Scribd
Upload
40 views

Data Mining in Telecommunications and Studying Its Status in Iran Telecom Companies and Operators

This document summarizes the key applications of data mining in the telecommunications industry, including fraud detection, marketing, customer profiling, churn management, and network fault isolation. It discusses the types of data involved, such as call detail records, network data, and customer information. It also outlines some of the challenges of data mining for telecom companies, such as dealing with large datasets, data preprocessing requirements, handling rare events, and real-time performance needs. Finally, it notes that the study of data mining adoption among Iranian telecom companies is still ongoing.

Uploaded by

kosureokami9369
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
40 views

Data Mining in Telecommunications and Studying Its Status in Iran Telecom Companies and Operators

This document summarizes the key applications of data mining in the telecommunications industry, including fraud detection, marketing, customer profiling, churn management, and network fault isolation. It discusses the types of data involved, such as call detail records, network data, and customer information. It also outlines some of the challenges of data mining for telecom companies, such as dealing with large datasets, data preprocessing requirements, handling rare events, and real-time performance needs. Finally, it notes that the study of data mining adoption among Iranian telecom companies is still ongoing.

Uploaded by

kosureokami9369
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

IDMC'07 20-21 Nov.

2007 Amir Kabir University

Data mining in telecommunications and studying its status in iran telecom companies and operators
Author: jamal sophieh Affiliation : ( MS student of IT management,science and research branch, Azad university, bachelor of telecom engineering , khaje Nasir Toosi technical university and expert of telecom infrastructure company of Iran ) Email : [email protected]

Abstract: telecommunication companies generate and deal with a tremendous amount of data ,including : call detail data, network data and customer data. the amount of data is so great that manual analysis of the data is very difficult , if not impossible . in this paper we describe the main applications of data mining in telecommunications including : fraud detection and prediction, marketing ,customer profiling , network fault isolation , churn management ,etc. we also explain data mining challenges which telecommunication industry faces with them and finally the result of studying data mining status in iran telecommunication companies and operators. Keywords : data mining applications , telecommunications ,iran telecommunications

mining to help understand the new business involved , identify telecommunication patterns , catch fraudulent activities, make better use of resources and improve the quality of services. In general , the telecommunication industry is interested in answering some strategic questions through data mining applications such as : 1-which customer group is highly profitable , which one is not? 2-to which customers should we advertise what kind of special offers ? 3-which customers are most likely to churn? 4-how do customer profiles change over time? 5-fraud detection and prediction ( for example stolen mobile phones or phone cards ) 6-how does one retain customers and keep them loyal as competitors offer special offers and reduced rates? 7- how does one predict whether customers will buy additional products and services like cellular services , call waiting or basic services ? 8-what characteristics differentiate our products from those to our competitors? 9-when is a high-risk investment, such as new fiber optic lines ,acceptable? 10-what kind of call rates would increase profit without losing good customers? The popularity of data mining in the telecom industry can be viewed as an extension of the use of expert systems in the telecom industry ( leibowitz, 1988).these systems were developed to address the complexity associated with maintaining a huge network infrastructure and the need to maximize network reliability while minimizing labor costs .also we can say the need to handle such large volumes of data in telecom industry , led to the development of knowledge based expert systems . these automated systems performed important functions such as identifying fraudulent phone calls and identifying network faults . the problem with this approach is that it is time consuming to obtain the knowledge from human experts (the knowledge acquisition bottleneck ) and in many cases , the experts do not have the requisite knowledge .the advent of data mining technology promised solutions to these problems and for this reason telecommunication industry was an early adopter of data mining technology . Telecommunication data pose several interesting issues for data mining which we mention four of them here:

1.Introduction :
Data mining for telecommunications companies involve the use of simple, traditional and advanced mathematical techniques to analyze large populations of data and deliver forecasts , insights, explanations and predictions of how customers , systems , network and marketplace are likely to react to different situations. The hypercompetitive nature of the telecom industry has created a need to understand customers, to keep them , and to model effective ways to market new products. This creates a great demand for data

IDMC'07 20-21 Nov.2007 Amir Kabir University

1-first concerns scale, since telecom databases may contain billions of records and are amongst the largest in the world. 2-a second issue is that the raw data is often not suitable for data mining .before this data can be effectively mined , useful summary features must be identified and then the data must be summarized using these features. 3- rarity is another issue that must be dealt with (because many data mining applications involve predicting very rare events , such as the failure of a network element or an instance of telephone fraud ) 4-the fourth and final issue concerns real-time performance (many applications , such as fraud detection , require that any learned model/rules be applied in real-time )

each one will be described in more detail.also amny other applications exists which can be classified in these four categories such as : telecom market research , telco customer segmentation , telco market sizing , telco territory design and alignment , telco market forecasting , telco fraud prediction , telco sales force optimization and telco marketing campaign optimization.

4- data mining costs


Unfortunately , telecom data mining can be a very expensive proposition . the big costs are associated with finding the data required ,cleansing it and making it useful.

5-privacy and legal restrictions


Privacy concerns are an important issue for data mining especially in telecom industry , since telecom companies maintain highly private information , such as whom each customer calls.also there are many legal restrictions in each country about data mining , much of the rationale for these prohibitions relates to competition .

2. types of telecom data


The first step in the data mining process is to understand the data . here we describe three main types of telecom data .

2.1 call detail data


every time a call is placed on a telecom network , descriptive information about the call is saved as a call detail record. At a minimum , each call detail record will include the originating and terminating phone numbers , the date and time of the call and the duration of the call.

6- data mining status in iran telecom companies


This section is under studying and has not come to an end so far .

2.2 Network data


Telecommunication networks are extremely complex configurations of equipment, comprised of interconnected components.each network network element is capable of generating error and status messages,which leads to a tremendous amount of network data.

7- future trends
As advances are made in data mining , more reliance will be placed on the knowledge acquired through data mining and less on the knowledge acquired through the time-intensive process of eliciting domain knowledge from experts.

2.3 customer data


Telecommunication companies , like other large businesses , may have millions of customers .by necessity this means maintaining a database of information on these customers .this information will include name, address and may include other information such as service plan , contract information , credit score , family income and payment history.

7- conclusion
Because some parts of this paper has not been finalized so far so snap conclusion is not reasonable just now .

3- data mining applications in telecom


The telecom industry was an early adopter of data mining technology and therefore many applications exist.four major applications include : fraud detection , marketing / customer profiling , churn management and network fault isolation. which

You might also like