Alianza’s Intelligent Communications Fabric’s Orchestration layer is critical to modernizing operators’ voice offerings for the AI-enabled services era. By modeling underlying networks, aggregating and normalizing subscriber, telemetry, and log data, and preparing real-time traffic for AI ingestion, it enables new developer APIs that power applications with integrated voice network capabilities that surpass what over-the-top (OTT) providers can offer. At the same time, the Orchestration layer protects voice networks with strict security protocols that govern how APIs and network data are utilized while preventing misuse and fraud.
Here's a closer look at how this powerful Orchestration layer helps network operators deliver modernized voice services that derive more value for customers to generate new revenue from their existing voice infrastructures.
Closing the network monetization gap
Voice network operators have invested billions in their infrastructure only to see OTT application providers reap the benefits. In parallel, these applications have raised users’ expectations for the value and functionality voice services could and should offer.
For operators, this has created a network monetization gap. This gap represents a disconnect between the massive investments made in voice infrastructure and operators’ inability to grow revenue in voice services, as voice revenues have declined for service providers worldwide. Reversing this negative trend requires a rethink and modernization of voice offerings. Operators must create ways to add new value for customers while maximizing their existing voice network infrastructure.
Modern voice offerings versus legacy services
Let’s look quickly at the key differences between legacy and modern voice offerings.
The legacy voice services that operators traditionally provide are disconnected from other applications that business customers use every day, like appointment scheduling, CRM, and tech support systems. They lack features which have become common with OTT voice and collaboration apps, like presence, recording and transcription, and screen sharing.
On the other hand, modernized voice services close the network monetization gap by:
- Carrying forward the best features of legacy voice, like quality, ease of use, and the standards-based, worldwide access that made them ubiquitous for decades.
- Adding features common to OTT apps, like showing whether a called party is available as well as recording and transcription on-demand.
- Surpassing what OTT apps can deliver through network API-based integration to business software.
- Enabling new AI applications to ingest a range of valuable network data and empowering developers to use that data to create services that generate new revenue.
Deriving new value from existing voice networks
Modernized voice offerings need to maximize what existing voice network infrastructure can offer. For example, customers should be able to leverage API integrations with their business software, use multilingual translation and transcription powered by AI, and benefit from AIOps. This uses a combination of machine learning and modern Large Language Models (LLMs) to detect and pinpoint service issues in real-time. And as operators move towards closed-loop, fully automated, and intent-based networking, they should be able to predict and resolve voice network and service problems automatically.
While the AI wave continues to build, modernized voice offerings should also enable AI developers to create new services. This is possible only if AI platforms can ingest real-time media plus network metadata like call logs, signaling events, quality metrics, network state, telemetry information, and alarms.
With these types of modern capabilities drawn out of existing voice network investments, operators can create new experiences that integrate voice services and innovative features with their customers’ business applications and processes. This closes the network monetization gap because those new services deliver new revenue-generating capabilities to customers that exceed the functionality of OTT apps.
Orchestration powers new features and security
In Alianza’s Intelligent Communications Fabric, the Orchestration layer is the critical piece that connects AI-driven applications with voice networks. Through a comprehensive suite of abstracted APIs. This layer captures and transforms raw network events and traffic into structured, contextualized, and stateful information that both powers actionable intelligence about voice networks and powers modern user experiences. Voice packets, signaling messages, subscriber and call detail records, alarms and telemetry data like jitter, latency, and packet loss are acquired, normalized, indexed and stored in the Orchestration layer.
With this data extracted, loaded, transformed and stored within a common schema, APIs can expose it securely for access and consumption by observability engines, AI agents, and user applications. Developers can then create services that combine voice network functions with new capabilities like speech-to-text, language translation, sentiment measurement, and fraud detection.
Developers can focus on creating valuable services because they aren’t restrained by underlying network complexity. When opening these new capabilities to developers, operators still determine exactly which capabilities are exposed, who can access them, and how they can be used through the governance and security the Orchestration layer provides.
This type of security and governance is crucial when voice network APIs are exposed to developers because:
- Operators need to know developers on their network can be trusted. These developers also need to know their voice applications and integrations are secure.
- Operators want to control what developers can do on their networks. While they want to assume they are well intended, operators need to provide guardrails so developers understand what’s possible and what the limits are when they utilize network resources.
- Operators must protect themselves, their customers, and their customers’ customers from fraud and scams.
With this comprehensive set of capabilities, the Orchestration layer adds the modernization, intelligence, and security operators need to be more responsive to customers, surpass competitive offerings including OTT applications, and reverse the negative revenue trends that have plagued legacy voice services.
The Orchestration layer provides the brains to power new voice offerings
The Alianza Intelligent Communications Fabric’s Orchestration layer provides the intelligence behind voice services modernization to help close the network monetization gap. It allows operators to expose voice network features and functions via APIs to trusted developers. It prepares voice network features and data for AI ingestion and integration. It enables new voice applications and services that add value for customers and create new revenue streams for service providers. And it keeps networks, customers, and customers’ customers safe from bad actors and scammers.
Check out Alianza’s website for more information about the Intelligent Communications Fabric.