By: Damian Wallace
Savvy companies realize one of the key things they are being judged on today is customer experience. And that means capitalizing on each and every interaction they have with their customers. In
the past, customers had only a few methods for communicating with companies: visiting in person, writing a letter or calling customer support. Today, consumers have many more, including email,
social media, and support forums. This omnichannel environment requires businesses to keep tabs on multiple contact points and to empower employees to interact on multiple levels…
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By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
Customer experience (CX) is a nebulous term with a whole host of companies paying lip service to it. On the surface, CX is nothing more than the experience your customers have when interacting
with your company. Seems simple. But in reality, it’s more complicated than that, and it’s growing more complex as customers have more options to interface with your company, its services, and its
various customer-facing systems. In addition, customers have more provider choices today, and the experience they have with your company may be your greatest competitive advantage…
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By: Todd Foje
In the early days of telephony, a basic static-filled connection constituted what customers wanted. “Hello? Speak up, I can barely hear you!” Tolerance for what we would view today as poor
service was pretty high back then. After all, this extraordinary instrument eliminated the need to travel to talk to someone who wasn’t close by. Technology and service in the
telecommunications industry advanced over the decades and another milestone occurred in the late 1960s. Communities began to adopt 911 emergency call systems that gave people a way to call for
help…
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By: Drew Jordan
Last year, the number of 5G devices on the market hit the 100 milestone and, as of January 2020, there were 61 commercial 5G networks up and running in 34 countries worldwide, according to the
Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA). Many wonder, though, if 5G is going to be worth the billions needed in investment, and if it will save CSPs as we know them today. The investment will be
transformational for CSPs—but only if they get their fundamental Business and Operational Support Systems (B/OSS) right…
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By: Kevin Riley
Service providers are primed and ready to capitalize on new 5G opportunities that include everything from enhanced mobile broadband to the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of
Things, smart buildings, smart cities, smart cars and more. As of this writing, Ookla’s real-time 5G map lists more than 100 5G operators around the world boasting more than 7,100 deployments.
Delivering new 5G services has implications across a wide “spectrum” of the operators’ network architectures and ecosystems, ranging from the networks’ core to the edge with multi-access edge
computing (MEC), distributed cloud, network slicing and the interworking of legacy systems…
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By: Patrick Kalaher
You can almost write a book consisting entirely of Benjamin Franklin quotes, but one of his best known is that “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” And while no one would accuse
the telecom industry—a sector that prides itself on setting global standards—of being unaware of the need to prepare for the future, there’s something about 5G that both excites and worries mobile
operators. It’s widely acknowledged that a true, stand-alone 5G network will be the most intelligent, most complex, most open and most flexible network the telecoms community has ever
created…
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By: Jan Ulc, CROSS Network Intelligence
The 5G era brings transformation towards a new, service-oriented architecture for operators globally. The new network architecture is designed to enable the support of an increasingly wide
range of services, with an equally wide range of different performance requirements. It’s also supposed to introduce new dynamic capabilities, so that services can be composed, delivered and
orchestrated on the fly, before being shut down or recycled. And, lest we forget, 5G isn’t just for mobile: this new architecture will become the foundation of fixed as well as cellular
networks…
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By: Al Balasco
Today, technology has changed the way we shop, learn, and connect. Yet, it can be argued that technology has sanitized many of our interactions of the human touch. To win and retain customers
in today’s hyper-competitive market, customer experience needs to take back some personalization. Digital video assistants offer new tools to do just this. According to a recent Facebook survey of
users in 13 global regions, more than 70 percent of consumers today across all generations favor instant messaging apps as their primary communication method…
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By: Karen Arbel, Eric Klein
Change is an inexorable force. What was once impossible to even conceive of slowly becomes normal or even obsolete. Consider that 30 years ago, the main channel for advertising was newspapers
and broadcast media such as radio and television. Today, it has moved to web and mobile. Yet the goal remains the same: to make it easier for your prospects to become your customers. To borrow from
an old TV program (and now movie series): Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enable your customers to reach you…
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By: Tim Armstrong
Today, collaboration and connectivity are driving forces in our personal and professional lives. And, now more than ever, we lean on a variety of communication tools to connect us in these
spheres. In using them, we expect a certain level of performance and quality of experience. Shifts in those expectations and the way we work and live are forcing businesses to keep pace by rapidly
moving services to the cloud, deploying modern services and applications, and integrating modern, best-of-breed technology into legacy hardware and software solutions…
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By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
Your customers are depending on you, now more than ever. IT and telecom technology, which Pipeline has been covering for over 15 years, has become and will now remain the backbone of our
global, connected society. As the COVID-19 coronavirus hit and quickly spread throughout the world, the world turned to this technology as way to stay connected. To work from home, see loved ones,
network, communicate, and fill online shopping carts with essential supplies. But, I have to ask, is it all that different than before? Maybe, but maybe not…
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By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
It was a busy month for partnerships in telecom industry news. Nokia initiated, renewed, or extended key global partnerships to roll out 5G networks in Europe; to complete a 5G standalone core
network trial in Japan; and to improve the supply chain and economics of advanced optical connectivity solutions. The FCC authorized additional funding to expand rural broadband deployment over the
next decade and released new data showing the closing of the digital divide. New reports from Juniper Research projected online fraud losses as well as the growing number of 5G IoT connections
worldwide…
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