7 Top Digital Transformation Trends Shaping The Telecom Industry In 2020
Over the past few years, the telecom industry has witnessed a heavy decline of revenue streams in core areas like voice and text messaging along with severe competition from Over-the-Top service providers.
Today the telecom industry is poised to undergo a digital transformation due to the swift emergence of IoT and 5G. Their services need to be customer-centric, improve efficiency, and add high-value margin by gradually moving from traditional services.
Just as cloud computing has changed the world of data, it is now changing the way the telecom industry operates. Many organizations have adopted cloud-hosted solutions to streamline data delivery and utilize a single supplier for voice & data services. The new wave of digitalization has offered new prospects of growth, increased innovation, and opportunities for communication services.
How the Telecom Industry is Leveraging Digital Transformation
Telecom industries are undergoing massive structural change turning their customer channels, content and communication services digital, creating a new ecosystem of value. Providers are trying to adopt high performing networks to meet customer’s needs and wants in this digital era. Here are several trends that are causing a dramatic change in the telecom industry.
5G Network – The Network of Today and Tomorrow
There are 3 billion internet users around the globe. Billions of these users prefer smartphones as their primary internet access point. With smartphones now helping users manage important tasks in their lives, consumers are looking for high capacity networks that promise faster access to applications and richer services. This can be enabled by 5G and wireless broadband, allowing 100 times faster data transfer than 4G, along with high speed, and low latency.
Telecom giants are already using 5G applications and IoT devices to target industry verticals. The Healthcare sector is using telemedicine as a cost-effective and timely means of delivering diagnoses and treatments. Connected cars are improving means of transportation and traffic infrastructure. The education sector is using e-learning as the world is adjusting to the new normal amidst COVID.
Telecoms are expanding into all sorts of sectors by automating processes for online customers and offering a whole set of technologies to make telecommunications better.
Artificial Intelligence
As the telecom industry is heavily based on technological advances, many are already using AI technology such as virtual assistants, chatbots, and tools to improve customer experience and satisfaction.
These solutions offer unmatched ability to process and analyze an enormous amount of big data that provides valuable insights to improve the quality of service and increase revenue. It is also hard at work predicting future actions needed to reach specific business goals.
Artificial intelligence provides new ways to optimize network maintenance, predictive maintenance, and customer service costs allowing operators to prepare personalized offers for their B2C and B2B customers. AI also detects problems in the network, allows self-healing, and protects networks from any fraudulent activities.
Internet of Things and Telematics
The Internet of Things has transformed the roles of telecom service providers to enable better communication between people and devices. The adoption of IoT helps the telecom industry monitor base stations and data centers remotely. This ensures minimal downtime for the network, enhances business procedures, and generates more revenue.
Telecom industries are developing innovative methods and applications to monetize IoT solutions to benefit from these emerging technologies and improve their business processes. Businesses can also implement business models like SaaS, PaaS, and BaaS to utilize IoT effectively and decide which application is beneficial for their organization.
The strategy here is to simplify IoT processes and data and accelerate its adoption in major vertical sectors like health care, energy, and connected smart cities.
Big Data
IoT is enabling telecom companies to acquire enormous amounts of data with help of sensors in mobile devices and apps. Companies need to ensure that their network can move this data efficiently and continue to support new technologies.
Telecom industries can use the collected data to generate crucial business insights and understand customer usage patterns. Ultimately the data can be utilized to improve customer service, evaluate new products as well as monitor and optimize the network. Big data helps companies build stronger businesses and use it to their competitive advantage.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
The telecommunication industry has one of the highest adoption rates for RPA technology. It offers high levels of scalability and agility as it takes over the repetitive and rule-based tasks or processes such as responding to customer queries, report generation, price tracking, etc.
It enables companies with the right tools to easily manage back-office work such as maintaining data integrity and security, employee salaries, marketing, and advertising, and hardware & software costs.
This gives time to employees to work on more crucial tasks, develop deeper customer relationships, increase operational efficiencies, and troubleshoot delays in the service delivery to the customer.
Cloud Computing
Most telecom providers rely on a large computing infrastructure to deliver a diverse set of applications, manage data, and bill services. Migrating to the cloud reduces internal computing resource needs as well as internal costs while increasing revenue streams.
The pay per use service model helps telecoms to introduce new services, reduce the cost of the service, and work more effectively as per the market demands. By adopting cloud technology, telecom industries can switch important business functions to the cloud and benefit from its efficiency.
Cyber Security
The telecommunication sector is one of the most vulnerable sectors when it comes to cybersecurity. With telecom companies having large customer bases, there are abundant opportunities for malicious attacks to gain unauthorized access to their data.
When a major telecom service provider’s infrastructure is under attack, the consequences could potentially affect a whole country and it’s businesses, consumers, and the government agencies. It also has major ramifications over the telecom brand’s reputation and trustworthiness.
By adopting a holistic approach, telecom providers are more able to detect threats, take up prevention measures, and support resilience when attacked.
How iLink Helps Telecoms Deliver the Right Benefits
Nearly everyone turns to telecommunication companies to keep them connected with diverse, global networks and provide the fastest, most affordable, cutting edge services. Yet many telecommunication providers are burdened with rapid growth, managing large amounts of data, controlling costs, and trying to increase business agility.
iLink can identify these pain points that pose significant challenges in delivering services to customers and create solutions accordingly. We help telecommunication providers to transform operational processes, achieve a high level of organizational growth, and enhance the quality of their offerings.
