The financial value of adding A3 into the network and OSS

Bi-yearly research estimates the financial value of AI, automation and analytics (A3)  through bottom-up analysis of potential capex/opex savings or revenue uplift from integrating these technologies into 60 processes/use cases across a telco’s network and OSS.

This value is measured on an annual basis in dollar terms and as a proportion of total revenue for an “average telecoms operator”.

Summary of findings from the research:

  • A total yearly value of $816m was calculated in financial upside from deploying A3 – this represents 5.2% of revenues.
  • Resource management (including the virtualisation of networks, more intelligence and automation in power management, new automations in the RAN and the move to intent-based networks) offers 50% of the total potential value from A3
  • Assurance requires a good deal of analytics/ML to manage large data sets and complete diagnostic/predictive tasks and offers 16% of the value
  • Network planning also offers complex problems that can benefit from the addition of intelligence to optimise capital spend and spectrum – calculated at 14% of the value
  • Over the last year, industry discussion has been seen around four particular automation goals.  New case studies have been seen, allowing additional clarity around the financial values in the model:
    • end-to-end service orchestration – a single process that fulfils a customer’s requirement for a new service by combining pre-existing services from the telco and its partners
    • intent-based networks – the interpretation of high-level business/customer objectives into automated network configurations and actions
    • automation of power management, especially on the RAN
    • increased use cases for assurance data and development of the self-healing network concept.