Data Analytics in the Telecom Industry
Features, Development Steps, and Costs
In data analytics since 1989, ScienceSoft engineers custom analytics solutions to help telecom companies benefit from data-driven network performance optimization, customer service personalization, fault and fraud detection, and more.
Telecom data analytics helps companies make strategic and real-time decisions on network management, customer attraction and retention, cost optimization, product and service development, monetization, and more.
Custom telecom analytics solutions are a popular choice among telecoms companies due to the need to adapt reporting processes to the specifics of business operations and unique goals to be achieved with analytics. Such solutions often have advanced features like ML/AI-powered fraud detection and prevention, network load forecasting, and smart recommendations for service personalization.
- Implementation time: 2–6 months for an MVP.
- Costs: $50,000–$3,000,000 depending on the solution's complexity. Fill in our free online calculator, and our data analytics team will return shortly with a ballpark estimate for your case.
- Core integrations for telecom analytics software:
- Business support systems (BSS), e.g., ERP, customer service software, CRM, billing software, a customer portal.
- Operations support systems (OSS), e.g., a network maintenance system.
- External data sources, e.g., social media and review platforms, government websites and databases, geographic information systems (GIS).
77% of Telecom Leaders Expect Data and AI to Boost Business Efficiency by 25% Over the Next Two Years
These figures are from the global survey of senior data and technology executives by MIT Technology Review Insights. According to the same report, 47% of the telecoms industry respondents expect their company’s spending on data and AI to rise by up to 25% over the next year, while 53% expect the increase to be even higher. The major goals to be achieved with data and AI include the following:
- Operational cost reduction.
- Customer experience enhancement.
- Identification of monetization opportunities.
In-Demand Telecom Data Analytics Features
Core Integrations for Data Analytics in the Telecom Industry
- Business support systems (ERP, HR software, accounting software, CRM, billing software, customer-facing apps) — to enable financial modeling and forecasting; to get insights into cost optimization; to support informed workforce planning, to improve sales, marketing, and customer retention strategies and enable service personalization; to support offering development and evolution.
- Network management system — to timely detect network issues and identify their root causes; to forecast network load and maintenance needs; to identify service and network usage patterns and adjust services accordingly; to serve data for fraud detection mechanisms.
- Customer service software — to optimize support service management.
- External data sources (e.g., social media and review platforms, government websites and databases, GIS) — to get insights into customer sentiment; to receive timely updates on regulatory changes; to enable data visualization and analysis in a spatial context.
Key Development Steps for Telecom Analytics
Telecom analytics development is needed when a telecom company requires case-specific software features or a combination of capabilities that are not offered by OOTB solutions. Custom analytics can also be easily integrated with legacy or custom-built software. Relying on 19 years of experience in custom telecom software development, ScienceSoft provides a brief overview of steps to build an analytics solution for telecommunications.
1.
Business analysis and requirement engineering
At this stage, business analysts conduct Q&A sessions and workshops with the company’s stakeholders and SMEs to define project objectives. The analysts also map out the user roles and explore data- and operations-related specifics of the company (e.g., the software in use, the network performance data collection and customer onboarding processes). The gathered details are then used to document functional and non-functional solution requirements.
During this stage, ScienceSoft’s consultants recommend to pay special attention to compliance regulations for the solution-to-be, such as GDPR, CCPA, FCC, PCI DSS, and NIS Directive.
2.
Technical design
The solution architect decides on analytics system components and optimal integrations. The expert compares the available analytics techs and services and chooses the ones that can satisfy scalability, availability, latency, and other tech requirements at the optimal cost-to-benefit ratio.
For example, if you need to analyze network performance in order to detect issues (e.g., packet loss, latency spikes), it may be viable to use big data techs like Apache Kafka or Apache Flink as they can enable low-latency data processing and help detect problems as they occur. However, if the primary focus of network analytics is to identify network usage patterns like bandwidth consumption and peak usage times, then the best choice is a data warehouse that can store large-volume traffic data for historical analysis (e.g., Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery).
3.
Data model development
At this step, data engineers and data scientists conceptualize the data model. They can develop one from scratch or use the existing one as a basis (e.g., a data model from operational databases of a billing system). The experts define major entities and their attributes and establish the relationships between these entities. For example, a network device can be an entity and have attributes like device ID, location, and status and can be related to other entities (e.g., a user, a certain network traffic pattern). The developed concept is used to build a schema for a database management system (DBMS) that arranges all entities and their characteristics in a pattern meaningful for analytics querying and reporting.
4.
UX/UI design
UX/UI designers build workflows and dashboard UIs relevant to the specifics of user roles defined in the requirements. For example, network operators may receive real-time alerts on suspicious traffic spikes or outages, so the dashboard should have elements for quick access to issue-specific details (e.g., summary of incident info, estimated resolution time) right from the notification. C-levels, on the other hand, are likely to benefit from static interfaces that present a 360-degree overview of the company's performance.
In similar projects at ScienceSoft, we often audit the client’s existing software and transfer familiar buttons, widgets, and colors to the new solution. Such an approach to UI design helps promote user adoption and significantly shortens the learning curve.
5.
Development, testing, and QA
To optimize development time and costs, developers can use ready-made third-party components (e.g., APIs for data integration, data orchestration tools), opt for feasible QA automation, and implement DevOps practices. According to our experience, such an approach helps cut development costs by up to 78%. ScienceSoft often conducts testing in parallel with development, which helps minimize defects in production and detect and fix issues before they cause significant problems.
The final steps include user training sessions, solution performance monitoring, and bug fixing (in case some are detected after deployment).
What makes ScienceSoft different
We achieve project success no matter what
ScienceSoft does not pass mere project administration off as project management, which, unfortunately, often happens on the market. We practice real project management, achieving project success for our clients no matter what.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop an Analytics Solution for Telecoms?
The cost of developing a telecoms analytics solution may vary from $50,000 to $3,000,000. The major cost factors include the range of business operations to be analyzed (e.g., network monitoring and customer retention analytics will require dedicated data sources and features) and the complexity of analytics capabilities.
|
Basic solution |
Solution of medium complexity |
Advanced solution |
---|---|---|---|
The number of business areas to be analyzed E.g., network management, customer management, financial management
|
2 |
2–5 |
6+ |
Geographic reach. Possible location-specific cost factors include the need to enable compliance with different regulations and the need to account for different customer preferences and cultural specifics across regions.
|
Companies that operate in a small region or withing a single country, e.g., local ISPs, regional mobile operators. |
Companies that operate across one country or several countries with similar jurisdictions. |
Companies that operate across different countries and continents, e.g., multinational mobile operators. |
Integration complexity. Different data sources may introduce varying data formats and require custom APIs, especially for legacy systems.
|
Integrates with 1–2 systems (e.g., ERP, billing software). |
Integrates with up to 7 data sources, including external sources like social media platforms and government databases. |
Integrates with an unlimited number of systems, including customer-facing apps and same-type systems (e.g., network monitoring systems used by different geographic divisions). |
Data complexity
|
Structured data. |
Structured and semi-structured data (e.g., JSON, GeoJSON, KML files). |
Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data (e.g., Syslog, DOCX, PDF, JPG, JPEG, MP3, MP4, HTML files). |
Data processing frequency
|
Batch (e.g., every 24 hours). |
Batch and real-time. |
Batch and real-time. |
Complexity of analytics
|
KPI calculation, data segmentation, rule-based forecasting (e.g., predicting network load based on historical usage data for a certain time period). |
ML/AI-powered forecasting based on historical and real-time data (e.g., predicting service demand based on user behavior and seasonal trends). |
|
Reporting and visualization
|
Scheduled and ad hoc reports creation via market-available tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker. |
Scheduled and ad hoc reports creation via market-available tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker. |
|
Costs
|
$50,000–$100,000 |
$200,000–$1,000,000 |
$1,000,000–$3,000,000 |
See How ScienceSoft’s Telecom Clients Benefited from Data Analytics
Data Analytics Services
Engineering IT solutions for telecoms since 2005 and enterprise analytics software since 1989, ScienceSoft is equipped to provide full-cycle analytics consulting and software development services to telecom businesses. Holding ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications, we can guarantee high software quality and complete security of your data.