Network reliability is crucial for customers, which is why Comcast has been working to virtualize its network, making it nimbler and more resilient. Embedded AI already enables the organization to resolve 77 percent of network software issues before customers are impacted. However, external factors, like commercial power outages, remain a challenge to connectivity.

Most power outages are resolved in less than two hours and impact fewer than 200 customer locations at a time. Comcast’s network is already built to stay online for up to four hours without commercial power to withstand these outages. Now, Comcast is taking outage detection and resolution to the next level, using AI deep inside the network to determine what homes and businesses do or do not have power and deploy restoration crews more efficiently.

Additionally, Comcast offers Xfinity customers a Pro WiFi Extender with 4G LTE backup as part of its Xfinity Pro service with the option to purchase a backup battery. In the instance of a power outage, the home network will automatically switch to a cellular for these customers, enabling their home to remain online for up to four hours.

Here’s How It Works

When there is any outage on Comcast’s network, whether from a fiber cut, a power outage, or an in-home issue, an alarm is automatically triggered on Comcast’s monitoring system that a customer’s modem is offline. An outage hitting a large area creates many individual alarms. Comcast uses a proprietary AI algorithm to understand commonalities among all the individual alarms, like location and time, and groups them into a single alert.

By automatically analyzing the device and network data within that group of customers, it then determines the cause, allowing Comcast to jump into action by notifying customers and providing them with recommendations like contacting their local power provider. The tool also streamlines the dispatch of technicians with the specific tools they will need to fix the issue as quickly as possible.

AI In the Eye of the Storm