The Artificial Intelligence era will reshape how operators monetise and deliver smooth user experiences, thus reshaping the telecoms industry. Picture: Gerd Altmann/Pixbabay
Huawei’s Operations and Transformation Forum Africa 2024 was one of the key events at the Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town this week.
The forum looked at ways for telecommunications industry stakeholders to use intelligent operations to unlock new business growth.
David Li, president of Huawei’s Southern Africa Delivery and Service Business explored intelligent operations to enable new growth.
He shared insights about how carriers must prepare for the intelligent era, emphasising the need to upgrade technologies, strategies, services, and operations and maintenance (O&M) modes.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) era will reshape how operators monetise, deliver smooth user experiences, and O&M, thus reshaping the telecoms industry, Li explained.
In this new era, AI-enabled O&M (AI for Operations) and AI-oriented O&M (Operations for AI) will promote each other, he stressed.
“This will help companies achieve the ultimate multi-modal interaction experiences, facilitate the rapid development of digital intelligence services, enable closed-loop business, and unlock comprehensive intelligent O&M,” Li added.
“The AI era has arrived, and bringing together AI for Operations and Operations for AI, we will reshape everything, from modes of monetisation to user experiences as well as ways of doing O&M mode,” Li told delegates.
During the forum, Safaricom’s Chief Technology Officer, Anthony Gacanja, explained how Safaricom achieves its strategic objectives.
The company’s mission has evolved over time and now it’s full-stack digital transformation has allowed it to accelerate fintech and connection service growth, he added.
“A few key digital tactics had to be prioritised to enable Safaricom to achieve its status as a purpose-led technology company. We first sought to deliver superior customer experience to set ourselves apart. Then our people focused on leveraging the company’s growth for new tech solutions. This is a pivotal shift as we focus on becoming a TechCo with operations powered by AI,” Gacanja said.
Simo Mkhize, Chief Commercial Officer of Telkom Consumer shared some insights and lessons from Telkom’s strategy.
He said that Telkom proactively initiates intelligent marketing data transformation on the market side.
“By planning its evolution objectives of automation, digitisation, and intelligence, Telkom streamlines information from sources such as its market, network, and social networking, to build a converged foundation for carrying diversified data,” he noted.
IOL BUSINESS