency of data collection needed to obtain timely and actionable behavioral insights. ?The approach puts embedded intelligence and dynamically generated workflows in motion that identify an issue's root cause, ensuring optimal service experience. ?This improvement empowers the CSP to predict, prioritize, and quickly resolve customer-impacting events. ?The critical ingredient for accomplishing this task is gathering the right combination of Virtual Test Access Point (vTAP) and event data to deliver deep End-to-End (E2E) troubleshooting. ?The key benefits of this approach include:

• ·?? Quantified positive impacts on subscriber retention, cross-sell/upsell, and customer lifetime value (CLV) through improved customer experience;
• ·?? Lower operational expenses from customer care (reduced calls to contact center, improved 1st-/2nd-line first call resolution (FCR) and reduced escalations) as well as planning and engineering operations; and
• · More efficient, effective, and timely subscriber insights to support, optimize, and monitor 5G deployments and subscriber adoption.

Chris Tsigros, General Manager Cloud Infrastructure and Network Services, TPG Telecom Australia, appreciates how Ericsson Expert Analytics "… gives TPG the ability to provide actionable behavioral insights to predict, prioritize and resolve customer impacting events. ?Going forward, we know that this will meet our customer needs and will be a great foundation for us to build upon for other areas of the network as we grow."?

Chris Lewis, telecoms industry analyst and strategic advisor sees this solution as different than what's currently on the market because "… it provides real-time experience insight using event data intelligently to collect specific information to pinpoint root cause at the subscriber level. …This all contributes to more efficient troubleshooting and radically reduces the TCO."

Ericsson Expert Analytics addresses a broad range of telecommunication use cases and leverages the company's vast telecommunication domain knowledge and experience. ?Embedded toolsets help service providers meet changing business and consumer demands by integrating with Ericsson OSS/BSS platforms. ?The solution delivers positive impacts in such vital areas as:

• ·???? Marketing - Through the measurement of subjective customer experience and prediction of Net promoter score (NPS) for every subscriber, using artificial intelligence to identify churn risk, upsell potential, and customer support needs and automatically delivering targeted offers that drive retention, satisfaction and average revenue per user (ARPU).
• ·???? Customer care - Delivering a more satisfying customer care experience with higher first-call resolution and shorter call-handling time.
• ·???? Operations - Helping to identify subscriber-impacting events in near real-time, prioritize based on scope and importance of impact, and automatically identify the most probable cause of the issue before triggering the following best action (policy, configuration, trouble ticket, etc.)
• ·???? Planning - Assisting in enhanced network investment decisions based on knowledge of which upgrades will most impact the perceived customer experience of the most critical customers.
• ·???? Radio access network (RAN) analytics - Helping leverage fast, visual, explorative analytics for large sets of detailed RAN data, guided by artificial intelligence, to support 24/7 RAN optimization.
• ·???? Monetization - Supporting new business models with partners based on anonymized subscriber data and insights.

Ericsson Expert Analytics is just one of the many ways Ericsson enables communications service providers and enterprises to capture the total value of connectivity. ?The company's portfolio spans Networks, Cloud Software and Services, and Enterprise Wireless Solutions delivered through global communications platforms and technologies. ?Please visit the Ericsson Expert Analytics website to learn more about how Expert Analytics can help your company capture the value of ML and AI.