Nokia is offering telecom engineers their own personal assistant, and its name is MIKA, for, you guessed it: Multi-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant.
It’s not exactly Siri or Alexa, but it’s not designed to be. While it does provide voice-activated assistance, Nokia says it’s the first digital assistant “trained” specifically for the telecom industry, created to provide automated assistance and recommendations on all things telecom-related. Nokia’s own research indicates the application of MIKA could “give back” more than an hour each day to engineers just by giving them useful information when and where they need it.
"Finding the right information is a daily challenge for telco engineers tasked with boosting network quality. MIKA taps into the power of the Nokia AVA platform to provide quick and accurate answers, avoiding time wasted on fruitless searches,” said Igor Leprince, head of Global Services at Nokia, in a press release. “MIKA is customized to support the specific needs of telecoms, and can deliver recommendations based on experience from networks around the world."
MIKA combines augmented intelligence with automated learning to provide access to a range of tools, including the Nokia AVA knowledge library, a repository of best practices gathered from Nokia projects around the world. Using the knowledge library, MIKA can provide recommendations based on similar issues seen in other networks.
Nokia is also tapping into the expertise it acquired from Bell Labs with the introduction of Predictive Repair, which is a service designed to enable operators to “reduce costs and improve network quality by moving away from break-fix approaches to hardware maintenance.” The service can predict hardware failures and recommend replacements up to 14 days in advance, with up to 95% accuracy.
“These recommendations will allow operators to improve efficiency by avoiding unnecessary site visits, wasted operations efforts, excessive inventory, and false 'No Fault Found' returns,” Nokia said in the release.
By applying Nokia Bell Labs machine learning algorithms to predict failures, the focus is on high-runner modules that generate a significant share of customer repair transactions. The service is available to operators that use Nokia 3G and 4G equipment.
MIKA is available via a web interface and mobile agent and it’s now available for customer trials; it will be demonstrated at Nokia’s booth at the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. The Predictive Repair will be available for customer trials in March.