With MWC Barcelona set to take place at the Fira Gran Via next week, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Rohit Maheshwari, Head of Strategy & Products at Subex on the company's participation at the event.
Ariana: What are some of the key themes of this year's MWC?
Rohit: As the world continues to rapidly move towards digitalisation, customer expectations are on the rise. To this end, operators are grappling with meeting increasing customer requirements by providing secure, seamless, and consistent connections 24/7 that are as unique and personal as the customers themselves. To empower operators to meet escalating customer needs, Subex, a telecom AI company, is focused on enabling operators to have connected customer experiences. By leveraging GenAI across the data value chain, Subex provides operators with the opportunity to turn mediocre service into exceptional connected and personalised experiences.
Our theme for this year’s MWC is “Creating Connected Experiences”, which reflects our unwavering commitment to helping enterprises navigate the exciting world of 5G, AI, and next-generation customer engagements. We will explore GenAI use cases in fraud management, revenue assurance, and customer experience, as well as unveil the findings obtained from the industry’s largest business assurance survey. We will also be showcasing our brand new set of AI Agents aimed at revolutionizing the way in which telco operations are carried out.
Ariana: What are some of the events that Subex has lined up? Any showcases?
Rohit: Subex will be showcasing interactive AI demos covering the areas of Fraud Management, Business Assurance, Customer Experience, and Product Rationalization. These will include:
- AI Agents: Autonomous AI Agents purpose-built to understand and carry out operational tasks that would otherwise be handled by analysts.
- Gen AI: Fraud Management Analyst Co-Pilot - Large language model (LLM) driven conversational assistant for supporting FM analysts.
- Gen AI: Customer Experience Co-Pilot - LLM assistants for enhanced customer experiences and contact centre efficiency.
- Gen AI: Business Assurance Analyst Co-Pilot - LLM driven conversational assistant for supporting BA analysts in discovering insights and KPIs faster from huge volumes of data.
- Contract Assurance - Optimize contracts while ensuring compliance and mitigating risks.
- Margin Assurance & Product Rationalization - Achieve deep insights about profit margins.
As 5G ushers in a transformative era for CSPs, it brings a bounty of new business models that are brimming with potential. Subex invites MWC attendees to discover why AI-infused risk and assurance are pivotal in capitalising on the emerging opportunities in the 5G landscape and beyond. These topics include:
- Unveiling the ‘unknown-unknowns’ with the synergy of AI and 5G.
- Propelling ROI with predictive analytics.
- Boosting operational efficiency with preemptive risk management.
- Scaling effortlessly, while minimising unnecessary expenditures.
- Securing enhanced profitability with strategic assurance.
Ariana: What's the outlook for telecoms, specifically the mobile industry in the next 12 months?
Rohit: The telecom industry is on the brink of a transformative era, where technology and user demand for rich experiences are reshaping the very foundation of connectivity. Video and AI applications are revolutionising traffic and mobile spaces, foretelling a future of uninterrupted, intelligent interactions that are reliant on 5G. However, it’s not just about predicting the future, it’s about creating it using technological advancements.
We strongly believe the next 12 months will provide operators with an abundance of game-changing opportunities, as well as challenges they’ll need to overcome to remain relevant, including:
- While traditional voice calls will continue their downward trend in developed markets, the shift to data and apps, particularly short videos, will grow exponentially, providing customers with an ever-increasing number of new experiences.
- AI chips will make their way into a significant percentage of mobile phones, providing additional intelligence for more in-app capabilities; however, this will result in revenue issues for operators as value transitions to the app.
- Devices will move towards becoming robotic agents capable of running Large Language Models (LLMs), which will generate a plethora of content and experiences.
- LLMs along with interactions on mobile phones will become increasingly conversational, ensuring smartphone ease of use and opening the door to innovative use cases and experiences.
- With AI chips running a LLM, processing can be done within the phone and since no information is sent to the cloud, user’s privacy will be protected.
- Operators will explore a multitude of use cases as they attempt to diversify, and many will focus on the enterprise segment – 5G, private 5G networks, and rolling out fixed wireless access points.
- Already playing a significant role in fintech, mobile money, and mobile wallets, the combination of traditional telco data with payment and fintech data will create new business models.
- With AI chipsets, mobiles will continue to rise in cost, which will impact operators who heavily rely on handset sales. To mitigate the high cost, telcos and resellers will explore offering customers device refinancing plans.
- As network workloads move to the cloud, the way data flows in the network will start shifting, and it’s expected that an additional layer of user experience-led demand will come from AR/VR applications.
- As the number of 5G SA networks increase globally, delivering on the promise of 5G (moving from 5G NSA to 5G SA) will become an issue. 2024 will be the year when this number reaches critical mass for enterprise use cases to start playing out, requiring attention to the topic of sustainability led growth.
- With AI chips enabling people to do more on their mobile phones, networks will need to enable experiences at the edge, however increased penetration of cloud computing will negatively impact the operators bottom line.
- Satellite-based mobile connectivity will make an entrance, which one day may overshadow traditional telecom infrastructure.
- The increased opportunity for subscription fraud will heighten the focus of using AI to predict, prevent, and manage malicious activity.
- As enterprise use cases begin to roll out, security and fraud risks will correspondingly increase, compelling operators to partner with security solution organisations.
