Your AI Journey: Finding the Use Cases That Matter
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Blog
26 January 2026
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Network quality is emerging as a key differentiator for telecom monetization. Discover how operators can turn quality into advantage. Learn more here
Blog
26 January, 2026
Author
Today’s network users take it for granted that they will experience a certain level of network quality. This can be seen through the frustration experienced when services (or connectivity) don’t deliver the expected experience – whether it’s because streaming is buffered, or because calls can’t be made, or, in more extreme cases, if alarms from remote IoT devices can’t be received in the appropriate timeframes.
Network Quality. It’s Taken as Given.
Put simply, quality is an expectation. It’s one well-recognized by MNOs. And, it’s also long been a goal of MNOs to offer services that are differentiated by network quality. Some pioneers sought to offer enhanced performance for gaming users by offering upgrades to standard packages. Others, for better streaming – with options for in-service upgrades during live events.
However, few of these offers endured – they hit the headlines then, well, they hit the buffers. But as service innovation has leaped ahead, an increasingly interesting array of opportunities has emerged.
The Ability to Deliver Differentiated Services Is Spreading - Fast
That’s because many MNOs now have the capabilities to deliver highly differentiated services, thanks to their 5G SA launches. The GSA reports that 93 operators have launched (wholly or in part) 5G Standalone networks – providing a solid foundation for future innovation.
As such, perhaps it’s time to revisit how Network Quality can be used as both a differentiator and to drive monetization.
Differentiated Services with Slicing
With 5G SA, operators can deliver a range of differentiated slices and services that use those slices. The differentiation can be used to meet the needs of services and applications across multiple sectors – industrial use cases, manufacturing, ports, distribution and much more.
For each such service, there will be a clear definition of the expected performance requirements, and this will be central to the SLAs and service guarantees in place. And it’s important to remember that quality is also a broad term. Quality for a video call or live stream is different from the quality required to support wireless operation of a drone or tower crane. As such, quality depends on the objectives of the service as well as the expectation of the user.
All of which is well understood. Operators are already launching specialized and customized services for their business and consumer partners alike, creating differentiated portfolios. However, there’s a catch.
If you are to create, deliver and sell a service that offers a particular level of performance or experience, then you need to actually do so – and you need to be able to measure how you are performing, so you can assure such services, dynamically and in real-time.
Defining and Delivering Differentiated Performance
We already have classical ways to measure network quality. The practice and discipline are mature – and it largely depends on capturing network indicators with probes and other sources, as you will know. This classical approach continues to be fundamental, with the ITU and others helping to define best practice in terms of the data that needs to be obtained.
But if you are to sell experiences based on quality, for services that have new demands, performance criteria or user expectations, then this approach is no longer sufficient. Instead, you need a broader approach, because quality is both a measurable outcome and a perception.
We need to take the most robust indicators from different sources and combine these to obtain the most comprehensive picture possible. These include:
- Performance Management data (PM)
- Fault Management data (FM)
- Configuration data
- Probe data (control and user plane) and network KPIs
But that’s not all. Customers have also discovered how to vent their disappointments regarding perceived quality, via social channels – or, to run their own investigations with solutions that test the connectivity available, such as Ookla. While perception is, well, subject to the eyes of the beholder, third-party speed test applications empower citizen action and provide objective data that helps our industry benchmark performance.
Extending the Range of Data Inputs – and Augmenting with AI
So, we also need to harness this data to compliment other sources. If an operator sells and a user buys a service with specific uplink demands, not only will they check it, but you can also do the same to correlate external measurements with those that are captured internally, providing checks between what you measure in your own network and what the user experiences in reality.
Similarly, businesses will also verify that the demanding applications they buy deliver the required performance. There is an alignment issue here, though, because the KPIs that matter to, say, a factory operator, a port, or a local authority that has thousands of smart streetlights will be different from the network KPIs that an operator tracks and assures.
These need to be mapped to the metrics that matter to the customer or user of the service – so the availability of KPIs becomes both part of the SLA that’s delivered as well as a monetization opportunity for any integrators involved in the value chain.
Evaluate and Automate CX Management
Similarly, new methods for evaluating customer experience – and automating its management are emerging. For example, ITU-T M.3389 “provides the requirements for artificial intelligence (AI)-based customer experience management of telecom services”.
The new recommendation also details an end-to-end process, covering different stems – from data acquisition to storage and processing, and optimization. The data storage consideration means that, ultimately, this data could be used by operators with their business partners and even end-customers to effectively enhance and even monetize experience management.
In other words, network quality, as captured through a much wider range of metrics and data points can be used both as a differentiator and as the guarantee to support new kinds of services and models.
Realizing Network Quality as a Differentiator
Operators have long sought to build reputations for quality. Many have also wanted to launch services with differentiated performance levels. Recent innovations and the growing adoption of 5G SA enable them to design, deliver and manage services with differentiated performance aspects, often tailored to the needs of specific customers.
At the same time, the predominant approach to managing network quality via capturing real-time probe data and network KPIs is not sufficient to cater for new customer expectations and demands. It needs to be augmented – not only by adding PM, FM and other data held in or generated by network entities, but also by incorporating new sources of data — like third-party speed tests, social media sentiments and the like — as well as by applying AI to process the expanded dataset and to automate actions and responses to observed conditions.
Network Quality Management Boosted with AI
Clearly, this, particularly the application of AI to network quality management, is a developing field. However, if operators seek to differentiate on quality and to really deliver to new kinds of SLA guarantees and benchmarks, then the tools to enable them to do to so are already taking shape.
And, with those tools, then differentiation can be monetized. This can be achieved both by boosting reputation among subscribers, so touching on classical metrics like churn reduction and net subscriber additions, while also supporting new monetization through delivering new kinds of services and supporting business partners with the data they need to manage new offers.
This elevated approach to quality can be applied to existing services today while also providing the foundation of new services as part of an evolving portfolio as operators seek to capitalize on newer investments in 5G SA and other network evolution steps. By capturing and processing all relevant data, differentiation can be both supported and monetized – realizing the long-held ambition of using Network Quality as a differentiating characteristic.
This is the fourth and last article in our blog series about Network Assurance.
Read the previous posts:
How Can Data Enhance Coverage Optimization and Extension for Mobile Network Operators?
Location and User Validation Through Enriched Data Acquisition and Analytics
