In our first REAL AI blog, we introduced a phased journey for service providers – starting with reactive support. Today, we focus on a pivotal shift: evolving from reactive to responsive support. It’s a transformation that turns support centers from firefighting units into proactive service hubs, improving both customer experience and operational efficiency.

Reactive support today: Driving blind

In today’s broadband operations, support often begins only after a subscriber reports a problem. A frontline human agent takes the call and starts troubleshooting – but with limited visibility and fragmented tools. Data is scattered across dashboards, device logs, billing systems and more. Support teams must hunt for clues, relying on tribal knowledge to stitch together a diagnosis. Expertise becomes a bottleneck. New personnel face steep learning curves and even seasoned techs struggle to interpret disconnected systems.

Without clear insights, support may resort to trial-and-error fixes, escalate too soon or dispatch a technician for issues that could’ve been resolved remotely. It’s like driving at night without sensors – reacting only when an obstacle appears. No early warnings. No guidance. The result: longer downtimes, repeated explanations, rising costs. Subscribers are frustrated. Support teams are overwhelmed. And operations remain stuck in a reactive loop.

Responsive support tomorrow: Driving with insight

Responsive support still begins with a subscriber reporting an issue – but now, support teams are equipped with AI-assisted tools that surface the right data, in the right context, at the right time. Guided workflows and anomaly detection help pinpoint root causes. In-context actions – like rebooting an ONT or running a speed test – are just a click away. Even novice agents can deliver expert-level outcomes without relying on years of tribal knowledge.

It’s still human-driven, but smarter – like driving with lane departure warnings and blind-spot alerts. The agent stays in control, but now with systems that reduce guesswork and accelerate resolution. Responsive support doesn’t replace human judgment – it enhances it. Subscribers get faster, more consistent service. Support teams gain productivity and confidence. And operations become more efficient, without losing the human touch.

The REAL AI approach

The subscriber: Guided self-diagnosis with Intellifi®

For subscribers, responsive support starts with empowerment. The upcoming Intellifi® enhancement guides subscribers through self-diagnosis and resolution. It collects experience data, analyzes anomalies, determines root causes and prescribes remedies – all through an intuitive workflow. This isn’t just convenience – it’s intelligence at the edge. And every interaction feeds the learning loop, helping the system understand what subscribers experience and how they respond to fixes.

AI-assisted tools surface the right data, in the right context, at the right time.

Human agents using Mosaic One Care no longer need to hunt through fragmented systems. They get a unified view across in-home and access networks – including third-party RGs (via TR-69 and soon TR-369), ONTs and OLTs. Anomaly detection highlights what could be wrong, and the Action Center offers direct remedies like rebooting ONTs or running speed tests. For a well-known call center, integrating Mosaic One Care via its API turned a process that used to take minutes into one that now takes seconds – dramatically improving efficiency for frontline tech support.

And with the upcoming Mosaic One Clarity upgrade, customer support won’t just get anomalies – they’ll get root cause analysis and recommended actions, explained in plain language. This enhancement accelerates resolution and improves accuracy. Even novice personnel can deliver expert-level outcomes, backed by tools that surface the right data at the right time.

The Tier 2 engineer: Deep diagnostics with Mosaic Subscriber Insights

When issues escalate, Tier 2 engineers turn to Mosaic Subscriber Insights (MSI). MSI provides deep cross-domain visibility across fiber, Wi-Fi, BSS and BNG layers, allowing engineers to diagnose complex problems with precision. It’s built for experts. 

Delivering REAL AI with multiple AI technology approaches

Adtran’s responsive support capabilities are powered by two complementary flows: Reasoning and Learning. Together, they form the intelligence backbone of REAL AI, delivering expert-level outcomes at scale while continuously improving over time. The Reasoning Flow is the engine behind every AI-assisted interaction. It’s fast, scalable and understandable, built not on opaque models, but on human-curated logic. Think of it as a vast troubleshooting library that detects anomalies, traces root causes and prescribes remedies across both in-home and access domains.

This reasoning flow avoids the need to run every alarm or config change through a large language model. Instead, it uses structured logic to answer three key questions: What’s out of place? Why is it happening? And what can be done to fix it? The result is a repeatable, low-cost, and grounded approach that empowers support teams to act with confidence – whether rebooting an ONT, escalating a ticket or resolving an issue remotely.

The learning flow ensures the system gets smarter over time. Researchers and AI agents mine data from tools already in use – Care, MSI and Intellifi® – to refine anomaly detectors, improve root cause chains and enhance remedy recommendations. Agentic AI helps automate parts of this loop, spotting new symptoms, developing hypotheses and proposing updates to the reasoning flow. This feedback loop not only improves support outcomes – it supervises the quality of the AI’s reasoning itself.

Why REAL AI is different

Reactive support is slow, fragmented and frustrating. REAL AI changes that, empowering every user in the support chain with AI-assisted tools that surface the right data, in the right context, at the right time.

Subscribers use the upcoming Intellifi® app enhancements to self-diagnose and resolve issues. Frontline agents rely on Mosaic One Care for anomaly detection and rapid action, and with the Mosaic One Clarity upgrade, they will benefit from root-cause analysis and recommended remedies. Tier 2 engineers use Mosaic Subscriber Insights to resolve escalations with precision. Each tool not only assists – it learns, feeding a loop that improves outcomes and supervises AI reasoning.

REAL AI is more than a framework – it’s a philosophy. Built to Reason. Designed to Explain. Ready to Act. Always Learning. This is how we move from reactive to responsive support. And it’s just the beginning.

Written with the assistance of REAL AI