AI Will Make Networks Self-Healing. Here's What That Means for Customer Support
Telecom networks are moving toward self-healing operations powered by artificial intelligence. At India Mobile Congress 2025, telecom secretary Neeraj Mittal said AI will sit across the stack-front end, middle layers, and deep in the network-to improve service reliability and customer experience.
The government is coordinating with the International Telecommunication Union's AI for Good agenda to align telecom and AI development for public benefit. Expect standards, governance, and security to be part of this push, not an afterthought.
What Changes in the Network Mean for Support Teams
- Self-healing networks will auto-detect and resolve many faults. Ticket volume drops, while the remaining cases are higher-value and more complex.
- Agentic AI will triage, route, and summarize incidents end to end. Agents get richer context, not long log files.
- Proactive outreach becomes standard. Customers get notified before they feel the pain.
- Personalized troubleshooting improves as AI correlates QoS metrics, device data, and historical issues.
"As we move from 5G to 6G, there is a tremendous role for AI to improve the intelligence in the networks, make them self-healing, move from generative AI to agentic AI… there will be a lot of functions which AI will replace, make the customer service better," Mittal said.
Timeline: 6G on the Horizon
Industry players expect 6G trials to begin in 2028. Commercial deployment will follow later. Support leaders should prepare playbooks that work across 5G today and scale into 6G-era automation.
Security and Fraud: New Risks, New SOPs
AI also raises risk. Mittal flagged deepfakes, voice cloning, and identity spoofing that bypass voice signatures and even video checks. Support operations need stronger verification steps and audit trails.
- Adopt multi-factor verification beyond voice and video. Add device binding, one-time passcodes, and risk scoring.
- Update agent scripts with challenge phrases, mandatory call-backs on high-risk requests, and secure note-taking.
- Review AI-assisted responses for social-engineering cues. Log and review escalations where identity or payment changes occur.
- Minimize access to sensitive data and rotate credentials used by bots.
On the prevention front, the Department of Telecom's AI-based fraud risk indicator has helped PhonePe and Paytm claim protection of citizens from fraud worth ₹200 crore and blocked more than 48 lakh suspicious transactions. Expect similar tools to plug into CRMs and ticketing flows so agents see risk signals in real time.
Standards, Governance, and Investment
India is advancing an "AI for good" vision through a $1.25 billion India AI mission, funding research, startups, and scaling efforts. The country is contributing at WTSA-24 and into the ITU's AI standardization framework-key for interoperability and trust.
Action Plan for Customer Support Leaders
- Map your top 10 incident types to AI detection signals. Define which fixes can auto-run and which must escalate to humans.
- Set clear SLAs for bot-to-agent handoffs. Ensure agents see root cause, impact radius, and recommended steps at first glance.
- Run red-team drills for deepfake scenarios: voice cloning, SIM swap requests, account takeovers, and high-value refunds.
- Instrument contact reasons and outcomes. Track deflection quality (resolution) rather than raw deflection volume.
- Upskill agents on AI oversight, privacy, and effective prompt strategies. See curated options by role at Complete AI Training.
- Integrate network ops signals into your CRM. Push proactive notifications and status pages before customers reach out.
What to Monitor
- Mean time to detect vs. time to inform impacted customers.
- First-contact resolution for AI-detected incidents.
- False positive/negative rates in AI triage and fraud scoring.
- Fraud losses per 1,000 interactions and authentication success rates.
Bottom Line
AI-driven, self-healing networks promise fewer outages, faster answers, and smarter workflows. The upside is real-but so are the risks. Build automation with guardrails, train your team to verify with rigor, and align with emerging standards to keep customer trust intact.
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