Throughout history, we have never ceased in our pursuit of greater productivity. With each new industrial revolution, from industrialization and digitalization to today's focus on robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), we have seen giant leaps in terms of our industrial efficiency.

In 1947, US completed the first autonomous transatlantic flight. 1983 witnessed the world's first driverless metro – Métro de Lille – going live in France. In 2012, Google obtained the world's first self-driving car license in Nevada, with its self-driving cars travelling 8 million kilometers as of March 2018. Autonomous driving is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Indeed, today, with the massive strides made in autonomous driving technologies, companies like Tesla are making it possible for people to travel in a comfortable and more environmentally friendly way. In a fully connected and intelligent era, autonomous driving is becoming a reality. Industries like automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing are modernizing and renewing themselves by introducing autonomous technologies.

Huge Telecom Structural Challenges Requiring Autonomous Driving

According to a report by OVUM, over the past decade, growth in the telecommunications industry's revenue has never outpaced growth in OPEX. As the scale of a network increases, OPEX increases with it, and the structural challenges to an industry come to the fore. Telecom operators depend more heavily on the experience and skills of their staff than OTT players do in network operations and maintenance (O&M). Only 3 engineers are needed for an OTT player to perform O&M on 10,000 devices. But for a telecom operator, that number is 300. Telecom networks also face huge challenges in managing user experience – 58% of people's problems with their home broadband are not identified until they file a complaint. As such, there is now a pressing need for an autonomous driving network.