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Why Telecom Service Providers Need To Automate

By Greg BryanSep 12, 2023

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In 2021 and 2022, MEF CTO Pascal Menezes joined us on TeleGeography Explains the Internet to discuss MEF's work on standardizing the enterprise network.

This season, we welcome a new face from the same team, Stan Hubbard, Principal Analyst at MEF. Stan recently authored a State of the Industry Report for MEF; I wanted to have him on to discuss his findings and see where the telecom industry is at with adopting new technologies.

Stan first explains the drivers in the market and why telecom service providers need to automate to stay relevant and competitive. He then outlines the path carriers can take to achieve this.

Next, we discuss his report and get details on the state of automation adoption in the telecom industry, why customized or proprietary APIs are inefficient, the benefits of standardization, how enterprise drives automation, and even how blockchain will be involved in network contracts.

Punch the play button below to listen in.

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Key Takeaways

Telecom service providers must automate business functions to remain relevant and competitive.

This transformation is driven by enterprises accelerating their digital transformation and cloud migration, demanding dynamic, secure, and cloud-like services that are delivered across a global ecosystem of automated networks.

Manual processes, involving spreadsheets, phone calls, and emails, are inefficient, error-prone, and cannot scale to meet the demands of this evolving landscape.

Standardization is crucial for enabling this automation and the widespread adoption of NaaS.

While the concept of NaaS and network automation has been around for about a decade, a common definition is needed.

MEF is developing a NaaS blueprint and focusing on standardized APIs to automate business and operational processes. 

Standardized API adoption is gaining critical mass.

Service providers are implementing these APIs primarily to accelerate service delivery, reporting an average reduction of 25% in order cycle times, which in turn accelerates time to revenue and improves customer experience.

Automation also increases operational efficiency, reduces human errors, and saves time. Service providers that adopt these standards can emerge as preferred providers, while those that do not risk losing business to automated competitors. 

Greg Bryan

Greg Bryan

Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.

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