News

15 March, 2019

Application of AI enhances field service management for 5G, IoT and beyond

As communications service providers (CSPs) gear up for 5G and look to support IoT businesses as a new business line of their own, field service engineers will be under more pressure than ever. However, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being applied to the discipline of field service management to optimise field service performance through a blend of intelligent routing, remote assistance and performance analysis. VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim talks to Paul Whitelam, the senior vice president of global marketing at ClickSoftware, to catch a glimpse of the field service management of the future.

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14 March, 2019

Blockchain for number portability – Five key benefits for CSPs

With the advent of 5G and IoT, greater collaboration is required between communications service providers (CSPs) in order to cost effectively deliver innovative services, write Ganesan Arulanandham, consulting partner and head of the IP and Innovation COE in the Communication business unit at Wipro, and Subrat Saurabh, principal consultant for blockchain and a telco domain expert, in the Communication business unit at Wipro.

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16 January, 2019

The long and winding road to 5G begins with 4G optimisation

The close of 2018 saw the UK operator O2 leave its customers without access to 3G or 4G data connectivity for more than 24 hours. The ensuing uproar underlined the critical importance of mobile broadband to all UK consumers, writes Tony Gillick, the vice president of solutions management at Openet.

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03 January, 2019

CSPs add value to SD-WAN by achieving full QoE visibility

Quality of experience (QoE) has long been evasive for communications service providers (CSPs), especially when it comes to ensuring that the quality of service they provide matches the QoE users are subjected to, writes Michael Rezek, the vice president of business development and strategic partnerships at Accedian.

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19 December, 2018

Increasing numbers of NPMD tools are a problem for SMBs

Over the past few years the network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) industry has developed more and more specialized tools for specific network functions, writes Joe O’Connor, the senior vice president of Channels and Alliances at LiveAction.

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18 December, 2018

How can system design engineers guarantee a successful transition from 4G to 5G?

The transition from 4G to 5G brings a variety of benefits, notably an increased data rate and mobile broadband network capacity. However, system design engineers will need to adapt to the latest 5G new radio (NR) standard which was completed in June 2018, writes Ken Karnofsky, a senior strategist for Signal Processing Applications at MathWorks.

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17 November, 2018

What does Hotspot 2.0 really mean for your business?

Wi-Fi connectivity is extremely important for businesses and is a key tool driving customer satisfaction across the retail, hospitality and transportation sectors, as well as cost control and employee productivity in the enterprise. Users simply want, nay expect, to be seamlessly and securely connected wherever they are and able to get on with whatever task they need to complete without participating in the plumbing, writes Blaz Vavpetic, the chief technology officer of iPass.

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15 November, 2018

Maintain visibility into the new mobile reality

The rapid explosion of over-the-top (OTT) services has forever changed the business model of mobile operators globally, writes John English, the director of marketing for service provider solutions at NETSCOUT.

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08 November, 2018

It’s time to fix broken processes in the contact centre

Go back little more than a decade and most contact centres followed the traditional model of being office-based with headphone-wearing operators packed together like battery hens answering fixed line phone calls on weekdays between 9-5, writes Jeremy Payne, the international vice president of marketing at Enghouse Interactive.

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25 October, 2018

Developed market lessons learned from emerging markets

Mobile carriers in emerging and developed markets might operate in very different market conditions but the challenges they face are remarkably similar: stagnating subscriber growth, squeezed profit margins and a commoditization of services, writes Albrecht von der Recke, the founder and COO of fonYou.

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