Telecommunication network configuration from feature-based extrapolation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10929862-B2
Application number	US-201816179799-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 2, 2018
Priority date	Nov 2, 2018
Publication date	Feb 23, 2021
Grant date	Feb 23, 2021

Abstract

A processing system may obtain a feature set for segmenting households comprising subscribers of a telecommunication network into segments, the households including reporting households for which an information value regarding a feature of interest is available, and non-reporting households for which an information value regarding the feature of interest is not available. The processing system may then assign the households to segments, each segment associated with a set of information values for features of the feature set, and where for each segment, households assigned to the segment have information values that are the same for each of the features of the feature set. The processing system may also link each non-reporting household in a segment to a reporting household in the segment. The processing system may then reconfigure the telecommunication network in accordance with information values for the at least one feature of interest for the plurality of households.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising: obtaining, by a processing system including at least one processor, a feature set for segmenting a plurality of households comprising subscribers of a telecommunication network into a plurality of segments, wherein the plurality of households comprises a plurality of reporting households and a plurality of non-reporting households, wherein the plurality of reporting households comprises households of the plurality of households for which an information value regarding at least one feature of interest is available to the processing system, and wherein the plurality of non-reporting households comprises households of the plurality of households for which an information value regarding the at least one feature of interest is not available to the processing system;
assigning, by the processing system, households of the plurality of households to segments of the plurality of segments, wherein each segment is associated with a set of information values for features of the feature set, and wherein for each segment, households assigned to a respective segment have information values that are the same for each of the features of the feature set;
linking, by the processing system, each non-reporting household of the plurality of non-reporting households in a segment to a reporting household in the segment, wherein the linking comprises, for each non-reporting household in the segment:
selecting the reporting household in the segment to be linked to the non-reporting household, wherein the reporting household is then made unavailable for selection to link to another non-reporting household in the segment until all reporting households in the segment have been selected to link to a respective non-reporting household in the segment;
and assigning an information value for the at least one feature of interest from the reporting household to the non-reporting household;
and reconfiguring, by the processing system, the telecommunication network in accordance with information values for the at least one feature of interest for the plurality of households, wherein the reconfiguring the telecommunication network in accordance with the information values for the at least one feature of interest for the plurality of households comprises:
identifying a utilization trend in the telecommunication network comprising an increased usage or a decreased usage of at least one service provided by the telecommunication network, wherein the information values comprise the increased usage or the decreased usage;
and allocating at least one additional resource of the telecommunication network to the at least one service or removing at least one existing resource of the telecommunication network that is allocated to the at least one service in accordance with the utilization trend, wherein the at least one additional resource or the at least one existing resource comprises a hardware computing resource.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assigning the households of the plurality of households to the segments of the plurality of segments comprises: determining whether there is at least one reporting household in a segment of the plurality of segments; and when there is not at least one reporting household in the segment, removing at least one information value of the set of information values associated with the segment.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the removing the at least one information value comprises removing information values for a number of features of the features of the feature set until at least one reporting household is in the segment.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the feature set is obtained with the features of the feature set in an order of priority, wherein the removing the information values for the number of features comprises removing the information values for the number of features according to the order of priority.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein one or more of the information values are removed on a per stage basis of a plurality of stages, and wherein the removing is stopped at a particular stage of the plurality of stages when at least one reporting household is in the segment.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the feature set comprises demographic features.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the feature set comprises television service features.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the feature set comprises telephone service features.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the feature set comprises internet service features.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one additional resource or the at least one existing resource further comprises: a virtual machine or a container hosted on a network function virtualization infrastructure.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the at least one additional resource further comprises a bandwidth allocation on at least one network link in the telecommunication network.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein when the at least one service comprises a television service, and when the utilization trend comprises an increased viewership of a video program beyond a threshold viewership, the at least one additional resource that is allocated to the at least one service comprises storing at least one additional copy of the video program at an edge server of the telecommunication network.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: performing an automated communication action in accordance with the information values for the at least one feature of interest for households of the plurality of households in at least one segment of the plurality of segments.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the automated communication action comprises: activating a marketing automation platform to direct automated communications to one or more devices of one or more of the plurality of households in the at least one segment of the plurality of segments.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of non-reporting households comprises households of the plurality of households that are opted-out of recordation of information values for the at least one feature of interest.

16. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: detecting a change in the information value for the at least one feature of interest for a reporting household of the plurality of households; and propagating the change in the information value for the at least one feature of interest to any non-reporting household that is linked to the reporting household for which the change in the information value is detected.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by a processing system including at least one processor, cause the processing system to perform operations, the operations comprising: obtaining a feature set for segmenting a plurality of households comprising subscribers of a telecommunication network into a plurality of segments, wherein the plurality of households comprises a plurality of reporting households and a plurality of non-reporting households, wherein the plurality of reporting households comprises households of the plurality of households for which an information value regarding at least one feature of interest is available to the processing system, and wherein the plurality of non-reporting households comprises households of the plurality of households for which an information value regarding the at least one feature of interest is not available to the processing system; assigning households of the plurality of households to segments of the plurality of segments, wherein each segment is

Assignees

• At & T Ip I Lp

Inventors

• Boddhireddy Prashanth
• Hwang Kyubyul
• Kolachina Siva
• Garikapati Vijayendra Kousik

Classifications

• H04H60/46

  for recognising users' preferences · CPC title

• H04H60/37

  for identifying segments of broadcast information, e.g. scenes or extracting programme ID · CPC title

• H04H60/29

  Arrangements for monitoring broadcast services or broadcast-related services · CPC title

• G06Q30/0204 Primary

  Market segmentation · CPC title

• H04H60/45

  for identifying users · CPC title