Airtel’s journey to a data-driven operating model

Airtel and Ericsson have a long-standing technology and services partnership that has lasted for 25 years, spanning 2G, 3G, 4G provision and more recently with 5G. In 2020 Airtel renewed their Pan India Managed Services partnership with Ericsson, which includes managing Airtel’s Network Operations Center and field maintenance activities across India. It meant implementing a new data driven operating model and capabilities through Ericsson Operations Engine (EOE) and Ericsson’s network design and optimization solution, Cognitive Software to address Airtel’s strategic ambitions and improve customer experience. 

India is one of the most hypercompetitive and challenging mobile markets across the globe. Competing on price here has little strategic value simply because the ARPU is about two US dollars a month, and with churn rates at 2 percent, competitive differentiation across India is largely focused on customer experience and customer care. Airtel is India’s second largest service provider with appx over 323 million mobile subscribers (62.8 percent mobile broadband and 31.2 percent 2G subscribers) as of December 2021. 

Airtel and Ericsson’s collaboration had the objective to ensure that customer complaints and network performance would be tracked as complexity and scale of Airtel’s networks operations increased by deploying more than 300 automation rules through AI, machine learning, automation, and data analytics-based capabilities.

We worked with Airtel on their key challenges with the deployment of the Ericsson Operations Engine, a data-driven technology-operations solution using AI, automation, and data analytics that are fully equipped to handle the growing complexity and scale of Airtel’s operations. Ericsson Operations Engine is multivendor and technology agnostic and delivers end-to-end customer-centric operations, network design and optimization, and enhanced network management and cloud and IT capabilities.

The three building blocks of Airtel’s new operations model approach were:  

• A service-centric business model based on business outcomes and focusing on enhanced customer experience. 
• End-to-end capabilities delivering business outcomes through AI-based design, planning and optimization, data-drive operations, dynamic deployment, applications development, and collaborative innovation. 
• Components including best in class tools and processes that would leverage expertise and investments in the service provider domain. 

Furthermore, the Airtel network has also benefitted from Ericsson’s Cognitive Software, which is an industry-leading network design and optimization solution that enables pro-active network optimization. Ericsson has deployed the solution’s Performance Diagnostics Optimization module in eight circles (India is divided into 22 license areas or circles) of the operator. The performance diagnostics module is composed of RAN Troubleshooting, Cell Issue Classifier (CIC), UL Interference Issue Classifier (UIC) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA). The main objective of the Cell Issue Classifier (CIC) and UL Interference Classifier (UIC) feature is to leverage on an automatic way to discover and classify problems in the network. 

By deploying Ericsson Operations Engine capabilities, Airtel is today seeing tangible benefits. 

What Ericsson brought to the Airtel network 

• Lowest TCO 
• Improved customer experience 
• New revenue streams 
• Efficient transformation 
• Trusted and secure business 

From an efficiency perspective, Airtel has implemented more than 300 automation rules and AI use cases to improve service quality that are already providing correlations, which otherwise would not be seen. 

Ericsson Operations Engine has revolutionized Airtel’s service uptime and service fulfillment metrics, doubling the amount of automation in its network, with 69 percent fully automated alarms, reducing the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) by 29 percent, and network unavailability by 47 percent. Ultimately, the deployment of Ericsson Operations Engine is responsible for a 26 percent improvement in the customer experience. 

The transformation journey continues for Airtel, with strategic ambitions now heading towards fully automated, predictive operations.

As part of the data-driven operating model enabled by the Ericsson Operations Engine, Airtel has implemented new initiatives like OMT (Own My Tower), Business Interlock (Ericsson zonal Field Operations-Airtel Zonal Business) and Zero Touch approach with GPL (Golden Parameters List) Standardization. Closed-loop has been introduced for GPL Parameters.  Own My Tower is an initiative to make the Ericsson Field Management Engineer – who is now designated Customer Experience Manager – take complete ownership of the physical parameters of towers under his responsibility. Business Interlock means the Ericsson Customer Experience Manager (supported by Ericsson Cluster Technical Leads) works in close alignment with Airtel Territory Sales Manager or Zonal Business Managers to address customer experience or customer acquisition-related issues Airtel may raise. 

This collaboration to achieve Airtel’s data-driven transformation journey, based on trust and transparency has led to industry recognition. It’s a real testament to the long-lasting relation between Ericsson and Airtel.

In June 2021 Airtel and Ericsson were nominated as finalists in TM Forum’s Excellence Awards 2021 under the autonomous operations category. In October 2021 Ericsson and Airtel won the ‘Best Network Transformation Initiative’ category at the World Communication Awards 2021.  

Additionally, in November 2021 Ericsson won the 2021 Glotel Award for the Automation Initiative of the Year for empowering Airtel’s automation journey.