AI: The Next Big Thing on the Path to 5G Monetization?

Communications service providers (CSPs) have been wading through the 5G hype these past few years as they diligently search for the Holy Grail of monetization use cases. So far, prognostications have proven less than accurate. Edge computing and private wireless investments have yet to yield those highly touted business opportunities.

However, recent press announcements about partnerships between leading telcos and artificial intelligence (AI) innovators suggest an exciting new path toward 5G monetization. According to a McKinsey study, many telcos are committing serious resources to generative AI that is focused on customer service, network, and IT use cases.

Many CSPs are looking to exploit high-quality data from the network to bring new innovation to all aspects of network, security, and IT operations. This has led to an emphasis on spinning up AI operations (AIOps) teams to take advantage of this data to help reimagine how planning, operations, and customer support teams conduct their work—all with the end objective of lowering costs and driving revenue.

One example of this trend can be found in the same McKinsey study, which reported: “A Latin American telco increased call center agent productivity by 25 percent and improved the quality of its customer experience by enhancing agent skills and knowledge with gen-AI-driven recommendations.”

Generative AI is exceptionally well-suited for taking unrelated datasets and finding connections that can be exploited for monetization use cases. The real challenge is in collecting and refining data that is found across disparate parts of the network and cloud platforms. Because, after all, AI is only as good as the data it’s fed.

Dealing with the Data Conundrum

As CSPs continue to build out 5G networks and look to promote edge technologies, they increasingly are faced with a data conundrum. As the radio access network (RAN) becomes more disaggregated, there is a growing challenge in accessing data across multivendor, cloud-native networks. Although large volumes of granular data in these networks can be made available to AIOps teams, unless they can extract high-value insights on subscriber experience, this information can’t be used to its fullest.

Transforming raw data into actionable insights that then become the catalyst for strategic decision-making and operational improvements requires the ability to analyze vast volumes of information, distilling it down to what NETSCOUT calls Smart Data. Smart Data is key to optimizing network and service availability, performance, and profitability.

AI Success Starts with Smart Visibility

As CSPs turn to AI for new business opportunities, achieving success will be possible by tapping into a common source of truth attained via the combination of packet-level data with telemetry and visibility from system elements across all borders of the network. Not only can this “smart visibility” expose trouble spots anytime, anywhere throughout the 5G network, allowing AIOps to focus on proactive detection versus reactive mitigation, but it also can reveal opportunities for new services.

NETSCOUT’s solution delivers pervasive visibility by conducting deep packet inspection (DPI) at scale, placing instruments throughout the infrastructure all the way to the business edge. NETSCOUT’s Omnis AI Insight platform integrates an Omnis AI Sensor and Omnis AI Streamer to extract data at or near the source and generate enriched metadata in real time—Smart Data—which can then be used for targeted, higher-level analysis.

This powerful solution provides invaluable insights into customer experience and behavior, empowering CSPs to boost Net Promoter Scores (NPSs), monitor spectrum depletion from heavy users of fixed wireless access (FWA), provide assurance for 5G standalone (5G SA) service slicing, enhance security via improved threat detection, and open the door to new monetization use cases.

Although there is no guarantee that AI will be the answer to all CSP monetization prayers, one thing is clear: The success of these efforts will be greatly enhanced when smart visibility is employed to achieve advanced automation, drive greater efficiency, and capitalize on new business opportunities.

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