Augmented Reality in Telecom Industry - Enabling Real-Time Remote Assistance for Telecom Troubleshooting, allowing companies to enhance first-call resolution rates & reduce downtime through AR driven insights.
It started as just another normal day at the office—everyone busy with their work, voices of keyboards chattering, colleagues immersed in their respective tasks, a typical Monday gearing everyone to get ready for new targets and challenges. It was a productive start to the week but suddenly a silence of disruption filled the room, everything suddenly ground to a halt due to the network outage.
“Ahh not again, Today is an important client presentation in the evening, " James Chen, the IT manager of the Software Solutions firm muttered to himself. Reaching for his phone back at his cabin room, he immediately called MetroConnect, their Internet network service provider.
In the past, such issues and back-and-forth communications often led to hours of downtime. In some cases, it meant losing a full day waiting for technicians to arrive—sometimes checking and fixing problems on the spot, while other times requiring multiple on-site technicians visits to diagnose, check, and recheck the issue.
Well, the story of resolving this issue would have been the same as before, but this time something was new and different that changed everything. Now the question is, What was that?
Well, it is the smart way of adopting technology for troubleshooting and providing support services, that not only fixes the issues faster but also reduces costs, saves unnecessary on-site visit times, improves first-time resolution rates, and enhances overall customer satisfaction.
"MetroConnect customer support, this is Sophia. How can I help you today?" Over that phone call James explained the whole situation to Sophia about the unstable internet connection at their office premises. "Mr. Chen, do you have the AR Genie app installed on your smartphone? Our company has recently encouraged all of our existing customers to download this new troubleshooting AR application, which we have started implementing to offer remote support to our customers”.
“ Yes, I got the message. I have installed that app on my smartphone, ” James replied, looking at his phone and thinking, how exactly is this app going to fix this problem without sending any technician on-site. "Perfect," Sophia continued. " We can start a video remote AR session to diagnose your issue more efficiently. It might save us both a lot of time. I have just sent you the session code on your mobile number , just simply click the “Join Video Session on the app” and enter this code to connect for a remote session”.
When James accepted the support request and joined the remote session by entering the link code sent by Sohpia, both of them immediately entered into the live video remote session room. Sophia could now see exactly what James saw through his smartphone camera.
Initial Assessment:
Can you please show me or just point your camera at the main router ?" Sophia asked. As James did so, Sophia noticed the WAN/Internet LED and the upstream LED indicator was flashing red instead of its normal solid green state through James' live video feed. The internet speed was also slow as James had earlier explained to her. Using AR Genie Remote Assist, she took the snapshot with AR annotation marked on the LED’s indicator to document the scenario.
"I can see your router's indicating an upstream connection issue. Show me your network termination point." Sophia said.
James followed her guidance, and went close to this router’s closet. Before he could ask what the termination point was, Sophia swiftly drew a bright yellow AR arrow that circled the termination point—highlighting the exact spot where to check.
James showed her the cable connecting to the termination point, which seemed to be perfectly fine. "Everything looks physically connected properly on your end," Sophia concluded after guiding James through several diagnostic steps. "Based on what we've seen from your end, and the data our team has collected, there is an issue at the cell tower serving your area. It appears there's a hardware malfunction in one of the signal amplifiers that's affecting several customers in your vicinity."
James "So what happens now, if everything is ok here, when can we get a stable connection?" Sophia- " Don’t worry, we have already dispatched a field technician to the tower with the exact replacement parts needed. Our technician is heading directly to the source of the issue. so, it will not take much time”.
After three hours, James received a notification that their internet connection had been fully restored—far faster than previous outages. This AR-assisted troubleshooting eliminated an entire step in the traditional service process: the initial on-site visit to diagnose the issue.
Since Sophia has visually inspected the initial stage of the issue using an Augmented Reality App, “ AR Genie Remote Assist”, she didn't need to send someone to Jame’s location first to diagnose the problem—which saved the unnecessary time of inspecting the case.
For MetroConnect, by implementing Augmented Reality Technology in their remote tech support services has significantly improved their efficiency and reduced the downtime for their customers.
In this case, their field technician arrived at the tower already knowing exactly which equipment was malfunctioning – all thanks to AR Remote Assistance for quickly inspecting the case visually first hand. With the proper replacement parts in hand, the issue was resolved very quickly in a few hours, which would have taken a full day of service interruption for multiple customers.
AR Remote Visual Assistance is transforming the telecommunication industry by enabling faster, and more efficient maintenance and troubleshooting. By leveraging AR in their customer support services, experts or customer service agents can remotely guide their on-site field technicians or their customers in real-time. With step-by-step visual guidance through precise AR overlays on the live video feed, they can reduce the need for multiple site visits and minimise service disruptions, while ensuring their technician arrives on-site with the right tools and parts –cutting repair times significantly.
For example, a telecom company using AR in their tech support and maintenance services can resolve their customer issues or tower malfunctions in hours instead of days, preventing widespread service disruptions.
Beyond on-site repairs and troubleshooting, AR also helps technicians to practice complex procedures, enhancing workforce training through hands-on experience with interactive AR guidance.
For Network Service Providers ( NSPs ), adopting and implementing Augmented Reality Remote Assistance solutions can serve several advantages.
As telecom networks expand with 5G and IoT, AR-driven remote assistance is becoming a critical tool for maintaining uptime, reducing costs, and delivering seamless customer experiences. With advancement in AR technology, we can expect even more sophisticated applications that further enhance efficiency and service quality across the telecom industry.
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