The telecoms industry is entering a decisive moment. AI is no longer just improving individual processes, it is exposing the limits of the way telecoms operations have been organised for years, writes Chantel Cary, the head of product marketing at Oracle Communications.
For decades, operators have managed complexity through human coordination, process discipline and incremental automation. That model delivered progress, but it was designed for a slower, more predictable environment. It is no longer enough.
Networks are becoming more software-driven and distributed. Services span cloud, edge and core environments. Customer expectations continue to rise. AI is accelerating how quickly telecoms organisations are expected to detect issues, understand impact, make decisions and act.
The gap is becoming clear. The operating structures many communications service providers still rely on were not built for the speed, complexity and cross-domain coordination the industry now requires.
Operations teams still monitor environments, analyse alarms, escalate issues, correlate data across systems and coordinate remediation manually across network, service, customer and business domains. OSS and BSS modernisation has improved parts of this process but the core structure remains fragmented.
Chantel Cary