As if sorting through giant data warehouses and archives of unstructured data wasn’t enough, many service providers and their customers want real-time analysis as transactions occur. The probes that monitor every public network capture every transaction by every connected customer every time they use their devices. But there’s more to it than that: Examining trillions of packets from thousands of devices creates a bottleneck. Correlating and distributing the data to hundreds of applications creates another one.

Scalability with regard to real-time data capture and usage is a serious concern for both CSPs and system vendors. Given the tremendous volume of data involved, the OSS/BSS of the former look for a few specific data points and send the rest away to storage, but a processing bottleneck prevents CSPs from using all of the available data in real time. 

Deriving real-time business intelligence requires complex, expensive modifications to the systems and probes connected to a provider’s network. Currently, only charging data is captured and processed in real time, and while that information supports the management of usage limits and fraud detection, it doesn’t do much for marketing or customer care.

So, if real-time data isn’t available and back-end processes and systems aren’t ready to seize the day, what should service providers be asking of Big Data? From network operations to customer care, there is value in analyzing the customer experience and making changes or improvements based on the outcome. But there’s no Big Data solution that implements a seamless process from inquiry to action, so business users must team up with the IT departments of their companies to make it work.

While there are plenty of organizational issues that continue to threaten the widespread adoption of Big Data analytics in telecom, the data continues to flow, and users want access to it. Service providers will benefit from taking the time to understand what goes into data analysis, what the results mean and how they can best act upon their new found knowledge.