Differentiating service offerings in a remarkably competitive market such as communications is incredibly difficult. One route, a relevant understanding and early adoption of emerging technologies that can provide that niche. Platform providers globally have been claiming that they have leveraged the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning but have, in some cases, delivered little.
Certainly, there are some innovators out there that are utilising artificial intelligence tools to disrupt and enhance existing processes, but there are also a host of vendors that use the term as a form of, pardon the pun, artificial smokescreen to cover their own lack of imagination or ingenuity. Disguising intelligent routing or process automation with a guise of true AI may fool some but many customers will see through this as a shiny gimmick.
We have seen truly innovative use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in other industries. In medicine we have seen AI engines save lives with the analysis of medical data enabling early detection of various diseases and cancers. In transport we have seen companies like Tesla showcase the potential of AI within enhanced automated piloting systems. Undoubtedly it’s not easy to leverage the true power of AI, we have even seen some examples of companies posing human intelligence as artificial to try and seem more technically advanced. So, what have we seen in the communications industry?
The most impressive use cases so far, mostly offered by cloud native providers, centre around data analytics. Using genuine artificial intelligence engines, developed internally or adopting external engines from the likes of IBM, Amazon and Google, have offered cloud platform operators the chance to leverage their huge volumes of customer data. The sheer computing power of such AI tools allows companies to interpret their customers data, and offer insights in return, that were simply not possible previously. The value of these insights can be huge.
