Your cognitive future in the communications industry

Dialing in a new frequency

A communications renaissance

For communications service providers (CSPs), cognitive computing has arrived, and its potential to revolutionize the industry is enormous. With the power to unleash a new era of innovation and growth, cognitive systems are already helping CSPs further enhance the customer experience and uncover new insights. Our research indicates that communications industry executives are poised to embrace this groundbreaking technology and invest in cognitive capabilities to spark a renaissance in communications.

Welcome to the age of cognitive computing, where intelligent machines simulate human brain capabilities to help solve vexing problems across multiple industries. For communications service providers (CSPs), the timing for an industry game changer couldn’t be better.

Facing upheaval triggered by technological, societal and economic influences, the com-munications industry is primed for a landmark shift. As numerous CSPs experience slowed growth and pressure to reduce costs, they simultaneously must investigate ways to address the explosive growth in video.1 In addition, the industry finds itself catering to increasingly demanding and empowered customers, while contending with continued security concerns and competition from over-the-top (OTT) players.

At the same time, CSPs have to manage increasing volumes of both structured and unstructured data – data brimming with latent insights that could potentially redress some of these issues. Unfortunately, most providers still struggle to unlock the full value of the data at their disposal. As the potential for insight increases with additional data, so, too, does the challenge in managing this data.

Advances in cognitive computing can help bridge the gap between data quantity and data insights. Cognitive-based systems can build knowledge, understand natural language and provide confidence-weighted responses. And these machine learning systems can quickly locate the proverbial needle in a haystack, identifying new patterns and insights.

Our research reveals that cognitive solutions are already helping some CSPs blaze new territory. As a follow up to the “Your cognitive future” reports, we launched a new series of industry-specific studies based on research conducted in early 2015. (For more information on the research, which included a survey of 83 communications industry executives, see the “Study approach and methodology” section).

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