In December 2023, we predicted the top telecoms trends that would shape the market in 2024. So how did we do?
2024 telecom trend prediction #1
People, not technology, will become the prime focus for telecoms in 2024
We said that in 2024 operators would shift towards becoming more customer-centric and even beyond that to becoming “customer-obsessed”. The Amazon-inspired concept of customer obsession takes customer centricity to the next level and in 2024 took the telecoms industry by storm. Operators began harnessing Big Data, AI/ML, automation and predictive analytics to deliver hyper-personalized experiences that took customer satisfaction and loyalty to the next level.
In the customer support domain, operators worked to reduce the stress on call center agents and engineers by giving them the information they needed to do their job efficiently and effectively at their fingertips. The trend towards supplementing employee skills with AI / ML empowered tooling to get the best possible performance from human, machine and human-machine combinations is set to continue in 2025 as customer obsession becomes embedded across the organization.
2024 telecom trend prediction #2
Digital identity is key to future telecoms success
In 2023 we said the rise of AI would refocus operators on digital identity both to combat fraud and make the customer experience smoother. Digital identity has emerged as both an operational necessity and an opportunity for telecoms operators in 2024. According to Digital Identity, a report by GlobalData, up to 1.1 billion people worldwide have no proof of identity. McKinsey describes how by 2030, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, the UK, and the US can unlock huge, new economic value from implementing digital identity programs.
With China, the Nordics and India pioneers in digital identity, and the EU planning to give every citizen digital IDs accessible from digital wallets by 2026, other countries are now playing catch-up. This is a significant opportunity for operators, who must make ID verification near effortless for customers, in order to offer a simple but secure experience.
2024 telecom trend prediction #3
Rapid evolution of chatbots
It’s just two years since ChatGPT burst onto the scene on 30 November 2022. Since then it seems as though GenAI has been applied to just about every business problem operators face – including long-standing customer service issues. Even Subtonomy has got in on the act with the launch of our new and AI-powered self-service and chatbot offerings designed specifically for telecoms customer support environments. With Subtonomy, customers already get instant, effortless support 24/7 in their channel of choice, but we’re not done yet.
As we develop our offering further, operators immediately benefit from the latest innovations without the need to build a complex business case, because upgrades are automatically available to our clients via our software-as-a-service model. As AI in customer service continues to evolve, we will continue to evolve our tools so operators can concentrate on figuring out how they can utilize these capabilities to deliver world-class customer service to each and every customer.
2024 telecom trend prediction #4
Personalization is set to hit compliance guard rails
We highlighted how telecoms firms must find the right balance between personalization and data privacy to build customer trust and ensure compliance with pending regulation. In July 2024, the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act was published in the EU Official Journal, coming into force across all 27 EU Member States on 1 August 2024, with enforcement commencing on 2 August 2026.
The Act aims to deliver harmonized rules for the development, marketing, and use of AI in the EU – ensuring AI systems are safe and respect fundamental rights and values. The penalties for non-compliance range from €7.5 million to €35 million (or 1% to 7% of global annual turnover). That’s why it’s essential to work with vendors who understand the telecoms market and are compliant with best practice in data security and responsible AI development.
Find out more about Subtonomy’s data security compliance here and find out how we ensure there’s no data leakage to AI models here.
2024 telecom trend prediction #5
5G FWA will increasingly be QoS-based
According to Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report there’s been a significant increase in operators offering FWA in 2024.
Ericsson said that by April 2024, 241 operators offered FWA and 128 offered 5G FWA, which represents 29% growth YoY. The report describes how Elisa Finland has introduced a new FWA service called Omakaista (Own Lane). This service is designed to deliver a reliable experience for demanding use cases, such as remote working and online gaming, in a household where other services are being used simultaneously. It uses a specific network slice for FWA, together with radio resource partitioning and relative priority scheduling functionality.
Critical to the success of any 5G FWA service though is the ability to onboard customers reliably and support them effortlessly. Find out more about how Subtonomy helps with this here.