Operators’ Path to Artificial Intelligence

After a year of development, AI technology and applications have gradually exploded, especially in the communications industry, where the three major operators have made significant progress in technology, platform and application.

China Telecom

Since the beginning of this year, China Telecom has actively used artificial intelligence in corporate management and achieved many results. China Telecom's intelligent customer service robot Xiaozhi combines core technologies such as deep learning of neural networks, speech recognition, natural language processing, and contextual scene interaction to provide users with 7×24 hours of intelligent answering services in a human-computer interaction manner, and the monthly service volume has exceeded 40 million times.

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On this basis, China Telecom has built an intelligent customer cloud platform, using intelligent, voice, and semantic recognition technologies to uniformly empower all regions, greatly improving the convenience of customer service calls and enabling instant answers to questions.

In terms of application, China Telecom has actively laid out the smart home industry. China Telecom has carried out comprehensive cooperation with smart terminal manufacturers, introduced smart speakers, smart interconnection, smart main network, smart phones, smart gateways, smart set-top boxes, etc., formed a smart home product group, and provided users with a package of solutions for home intelligence.

In addition, China Telecom has also actively applied artificial intelligence results in industry solutions. China Telecom's independently developed sand control system based on artificial intelligence and big data analysis technology is based on police data and population data. Through intelligent analysis, it assists the police in intelligent police force deployment, deep clue mining, and potential danger detection, thereby improving the efficiency of police work. The system participated in supporting the "Belt and Road" summit forum, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the security work during the 2018 Two Sessions.

Not only that, yesterday, China Telecom was the first to release the "AI Terminal White Paper", and the first batch of centrally purchased artificial intelligence mobile phones were also unveiled. The purpose of the release of the "AI Terminal White Paper" is to provide greater expansion space for the full network terminal to upgrade to AI intelligence. A relevant person in charge of China Telecom said that the full network terminal will integrate China Telecom's network security, big data, and cloud computing AI capabilities, and bring users an intelligent experience in scenarios such as AI photography, AI voice assistant, AI scenario intelligence, and terminal user intelligent management.

China Mobile

Similarly, China Mobile is also actively deploying artificial intelligence. For example, it is deploying the next-generation intelligent network orchestration and management system to create a new intelligent brain for the next-generation network and realize intelligent orchestration, scheduling, control, and operation of cloud networks.

Last year, China Mobile and AT&T jointly launched an open source framework for the next-generation network management and network orchestration. This framework was jointly established by China Mobile's original open source organization and AT&T's own open source organization to promote the entire open source, especially the development of artificial intelligence. It has now become one of the most influential open source communities in the industry.

In addition, at the beginning of this year, China Mobile, together with four other operators around the world, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, DOCOMO, and Orange, jointly announced the establishment of the "Ohrand Alliance". Ohrand means open public access network alliance. The current goal is to create an open, open source, and intelligent alliance not only in the core network but also in the public access network.

From this perspective, China Mobile must vigorously develop artificial intelligence technology in future network development and improve the adaptability of equipment to complex environments in order to better meet the needs of various complex application scenarios of future 5G.

It is understood that after several years of exploration, China Mobile has gradually formed a relatively clear and complete development strategy, and has also fully launched the layout and research and development practice of artificial intelligence. This year, China Mobile Research Institute has established an artificial intelligence and intelligent operation research and development center specifically for artificial intelligence, focusing on intelligent operation and intelligent services, and accelerating the construction of key artificial intelligence technology platforms and capabilities.

At present, the R&D center has carried out application research and innovation of core algorithms in the field of artificial intelligence, and built a basic artificial intelligence platform called the "Jiutian Platform". The platform is oriented to various scenarios such as smart connection, smart decision-making, and smart services. It provides basic services such as deep learning platforms, as well as core capabilities such as intelligent language and facial image recognition, and carries out artificial intelligence applications in the fields of network intelligence, marketing, customer service, etc.

So far, China Mobile has developed and explored a variety of front-line applications such as intelligent marketing robots, intelligent network maintenance, automatic tracing of wolter fault sources, and automatic quality inspection by using the Jiutian platform in many provinces including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, etc., combined with local specific needs.

In addition, China Mobile has independently developed an intelligent customer service system - Yiwa System. Yiwa System has been involved in a total of 170 customer channels on the Daquan network. Currently, China Mobile has more than 200 million interactions with customers per month, and has become one of the most service-intensive response interaction systems in the world.

China Unicom

In the field of artificial intelligence, China Unicom, as the vice president of the China Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, actively participated in the formulation of various standards at home and abroad. But first of all, it is the upgrade of its own network. In terms of intelligent operation, China Unicom promotes the opening of network capabilities and forms an interconnected network operation ecosystem with a hundred flowers blooming. Through intelligent operation tools, it continuously improves operation efficiency and benefits. Based on end-to-end resources, massive alarms and user behavior data, it adopts intelligent and automated technologies to transform the network from operation and maintenance to operation, and the work from passive to active.

After applying new technologies such as artificial intelligence, China Unicom has continuously promoted network optimization, improved the efficiency of the entire operation and customer experience. In terms of customer service, it has cooperated deeply with Baidu, Alibaba and others in artificial intelligence to accelerate the construction of a new generation of intelligent customer capabilities with full business, all media and all cloud.

It is worth mentioning that China Unicom has promoted customer service robots in 10010 to effectively improve customer perception and reduce operating costs. On this basis, it has exported intelligent call center cloud solutions to the entire industry such as finance and insurance.

In addition, artificial intelligence technology has been used to establish anti-harassment and anti-fraud systems. After precise identification and analysis, a series of service capabilities such as a database of bad call numbers have been established to enhance user experience.

In the field of Internet of Things, we have built an advanced connection management cloud platform and intelligent potential platform to provide customers with automated rules, business insights, intelligent business capabilities, and full life cycle services.

Entering the era of artificial intelligence, China Unicom has actively transformed from consumer Internet to industrial Internet, creating intelligent solutions in vertical industry fields and serving the digital transformation of various industries.

In order to accelerate the layout in the field of industrial Internet, China Unicom has established 12 industrial Internet companies. By focusing on key industries and taking cloud, Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other core technologies, it has formed innovative products with differentiated advantages and can be promoted nationwide.

• In the field of government affairs, artificial intelligence technology has been introduced into massive projects, and technologies such as facial recognition, license plate number matching, big data analysis, and comprehensive control have been combined with multi-level centers in cities, counties, and villages to implement prevention and control measures and extend them to the people.
• In the field of ecological and environmental protection, artificial intelligence visual technology is applied to China Unicom's smart river chief and lake chief solutions, realizing intelligent monitoring and services, and providing digital and refined services for government management departments.
• In the medical field, together with partners such as Tencent, we have launched artificial intelligence solutions such as Medical Imaging Cloud for medical application scenarios. Through image recognition and deep learning technology, we can automatically identify patients' CT, MRI and other medical images and lesions, helping doctors improve diagnostic efficiency.
• In the field of education, we have created a cloud-based and open one-stop comprehensive public service platform, Wo Education, which is embedded with artificial intelligence services to provide high-quality resources for teachers and students and solve problems such as unbalanced educational development and single educational resources.