Converge ICT Solutions Inc., a front-runner in the Philippine internet and technology solutions industry, is spearheading the transformation of network operations management with its new "zero-touch" network operations center. The company is making strides in integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and automation into its network, allowing intuitive, automatic responses to data signals with minimal human involvement.

"Now that we have the broadest fiber to the home network in the country, we want to install the best technology into the network that will make it an autonomous and self-healing network - capable of observing, monitoring, and detecting faults automatically. This ensures that service interruptions to our customers are significantly reduced, and outages are quickly resolved, a 180-degree turnaround from our manual processes," said Converge Chief Network Transformation Officer Paulo Martin Santos.

Converge Chief Network Transformation Officer Paulo Martin Santos.

The Network Intelligence and Automation Platform (NIAP) is central to this transformative initiative. NIAP is a platform created by Converge to bring much-needed intelligence and automation into network operations, providing a comprehensive automated solution covering every aspect of the operational life cycle, from monitoring to maintenance and resolution.

According to Santos, "Take, for example, the day-to-day network maintenance: when a trouble event occurs in the network - for example, a fiber link is down - a deluge of alarms, in the thousands, come into the system. In the past, since the equipment used by Network Operations came from different vendors, there was no single view of the alarms. With the new solution, alarms are centralized in one dashboard, offering ease and convenience to engineers." Through AI, NIAP can analyze trouble events, reduce alarm volumes, and identify the source of the alarms. Once the source is pinpointed, the system automatically creates a trouble ticket and updates it accordingly with any new information about the incident.

Additionally, NIAP incorporates a cognitive module that turns massive data events into understandable incident patterns and root causes. This enables the running of data-driven automation flows and predictive analyses and facilitates learning from past events.

NIAP has significantly boosted operational efficiency by enabling engineers to resolve issues with a single click, earning the network the description of a 'self-healing' network. For customer-facing departments, NIAP promptly provides information about the number of subscribers affected during service interruptions and their respective locations.

Jeff Briones, the Network Transformation project lead, mentioned, "With our one-click diagnosis tool, we automate the diagnostic process and provide possible root causes for our clients, including high CPU usage, memory issues, temperature problems, and low optical power."

NIAP's efficiencies extend to field operations as well. Through the platform, work orders are generated, trouble tickets are assigned to available engineers, and through an accompanying mobile application, the engineers' locations and the status of the issue are updated in real-time.

Ever since integrating AI technology into Converge's operations, there has been a substantial decrease in the resolution time of service issues. One of their clients, Landbank of the Philippines, expressed appreciation for the improved resolution time and the reduced downtime.

The implementation of the platform has already brought about improvements in the operating metrics. The ratio of service-affecting tickets to total network tickets fell by almost 50% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Furthermore, the mean time to escalate for backbone issues has been reduced by 62% — from an hour to about 25 minutes.

Jeff Briones added, "These recent rollouts are just a glimpse of what we have planned for the upcoming quarters. Our goal is to continuously transform the predominantly human-operated O&M into an intelligent operation through collaboration between humans and AI machines."

Santos commented on the implementation: "With this new and intelligent operating model driven by AI, the processing time of network faults and the cost of operations, as well as human errors, can be effectively controlled."

Santos further shared the company's future ambitions of using AI to provide proactive advisory services to their customers. He emphasized, "In the future, we look forward to using AI to provide proactive advisory services to our customers. This will definitely give our customers a better experience which has always been our top goal."

Santos highlighted Converge's continual efforts as an ICT company to leverage technology to improve the daily experiences of its customers, with a particular emphasis on reliability. He added, "While there are events beyond our control that impact our infrastructure, such as environmental calamities, we must ensure that our services are resilient and affected minimally in the face of these disturbances."

Converge's progressive strides in incorporating AI and automation in their network operations symbolize a new era in the ICT industry, where technology and human operation work together to deliver superior, efficient, and reliable customer service.

For more information about Converge and its innovative technologies, visit www.convergeict.com.