Use Cases of Big Data Analytics in Telecom Industry 

What You’ll Find in this Case Study

• Overview of the Telecom Industry
• Big Data Telecom Challenges Faced by the Client
• Quantzig’s Big Data Telecom Analytics Solution
  • Customer Churn Prediction
  • Customer Insights
  • Identify New Business Areas
  • Improve Service Quality
  • Enhanced Security
  • Variety
  • Velocity
  • Complexity 
  • Cell-Site Optimization
  • Intelligent Network Planning
  • Proactive Customer Care
• Key Takeaways

Overview of the Telecom Industry: 

If you’ve ever worked in the telecom industry then you already know the role the telecom companies are playing in facilitating the transfer of information and communication across the globe. While focusing on the role of big data analytics in telecom, it becomes imperative to understand that rapid globalization has augmented the growth in network traffic leading telecom companies to increase infrastructure investments. However, such investments don’t always impact the profitability of telecom companies positively. So, telecom operators must look elsewhere to optimize their operations and increase profitability. Big data and analytics are the solution for telecom operators looking to enhance the overall value of their business. Big data can handle large datasets generated by telecom operators to identify problem areas and new revenue opportunities.  

What is the role of Data analytics in the telecom industry? 

Data analytics plays a crucial role in the telecommunications industry, providing valuable insights and driving various aspects of business operations. Here’s how data analytics impacts the telecom industry:

1. Operational Analysis: Data analytics enables telecommunications companies to analyze operational data effectively. This includes analyzing network performance, identifying potential bottlenecks, and optimizing infrastructure to ensure smooth service delivery. 

2. Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis: Telecom companies utilize data analytics to analyze call detail records, which contain information about calls made, duration, location, and more. Analyzing CDRs helps in understanding customer behavior, identifying patterns, and improving service quality. 

3. Real-time Analytics: Real-time analytics allows telecom companies to monitor network performance and customer interactions in real-time. This enables them to address issues promptly, optimize network resources, and provide better customer service. 

4. Predictive Analytics: Telecom companies leverage predictive analytics to forecast customer behavior, network traffic, and potential service disruptions. By analyzing historical data and patterns, predictive analytics helps in proactive decision-making and resource allocation. 

5. Global Telecom Analytics: In the global telecom market, data analytics plays a vital role in understanding market trends, consumer preferences, and competitive landscapes. Telecom companies use analytics to adapt their strategies to different regions and markets effectively. 

6. Data Monetization: Data analytics enables telecom companies to monetize their data assets by offering insights and analytics services to third parties. This includes providing anonymized customer data to advertisers, researchers, and other organizations for targeted marketing and analysis. 

7. Big Data Solutions: Telecom companies rely on big data solutions to manage and analyze vast amounts of data generated from various sources, including network equipment, customer interactions, and operational systems. 

8. Data Deployment Options: Telecom companies explore various data deployment options, including on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid solutions, to optimize data storage, processing, and analysis capabilities. 

9. Big Data Consulting Services: Telecom companies often engage big data consulting services to develop data analytics strategies, implement analytics platforms, and train internal teams. These consulting services help in leveraging data effectively to drive business growth and innovation. 

10. Big Data Challenges: Despite its benefits, telecom companies face challenges in implementing big data analytics, including data privacy concerns, data integration issues, and ensuring data accuracy and reliability. 

In summary, data analytics is indispensable for telecom companies, enabling them to enhance operational efficiency, improve customer service, and capitalize on data-driven insights to drive innovation and business growth in a dynamic and competitive industry landscape. 

 Big data applications in the telecommunications industry 

Big data applications in the telecommunications industry encompass a wide range of uses, from network optimization to customer experience enhancement. By analyzing vast amounts of data generated by network equipment, customer interactions, and network traffic, telecom companies can improve service reliability, predict network breakdowns, and optimize resource allocation. Additionally, big data analytics enables personalized marketing strategies, churn prediction, and customer segmentation, leading to improved customer satisfaction and retention. With the implementation of advanced analytics techniques and predictive models, telecom operators can streamline operations, maximize profits, and innovate in a rapidly evolving industry landscape. 

Big Data Telecom Challenges Faced by the Client

Just like every other industry, the telecom industry is also fraught with challenges of its own. Our client was also facing some challenges, such as:  

• Developing product recommendation platform for customers. 
• Lack of accuracy while using the existing model. 
• The client’s existing model was not proving effective when it came to accuracy of predictions, at an individual product level. The client wanted to implement a much more robust mechanism. 
• High churn rate: Acquiring new customers is a challenging task and keeping the customer engaged requires a lot of effort as well. The client’s customer retention strategies were not built to meet their current needs and failed to help them achieve their goals around churn reduction.  
• Customer segmentation: With a huge customer base spread across Europe, the client’s main challenge was to segment them into homogenous cohorts based on their needs.  
• Product development: With the proliferation of technology the client realized the need to develop more products and offer personalized services. At the same time, the telecom services provider wanted to develop products backed by telecom big data analytics to ensure a very high-quality performance as per the customer’s requirements.  

The client wanted to implement an effective mechanism which could assess the nature of individual customers and recommend them the right services for effective cross-selling and up-selling. 

Driving profitable growth is no small feat for telecommunication service providers in Europe, given the complexities and regulations in the market. With new players entering the market and capital costs skyrocketing at breakneck speed, competitive pressures facing the existing telecom companies have doubled, leading to a tri-fold increase in customer acquisition costs. The client is one of England’s leading telecom service providers with more than 15 million users. The telecom company is well-known for its network services that can be customized to meet the different requirements. The client was facing challenges with high customer churn rates. Our big data analytics experts helped this client to reduce customer churn rate while delivering valuable insights into making data-driven decisions. 

Quantzig’s Big Data Telecom Analytics Solution

In a bid to provide superior solutions to the client, Quantzig started by assessing customer and service level data for actionable insights. 

We did a customer segmentation based on various factors including demographics, purchase, spend etc., to develop effective cross-sell and up-sell recommendations. Our robust algorithm was capable of determining the correlation between different offerings based on customer behavior. 

Let’s understand these solutions in terms of use cases: 

Customer Churn Prediction 

Of all businesses in the world, the telecom industry is the one which is plagued by high customer churn rates. Customers usually churn when they are dissatisfied with their current service provider or when they find better offers elsewhere. An average customer retention rate of 60-80% in the telecommunication industry doesn’t seem that impressive. As a result, telecom operators are resorting to big data and analytics to predict customer churn. To do so, telecom companies use various data sets including usage patterns, social media feedback, negative comments, and transaction history. A robust machine learning algorithm is then created to predict which customers are more likely to churn accurately. Preventive measures such as improved offers, reduced rates, and customized tariffs can then be employed to stop such churn. 

Customer Insights 

Telecom operators have access to a large repository of data related to customers. With advancements in data storage and data processing technologies, telecommunication companies can store and analyze diverse data sets including customer information, device information, usage data, and location data. Big data and analytics solutions can go through all such structured as well as unstructured data sets to generate actionable insights. Various metrics and tools such as sentiment analysis, churn analysis, and clickstream analysis can be used to effectively understand the customer and personalize their experiences. For instance, based on customers’ needs, behavior, location, and device details, telecom companies can offer tailored products to meet their requirements.  

To know more about how big data analytics is driving the profitability of telecom companies,

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Identify New Business Areas 

The revenue source for mobile operators has changed significantly over the past few years. With revenues from voice and messaging drying up, data sales make up a large part of their earnings. They always need to be on their toes to identify new opportunities in such a dynamic world. Consequently, major operators are exploring new business areas including IoT integration, 5G network, and cloud computing. Additionally, telecom companies can explore new business models, which look to increase their profitability by offering location-based and event-based campaigns to identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. 

Improve Service Quality 

The key to improving profitability in the telecom industry is tied closely with high customer satisfaction rates. As a result, mobile operators are constantly looking for ways to enhance the quality of service. Apart from network infrastructure management, big data and analytics can help companies improve network performance and optimize capacity. For instance, operators can improve network performance by optimizing call routing and quality of service (QoS). They do so by using real-time CDR analysis and location-based analysis, which provides them insights on which location should be prioritized to improve the 4G network. Service providers can effectively plan maintenance schedules and enable proactive care with the help of big data analytics. 

Enhanced Security 

Telecom companies rely on big data analytics to identify anomalous and fraudulent activities. They do so with the help of sophisticated machine learning algorithms that monitor huge data volumes including sentiment data, customer demographics, usage patterns, geographic trends, and behavior data. Mobile operators can predict the likelihood of unexpected behavior and take corrective action with the help of analytics-driven surveillance. By enhancing security measures, big data analytics can help improve company profitability through damage limitations. 

Variety 

Telecom companies deal with a wide variety of data that holds various customer details such as the call data records, billing information, connected devices, etc. This data comes from different unstructured sources. So, it becomes difficult for the service providers to restructure and organize this data to carry out the necessary analysis. 

Request a free proposal today to know how you can leverage big data analytics to deliver intelligent, timely actions for your business, that improve customer engagement, increase revenues, and lower costs.   

Velocity 

Customers use large volumes of data within a small time frame. Therefore, it becomes difficult for telecom companies to record these vast amounts of transactions in a short span of time. 

Complexity  

The user data generated is complex and unstructured. Also, no specific format is used for storing data. The user data collected varies with demographics, lifestyle, geography, etc. Therefore, if the data is not filtered correctly, big data analytics may provide unwanted results. 

Cell-Site Optimization 

One of the most notable phenomena in the telecom industry is the usage of a cell network being distributed unevenly throughout the data. For instance, in peak hours, almost every user in the network is trying to access the services, whereas during the night only a fraction of that population would use telecom services. Consequently, it also affects how much power each cell on the whole network would be consuming. Big data analytics can smartly solve this problem by automating how cells interact with each other, adjust their power to minimize interference, and ensuring maximum coverage and bandwidth. This way they can optimally handover traffic between cells and load balance traffic based upon traffic patterns. 

Intelligent Network Planning 

Network planning is a process through which telecom service providers meet the need of the subscriber and operator by encompassing network-synthesis, topological design, and network-realization. In short, it is all about allocating resources such as IT, networks, operations, and maintenance sufficiently based on network load forecast. Inefficient designs can cause serious bottlenecks in the network performance, which is why network operators are looking at network planning solutions that are embedded with advanced analytics that can correlate information from multiple network datasets and CRM systems. By working closely with their operations support systems such as network inventory solutions, network discovery information, and service activation solutions players in the telecom industry can efficiently implement intelligent network planning. 

Proactive Customer Care 

Network operators can face a host of issues causing network downtime now and then. Such downtime can create negative customer experiences, which is why players in the telecom industry are being proactive in solving such issues by collecting lots and lots of data. Such data comprise of issue-resolution data and error fixes, which can guide operators to predict the instances of network breakdown. With the help of big data, operators can gain real-time contextual intelligence updates that effectively maintains an up-to-date context map of each consumer. Such intelligence enables operators to provide top-class customer experience by continuously monitoring subscriber activities to identify and rectify network issues. 

Quantzig’s telecom big data analytics experts combined advanced analytics with predictive analytics in telecom to understand the challenges the client was facing. A deep dive into the challenges facing the European telecom industry helped our experts to understand the problems faced by the client and the reasons behind their inability to adapt telecom big data analytics to streamline operations and maximize profits. On further analysis of key problem areas of the client, our experts revealed the client needed to form an effective marketing strategy to stop the high churn rate and acquire new customers. Our telecom big data analytics experts then began working on developing predictive data models for the client to help them with visualizing data to perform better and predict churn. 

Within a very short span of time, the client was able to identify the factors that were resulting in high churn rates. Big data analytics for telecom also enabled the client to re-design better marketing strategies as per customer needs. In the final stage of this engagement, the client exponentially used customized big data analytics for telecom sector to develop new and better products which helped them to stand apart from their largest competitor. 

Key Takeaways 

Quantzig’s big data analytics for telecom helped the client to: 

• Reduce customer churn rate 
• Develop new data services 
• Improve cross-selling and up-selling opportunities 
• Implement improved product recommendation platform  
• Identify and act on new business areas 

In conclusion, the utilization of big data analytics in the telecom industry has proven to be transformative, particularly in addressing network downtime and enhancing customer experiences. By leveraging advanced analytics and predictive models, telecom operators can proactively identify and resolve network issues, leading to reduced customer churn rates and improved service reliability.  

Quantzig’s telecom big data analytics expertise exemplifies this transformation, as evidenced by their successful engagement with a European telecom client. By delving deep into the challenges faced by the client, including high churn rates and the need for effective marketing strategies, Quantzig’s experts developed predictive data models that enabled the client to visualize data effectively and predict churn. 

As a result of this engagement, the client not only identified the factors contributing to high churn rates but also redesigned their marketing strategies to align with customer needs. Furthermore, the implementation of customized big data analytics facilitated the development of new and improved products, positioning the client as a leader in the telecom sector, distinct from their competitors. 

Key takeaways from Quantzig’s big data analytics for telecom include the reduction of customer churn rate, development of new data services, improvement in cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, implementation of an enhanced product recommendation platform, and identification of new business areas for growth. 

However, it’s important to note that while big data analytics presents significant opportunities for telecom operators, there are also challenges to overcome. These challenges include data management challenges such as data heterogeneity, complexity in data processing, and the integration of diverse data sources. Additionally, the effective utilization of network telemetry and data statistics, along with the establishment of robust data management practices through platforms like Vodafone Analytics platform and the leadership of Chief Data Office, are crucial for success. 

Moving forward, telecom operators like Deutsche Telecom must continue to invest in advanced analytics capabilities to optimize network equipment, manage network traffic efficiently, and enhance network usage. Moreover, integrating data from various sources including social networks and soccer analytics can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling operators to deliver personalized, omnichannel customer experiences that drive customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value. 

In essence, big data analytics is a powerful tool that, when utilized effectively, can revolutionize the telecom industry by improving network optimization, enhancing customer experiences, and driving business growth.