•
Jun 5
Sand Technologies
Global pioneers and experts deeply involved in the digital twin revolution participated in a webinar that addressed how digital twins can solve key pain points, manage high-value use cases and accelerate profitability. The webinar featured the following experts:
A compelling discussion of their valuable perspectives, shaped by extensive real-world experience and innovative research, illuminated the significant capabilities and tangible applications of cognitive digital twins.
While the webinar focused on how the telecom industry is leveraging AI-powered digital twins to address pain points and accelerate profitability, the experts provided valuable insights into realizing value as well as a playbook for identifying high-value use cases.
The foundational elements that underpin cognitive digital twins have been evolving rapidly and independently, now reaching a critical mass where their synergy unlocks unprecedented capabilities. When these powerful forces converged, they made cognitive digital twins a reality. These technology advancements include:
The commercial application of digital twins began in the manufacturing sector. However, the implications of cognitive digital twins extend far beyond the manufacturing plant. They offer tangible solutions to a myriad of real-world challenges across diverse sectors.
Imagine the transformative potential within smart cities, where cognitive digital twins can optimize everything from traffic congestion and dynamic pricing to vehicle-to-infrastructure communication and enhanced public safety. Smart buildings can leverage this technology to optimize energy consumption, improve occupant comfort and streamline maintenance operations.
The healthcare sector is poised for revolution by cognitive digital twins, offering the potential to enhance patient experiences, personalize treatment plans, optimize hospital operations and accelerate medical research.
The telecommunications industry operates within a uniquely challenging environment. Network operators face substantial capital expenditure (CapEx) requirements to invest in and upgrade their infrastructure as wireless networks evolve. The rapid pace of technological innovation necessitates frequent rollouts of new technologies, typically occurring every five to seven years.
Simultaneously, telecoms must navigate an operating landscape where customers increasingly expect more for less, leading to stagnant or declining average revenue per user (ARPU). Industry analyses often reveal that the return on investment in this capital-intensive sector lags behind other industries, underscoring the critical need for smarter decision-making.
In this context, every investment and operational decision carries significant weight. Cognitive digital twins in telecom offer a powerful arsenal of tools to enhance decision-making across the entire value chain.
Digital twins provide granular insights and predictive capabilities, enabling network operators to make more informed investment decisions, optimize network operations, enhance customer experiences and ensure regulatory compliance. Even minor improvements in efficiency and intelligence can translate into significant gains for the bottom line.
Solving Pain Points and Accelerating Profitability
The panelists provided engaging demonstrations to highlight the real-world use of cognitive digital twins and how they are revolutionizing the telecommunications industry.
Intelligent fiber rollout
Webinar panelists showcased a tool that utilizes demand forecasting and accurate network modeling to pinpoint optimal areas for fiber optic network deployment. By analyzing open-source data, including satellite imagery, demographic information and existing infrastructure, the tool provides granular recommendations at the property level, determining the suitability for fiber, wireless, or fixed wireless access (FWA) connections. It also generates high-level and low-level network designs, optimizing the placement of infrastructure and reducing deployment costs.
This data-driven approach addresses the critical challenge of knowing where to build networks to maximize profitability and market share. Conventional methods often lack data-driven insights, leading to suboptimal deployment decisions. The AI-powered approach demonstrated a potential reduction of approximately 20% in street infrastructure costs compared to traditional planning software.
Targeted 5G deployment
This demonstration focused on optimizing the deployment of 5G networks. By utilizing advanced ray tracing algorithms and high-resolution satellite imagery, the solution simulates the real-time propagation of radio waves, taking into account terrain, building materials, foliage and other environmental factors.
This level of detail enables operators to strategically place antennas and cell sites to maximize coverage, improve signal strength and address specific business needs, such as providing backup services to fiber in business districts. The AI-powered planning model significantly reduces the time required for network planning, potentially cutting it down from months to just a few days, while also allowing for on-the-fly adjustments and scenario analysis.
Integrated AI network modeling
This solution showcased the power of combining fixed-line and wireless network planning capabilities. By integrating demand mapping with technological considerations, the solution can generate accurate predictions and recommendations for fixed wireless access deployments, a rapidly growing area for mobile operators. This integrated AI network model approach enables a comprehensive view of network infrastructure and service delivery.
AI network monitoring for service assurance
When leveraging AI and digital twin technology, a telecommunications network creates massive datasets from various nodes, elements and the entire network. Additionally, existing network management software generates large data logs for service assurance. The challenge is that all that data is cumbersome to use.
A digital twin of the network with AI network monitoring allows operators to see the performance in real time, the impact of any network outage, any node going down, what effect it has on the quality of service down to what impact it has on the net promoter score (NPS), cash flow, revenue, the number of customers three or six months in the future and more, all in real time. It collects data from all nodes regularly, enabling it to preempt major outages and prevent revenue loss.
While the potential of cognitive digital twins is undeniable, realizing their full benefits requires a strategic and pragmatic approach. It is essential to understand that this technology is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Several critical success factors must be in place within an organization to ensure the successful deployment and derivation of value.
A cognitive digital twin’s true value lies in its ability to facilitate improved decision-making. This capability can manifest in long-term strategic planning decisions, such as optimizing capital expenditure (CapEx) for network upgrades and expansions, or in shorter-term operational decisions, enabling real-time adjustments to network parameters to maximize performance and reduce operational expenditure (OpEx).
Other articles that may interest you
