Total Access Communication Public Company Limited (or DTAC) is the third-largest mobile phone provider in Thailand (AIS and True are the biggest). DTAC has some 23.2 million subscribers and a market share of 30 percent. DTAC has won the “Best Mobile Operator of Thailand” award three times.
With its focus on being a customer friendly telecom company, DTAC has a program of continuous improvement in place and this includes digital transformation initiatives. This includes artificial intelligence and Internet of Things devices.
According to Piero Trivellato, who heads up digital sales for the company: “Machine learning and AI can unlock formidable potential to better serve our customers. We’ve fully embraced their use for online marketing and have begun testing AI for customer care chatbots.”
Chatbots allow customers to interact with services faster and have their questions answered more quickly. The digital service also allows the telecoms operator to log calls and to analyze the results in a more streamlined fashion. Big data analytics can be used to improve services by understanding common customer queries.
One application includes the use of machine learning to assess which call package best suits an individual customer’s usage. For this, a static algorithm is used. Over time, the machine learns which packages best match different customers. This eases the burden on call operators and reduces the complexity for customers in shifting through some twenty different call packages.
In terms of Internet of Things applications, the company is preparing for customers to be using more connected devices and this requires more advanced networks to keep pace. In preparation, DTAC has rolled out a virtualised core network. This enables the company to scale network capacity much more quickly and efficiently.
In an example application DTAC has recently assisted farmers in adopting Internet of Things technology to enhance production capacity. The package used is the SmartFarmer project, which includes thirty pilot farms. The next phase will be with home automation and smart transport solutions.
