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Enhance the speed, precision and effectiveness of human efforts with AI in telecom and media

AI in telecom and media

Discover how AI, including generative AI and AI agents, can help you make faster, smarter business decisions so you stay competitive. Enhance your data processing capabilities to boost productivity, optimize network investments and increase profitability, all while effectively managing risks to ensure your company's resilience. Drive growth by improving customer engagement, reducing churn, increasing ad sales and enabling service innovation.

Trusted by:

  • Vodafone logo
  • Alliant logo
  • Telefonica logo
  • REA Group logo
  • 1&1 logo
  • itvX logo

AI use cases for telecom and media

Empower your team to better understand your customers, create highly personalized content and simplify your communications processes. From increasing operational efficiency to fighting fraud to improving customer retention, our AI technology solutions solve your business challenges and automate processes – so your team can be more productive.

Optimize telecom network investments

Automate traffic forecasting and ROI analysis, making your rollout investments more accurate and optimized. With SAS, you can predict and refine capacity planning at a detailed level using key traffic KPIs. By combining your engineers' expertise with machine learning algorithms, we make optimizing network investments not only quicker and easier, but also more reliable, giving you trustworthy insights for fact-based decision making.

The value of this solution:

  • Cost savings. Customers have seen payback in as little as seven months, with net benefits estimated at up to $5.2 million.
  • Operational efficiency. Customers have reduced network rollout time by 40% compared to traditional design methods and cut the forecasting process by up to 90% compared to using Excel.
  • Highly accurate forecasting. Customers have increased forecast accuracy by an average of 25% compared to their current radio-planning tools.

AI techniques used in this solution:

  • Machine learning automatically identifies cells in the network in need of network enhancements.
  • Forecasting enables you to quickly and reliably predict outcomes and plan better for the future by automating large-scale time series analyses and hierarchical forecasts.
  • Digital twins can be leveraged to safely explore the results of different investment scenarios.

How AI helps:

  • Optimize CapEx by only rolling out network quality enhancements when they're actually needed.
  • Avoid unnecessary network capacity investments by understanding when traffic spikes are anomalies and when they're not.
  • Predict necessary upgrades so you can plan for multiple site visits on the same day, saving time and reducing OpEx.

The AI models provide:

  • Automated, highly accurate mobile traffic forecasting, access-network traffic forecasting, and ROI analysis of valuable customer usage and movements.
  • Automatic identification of areas that need network enhancements, including optimizing latency and bandwidth for critical workloads.

A telecom provider in Ecuador improved forecast accuracy by 25% (avg.) over radio-planning tools and reduced production time by 90%.

Proactively fight telecom fraud

Predict fraud and identify fraudster network rings based on changes and inconsistencies in customer behavior patterns using adaptive machine learning, reinforcement learning and social link analytics. Identify fraudulent transactions in real time and reduce false positives to protect revenue and the customer experience.

The value of this solution:

  • Increased revenue. Customers have reduced bad debt by more than 25%.
  • Fraud detection and prevention. Customers have significantly reduced fraud by more than 75%.
  • Risk mitigation.
  • Customer satisfaction.

AI techniques used in this solution:

Adaptive machine learning predicts fraud based on changes and inconsistencies in customer behavior patterns and provides automated model building and real-time risk assessments.

How AI helps:

  • Identify fraud in real time to reduce revenue loss.
  • Stop first-party, third-party and synthetic ID fraud before fraudsters can open new accounts.
  • Mitigate payment fraud risk without impacting the customer experience.

The AI models provide:

  • Identification of emerging threats and automatic suggestions of new rules and scenarios in real time for the most accurate transaction risk assessment.
  • Detection of changing population behaviors via automated model building so that algorithms get smarter and deliver more accurate results.
  • Better fraud detection by confirming the most effective machine learning algorithms through champion-challenger evaluations, simulations and benefit estimations.

An Australian telecom provider reduced fraud by more than 70% and bad debt by more than 50%.

Agent: Improve your call center productivity

Manage your call center schedule, forecast incoming calls, streamline complaints processes and automate conversation transcript analysis. Use insights from transcripts and even social media to improve communication and prevent customer churn. Decrease complaint handling time and costs while increasing the volume handled. Improve resource planning to boost productivity. AI and GenAI help you capitalize on large language models (LLMs) to cut costs and create niche use case integrations.

The value of this solution:

  • Cost savings. Customers have saved up to 15%.
  • Operational efficiency. Customers have reduced complaint handling time by up to 40% and increased the volume of complaints handled by up to 20%.
  • Better customer experience and lower churn.
  • Greater productivity.

AI techniques used in this solution:

  • Machine learning, optimization and natural language processing enable you to create highly accurate forecasts, analyze communication, make operational improvements and improve customer service.
  • LLMs help you understand and update model metadata. Analytical capabilities like forecasting, machine learning and deep learning can be easily integrated with LLMs and GenAI in business processes, delivering real value through automation and ease of use.
  • Use AI agents to support and/or partially replace support call-center personnel with fast, real-time, personalized customer insights and actions.

How AI helps:

  • Create a more consistent customer experience with increased personalization.
  • Upskill employees faster.
  • Reduce complaint handling time and associated costs.
  • Increase call center productivity and efficiency.
  • Lower overhead costs by needing fewer call center staff.
  • Prepare schedules faster, accommodate ad hoc changes and generate a new schedule quickly and accurately.
  • Enable better cooperation with employees and adapt quickly to employees' flexible scheduling needs.
  • Ensure the best possible KPIs.
  • Improve sales by including Next-best offer/next best action (NBO/NBA) along with anti-churn tasks.

The AI models provide:

  • Improved resources and skill sets based on a number of call-center queues, opening hours, available shifts and SLAs to fulfill.
  • The ability to meet customer SLAs.
  • Automation and efficiencies.
  • Accelerated schedule preparation.
  • Quick and accurate rescheduling.
  • Improved KPIs (SLAs are kept).

Digitize documents and extract their information

Unlock valuable insights from physical documents for better decision making and analytics, even from blurry documents, forms with checkboxes or handwritten papers. Intelligent document processing quickly structures and extracts information from paper files – like NPS feedback forms and site documentation – delivering greater accuracy.

The value of this solution:

  • Greater productivity.
  • Maximized operational efficiency.
  • Reduced complexity.

AI techniques used in this solution:

Computer vision models, machine learning models, natural language processing and text analytics decipher and extract information from paper documents. Combining text analytics, computer vision and optical character recognition methods provides greater value than any individual technique.

How AI helps:

  • Significantly reduce the hours required for staff to research and find information.
  • Expand the amount of useful information available for insights.
  • Score RFPs on the predicted likelihood to close based on the attributes extracted from the documents.
  • Modernize and improve customer feedback collection so you can use all feedback instead of just a sampling.
  • Modernize and accelerate the agreement- and contract-handling process.
  • Modernize claims filing and information systems.

The AI models provide:

  • Automate the extraction of key information from images or documents into a structured format for better analytics and decision making.
  • Supplementation of any current ocular character recognition/robotic process automation (OCR/RPA) processes to significantly improve the accuracy and quality of the information extraction.
  • The ability to search extracted data and use that data for investigations, measurements or feeding existing processes.
  • Analysis of vast quantities of unlabeled agency formats to identify common instructions templates.

Turn customer experience into customer engagement

Gain a 360-degree view of your customers by integrating data from all sources in real time. This enables quick decisions that enhance engagement. Break down data silos by using a unified analytics platform that incorporates transactional systems, social media and IoT devices. Interactive dashboards visualize customer journeys and highlight touchpoints across all channels. Activate your unified customer data with AI-powered journey orchestration to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time and through the right channel.

The value of this solution:

  • Greater customer engagement, including higher conversion rates.
  • Increased revenue and productivity. Spend less time and effort to create and execute more effective marketing campaigns.
  • Faster decision making. Intelligent decisioning has helped customers grow their share by 5% during a market contraction.
  • Maximized agility.

AI techniques used in this solution:

  • Simultaneously apply multiple machine learning algorithms, including neural networks, support vector machines, gradient boosting and random forests, to the same data set to transform modeling operations.
  • ​Natural language processing interprets unstructured customer feedback.

How AI helps:

  • Extract actionable insights from massive volumes of business and customer data.
  • Uncover associations contained in the data ​so you can compile distinct journeys.
  • Enable real-time decisions by analyzing data in motion and take immediate action on customer behavior as it happens.
  • Optimize engagement with analytics that determine the next-best action for each customer interaction.
  • Improve decision quality and increase your competitive advantage by incorporating AI models from a common repository created in your preferred language.
  • Gain assistance with email content creation and audience building.
  • Automate documentation with an AI copilot.

The AI models provide: 

  • Sophisticated A/B/n testing that allows for multiarmed bandit experiments to continuously optimize customer interactions.
  • Predictive, real-time capabilities that let you forecast customer behavior and trigger immediate responses.
  • A visual interface that enables self-service data preparation so users across the business can analyze data.
  • Interpretation of unstructured customer feedback.

Improve insights and decisions with synthetic data

Empower marketers with generated synthetic data to complete data that reflects the diversity of their customer base, enabling them to understand customer behaviors without infringing on privacy or introducing bias.

The value of this solution:

  • Increased revenue and market share.
  • Accelerated innovation.
  • Greater productivity.
  • Maximized operational efficiency.

AI techniques used in this solution:

Synthetic data is a cost-effective way to fill data gaps, such as those in specific customer subsegments or irregular network issues. It also safeguards sensitive private and proprietary information. You can use synthetic data to train and test models, which helps reduce data access time while maintaining model accuracy and keeping it up-to-date.

How AI helps:

  • Save money on the high costs of data collection.
  • Improve precision in predictions, reducing errors in risk assessment while retaining explainability for decisions.
  • Streamline analytics, accelerating data processing and decision making.
  • Create more effective models with improved data quality.
  • Optimize production processes for greater efficiency and productivity.
  • Increase data monetization safely, avoiding legal risk.

The AI models provide:

  • Trustworthy, simplified data augmentation and generation.
  • More complete data that can make the data set more useful.
  • Better protection of sensitive data.

Agent: Hyperpersonalize ads at scale

Put the power of personalized advertising in your brand’s hands. This ad delivery solution works in your ecosystem and enables effective ad personalization based on your marketing and advertising data.

The value of this solution:

  • Better customer experience. Customers have increased program viewership by 80% in just four years.
  • Increased revenue. Customers have increased ad revenue by 10%.
  • Scalability. Customers have managed 1,500 personalized campaigns monthly and scaled from serving 36 billion to 60 billion ads per year.
  • Regulatory compliance maintained.

AI techniques used in this solution:

  • Machine learning enables you to manage customers, business rules and analytics in a converged solution.
  • AI agents help deliver real-time customer insights and enable you to automate actions.

How AI helps:

  • Make ad content decisions based on real-time testing and live results.
  • Create a positive feedback loop that encourages iteration and improvement through personalized advertising.
  • Improve advertising efficiencies by streamlining the ad-serving process, reducing the need for manual data movement.
  • Utilize the zero-, first- and second-party data and audience information you need without the cost and risk associated with data movement and duplication.
  • Increase ad personalization and targeted ad precision with information on customer behaviors, interests and demographics that reside outside of traditional advertising solutions.
  • Create more robust audiences using data from multiple platforms, resulting in better performance and ROI.
  • Maintain control over your advertising delivery engine so you can understand which data and analytical models you're using to deliver personalized advertising on your owned and operated channels.

The AI models provide:

  • Automation of delivery, user data flows and campaign optimization.
  • A deep understanding of viewer preferences for highly personalized campaigns.
  • Highly targeted, real-time ad decisioning on an immense scale.

Optimize ad pricing with highly-accurate demand and inventory forecasting

Grow your business by improving forecasting and optimizing ad inventory and pricing. Gain automated rate card creation and campaign-specific dynamic pricing recommendations. Analyze cross-platform audience data to identify the target audience for accurate forecasts, seasonality, past performance, channel and more. Provide ad buyers with clear, tangible ROI.

The value of this solution:

  • Increased revenue.
  • Highly accurate forecasting.
  • Greater productivity.
  • Competitive advantages.

AI techniques used in this solution:

Machine learning enables reliable forecasting faster and explores more alternative scenarios to provide optimization strategies for inventory and pricing.

How AI helps:

  • Identify your target audience so you can achieve key attention metrics and provide ad buyers with clear ROI.
  • Quickly and automatically produce large numbers of reliable forecasts, including large-scale time series analyses and hierarchical forecasts.
  • Optimization enables you to consider more alternative pricing scenarios and determine the right ad price to accomplish revenue and inventory sales goals.

The AI models provide:

  • Fast, automated and reliable forecasting for accurate information and increased productivity.
  • The ability to optimize pricing and inventory.

A global media company had inaccurate operational and corporate forecasts; it now accurately forecasts audiences, supporting ad sellout and pricing.

Improve productivity and performance with SAS AI

… We now have ample computing power to process gigantic data sets much faster … we’re running 10 times faster, so we can segment our entire universe to create better audiences. SAS helps Alliant deliver models in a quarter of the time of traditional workflows and shorten processing times by 85%." Malcolm Houtz Senior Vice President of Data Science Alliant

Explore other telecom and media use cases by AI solution

AI Agents

Improve efficiency, decision making and costs by using AI to autonomously perform complex tasks and make informed decisions.

  • Predictive maintenance and operational efficiency.
  • Personalized customer experiences at scale.
  • Improved business decisions.

Quantum AI

Revolutionize your business with unprecedented computational power and efficiency to solve complex problems.

  • Real-time analysis of vast data sets.
  • Optimized network performance.
  • Inventory management and operational costs improvement.

AI Modeling

Easily create programs that allow computers to predict outcomes and complete tasks for greater productivity and innovation.

  • Document analysis.
  • Customer experience enhancement.
  • Faster, more accurate segmentation.

GenAI

Generate results and synthetic data for improved productivity, operations, customer satisfaction, services and privacy.

  • Synthetic data creation.
  • Intelligent-agent building.
  • LLM performance and result improvements.
  • AI assistants for customer agents.
  • Enhanced digital personalization.
  • Fraud insights and alerts.

Digital Twins

Navigate uncertainty – test and optimize performance or innovations with digital replicas of complex, real-world systems.

  • Predictive maintenance. 
  • Capacity planning.
  • Workflow optimization.
  • Quality and safety management.

AI Ethics

Maintain privacy, inclusion, equity, transparency and protection of individual rights when using AI.

  • Safe, efficient maintenance issue resolution.
  • HR support.
  • AI and data governance support.
  • Regulation compliance support.

The value of AI solutions from SAS

  • TIM, the largest telecom provider in Italy, uses SAS Viya to optimize credit operations and support real-time decision making in a complex regulatory environment.

  • 36 billion

    ITV achieved highly targeted, real-time ad decisioning at scale. The company went from serving 36 billion to 60 billion ad impressions per year into streaming platforms.

  • 30%

    Vodafone uses automation from SAS to improve its market position, reducing customer churn by 30% while increasing incremental revenue by 2%.

  • 1,500

    REA Group relies on SAS for granular, rapid advertising inventory management, managing 1,500 campaigns on one end-to-end platform each month.

  • >5%

    Telefónica generated 10% more prepaid mobile campaigns, achieved 4x more effective campaigns and increased mobile subscribers more than 5%, one of the highest historical levels in the market.

  • 40%

    A leading Iberian communications service provider improved network rollout time by 40% compared with traditional design methods and gained 90% faster forecast production.

    Recommended resources on AI in telecom and media

    White paper

    A comprehensive approach to trustworthy AI governance

    Blog

    AI agents are here, but how autonomous should they be?

    Video

    Ready-Made AI Models

    Blog

    Using GenAI and AI agents to combat AI-generated fraud


    SAS is a leader in AI solutions

    SAS ranks No. 3 overall in the prestigious Chartis RiskTech AI 50 2025 – with 2 category wins.

    SAS is a Leader in The Forrester Wave: AI/ML Platforms, Q3, 2024.

    SAS is a Leader in 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning.


    Featured products & models

    AI from SAS enables you to automate tasks, improve customer experiences, reduce costs, improve operations, mitigate risk and make real-time, data-driven decisions. We help you accelerate growth and innovation so your business thrives in a highly competitive market.

    • SAS Intelligent Decisioning

      Easily create, manage and govern robust, analytically driven business rules to power decisioning at scale with this cloud-native solution.

      • Flexible, configurable data orchestration & enrichment.
      • Data visualization & user-friendly interface.
      • Common decision authoring & deployment environment.
      • Real-time decision intelligence & life cycle management.

      SAS Data Maker (in private preview, coming soon)

      Foster greater innovation by facilitating access to data while protecting sensitive information and reducing bias – generate synthetic data that statistically represents original training data.

      • Easily integrate with existing data sources and systems.
      • Open and extensible synthetic data generation.
      • Fast deployment & accelerated development.
      • Automatic auditing with visual & statistical evaluation metrics.
    • Document Analysis

      Transform scanned document images into structured data for reporting and analytics with an intelligent document processing (IDP) pipeline.

      • Cloud-based optical character recognition (OCR) streamlines text extraction.
      • Converts unstructured data into usable formats. 
      • Optimizes batch processing.
      • Supports robotic process automation.

      SAS Viya: The data and AI platform for your TMT business

      SAS Viya, our all-in-one platform, delivers governed, trustworthy AI capabilities. Viya enhances data cleaning processes, manages risks, reduces costs and increases ROI. It also quickly enables personalized customer experiences, improves productivity, accelerates network improvements, and supports new services and revenue streams.