Zjaen Coetzee , Head of Data Insights Management , Telkom

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As a retail focused business , distributed technology personalisation and autonomous or smart technology have all been key drivers ,” says Phaweni . “ Personalisation is possible with deeper insights into customer behaviour and their preferences . This means more granular segmentation and user driven product development . Autonomous and smart technology means fibre networks and towers that report their own faults and eventually autonomous agents that can repair them without risking human lives .” Phaweni believes that while no one can successfully predict the future accurately , instead you can take a view on the kinds of technologies that seem promising . “ Automatic Speech Recognition ( ASR ) is one of those promising technologies especially in a market as diverse and culturally rich as Africa ,” he says . “ The challenge is that speech requires good and large datasets many of which don ’ t exist and others are simply too small for commercial tools . Of course , the ASR does not standalone , it requires a plethora of natural language tools .”

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