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Leveraging your digital twin
Look at the mirror and foresee the future of telecommunications, by Claus
Nielsen, Vice President of Marketing at Neural Technologies
The adoption of 5G will unleash
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the full potential of augmented
and virtual reality, Smart
Cities and the Internet of Things
(IoT); presenting opportunities for
Communications Service Providers
(CSPs) to strengthen current revenue
sources or create entirely new revenue
streams. Consumers continue to
display an insatiable appetite for data
and with the consumption of data
hungry applications securing a place
in consumers’ daily lives, this is set
to continue exponentially into the
future.
Communications Service Providers
currently face ever-increasing
challenges of leveraging 5G networks
and offering customers new types of
services. To overcome this challenge,
new digital technologies are required
to automate complex business
processes to provide customers with
the new personalised service they have
come to expect in a fast-evolving,
digital world.
By 2025 Communications Service
Providers should already be leveraging
5G networks to offer new types of
services to various customer segments.
The challenges of this endeavour
will lie in the ability to scale telco
platforms, automate lifecycle
management of network slices and
incorporate predictive demand and
maintenance - all while ensuring
operational efficiency and a behind
the scenes workforce to support the
optimisation of the platform.
Using automation
To address these challenges, an
Analytical Data Model (AI Data
Model) and Machine Learning (ML)
were used to develop the Digital
Twins technology and tested as part
of the TM Forum Digital Twins
catalyst project.
The technology serves as a virtual
representation of a real-world entity
or system which acts as a mirror to
provide a means to simulate, predict
and forecast behaviour in the digital
world. As part of the catalyst project,
the Digital Twins technology was
applied to various use cases such
as a network, people, organisations
and processes to determine their
effectiveness in being applied to the
telecoms industry in order to address
the above 2025 challenges.
For the Digital Twins technology
to be possible, a common data model
is essential. All data needs to be
classified and structured in the same
way for the digital technology to
perform. Digital Integration is the
first step to making this possible.
One example of a Digital Twin is
that of a customer. Such Digital Twin
of a customer will be represented
in a heatmap with icons helping
to visualise aspects of their digital
lifestyle, such as whether they spend a
lot of time gaming, have high mobile
usage and are physically inactive.
This twin can then be used by the
Author details
Claus Nielsen is Vice
President of Marketing at
Neural Technologies
/www.newelectronics.co.uk
/www.digikey.co.uk