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telecom sector | Artificial intelligence | Telecos
BS Web Team |
Last Updated at December 20, 2022 19:44 IST
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India's top telecom companies are once again divided- this time over whether the deployment of new-age artificial intelligence (AI) and big data (BD) technologies can improve the overall quality of telecom services (QoS), traffic and spectrum management or not, reports Economic Times.
Reliance Jio in its submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), has said that the opportunities to deploy AI to improve network performance, overall QoS, spectrum management, security, and customer service in the telecom sector are vast.
Both Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel in their submissions said that it is too early to even predict if AI and BD can lead to internal efficiency, which could lead to optimisation of telco networks as both technologies remain at a budding stage.
Conflicting positions on the need to create common AI terminology standards before leveraging the new-age technology in the telecom industry were taken by the operators.
According to Reliance Jio in its submission, "AI with advanced analytics already plays a significant role globally in reducing network capex and the poor QoE (quality of experience) for VoLTE subscribers; it also predicts hardware failures prior to customer impact and its adoption has improved network reliability and customer experience, even optimised cost of operations."
Though Airtel said that while it uses AI tools for network planning to discover new rural locations for site development and analysis of satellite images, there is still time to deduce whether AI or BD can solve problems or optimise situations for telcos.
As per the report, Airtel in its submission said that systems evolve over a period of time and then stabilise, and it is only after that that one can think of them as a standard operating procedure, but we are still very far off from that when it comes to AI and BD technologies that are still in developing stage.
Separately, Jio has asked Trai to back the development of uniform and trustworthy AI terms/definitions by a non-statutory, expert multi-stakeholder body (MSB). Jio believes that such a regulatory approach will pave the way for a more responsible AI environment, which could instill trust among Indian users. The suggestion, however, was rejected by Vi and Airtel, who said that any such regulatory intervention would only stifle the country’s IT capabilities and development of innovative AI technologies.
Jio said that there is a need to balance the ethical considerations of AI with the need for innovation. The company also added that responsible and uniform AI standards should be built around the principles of safety, reliability, robustness, non-discrimination, equality, inclusivity, privacy, security transparency, and explainability.
Jio's view was countered by Airtel, who said Trai's focus must be on leveraging AI in the telecom sector instead of defining them and restricting its scope. It also added that IT capabilities and technologies work best without interventions.
Vi shared Airtel's views, saying there must be a clear objective for any standardisation, and as of now, there is no requirement.
The telcos have also differing views on whether 5G technologies will help in accelerating the adoption of AI in India.
While Jio believes AI and 5G will work in harmony, Airtel and Vi, said it would be difficult to predict whether 5G would boost AI adoption levels before getting a fix on how organisations and individual users are likely to tap the next-gen wireless broadband technology.
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First Published: Tue, December 20 2022. 17:34 IST
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