How gamification and big data can solve telecom problems?

It is not every day that you find a startup that can disrupt all industries in the world. Today I found one: Kaggle. Kaggle allows companies to set up big data competitions for others to solve. Students, freelancers, hobbyist, specialists, everybody with analytical skills can participate. You can help predict if the car you will buy next year on eBay will be giving you a headache, who will win next year’s Eurovision song festival, etc. Whoever makes the most efficient solution wins the cash price.

How can telecom use Kaggle?

There are literally hundreds of big data challenges that could improve operator’s revenues, decrease network costs, predict revenue leakage, offer better coverage, etc.

A simple example: why not let the best statistical gurus predict what will be the revenue of a subscriber in the next 6 months. You would need to anonymize calling records, service profiles, complaints, spending, demographic information, etc. Afterwards you divide the data in historical data, test data and unseen data. You share the historical data and the test data. To see who has won, you run the solutions on the unseen data. Imagine if the new algorithm could increase your prediction accuracy with 15%. Would paying €5K or €10K in price fees be worth it? It would probably be peanuts compared to the extra revenue you get. Potentially you would be able to hire the winning team, so you are set to improve other predictions and big data challenges as well…

Advertisements