By Oystein Bergmann, Senior Correspondent Scandinavia

Nokia has announced two new managed services offerings to help communication service providers (CSPs) deliver a better customer experience and realize faster returns on their 5G investments by better utilizing intelligence from their network data.

Operations Transformation is a multi-year service with a focus on guiding CSPs to enhance productivity and agility of their operations through cloudification and automation. The second new managed operations offering is called Operations Intelligence, which uses AI driven analytics using massive datasets to precisely pinpoint issues, with the end goal of enabling CSPs to increase business outcomes like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and returns on their 5G investments. NPS serve as a barometer of how likely a customer would recommend a provider or service to another user.

Both services follow a methodology where modular operations services focus on the biggest improvement areas. The method is designed to follow a CSP’s unique digital transformation journey and deliver tangible results in an outcome-based business model, giving flexibility and control. The micro-operations services catalogue includes use cases ranging from coverage and capacity optimization to predictive analysis of anomalies in complex network settings in order to prevent the degradation of customer services; and leverages Nokia AVA’s AI use case library.

Nokia has been delivering commercial projects for the new two services with various CSP customers that have already started to yield solid results, including some CSPs in Asia Pacific and Africa which have been able to reach the leading position in customer NPS and network performance. In other cases, CSPs have been able to keep their operating costs flat despite seeing network growth increase 50 per cent, while also achieving higher network availability with 60 per cent less variance in performance.

The new services coincide with the release of new Nokia-commissioned research, based on a survey of around 50 CSPs globally, which shows that most CSPs value their operations partners support in their digital transformation, according to 84 per cent of respondents.

CPSs also recognize the impact of their operations partners support in realizing higher returns on 5G and other major investments, according to 84 per cent respondents; 81 per cent report a positive effect of the partnerships on their customer’s experiences.

According to 65 per cent and 69 per cent of respondents, controlling capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenditure (OPEX), respectively, are top value drivers, an unexpected departure given that CAPEX and OPEX have long been traditional CSP priorities.

The survey also found that, according to 74 per cent of respondents, CSPs want to add new responsibilities to their operations partners with the needs being widespread. CSPs are counting on their operations partners to help them with network security, AI/ML, data management, and cloud architectures.

Service Director at GlobalData, John Byrne said: “Our research shows that Communication Service providers are acutely aware that their competitiveness depends both on making network operations more efficient and improving customer experiences. The modular services portfolio Nokia is now rolling out will help CSPs with both of these objectives in a more targeted way.”

Head of Technology Operations at Chorus New Zealand, Brenda Stonestreet said: “Nokia have provided consistent and expected operational performance outcomes, resulting in a stable end customer service delivery for Chorus customers. In parallel to this Nokia has established a focus on continuous operations improvement through a formal Service Improvement Plan program influencing field and customer assurance activities within Chorus’s scope.” Senior Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Services at Nokia, Friedrich Trawoeger said: “We know that customer expectations have changed so our focus with these new services is to help CSPs realize business outcomes leveraging the intelligence in their networks. The methodology can follow our customers’ unique digital transformation journey. In addition, the catalogue approach is another step in our strategy towards providing a complete Software as a service (SaaS) portfolio