{"id":59474,"date":"2023-10-30T16:21:38","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T08:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=59474"},"modified":"2023-10-30T16:21:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T08:21:40","slug":"smart-partners-with-google-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2023\/10\/30\/smart-partners-with-google-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart partners with Google Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Smart Communications, Inc.<\/a>\u00a0(Smart), the mobile services arm of\u00a0PLDT Group, and\u00a0Google Cloud announced a collaboration to improve the accessibility of essential digital services for Filipinos, with\u00a0Searce\u00a0providing technical implementation support. Under this collaboration, Smart will become one of the first communication services providers (CSPs) in the Asia Pacific region to adopt\u00a0Telecom Subscriber Insights, Google Cloud\u2019s AI-powered solution that ingests data from various sources, provides contextual insights on subscribers\u2019 propensity to consume services, and presents personalized recommendations to their devices for activation.
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With the Philippines\u2019 digital economy set to\u00a0grow 20% year-on-year\u00a0between now and 2025, mobile connectivity plays an increasingly central role in how Filipinos access essential services like food, transport, and the purchase of daily items. By leveraging Telecom Subscriber Insights to analyze customer data securely hosted on Google Cloud, Smart will gain richer perspective into how Filipinos interact with digital services and the pain points they face in everyday usage\u2014informing the development of services that equip Filipinos to better understand, manage, and optimize their mobile data consumption.

Smart will also use Telecom Subscriber Insights to design more inclusive mobile services for subscribers by identifying both patterns and gaps in connectivity. With real-time insights from customer data, Smart could, for instance, help subscribers optimize their data consumption while streaming content by alerting the user to adjust the resolution of their video. Subscribers could also be prompted to top up their prepaid plan on their device through integrations with local digital payments services, instead of having to locate a physical store to purchase a prepaid load.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur collaboration with Google Cloud to be the first communication services provider in Asia Pacific to adopt Telecom Subscriber Insights will empower us to better serve Filipino mobile users whenever and wherever they need us. This is a huge step toward our commitment to always put our customers first and provide them with the best mobile experience powered by our superior network,\u201d said\u00a0Alex O. Caeg, Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Business \u2013 Individual, Smart Communications, Inc.

<\/strong>\u201cThe speed of digital change has created growing anxiety amongst Filipinos about running low on data in their exact moment of need\u2014from booking a ride-hailing service on an app, to completing important financial transactions on the go. Google Cloud\u2019s enterprise-grade AI solutions will allow us to give our subscribers simpler, quicker, and more affordable access to the data services most aligned to their evolving digital lifestyles, while guiding our efforts to boost mobile connectivity across the country,\u201d said\u00a0Emmanuel C. Lorenzana, Chief Transformation and Customer Officer, PLDT Inc..\u00a0

Smart is looking to gain additional capabilities that enable subscribers to better interact with agents and chatbots, by integrating Google Cloud\u2019s generative AI (gen AI) capabilities\u2014such as\u00a0Google\u2019s first-party foundation models\u00a0for summarizing text and maintaining an ongoing conversation\u2014with Telecom Subscriber Insights. By using Google Cloud\u2019s\u00a0Vertex AI\u00a0platform to access and tune snapshots of these models, ground their responses with its own private corpus, and integrate them into its services, Smart could allow its subscribers to interact with natural-sounding, virtual agents that offer more tailored and accessible insights into, and ways to optimize, their personal data consumption.

\u201cAs CSPs are increasingly put under pressure to deliver transformative customer experiences tailored to individual needs, the ability to navigate and understand complex datasets has become critical for achieving success,\u201d said\u00a0Gabriele Di Piazza, Senior Director, Global Product Management, Telecommunications, Google Cloud. \u201cWith Telecom Subscriber Insights, Smart can extract customer insights in real-time, while leveraging the product\u2019s machine learning capabilities to inform digital sales opportunities based on customer readiness, price sensitivity, and lifetime value.\u201d

\u201cWhen\u00a0deployed strategically by CSPs, AI and gen AI can significantly improve inclusion and equity of digital access, by tapping on data that these providers already manage and store as part of their core operations,\u201d said\u00a0Malis Selamat, Country Manager, Philippines and Vietnam, Google Cloud. \u201cSmart\u2019s use of Telecom Subscriber Insights demonstrates the potential for CSPs in Asia to support\u00a0national digital transformation efforts\u00a0with the use of AI in a secure-by-design and privacy-controlled environment, while empowering consumers to make more informed decisions about their data usage in a growing and fast-evolving digital world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under this collaboration, Smart will become one of the first communication services providers (CSPs) in the Asia Pacific region to adopt\u00a0Telecom Subscriber Insights, Google Cloud\u2019s AI-powered solution that ingests data from various sources, provides contextual insights on subscribers\u2019 propensity to consume services, and presents personalized recommendations to their devices for activation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":59477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3126,343,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-59474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-google-cloud-platform","tag-smart-communications","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}